Speaker 1: What still at the bottom of the ocean. My worst
Speaker 1: submersible in history. Uh, there we go. That was That
Speaker 1: was That was nice. Huh that was good. Respectful of
Speaker 1: the sea.
Speaker 2: Sure, it's the most submerged submersible in history.
Speaker 1: Look in terms of being submerged. It did its job
Speaker 1: with a plomp. Yeah, you know, it is under the
Speaker 1: fucking water as hell. So none of these other submersibles
Speaker 1: lasted except for maybe the Curse. Yeah, but it's great,
Speaker 1: the great moments.
Speaker 2: It's like our top twenty submersible in terms of how
Speaker 2: fucking underwater it is staying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it is super under the goddamn water. Oh Andrew,
Speaker 1: how are we doing on this glorious week? Uh, you're
Speaker 1: having a good one to enjoy the Monday.
Speaker 2: You know, good, better than some folks. Let's just say,
Speaker 2: I guess worse than some other folks.
Speaker 1: Better than some folks. Yeah, yeah, middle Yeah, I'm feeling
Speaker 1: better than both submersible rich people who love submersibles, and
Speaker 1: I'm feeling better than many members of the Russian government.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 1: We had a little break for there to be a mutiny.
Speaker 1: I'm very happy there was a mutiny in Russia. You know,
Speaker 1: outside of a variety of geopolitical reasons, primarily because like,
Speaker 1: how long has it been since we've had a mutiny
Speaker 1: like in the news, like a real ass mutiny that
Speaker 1: just doesn't happen often anymore.
Speaker 3: Listen, maybe, listen to me.
Speaker 2: Russian Russian revolutions, robber barons, the nineteenth century into the
Speaker 2: twentieth centuries, back baby.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, hell yeah, the Titanic's killing people again.
Speaker 3: It's all coming back.
Speaker 1: History never changes, beautiful, beautiful. All we need now is
Speaker 1: for European powers to get us into a disastrous conflict
Speaker 1: and forget that machine guns exist where we're kno going
Speaker 1: to have everything off one by one.
Speaker 3: In that direction. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, speaking of easily predictable disasters with a high body count,
Speaker 1: let's return to the story of Stocked and Rush. Yeah, good,
Speaker 1: good ship. So in two thousand and nine, are our
Speaker 1: boy stocked and founded ocean Gate Incorporated, which is both
Speaker 1: the funniest name he could have possibly picked for a
Speaker 1: company that was about to become infamous for killing a
Speaker 1: bunch of rich people. Really, yeah, the the goal, It
Speaker 1: is quite a choice. Huh, Like, yeah, did you not
Speaker 1: think about.
Speaker 3: Why? Yeah?
Speaker 1: My guess is because, like you know, it's your gateway
Speaker 1: to the ocean and to deep sea exploration. But you
Speaker 1: are around in the nineties, Stockton, like, you know what,
Speaker 1: we use that word more.
Speaker 2: I mean, the full dame of the company should be
Speaker 2: ocean gate parentheses gate like a door, not like that
Speaker 2: kind of gate.
Speaker 1: Never mind, it's going to be fine getting no, no, no,
Speaker 1: like not like a watergate thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I would have called it, yeah, absolutely safe Submersibles Incorporated,
Speaker 1: but he didn't. So the goal of the company was
Speaker 1: to deliver manned submersible solutions to the private market. Now,
Speaker 1: because Stockton did not yet know how to design submarines
Speaker 1: or submersibles, we are using the word interchangeably as regular people,
Speaker 1: but they are two different things, right. Submersible needs needs
Speaker 1: a bigger boat that takes it around to places. A
Speaker 1: submarine is a boat in and of itself. I think
Speaker 1: that's more or less accurate. So, since he didn't really
Speaker 1: know how to make either subs or submersibles, he and
Speaker 1: his partner bought two functional subs and started kind of
Speaker 1: like hacking them, which makes sense right. Their goal was
Speaker 1: like to to have, you know, kind of figure out
Speaker 1: the basics so that they could eventually build a multi
Speaker 1: person submersible that could handle four thousand meters.
Speaker 3: Of that he's started.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a kit he's kit bashing. He's kit bashing
Speaker 1: his way to James Cameron's status.
Speaker 3: That's the goal.
Speaker 1: They started with a pair of conventional submersibles, the Cyclops
Speaker 1: and the Cyclops too. But the Cyclops is the cyclop i.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the plural of Cyclopses would be.
Speaker 1: But the two Cyclops submarines couldn't handle the trip that
Speaker 1: he wanted to make down to where the Titanic is.
Speaker 1: But having those early submersibles allowed Rush to kind of
Speaker 1: start building a business. Now that this was not like
Speaker 1: a money business, right, Rich people don't have to make
Speaker 1: businesses that make money. As we all learned from Uber,
Speaker 1: It's okay to be in continually lighting piles of money
Speaker 1: on fire as long as you're like establishing your place
Speaker 1: in the market. And so yeah, his kind of plan
Speaker 1: was basically Netflix. Yeah see Netflix, see most of the
Speaker 1: companies this outside of Apple and like the modern deck industry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Jesus Christ, I know it's it's it's pretty.
Speaker 1: They also, in his attitude Ocean Gate, it would be
Speaker 1: really funny if Netflix was like you know what, We're
Speaker 1: going to go down to the to the Titanic. Now
Speaker 1: everyone who pays seven to ninety nine a month gets
Speaker 1: a seat in our in our giant death sub.
Speaker 3: But no.
Speaker 1: So his his basic idea is like, I'm going to
Speaker 1: start taking just rich people on dives, you know, not
Speaker 1: to the Titanic, but to other you know less deep shipwrecks,
Speaker 1: and that'll get you know, that'll start building buzz, right,
Speaker 1: That's kind of a big part of his plan was
Speaker 1: like getting famous people, taking them down there, trusting that
Speaker 1: the majesty of the sea and being in a submersible
Speaker 1: would like make them evangelists for the brand, and that
Speaker 1: would allow him to get kind of the investment dollars
Speaker 1: initial eventually that he needed to move on with his
Speaker 1: more ambitious plan, the titan a submersible made with all
Speaker 1: the hubris of the Titanic and the size footprint of
Speaker 1: a Chevy suburban.
Speaker 3: It's awesome, how he was.
Speaker 2: His business plan was like clout is better than physics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is, well, because it's one of those things
Speaker 1: like people are inherently like intense experiences have a mind altering,
Speaker 1: especially like ones where you're at risk of dying have
Speaker 1: a kind of mind altering effect.
Speaker 3: Like if you take.
Speaker 1: Somebody to an intense place and they feel like they
Speaker 1: might die the whole time, and then they don't, they
Speaker 1: get kind of a high, you know, Like that's why
Speaker 1: war works the way that it does in a lot
Speaker 1: of cases. So that was I think that was kind
Speaker 1: of the idea, is like these people would like walk
Speaker 1: away just kind of like unable to stop talking about
Speaker 1: this thing. Which is why it's really interesting. He seems
Speaker 1: to have had a huge base of contacts. There's since
Speaker 1: this all went pear shaped, a bunch of different famous
Speaker 1: people have been like, oh yeah, like we were talking
Speaker 1: about going out, he offered us a ride, And it's
Speaker 1: interesting to me that, like, given how unknown he was
Speaker 1: kind of before the sub went down, relatively speaking, how
Speaker 1: well connected he is. And I think it was because
Speaker 1: of this, because he was kind of building this this
Speaker 1: undersea influencer network of like famous people and rich people
Speaker 1: who just really liked doing this. Not a bad plan
Speaker 1: at least in terms of like building his company. So
Speaker 1: the problem with the plan was that he wanted to
Speaker 1: make this big submersible with space for a larger crew
Speaker 1: than basically any of the any of the like the
Speaker 1: deep water diving vessels had had previously. You know, you'd
Speaker 1: had those Russian subs and stuff that could carry a crew.
Speaker 1: But when you're looking at like, you know, the different
Speaker 1: national like deep water exploration vessels or like James Cameron's vessel,
Speaker 1: they were made for like generally one person, and they
Speaker 1: usually had like the actual the pressure barrier, which is
Speaker 1: like the part of the submersible that was meant to
Speaker 1: actually protect the human being was usually made out of
Speaker 1: like titanium or some sort of special steel, which is
Speaker 1: what you'd expect. This is the reliable, safe way to
Speaker 1: do it, and Rush chose not to do the reliable
Speaker 1: safe way to do it. Basically after like this, I
Speaker 1: think like the last big submersible disaster was in like
Speaker 1: the early seventies. It was these guys who were like
Speaker 1: laying deep water cable off the coast of Ireland and
Speaker 1: then something went wrong and they got stuck fifteen hundred
Speaker 1: feet down.
Speaker 3: They both got rescued.
Speaker 1: It was like a real They had like twelve minutes
Speaker 1: of air left when they got saved, So it was
Speaker 1: a fucking close thing. Yeah, it sounded like a nightmare,
Speaker 1: but it was one of those like it was survivable
Speaker 1: because the pressure barrier didn't fail, right, Like everything else
Speaker 1: went wrong, but like they did not explode, and you
Speaker 1: can survive most things aside from exploding.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for a while at least.
Speaker 1: So the industry at all, I say industry, it's more
Speaker 1: of like a subculture of all of the the kind
Speaker 1: of weird undersea neabors.
Speaker 4: James Cameron calls it a community.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a community, Yeah, I mean they kind of is
Speaker 2: the subculturist of all subcultures, the subs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's the sub So the literal subculture built
Speaker 1: a bunch of safety rules about like here is how
Speaker 1: you make a pressure barrier. These are the different like
Speaker 1: things you want to make sure your your vessel has
Speaker 1: and they kind of voluntarily adopted these standards and it
Speaker 1: worked really well because nobody died, Like in the last
Speaker 1: like since everyone listening to this podcast basically has been alive,
Speaker 1: no one has died doing these kind of like crazy
Speaker 1: deep water dives, which is wild when you think about
Speaker 1: what they're doing, right, that they're going to a place
Speaker 1: less explored than the fucking Moon, and that it was
Speaker 1: so safe. But Stockton Rush is like I'm going to
Speaker 1: ignore all of the things that they've been doing. I'm
Speaker 1: going to ignore like all of the requirements they have
Speaker 1: for these vessels and instead I'm going to make this
Speaker 1: motherfucker out of carbon ass fiber. Now carbon fiber. It's
Speaker 1: one of those you remember when it was special, when
Speaker 1: like we would hear about like this amazing space aids
Speaker 1: carbon fiber and all the like. Obviously, it's got a
Speaker 1: lot of uses. It's great material for certain things, for
Speaker 1: over the water things, pretty good for things not in
Speaker 1: the water, maybe not under the water. Maybe might make
Speaker 1: a great boat. I don't know. I'm not a boat maker. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but uh yeah. So Stockton was kind of obsessed with
Speaker 1: the fact that carbon fiber has three times the strength
Speaker 1: to buoyancy ratio of titanium, which he brought up constantly.
Speaker 1: People who were you know, didn't think this was a
Speaker 1: good idea. It would be like, yeah, but it like
Speaker 1: has terrible compressive strength. Like if you it's it's great
Speaker 1: if you're trying to like push it certain ways, but
Speaker 1: if you're trying to push it the way that pressure
Speaker 1: works underwater, it's it's a bad thing. It's also when
Speaker 1: like metal, the different metals they used for these things
Speaker 1: have the ability to kind of bend and flex to
Speaker 1: an extent, whereas carbon fiber is super strong, but when
Speaker 1: it breaks, it just it breaks real bad.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a.
Speaker 2: Pretty good metaphor for all tech stuff that it's like
Speaker 2: a space age fiber, a space age material. It works
Speaker 2: really well at one thing and catastrophically bad at everything else.
Speaker 1: And it's you know, it's also a great tech industry
Speaker 1: kind of metaphor because the defining thing about the defining
Speaker 1: like cultural aspect of big tech is its inability to
Speaker 1: leave well enough alone.
Speaker 3: Right right.
Speaker 1: You can't just be like, oh, hey, subway systems can
Speaker 1: work really well, and a lot of the most livable
Speaker 1: cities in the world have public transit. You have to
Speaker 1: be like, no, we're going to under sea hole or
Speaker 1: underwater holes and we're going to drive tesla's under them
Speaker 1: and they'll have no fire escapes. And likewise, it kind
Speaker 1: of seems like, at least from the reading I've done,
Speaker 1: it kind of seems like the submersible industry there wasn't
Speaker 1: any room to really like disrupt or innovate, Like cameras
Speaker 1: get a little better, batteries get a little better, but
Speaker 1: the basics of the thing that goes underwater and keeps
Speaker 1: you alive is always going to be the same. It's
Speaker 1: a big metal thing, like a big metal sphere. Titanium
Speaker 1: is listen.
Speaker 2: I mean, the whole tech industry is just like the
Speaker 2: ultimate participation trophy. All these bozo's coming up with ideas
Speaker 2: that already exist and no one has like, no one
Speaker 2: has ever told them their ideas are wrong or bad,
Speaker 2: and then they get to make them and you know,
Speaker 2: bankrupt existing people.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then yeah, Uber lights tens of billions of
Speaker 1: dollars on fire. Yeah, this is he's kind of doing that.
Speaker 1: He's got He's just he's not doing this. I mean
Speaker 1: there's a couple other reasons, as we'll get into, but yeah,
Speaker 1: carbon fiber bad idea for this sort of boat. Now,
Speaker 1: people had tried to use it before for submersibles. In
Speaker 1: the early two thousands, Richard Branson had funded an explorer
Speaker 1: named Steve Fawcett who wanted to make like an airplane
Speaker 1: shaped carbon fiber submarine that could basically fly to the
Speaker 1: bottom of the.
Speaker 3: Challenge team and back up.
Speaker 4: Every name in this story is somehow funny.
Speaker 1: Well, Fawcett's really because Fawcett was like a legitimate explorer.
Speaker 1: He was also known as this guy who repeatedly nearly
Speaker 1: died and like would cost various governments a shitload of
Speaker 1: money rescuing him, and then he'd be like, well I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm not paying for that and get himself into
Speaker 1: another disaster and eventually he died in a mysterious plan.
Speaker 3: That's that's the lesson.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you might not take his advice on this, and
Speaker 1: he never got to build it because he was involved
Speaker 1: in a mysterious plane crash that became the most expensive
Speaker 1: rescue effort in modern history.
Speaker 3: I guess up until this subwent down is.
Speaker 2: Fine, we got to stay peg taxes because they just
Speaker 2: go to these bozos once.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly so that they can fly their planes into
Speaker 1: the sides of canyons. Oh so anyway, Yeah, as kind
Speaker 1: of he starts moving along and building this and testing
Speaker 1: it out and Shorter dives. Various people within the industry,
Speaker 1: including like literally James Cameron, start reaching out and being like, hey,
Speaker 1: I don't know about this, feels like it might be
Speaker 1: not the best idea ever, and Rush ignores them. He
Speaker 1: told Smithsonian Magazine, there hasn't been an injury in the
Speaker 1: commercial sub industry in over thirty five years. It's obscenely
Speaker 1: safe because they have all these regulations. But it also
Speaker 1: has an innovated or growed because they have all these
Speaker 1: regulations obscenely safe, it's too safe. It makes me sick.
Speaker 1: No one's killed a sub full of people in decades.
Speaker 3: He did.
Speaker 2: He saw his opening and went for it. It's so
Speaker 2: funny that every quote from him is just him doing
Speaker 2: like the jack off motion at the idea of safety regulations.
Speaker 1: I'm just imagining him like coming out and like a
Speaker 1: black turtleneck like Steve Jobs, and being like, and now
Speaker 1: for something insanely great, a boat that kills a shitload
Speaker 1: of people. What if we got more people to die
Speaker 1: at the Titanic wreck.
Speaker 3: It's all about scale, Roberts. It's about the scale.
Speaker 1: So he's instead of basically, instead of doing the things
Speaker 1: that engineers had been doing for decades to make this
Speaker 1: stuff safe, he invented an entirely new kind of safety device.
Speaker 1: It was called He called it an acoustic monitoring system
Speaker 1: which could detect the sound of micro buckling before it
Speaker 1: it being the carbon fiber fails Now. Nothing like this
Speaker 1: had ever been used on a submersible. It was untested technology.
Speaker 1: And again people who like worked with him, people who
Speaker 1: knew what he was doing, warned him like, hey, it
Speaker 1: kind of seems like this is the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that will only give you a warning right before you die,
Speaker 1: like it'll let you know, Like, and that's that's what happened.
Speaker 1: Like a minute before they all died. It said, hey,
Speaker 1: the structure's failing, so they tried to ascend and then
Speaker 1: it imploded.
Speaker 3: It's so wild that.
Speaker 2: His big safety plan was a robot that goes, damn,
Speaker 2: that just sounds crazy.
Speaker 1: It's like the bad idea about it. So he gets
Speaker 1: this fucking carbon fiber hole made. He rush orders it too.
Speaker 1: It's like a two week deal. It's a five inch
Speaker 1: thick hole made by a specialist and assembled into a
Speaker 1: submersible with a seven inch port hole put on by
Speaker 1: ocean Gate. One of the things he does is he
Speaker 1: attaches carbon fiber to titanium. The end cap of this
Speaker 1: thing with the porthole a is titanium. People didn't do
Speaker 1: that because titanium and carbon fiber, when put together and
Speaker 1: put under seawater corrode in specific ways. Then you're really
Speaker 1: bad but he was like, fuck it, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't think that'll happen. Like, I haven't found a reason
Speaker 1: why he thought this would be okay. He seems to
Speaker 1: have just been like, I don't think it'll be a problem.
Speaker 3: I thought I.
Speaker 2: Saw something where he was like, everyone says you can't
Speaker 2: do it, So that's yeah, like I said, back to there,
Speaker 2: we did it. It is start of shocking how much
Speaker 2: the engineering of this thing is just a pringles can.
Speaker 3: It's like, really wild.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean there's only basically everyone says, as
Speaker 1: everyone points out, there's only really two shapes something like
Speaker 1: this could be made the ideal one is a sphere,
Speaker 1: or you make the less ideal shape, a pringles can,
Speaker 1: as you call it. He goes with pringles can, and
Speaker 1: I want to play this clip of him because it
Speaker 1: really it makes it gives you an idea of how
Speaker 1: fucking arrogant this guy was.
Speaker 6: You remember it as an innovator, Yu, and I think
Speaker 6: it was general MacArthur said, you remembered for the rules
Speaker 6: you bring, and you know I've broken some rules to
Speaker 6: make this. I think I broke him with with logic
Speaker 6: and good engineering behind me, the carbon fiber and titanium.
Speaker 3: There's a rule you don't do that.
Speaker 6: Well I did.
Speaker 3: It's pick I do love that.
Speaker 1: Like he's he's he's being like quoting Douglas MacArthur positively here,
Speaker 1: like the guy who the guy who attempted to invade
Speaker 1: North Korea and then got his ass kicked, like Douglas MacArthur,
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, he got he got a lot of
Speaker 1: nineteen year olds killed. I feel like I could too
Speaker 1: good call man, I mean good call it is. It
Speaker 1: is like honestly crazy, how much every single thing he
Speaker 1: says is wrong. It's like shocking.
Speaker 2: It's like it's like if if we learned that he
Speaker 2: was a time traveler sent back from whatever he got,
Speaker 2: you know, he got vaporized, and then that sent him
Speaker 2: to the future, and then he figured out how to
Speaker 2: way to send himself back, and he was his only
Speaker 2: goal was to say the funniest possible thing about his death.
Speaker 3: It's crazy.
Speaker 1: See now I'm I'm trying not to like I'm trying
Speaker 1: to like really ride the middle of the of the
Speaker 1: not being too crude about this line. But now I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about like maybe Stocked and Rush came from the
Speaker 1: future where Skynett took over and like the billionaires on
Speaker 1: this sub were all of the guys who invested on
Speaker 1: the ground floor of that. And he's like, look, the
Speaker 1: Terminator thing, that created too much of a mess. We
Speaker 1: don't want a big shootout with the LAPD. I gotta
Speaker 1: find a quieter way to stop Skynett from getting off
Speaker 1: the ground, like inviting Miles Dyson to go under water
Speaker 1: with you. Yeah, he's a big Titanic head.
Speaker 3: That is. That is a thing that I really.
Speaker 2: Like tourat or two gets wrong, is like how easy
Speaker 2: it is to kill billionaires simply buy like you don't
Speaker 2: need guns or tact people are really there's just like
Speaker 2: appeal to their idiot ego.
Speaker 3: They'll fucking kill themselves. It's great.
Speaker 1: It is funny that, like the least realistic part of
Speaker 1: the movie Terminator Too is not like the time travel
Speaker 1: or the robots with living skin, but the fact that
Speaker 1: when Miles Dyson was told, like when this tech entrepreneur
Speaker 1: was told your product will kill the world, he was like, well,
Speaker 1: time for me to die stopping it, instead of being like, oh,
Speaker 1: I better do another round of VC funding. So when
Speaker 1: they finished building this stupid when it was done, they
Speaker 1: first did an unmanned test up to I think around
Speaker 1: ten thousand feet with this thing, and then as soon
Speaker 1: as like it didn't explode, stocked and took it down
Speaker 1: alone past ten thousand feet and against all expert advice.
Speaker 1: The experts were like, you'd probably do it more than
Speaker 1: once before you put anyone in it, right, Like human
Speaker 1: life is generally, Oh, you don't think it's precious, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's fine. It's whatever you know, And at this point, honestly,
Speaker 1: that's fine. Like if this had remained a crazy man
Speaker 1: who wanted to build his own terrible submarine and he
Speaker 1: had died alone exploring the bottom of that would be romantic.
Speaker 1: People would be writing songs about him, you know, the
Speaker 1: lone maniac who just loved the ocean so much and
Speaker 1: didn't really understand carbon fiber enough. But of course, you know,
Speaker 1: his plan is again to sell tickets on this thing. Now,
Speaker 1: there were some signs in his maiden voyage that this
Speaker 1: thing was not safe. It stalled out at like ten
Speaker 1: thousand feet below the surface for a while for reasons
Speaker 1: they couldn't determine, and then it lost contact for like
Speaker 1: a couple of hours with the team on the boat,
Speaker 1: and he didn't notice. He was like so excited piloting
Speaker 1: it that he didn't even realize he'd lost contact for
Speaker 1: a while. And I'm I'm going to read a quote
Speaker 1: from Smithsonian here. He had chosen to pilot Titan alone
Speaker 1: in case anything went unexpectedly wrong. Said, but he also
Speaker 1: wanted to be only the second person to travel solo
Speaker 1: to at least that depth, the other being James Cameron,
Speaker 1: who in twenty twelve took an Australian built sub into
Speaker 1: the Mariana Trench, reaching Challenger Deep, the ocean's deepest point,
Speaker 1: touching down at close to thirty six thousand feet. That's
Speaker 1: a nice club to be a part of, Rush says,
Speaker 1: and that that kind of makes it clear he doesn't
Speaker 1: he's not a scientist. He wants famous explorer clout right.
Speaker 1: He's not saying I want to test this, I want
Speaker 1: to do this. He's saying, like I want my name
Speaker 1: on like a list, right, Yeah, like I want to
Speaker 1: I want to do the you know, check off the
Speaker 1: box on the famous explorer list.
Speaker 3: That is, He's just.
Speaker 2: Kind of a thing that's been hard, is how much
Speaker 2: of this conversation, this last couple of days has been
Speaker 2: like these people were explorers, and it's like they really weren't,
Speaker 2: like they were not figuring anything out.
Speaker 1: Like, look, guys, aside from very niche facts about how
Speaker 1: boats underwater decompose, there's nothing left we're going to learn
Speaker 1: about the Titanic. It's we did We did it, like
Speaker 1: we've done a lot of time, spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time looking at that dead boat and yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: the ID it's it's just uh, it's clout. It's all
Speaker 1: clout seeking, and yeah, that's kind of the That's like
Speaker 1: why they went with That's why he went with, you know,
Speaker 1: this less safe shape is because he wanted to be
Speaker 1: able to take people with him so that they could
Speaker 1: then brag about this stuff. He just wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure he was first.
Speaker 5: He was.
Speaker 1: Also the reason why ultimately he's making this out of
Speaker 1: carbon fiber is because that will make it light, and
Speaker 1: that will make it cheaper than the other methods of
Speaker 1: making submersibles, and that means that it'll be like a
Speaker 1: big heavy titanium or metal you know, diving vessel takes
Speaker 1: a big boat to bring it around because like it's
Speaker 1: so heavy, Whereas he thought this thing you could take
Speaker 1: it around on smaller boats. You could make a bunch
Speaker 1: of them and he could have them operating for a
Speaker 1: lot less money and a fast company out of you.
Speaker 2: I just want to say, you know, you do you
Speaker 2: got to kill people with uh with scale.
Speaker 3: That's the key that he found.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, like we got to be able to get
Speaker 1: a bunch of these out. It's like Uber's long term
Speaker 1: plan was to get profitable by making autonomous cars and
Speaker 1: forcing out drivers. And his plan is to like flood
Speaker 1: the ocean with these dangerous submersibles so that he can
Speaker 1: sell them to a bunch of people the long term.
Speaker 1: This is what he told Fast Company. The long term
Speaker 1: value is in the commercial side. Adventure tourism is a
Speaker 1: way to monetize the process of proving the technology. Like
Speaker 1: that's and again his plan is still I want to
Speaker 1: sell this to the oil and gas industry. I want
Speaker 1: to sell this shit to the CIA. Like his plan
Speaker 1: is to make money in extractive industries, and like the
Speaker 1: defense industry, he's just trying to subsidize that by getting
Speaker 1: rich people to go down and look at the Titanic.
Speaker 1: Technical problems continued to plague the craft. Between that and
Speaker 1: bad weather, it missed several dive windows. In subsequent interviews,
Speaker 1: Rush tended to ignore this period of time where it
Speaker 1: was repeatedly kind of like failing to make depth. They're
Speaker 1: having to return because something would go wrong. But there
Speaker 1: were people within Oceangate who worried he was being reckless
Speaker 1: from the very first dive the Titan did people inside
Speaker 1: could hear crackling from the carbon fiber body. Now one
Speaker 1: of the industry folks, like a sub maker that he
Speaker 1: brought with him, was like, that is the sound of
Speaker 1: your sub failing? Like this is a serious problem. I
Speaker 1: can tell you exactly where it's compromised. Like, no, this
Speaker 1: has to be dealt with otherwise you can't take people
Speaker 1: on this boat. But Stockton tended to kind of brush
Speaker 1: this off as like a quirker.
Speaker 4: Do they not know the rule? Do they not know
Speaker 4: the rule?
Speaker 3: Though, Robert, what's the rule? Soviey?
Speaker 4: Do they not know the rule? The rule is snap
Speaker 4: crackle pop, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so this guy, it's in twenty nineteen that this happened.
Speaker 1: This guy, Carl Stanley, who's like runs an exploration compedy,
Speaker 1: goes with him on a twelve thousand foot dive and
Speaker 1: is like, yeah, that's part to the whole breaking down, bro,
Speaker 1: And Rushi is like, no, no, no, it's it's fine.
Speaker 1: We've we've we've been listening to the whole breakdown and
Speaker 1: it's doing it less now, so we feel like it's
Speaker 1: pretty good. And this guy's like, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't think you should take people. You can't take customers
Speaker 1: on this thing yet. Like, if you think it's safe,
Speaker 1: that's great, but you should wait until you've done like
Speaker 1: fifty deep water dives before you decide that this thing
Speaker 1: is safe. And he brings up he points out like,
Speaker 1: you know because because Russia's comment to that is like,
Speaker 1: well you just picked a random number. There's no reason
Speaker 1: fifty is safer than three or four, which, first stuff.
Speaker 3: That's very dumb.
Speaker 1: But second like this Stanley is like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: like with sky diving, fifty is the number that you
Speaker 1: have to hit to reach your like B license, so
Speaker 1: we should probably you know, seek to be at least
Speaker 1: as safe as the sky diving industry.
Speaker 3: And Rush is just like you just tend to number man.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, it's like these people that claim to be
Speaker 7: these like numerate hard science like whatever, it's just like, eh,
Speaker 7: three fifty whatever.
Speaker 3: It's like, what the fuck are you talking about?
Speaker 8: Man?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's anyway. So one of his employees takes action.
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, a guy named David Lockridge, who was
Speaker 1: a he's a submersible pilot who had been hired to
Speaker 1: be the ocean Gate director of marine operations. That meant
Speaker 1: the safety of the crew in customers was legally his business,
Speaker 1: and he was like he takes a look at this
Speaker 1: thing and is like, wait a second, I'm responsible for
Speaker 1: like not killing people, and this thing is a death trap.
Speaker 1: I have some problems with this, right, like responsibly. Lockridge
Speaker 1: is like one of two people in this entire story
Speaker 1: who does their fucking job right. So they had built
Speaker 1: a one third scale model of the Titan in order
Speaker 1: to like do you know, pressure tests and stuff outside
Speaker 1: of you know, the deep ocean, and those tests had
Speaker 1: shown that consistent constant pressure cycling weakened the carbon fiber
Speaker 1: overtime that it degraded pretty rapidly. Lockridge also found flaws
Speaker 1: and the visible carbon in samples for the Titan. He
Speaker 1: was like, we had this was not made well enough
Speaker 1: and it degrades very quickly over time. So he wanted
Speaker 1: the company to perform more extensive tests to see if
Speaker 1: the Titan had already been compromised. Stockton refused these tests.
Speaker 1: He claimed, quote no scan of the Wholer bond line
Speaker 1: could be done because the hole was too thick and
Speaker 1: the equipment to test it didn't exist. He was like,
Speaker 1: this thing is so well made, we can't even test
Speaker 1: if it's.
Speaker 3: If it's safe. Bro, you can't even test this ship.
Speaker 6: Bro.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's too thick, man, it's too thick, too thick
Speaker 1: to But also he's at the same time, he's like,
Speaker 1: it's safe because we're always monitoring to see if there's fractures.
Speaker 3: And it's like, well, but what Both of those things
Speaker 3: can't be true, Stocked it.
Speaker 1: You can't be monitoring the hole for problems and unable
Speaker 1: to the whole for problems. But Lockridge Lock So, Lockridge,
Speaker 1: I think, notices this, and he keeps digging. He finds
Speaker 1: other problems. For one thing, he'd always been concerned about
Speaker 1: the viewport, which people would note seem like it flexed
Speaker 1: at depth a lot more than it ought to be flexing.
Speaker 1: And so he was like, what is this thing rated for?
Speaker 1: And he like digs into it and he finds out
Speaker 1: that the viewport is rated for thirteen hundred meters. They're
Speaker 1: they're going down to like four thousand meters. So he's like, well,
Speaker 1: that seems like a real problem. And Stockton's general line is, oh,
Speaker 1: thirteen hundred. They just put like that number on there.
Speaker 1: It can actually handle a lot more. There's not any
Speaker 1: reason why he thinks it can handle more.
Speaker 2: He keeps saying engineering what he means, because I fucking
Speaker 2: felt like it.
Speaker 3: It's so bizarre.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I fucking felt like it. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty good. But you know what can with stand up
Speaker 1: to four thousand meters of pressure. Food boxes that Blue
Speaker 1: Apron ships out, every single one of them guaranteed to
Speaker 1: survive the pressures of the deep. And in fact, if
Speaker 1: you want to go see the Titanic yourself, you can't
Speaker 1: use this sub anymore. But what you can do is
Speaker 1: dive into the Atlantic with a box of Blue Apron
Speaker 1: food and it'll keep you safe. You will not die
Speaker 1: if you leap alone into the frigid North Sea with
Speaker 1: a box of Blue Apron vegetables. Keep you alive, Sophie.
Speaker 3: We're back.
Speaker 1: So this guy, David Lockridge finds a bunch of shit,
Speaker 1: that's a problem. In addition to the porthole not being
Speaker 1: rated for depth and the fucking carbon fiber being shit,
Speaker 1: he also finds out that there's hazardous flammable materials inside
Speaker 1: the vessel that the customers are not being informed about, Like, hey,
Speaker 1: you can all burn to death inside inside a carbon
Speaker 1: fiber tomb. Is a problem, and they just didn't tell people.
Speaker 1: And a big part of Lockridge's issue is like not
Speaker 1: just that they're doing this because it's it's not illegal
Speaker 1: to do this, right, because there's no laws in the site.
Speaker 1: He's like, we're not informing people that these are dangers, right,
Speaker 1: Like you're writing on the list, Hey you know you
Speaker 1: could die doing this, which generally just makes people think
Speaker 1: it's extra cool. But we're not saying, hey, guys, here
Speaker 1: are all of the defects in this process.
Speaker 3: Here, we are all of you.
Speaker 2: You really could die, So a lot of ways that
Speaker 2: you are not even thinking of. Burning to death in
Speaker 2: that tube under the ocean is the most like postmodern
Speaker 2: way to die, I feel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, definitely, Yeah, find the tech bros innovating disrupting
Speaker 1: the ocean enough that people burn to death inside it
Speaker 1: truly r Yeah, yeah, So Lockridge brings all of this
Speaker 1: to Stockton, and according to Lockridge, Stockton grows enraged and
Speaker 1: then fires Lockridge. So Lockridge ocean Gate sues Lockridge for
Speaker 1: disclosing confidential information, and he counters sues and claims like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm a whistleblower because I think he's going to get
Speaker 1: people killed. Now, none of this becomes major news while
Speaker 1: people are writing articles about their ocean gates first successful
Speaker 1: Titanic drops like this is all available again within like
Speaker 1: twelve hours of the boat going missing. This winds up
Speaker 1: in news stories. Anyone could have found this. And by
Speaker 1: the way, like billionaires, especially billionaires with their own companies,
Speaker 1: tend to have like crews of people who like look
Speaker 1: up shit rhythm, you know, who make sure that vet
Speaker 1: trips that they're doing, vet people they're working with, they
Speaker 1: have like intelligence wings. They tend to hire people for this.
Speaker 1: They could have found this too, Like nobody was looking
Speaker 1: for this shit, but it was not hard to find.
Speaker 1: So two months after Lockridge filed this suit, ocean Gate
Speaker 1: has another potential PR disaster on its hand because around
Speaker 1: forty leading figures in the industry, including deep sea explorers
Speaker 1: and oceanographers, write an open letter to Stockton in which
Speaker 1: they warned that his experimental craft is unsafe for passengers.
Speaker 1: Their primary issue here was that he had chosen not
Speaker 1: to get his submersible rated for four thousand meters of
Speaker 1: depth under the phvo or Pressure Vessels for human occupancy standards.
Speaker 1: This was not something he had to do. Again, he's
Speaker 1: not like required to do this. The boat's registered in
Speaker 1: like Canada, he's in international waters. There's not really a
Speaker 1: way to stop rich people from paying to build subs
Speaker 1: like this and taking them out in the ocean.
Speaker 3: You know, if.
Speaker 1: Canada made a law against it, he would have registered
Speaker 1: his boat in the caravan or some shit right like
Speaker 1: there's it's boats. You can't stop rich people from doing
Speaker 1: what they want on their stupid.
Speaker 2: Boats and needing to be rescued by a public entity.
Speaker 2: This is the perfect libertarian Parbertarian story. This is as
Speaker 2: libertarian as the shit gets.
Speaker 1: It is what they always take to the sea and
Speaker 1: it always goes so badly. There were a lot of
Speaker 1: other issues that people or a lot of other people
Speaker 1: who brought up issues. One of the guys who kind
Speaker 1: of like points out some potential risks kind of directly
Speaker 1: to Stockton is a guy named Rob McCallum, and McCallum
Speaker 1: is kind of a dude in the industry, and he
Speaker 1: is in direct contact with Stockton. Stockton's trying to get
Speaker 1: him to like get on this boat and be like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: don't you want to, like, uh, don't you want to,
Speaker 1: you know, go see the Titanic with me? And this
Speaker 1: guy responds like, I think you're potentially placing yourself and
Speaker 1: your clients in a dangerous dynamic in your race to
Speaker 1: the Titanic. You're mirroring that famous cat ry she is unsinkable.
Speaker 1: And Stockton responds, we have heard the baseless cries of
Speaker 1: you are going to kill someone way too often. I
Speaker 1: take this as a serious personal insult.
Speaker 2: I mean, like you can't make someone learned, like if
Speaker 2: he's going to respond to no, you really can't. People
Speaker 2: have been telling me I'm going to kill someone that
Speaker 2: I'm insulted, Like, you cannot fix that. That is like
Speaker 2: millionaire brain worms that cannot go away.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's you know. When I was in a
Speaker 1: little kid and I was in like the boy Scouts,
Speaker 1: we had this one camp out and like I was
Speaker 1: one of at this point, I was like fourteen, So
Speaker 1: I was one of the older boys and we had
Speaker 1: a couple of the younger boys, you know that we
Speaker 1: were trying to like teach the basics of camping and
Speaker 1: stuff too.
Speaker 3: And you know, it's nighttime.
Speaker 1: Everyone's sitting around their fires cooking food and they have
Speaker 1: this like nice cooler that one of their dads had
Speaker 1: brought out with them, and they've got it like wedged
Speaker 1: up right next to the fire and they're sitting.
Speaker 3: On it like it's a chair.
Speaker 1: And as I'm like doing a walk through, I'm like, hey,
Speaker 1: that's kind of a bad idea.
Speaker 3: Guys.
Speaker 1: You know, it's pretty close to the fire. It might
Speaker 1: like you know, catch on fire, get melted or something.
Speaker 1: It looks expensive, and like one of the kids just
Speaker 1: looks at me, like I'm an idiot, and it's like
Speaker 1: it can't catch on fire.
Speaker 3: It's got icon.
Speaker 1: We just like we go over to like the adult
Speaker 1: who's running things, and he's like, just let it happen,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: Like they'll learn a lesson. And I wish.
Speaker 1: I feel like if that had happened to Stockton as
Speaker 1: a younger man, maybe maybe all of those people would
Speaker 1: still be alive. You know, one melted cooler could have
Speaker 1: saved a lot of lives. Yeah, it is like, yeah, just.
Speaker 2: Face a consequence once or twice a minimum, please.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, learn that, you know, when other people give you warnings,
Speaker 1: they should be heated sometimes. Learn that maybe your instincts
Speaker 1: don't always take you in the right directions. He does
Speaker 1: not ever learn this lesson because he's born super rich,
Speaker 1: you know. So all of these warnings were super correct.
Speaker 1: And this gets proved in twenty twenty. And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote from a summary published by MSN Law MSN Live
Speaker 1: Right now.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty, the CEO told geek Wire the whole
Speaker 1: of the submarine was showing scigns of cyclic fatigue, one
Speaker 1: of the same technical issues mister Lockridge allegedly warned about
Speaker 1: as the company continued to test the craft, including with
Speaker 1: a four thousand meters deep dive in the Bahamas. As
Speaker 1: a result, the company temporarily downgraded the Titanic submarine's whole
Speaker 1: depth rating to three thousand meters, a thousand less than
Speaker 1: the Titanic's depth according to tech Crunch, So they have
Speaker 1: this problem. They had like recognized the cyclic fatigue and
Speaker 1: they decrease the depth rating while they get material to
Speaker 1: rebuild the hub the hole, which they do in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one. Now, the fact that they had to rebuild
Speaker 1: the hole that quickly is kind of worrisome, But what's
Speaker 1: extra worrisome is that they also cut costs.
Speaker 3: On this ship. So yeah.
Speaker 1: After the Titan imploded, Travel Weekly editor in chief Arnie
Speaker 1: Wiseman wrote that he had been due to take a
Speaker 1: trip to the Titanic that year, and he'd known Stocked
Speaker 1: in a while and liked him. He'd gone out with
Speaker 1: him a couple of times. But he expressed that like
Speaker 1: they'd been talking one day and Russiad told him quote
Speaker 1: he had gotten the carbon fiber us to make the
Speaker 1: Titan at a big discount from Boeing because it was
Speaker 1: way past its shelf life for use in airplanes. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: And so he tells this to the guy he's trying
Speaker 1: to convince to come down with him, and Arnie's like,
Speaker 1: that seems like a really bad idea, Like it seems
Speaker 1: really dangerous that you're using expired carbon fiber. And Stockton's
Speaker 1: response is like, nah, man, they set the shelf light
Speaker 1: dates on those like way earlier than they ought to
Speaker 1: be it's actually like, it's the argument I make when
Speaker 1: I take expired like it in that like a friend
Speaker 1: of mine has in a medicine cabinet and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we should just throw that out, Like, no, man, this
Speaker 1: stuff is still good.
Speaker 2: This is he's he's as cavalier with multiple people's multiple
Speaker 2: billionaires lives as I am with, Like, is this takeout
Speaker 2: still cool?
Speaker 3: Rice beIN in the fridge too long? It is?
Speaker 1: It is so wild that like and he just admits
Speaker 1: this to someone he's trying to talk into getting on his.
Speaker 3: Boat, Like, yeah, you know, was extra cool.
Speaker 1: I had a deal on this carbon fiber because they
Speaker 1: say it's not safe for airplanes anymore.
Speaker 3: Let's go under the sea with it. I am not
Speaker 3: getting in your boat.
Speaker 1: If you're saying that, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: God.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's bragging about cheaping out on your fucking submersible.
Speaker 3: Is so wild. It's so wild.
Speaker 1: It's it's funny too, because like a big touchstone with
Speaker 1: this story is obviously Jurassic Park, which is the tale
Speaker 1: of a you know, insane an insane rich man killing
Speaker 1: getting a bunch of people killed through humans. At least
Speaker 1: the book Hammond is a bad very much a bad
Speaker 1: guy in the book, But I do at least he's
Speaker 1: like smart enough to brag that they spared no expense,
Speaker 1: like they cut corners everywhere in Jurassic Park. But like
Speaker 1: he doesn't say that. He's not like being like, you know,
Speaker 1: we made all these t rex enclosures at a turkey
Speaker 1: wire a lot cheaper than the stuff that these experts
Speaker 1: said I needed to use.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just I just all I.
Speaker 2: Wish is that every Silicon Valley titan of industry has
Speaker 2: the like you know, has the self belief to live
Speaker 2: their lives according to what they really believe.
Speaker 3: The way that Stockton rushed did.
Speaker 2: I think he is a hero and a model for
Speaker 2: everyone of those guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think he. I agree with you entirely, And
Speaker 1: I think this is why I've heard that they're remaking
Speaker 1: doing like a TV show version of Jurassic Park that's
Speaker 1: based on the book. And I actually think we're ready
Speaker 1: for that, because in the actual book, Hammond, rather than
Speaker 1: being a sweet grandfather, is a psychotic tech entrepreneur who
Speaker 1: gets brutally murdered by one of his own dinosaurs. And
Speaker 1: maybe we need that right now. We may in fact
Speaker 1: need to that version of Jurassic Park or.
Speaker 9: Yeah fictionally, Yeah, So the weirdest thing about what I
Speaker 9: just told you about him getting cut right carbon fiber
Speaker 9: for his death sub is that he may have lied
Speaker 9: about that, which is this wild thing to lie about.
Speaker 1: It's hard to say, but like journalists reached out to
Speaker 1: Boeing to be like, are you guys selling discount carbon
Speaker 1: fiber to the death sub guy? And Boeing was like,
Speaker 1: we have no record of any kind of sale of
Speaker 1: this sort to ocean Gate or to Stockton Rush. Now
Speaker 1: Boeing is very like possibly a liar in this situation.
Speaker 1: I'm not going like there it's Boeing, I have no
Speaker 1: need to defend them. But also, like stocked and Rush
Speaker 1: would be the kind of guy. I find it equally
Speaker 1: likely that he cheaped out on life saving parts or
Speaker 1: that he actually bought better stuff and light about getting
Speaker 1: a deal on them to try to impress some guy.
Speaker 1: Like either of those things is possible. There's no way
Speaker 1: to know. Yeah, yeah, so many possibilities.
Speaker 2: It feels like there's also something like he seems like
Speaker 2: the guy who doesn't actually know where his shit is
Speaker 2: sourced from, like someone.
Speaker 3: Just told him at price, and like basically Boeing and like.
Speaker 1: Fuck it, yeah, yeah, who knows, Yeah, yeah, who knows.
Speaker 1: And it is also I should say this is also
Speaker 1: part of a pretty fun pattern for him, because Stockton
Speaker 1: had a history of bragging in his interviews, you know,
Speaker 1: he had He would he would take people on and
Speaker 1: they would see like, oh, there's a lag Tech controller
Speaker 1: as like piloting this thing, and like the interior lights
Speaker 1: are just like shit you bought from Camper World. Seems
Speaker 1: kind of jankie for a submarine that you're expecting to
Speaker 1: keep you alive at like twelve or thirteen thousand feet
Speaker 1: below you know, the surface. And Stockton to be like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, we you know, this is like a rough
Speaker 1: and tumble outfit. We had to kind of hack you know,
Speaker 1: certain shit. But like when it comes to stuff that
Speaker 1: really matters, when it comes to the pressure barrier, that
Speaker 1: is the best stuff available. You know, not only is
Speaker 1: carbon fibrous space age material, but we designed the whole
Speaker 1: pressure barrier with help from NASA and from Boeing and
Speaker 1: from the University of Washington. He would bring up those
Speaker 1: three names every single time, like somebody pointed out that
Speaker 1: it was janky, and since all those people died. Journalists
Speaker 1: reached out to Boeing, and Boeing was like, we didn't
Speaker 1: have shit to do. I don't know what he's talking about.
Speaker 1: We didn't help this guy with anything, like, we have
Speaker 1: no idea what you're commenting on.
Speaker 3: I have not seen NASA answer those like to that yet.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen any sort of response from them as
Speaker 1: to whether or not they had any role in this.
Speaker 1: CBS notes quote. In a statement, the University of Washington
Speaker 1: said it supplied physics Laboratory provided engineering services to the
Speaker 1: company in Rush from twenty thirteen to twenty twenty, but
Speaker 1: on a different submersible. The one they helped with was
Speaker 1: the Cyclops and at that point was steel hold and
Speaker 1: only meant for shallow dies. So basically he was and
Speaker 1: it seems likely to me that like I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe he talked with a guy from Boeing, maybe a
Speaker 1: because like there was one astronaut we'll talk about later
Speaker 1: that he like brings in that he hires to basically
Speaker 1: be a brand evangelist. I think he was just kind
Speaker 1: of like doing that normal tech thing where you just
Speaker 1: you have like this this little bitty sky of truth
Speaker 1: and you just sort of like embellish on it until
Speaker 1: it's a lie. Yeah, yeah, I think that's what he's doing.
Speaker 3: So it is I know you.
Speaker 2: Said a moratorium on forty k commentary, but it is
Speaker 2: shocking how much this is just an ORC mech that
Speaker 2: we're talking about.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 1: Hey, if this was an ORC mech, it would have
Speaker 1: made it down there, right, because all of these guys
Speaker 1: believed in this stupid thing, you know, that.
Speaker 3: Would have kept it safe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's he's a rip to the number one war boy.
Speaker 5: Yeah he.
Speaker 3: I.
Speaker 1: People always want us to do like a Warhammer episode,
Speaker 1: which I won't do because because there are only like
Speaker 1: thirty people who appreciate Warhammer enough for that to happen.
Speaker 3: But you didn't think I would be one of them.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, I'm proud it was proper use
Speaker 1: of a of a war boy there there.
Speaker 3: I'm oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, from the old Armageddon campaign. Orchimedes actually did build
Speaker 1: an Orc submarine. There was a during the Armageddon games.
Speaker 1: There was like even a little model that some.
Speaker 3: People act together for. Yeah, good stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Orchimedes better sub designer in the sky than sucked in Rush,
Speaker 1: A lot more concerned with safety. Yeah, Jesus okay, all right, sorry,
Speaker 1: sorry for that. So at this point I want to
Speaker 1: get to the thing that I've been most excited to
Speaker 1: show you because I found an ad that Ocean Safe
Speaker 1: was using to sell this that and it is bug fun.
Speaker 1: I am so excited for you to see this fucking thing.
Speaker 1: We're gonna play several clips. But here's how it's study.
Speaker 5: Expeditions offers you the once in a lifetime opportunity to
Speaker 5: be a specially trained crew members safely diving to the
Speaker 5: Titanic wreckage site. Get ready for what Jules Verne could
Speaker 5: only imagine a twelve five hundred foot journey to the
Speaker 5: bottom of the sea.
Speaker 1: Probably, so you see, they start right off with like
Speaker 1: it's safe, this is a safe journey. It's a safe
Speaker 1: journey that Jules Verna would be jealous about. Jules Verne,
Speaker 1: who famously wrote about safe submarine.
Speaker 3: Chah, listen, I know billionaires again just have brain worms.
Speaker 2: But anytime you're paying, like the idea, the fact that
Speaker 2: they call these people crew members or whatever, like anytime
Speaker 2: you have to pay money to ostensibly do a job,
Speaker 2: you should realize you're being scammed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does have a little bit of that, like
Speaker 3: going to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know exactly where to where to draw
Speaker 1: the line here, but it does have a little bit
Speaker 1: of that, like, no, we call our at this restaurant,
Speaker 1: we call our customers guests or exactly, yeah it is.
Speaker 1: I just want to play the next clip from this
Speaker 1: because the kind of the different. By kind of paying
Speaker 1: attention to the verbiage he uses here, you get two things,
Speaker 1: which is that like he's really obsessed with making sure
Speaker 1: people think this is safe, and he's really obsessed with
Speaker 1: making sure that they don't consider themselves tourists. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: we'll play some more from that, but like there's a
Speaker 1: couple of points where he like really emphasizes this is
Speaker 1: not tourism. Now, by the time this video was published,
Speaker 1: like two months before the sub kills everybody. So at
Speaker 1: that point, Ocean Game has done two different dives to
Speaker 1: successful dives to see the Titanic, and each time they're
Speaker 1: doing this, I think they're going down more than once. Right,
Speaker 1: they have a boat and it's got like a number
Speaker 1: of people on it, and they do is you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of trips. It's unclear to me exactly how
Speaker 1: many times the sub reached the bottom, but they brought
Speaker 1: a few different groups of people down there, which meant
Speaker 1: that they had some customer testimonials to play, which gives
Speaker 1: this thing kind of like the flavor of like a
Speaker 1: TV infomercial for I don't know, like a shot back.
Speaker 3: So if you play it again, another trip like this,
Speaker 3: fewer people have been the Titanic and into space.
Speaker 10: It's tougher to go to the bottom of the ocean
Speaker 10: than it is to the far side of the moon.
Speaker 10: So we saw things that maybe human eyes have never
Speaker 10: seen before.
Speaker 3: This is like, this is what's playing on the TV
Speaker 3: during RoboCop.
Speaker 1: This is a company that exists in RoboCop and every
Speaker 1: week they do get people killed, but it's not a
Speaker 1: problem in the RoboCop. The second guy you hear in that,
Speaker 1: the dude like talking about how you know you could
Speaker 1: see something no humans ever seen, is a former astronaut
Speaker 1: named Scott Perezenski. Scott was in NASA for seventeen years.
Speaker 1: He's the first person to fly in space and to
Speaker 1: summit Mount Everest. Now I'm not accusing doctor Perezinski of
Speaker 1: any illegal or an ethical behavior, but he is the
Speaker 1: major selling point of this video right. He is on
Speaker 1: this more than basically anybody else. He's constantly there to
Speaker 1: like let His job is to both let potential customers know.
Speaker 1: Number one, if you do this, you'll be an explorer
Speaker 1: like me, the cool astronaut guy, and nonumber two. I
Speaker 1: think this is a good idea as an astronaut. This
Speaker 1: seems like a safe thing to me. I guess I
Speaker 1: am accusing him of something that is unhappy mean in
Speaker 1: a two thousand nine year No.
Speaker 2: It is probably the best, most charitable version of this.
Speaker 2: He's like, what, how bad could it be?
Speaker 3: It is? I think you're right.
Speaker 1: I don't think he maybe knew, But also I think
Speaker 1: he he is a doctor in an astronaut and like
Speaker 1: guys who wrote for Business Insider found this this lawsuit
Speaker 1: from his former employee warning that the vessel was unsafe
Speaker 1: a day after this thing went down. I have to
Speaker 1: believe doctor Nasa man would like have found some of this,
Speaker 1: like it wasn't hard. Again, Business Insider not the greatest
Speaker 1: publication in the world, and they they locked this stuff
Speaker 1: down right. So anyway, in that twenty nineteen Smithsonian article,
Speaker 1: doctor Perezinski is fawning towards doctor's genius. It's not easy
Speaker 1: to take a white shee of paper, come up with
Speaker 1: a new submersible design, fund it, test it, and mature it.
Speaker 1: It was an incredibly audacious thing to do, fair enough, certainly.
Speaker 2: Audaciousacious, you know, not that hard, it turns out, but sure.
Speaker 3: Not easy, I guess. Yeah. You know what else was audacious?
Speaker 3: That guy who shot the Archbishop of Austria, Hungary. A
Speaker 3: lot of people killed too, but audacious. Yeah, So.
Speaker 1: Anyway, cool stuff. Scott's job is again to make potential
Speaker 1: clientele feel cool. Right, These are mostly a lot of
Speaker 1: the kind of the cash crop that Stockton is hoping
Speaker 1: to harvest is like late middle aged, super rich guys
Speaker 1: who want to feel like Indiana Jones but don't know
Speaker 1: how to do anything but shovel VC money into different
Speaker 1: startups and hope that it makes them a profit. Right,
Speaker 1: And so Scott's job is to be like, no, if
Speaker 1: you do this, you're an explorer and you'll be in
Speaker 1: this kind of like private club of deep sea explorers
Speaker 1: with me, the cool astronaut guy. So a big part
Speaker 1: of the work that this ad is doing is to
Speaker 1: try to incite that feeling in people while also pruning
Speaker 1: away the sense of embarrassment they naturally feel about paying
Speaker 1: a quarter of a million dollars to see a grave site.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to have Sophie play you another clip
Speaker 1: from this fucking video.
Speaker 5: This is not a thrill ride for tourists. It's much more.
Speaker 5: It is an eight day, one of a kind experience.
Speaker 5: You will be trained as a mission specialist and record
Speaker 5: valuable findings.
Speaker 8: A citizen scientist is also involved in the science.
Speaker 3: They are doing jobs that are.
Speaker 8: Essential to the scientific research, not just busy work. We
Speaker 8: are looking at the process of degradation at the science.
Speaker 8: We are trying to make a really good map of
Speaker 8: the site and its current state.
Speaker 3: This is not tourism. You're contributing. It's not a ride
Speaker 3: at Disney. You know, there's a lot of real risk.
Speaker 3: Then there's a lot of challenges we partnered with.
Speaker 2: I. All of these things are what you tell a
Speaker 2: five year old when you quote give them a job.
Speaker 3: Yes, this is bonkers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, guys, we're really going on a Star warship kids.
Speaker 1: You know, as you take them to the Disney World
Speaker 1: Star Wars experience, it's so funny because too they keep
Speaker 1: talking about like you're doing real work. But the closest
Speaker 1: they get to like saying anything scientific they're doing is like, yeah, we're.
Speaker 3: Gonna look at like how how it's falling.
Speaker 1: Apart, like you go down there. Yeah, the boat's still
Speaker 1: all fucked up. Guys, it's not it's not not sailing again.
Speaker 1: It hasn't reconstituted itself.
Speaker 3: My god.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's it seems like ocean Gate they really
Speaker 1: wanted their customers because there it's very interesting. They cycle
Speaker 1: between being like, you know, this isn't a tour a
Speaker 1: throw ride, this is there's real danger here, but also
Speaker 1: like you're not going to die, like they have to
Speaker 1: get it's interesting. They have to get both of those
Speaker 1: things across to the clientele. Both like you're in danger
Speaker 1: because they don't want it to People don't want to
Speaker 1: feel like this is safe. They want to feel like
Speaker 1: they're explorers. But also you will not die if you
Speaker 1: do this. Those are the two things they're trying to
Speaker 1: get across in this video. Is this next clip will
Speaker 1: help to make clear.
Speaker 10: That it's very well engineered and very safe. But then
Speaker 10: the team is very focused on safety. First.
Speaker 3: The communication. It's really key, I think knowing that they never.
Speaker 11: Lost communication, not one second of me experiencing anything from
Speaker 11: otion Gate.
Speaker 3: Have I ever felt unsafe? As I pointed out on
Speaker 3: the bridge earlier, your safety plans all are unvessele.
Speaker 5: All mission specialists get to dive down to the Titanic,
Speaker 5: but the full experience entails much more.
Speaker 1: So hold that for a second, so because I may
Speaker 1: have you play another clip, but like, that's that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: Number one, it's come out since it went down that
Speaker 1: they were just lying on that part where they're like,
Speaker 1: at no point, maybe the old lady was telling the truth.
Speaker 1: But like there are repeated stories from numerous clients of
Speaker 1: it like losing contact. It was regular that it lost contact,
Speaker 1: and the attitude that fucking stocked and tried it pushes like, look,
Speaker 1: this is you know, an experimental sub something a little
Speaker 1: you know, stuff's going to go wrong all the time,
Speaker 1: you know, as long as the big thing, as long
Speaker 1: as it doesn't. Employees were fine. If you listen to
Speaker 1: James Cameron. Cameron, who was another guy who was started
Speaker 1: as an amateur and you know got into doing this
Speaker 1: stuff right, so he is kind of a good person
Speaker 1: to bring in here. Cameron's attitude was very much like, well, no,
Speaker 1: something shouldn't be going wrong. Every dive and when something
Speaker 1: major like comms goes wrong, you should go back to
Speaker 1: the drawing board and fix it before you keep going
Speaker 1: back down there. Like Cameron's vessel had three different methods
Speaker 1: of communicating with the ship above. It was so reliable
Speaker 1: that he would like take calls from his wife like
Speaker 1: while he was doing dives a bit like again, because
Speaker 1: he was taking it seriously, say what you went about
Speaker 1: James Cameron. After he nearly got ed Harris killed by
Speaker 1: the set of The Abyss, he took undersea safety a
Speaker 1: lot more seriously.
Speaker 2: It is like this thing where you're like, like, we
Speaker 2: all see James Cameron as like, I guess he's just
Speaker 2: the s tier dilettante.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it is like a little you still.
Speaker 2: Kind of roll your eyes when you're like, oh, he
Speaker 2: did it, and then you like, now you see how
Speaker 2: a true dilettante could have done things, and you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: all right, we simply must hand it to James Cameron.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: It is funny because like Cameron's background prior to becoming
Speaker 1: a film director was I think he'd been a school
Speaker 1: bus driver and dropped out of college. Hey, everybody quit correction,
Speaker 1: James Cameron was a truck driver and not a school
Speaker 1: bus driver before he got into directing. Sorry, I didn't
Speaker 1: mean to fuck up on my big Jym lore. But yeah,
Speaker 1: James Cameron interesting dude, but you know he's not. I
Speaker 1: think what it is is that, like all these tech
Speaker 1: dudes need to have that Elon Musk. Elon Musk puts
Speaker 1: a lot of effort into making people feel like he's
Speaker 1: an actual inventor, like making these impressive things that his
Speaker 1: companies make, and Cameron, on the other hand, seems more
Speaker 1: like a guy who's like, well, I want to do this.
Speaker 1: I want to be like diving down there. But I'm
Speaker 1: going to find the very best people in this industry
Speaker 1: and listen to whatever they have to say, as opposed
Speaker 1: to like, no, everyone but me is wrong. I'm going
Speaker 1: to make a sub that kills three billionaires. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: very funny. Mike Reese is a Rice is a former.
Speaker 1: He used to be the showrunner for The Simpsons, and
Speaker 1: it tells you how much money used to be in TV,
Speaker 1: writing that he was able to take four trips in
Speaker 1: the titan including one down to the Titanic, and he
Speaker 1: says that the ship lost Colms at some point in
Speaker 1: every one of his four voyages. Here's what he told
Speaker 1: ABC quote with no GPA. Rice said it took his
Speaker 1: crew three hours to find the Titanic, despite landing just
Speaker 1: five hundred yards from the ship. Rice, who served as
Speaker 1: show runner for The Simpsons, said he signed a waiver
Speaker 1: that mentions death three times on the first page. It
Speaker 1: is always in the back of your head that this
Speaker 1: is dangerous and any small problem will turn into a
Speaker 1: major catastrophe, which is I guess we'll see how well
Speaker 1: these these these disclosure or whatever permission slips go off
Speaker 1: in court.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Speaking of the Simpsons, win it. When all this shit
Speaker 1: about their like liability waivers came out, I kept thinking
Speaker 1: about that scene where Seymour takes them all to the
Speaker 1: Civil War like fort as a as a school trip.
Speaker 1: They get in trouble and he winds up leaving several
Speaker 1: kids behind, and it's like hugging the permission slips. God
Speaker 1: bless the man who invented permission.
Speaker 3: Slip real did this this is your fault? Oh my god.
Speaker 1: So David Pogue, a journalist with CBS News who went
Speaker 1: on a trip with Ocean Gate, also mentioned this formidable
Speaker 1: waiver and once the titan went missing. He noted on
Speaker 1: Twitter that while he was on the boat reporting on
Speaker 1: the company, a tour went out and got lost for
Speaker 1: five hours. He notes that after this, because this was
Speaker 1: so scary, Stockton considered adding a beacon. But yeah, and
Speaker 1: this wound up not being the thing that got them
Speaker 1: all killed. But it shows you the level of safety
Speaker 1: consciousness they have where it's like, oh wow, this is
Speaker 1: a real obvious danger.
Speaker 3: Better not do anything about it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess in fairness, his point of view
Speaker 2: is like, listen, this thing isn't going to get lost.
Speaker 2: A beacon is truly wasted, Bundy. I know how this
Speaker 2: thing is gonna Uh how the end comes from this.
Speaker 2: I know everyone's going to die. We're good, No one's
Speaker 2: no one's suffocating on this thing. That is like the
Speaker 2: stocked in rush guarantee.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, the problem is not going to be that
Speaker 3: you run out of air. Don't worry guys.
Speaker 1: But you know who never runs out of oxygen? The
Speaker 1: sponsors of this show that's right immune to dying. Ah,
Speaker 1: and we're back so talking about mister Stockton Rush. There
Speaker 1: is a point like when that ship went missing on
Speaker 1: Pogue's voyage and it has gone for like five hours
Speaker 1: when they can't communicate with it. Pogue noted in that
Speaker 1: Twitter thread that like they shut down the internet as
Speaker 1: soon as the boat stopped communicating. Well, and that actually
Speaker 1: that's a thing I will defend. People have been like, well,
Speaker 1: that's really shady. I actually disagree with that, because if
Speaker 1: you're running a trip like this, right, even if it's
Speaker 1: not like a death sub right, if you're just like
Speaker 1: taking people out on a boat and one of your
Speaker 1: boats goes missing, if I'm in charge of that boat,
Speaker 1: first thing I'm doing is turning off the Internet because
Speaker 1: if a bunch of people just died, they shouldn't find
Speaker 1: out about it, because some like TikTok dude posts the video,
Speaker 1: you know, like, I'm not gonna give ocean Gate a
Speaker 1: lot of credit, but that is what.
Speaker 3: You would do with this they did. They did the
Speaker 3: right ish thing for obviously.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we could all be confident they did
Speaker 2: it for the wrong reason.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they had a shady reason for wanting to
Speaker 1: do it, but but there is a justification for wanting
Speaker 1: people to not find out that they're like and I
Speaker 1: don't know, I guess it is one of the real
Speaker 1: fucked up things to me is that like the wife
Speaker 1: of that that billionaire, the Pakistani billionaire who went down,
Speaker 1: and and like his son, she was like on the
Speaker 1: boat when they went missing, like she's on the like, which.
Speaker 3: Is pretty bad. Time up a lot of fucked up stuff.
Speaker 1: So the thing I keep coming back to is that
Speaker 1: all of the ship we've talked about about, how like
Speaker 1: all of the evidence that this thing was dangerous before
Speaker 1: it went down was easily available somewhere online. Prior to
Speaker 1: the titan setting out on its final voice, like credible
Speaker 1: people had pointed out that this was dangerous. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that I'm most frustrated about is that,
Speaker 1: like none of the people in the media who are
Speaker 1: covering this thing once it starts actually getting to the
Speaker 1: Titanic bring any of this stuff right right and it's
Speaker 1: it's It's very interesting because like David Pogue's of CBS
Speaker 1: goes on a tour and like Pogue, I think his
Speaker 1: like coverage is absolutely irresponsible, Like there's not really any
Speaker 1: investigative rigor. He's not pointing out any of the signs
Speaker 1: that this thing is like dangerous, and his article is
Speaker 1: the video in the podcast that he does is basically
Speaker 1: pure praise, right where like when he talks about it, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a disgusting puff piece, right, Like that's that's like
Speaker 1: there are parts of it that look almost identical to
Speaker 1: the ad video where he's like showing him around the
Speaker 1: you know, all this footage of it diving and footage
Speaker 1: of like life on the boat, like it is super fawning.
Speaker 1: Pogue did mention briefly that one of these butt like
Speaker 1: one of the trips got lost and they lost comms
Speaker 1: and stuff, but like he brings it up as like, well,
Speaker 1: it's still you know, not super tested technology, as opposed
Speaker 1: to like, well, this is a major problem and the
Speaker 1: boat shouldn't be back out until this gets solved. You know,
Speaker 1: there were other basic problems that should have drawn more
Speaker 1: scrutiny from journalists. For one, like, outside of the CBS report,
Speaker 1: Stockton also invited a BBC team to come film one
Speaker 1: of their dives as a pr thing imagig and that
Speaker 1: trip captures the looming disaster feel better than like when
Speaker 1: the documentary about this gets made, they're going to use
Speaker 1: clips from that BBC documentary because during this fucking dive
Speaker 1: that the BBC is there to film, I think two
Speaker 1: of the thrusters on this thing are installed backwards, like
Speaker 1: they put the engines on wrong, and so the boats
Speaker 1: spinning around in circles. And because there's a film crew there,
Speaker 1: they don't want to just scrub the dive to fix it,
Speaker 1: so they figure out a way that the guy piloting
Speaker 1: it can like hold the con troller sideways so that
Speaker 1: it works.
Speaker 3: So they I mean, and there's new.
Speaker 2: Video game spirit. They're basically on take the cartridge out.
Speaker 3: And blow on it mode. It's wild that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I want to play you a fairly long
Speaker 1: clip from this because it gives you an idea. It's
Speaker 1: kind of cutting between you know, mission controller whatever in
Speaker 1: the boat as they try to figure out how to
Speaker 1: fix this, and it shows you how janky this whole
Speaker 1: process is.
Speaker 3: Oh no, we have a problem.
Speaker 11: When I'm thrusting forward, one of the thrusters is thrusting
Speaker 11: backwards right now.
Speaker 5: Slowly.
Speaker 3: Thing I can do right now is the three sixty
Speaker 3: on the sticks now like the actual compsticks. Yeah, what
Speaker 3: is left and right?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 3: The right stick that's forward back, turn left, turn right?
Speaker 3: And what's happening when he's going forward? He's getting a turn?
Speaker 5: Got it?
Speaker 3: What's left it down and up? Okay, yeah what we
Speaker 3: calls that?
Speaker 1: You know, by got one of those restaurant.
Speaker 3: I mean if you're a directional parts right, yeah it
Speaker 3: should be. But something happened. Yeah, what he can do?
Speaker 12: So on the controller you have the updown, left right
Speaker 12: arrows and you could set them so that one was
Speaker 12: going and then when every time you hit the crew
Speaker 12: the button, you would go forward. I hope he knows
Speaker 12: how to do this. I hate Jerome Stockton on Wendy's phone.
Speaker 12: Just call it back if you get a chance. We
Speaker 12: get a question on the dive right now, looking to
Speaker 12: see if there's a way to remap the PS three controller.
Speaker 3: NICs.
Speaker 1: So they are just like you and your friends playing
Speaker 1: like video games at like someone's thirteenth birthday.
Speaker 3: Party late at night.
Speaker 1: They're they're getting tripped up remapping a p S three
Speaker 1: controller like while these fuckers are underwater.
Speaker 3: God, it's JANKI like it really is this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people flipped out a lot about the fact, like
Speaker 1: they're using, you know, a gaming controller, which is not
Speaker 1: super weird for stuff like this. Like a lot of
Speaker 1: times it gets used because controllers, gaming controllers are pretty
Speaker 1: good at at at this kind of motion, but like
Speaker 1: this is the the jank, Like you should not be
Speaker 1: having to remap on the fly because whatever checklist you
Speaker 1: had for this thing before it went off, didn't make
Speaker 1: sure the engines were on right.
Speaker 3: Like that's that's pretty bad.
Speaker 1: Like if I get on a plane and they're like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: we got to go back. Somebody put an engine on wrong.
Speaker 1: So we're just gonna We're just gonna like figure it
Speaker 1: out in the air. Don't worry. No, I'm I am
Speaker 1: opening the emergency door and rolling out onto the tarmac.
Speaker 1: I'm not going up in the sky in that thing.
Speaker 1: They're like, we just got to twist it and then
Speaker 1: it'll go in the right direction.
Speaker 3: Don't worry. It's so oh god, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: There's nothing really to say, but it's so fucking bonkers
Speaker 2: that this was allowed to happen.
Speaker 1: It's it's yeah, it's it's nuts, and it's nuts that again,
Speaker 1: guys like Pogue are just talking about how cool this is,
Speaker 1: what a great and it's it's of course it works
Speaker 1: this way. For one thing, David Pogue is the kind
Speaker 1: of quote unquote journalist you bring in if you need,
Speaker 1: like a guy a dumb guy with a platform.
Speaker 3: To make your tech product look cooler than it is.
Speaker 1: Right, That's his actual job is to like pump up
Speaker 1: bad ideas from the tech industry. So he's a great
Speaker 1: dude for Stockton to work with here. And it's also
Speaker 1: like Stockton has a kind of gut level understanding of
Speaker 1: how awe inspiring being this deep below the ocean is
Speaker 1: and the fact that when you put people through experience
Speaker 1: is that intense. It creates like a bond and a
Speaker 1: sense of like emotional loyalty between folks on the journey
Speaker 1: in between them and the company. And he makes a
Speaker 1: lot of conscious use of that even in testimonials on
Speaker 1: this ad. The lady that you're about to hear first
Speaker 1: from on this clip that Sophy's gonna play is a
Speaker 1: former Master Chef contestant who paid for a trip to
Speaker 1: the bottom of the sea on this thing. And here's
Speaker 1: here talking about that kind of like emotional bond that
Speaker 1: people form on this thing.
Speaker 3: Here instantly became family and that's something that you.
Speaker 1: Take away for life, correct And like, you know, that's
Speaker 1: a silly thing to say about spending eight days with
Speaker 1: a bunch of people on a boat, but I have
Speaker 1: no doubt that. After it's an intense peak experience. I'm
Speaker 1: sure she felt that way, you know, as there as
Speaker 1: they're all leaving from their time together. And Stockton understands
Speaker 1: this psychological phenomenon and he is he was making kind
Speaker 1: of very concerted use of it in order to pump
Speaker 1: his company. And this has made unsettlingly clear and how
Speaker 1: he responded to a lawsuit against Oceangate was launched in
Speaker 1: February of this year by a Florida couple who sued
Speaker 1: him for refusing to refund their one hundred and five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars tickets to see the Titanic in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: The trip was postponed repeatedly and they asked for a refund,
Speaker 1: and Rush keeps trying to get them on other dives.
Speaker 1: He's like, don't get a refund, just come out with
Speaker 1: us in a year, come out with us the year
Speaker 1: after that. You know, I can't give you your money back, basically,
Speaker 1: so they sue him. The case goes to court, and
Speaker 1: David Kinkannon, who is the ocean Gate company legal advisor,
Speaker 1: we heard from him earlier. He was the guy trying
Speaker 1: to blame the Coastguard for not working fast enough. He
Speaker 1: offered the federal judge who was hearing the case, Rebecca Smith,
Speaker 1: a free trip on Ocean Gate's boat to go down
Speaker 1: and see the Titanic, right like, as she's judged, He's like, look, judge,
Speaker 1: you can't properly, you know, adjudicate this case if you
Speaker 1: haven't been to see the Titanic, you know, why don't
Speaker 1: we take you on a free journey to the Titanic.
Speaker 1: Which number one seems illegal.
Speaker 2: Both in terms of bribery and now in retrospect, making
Speaker 2: credible death threats against a sitting judge seems like it
Speaker 2: shouldn't be a felady too.
Speaker 1: What's wild is according to The New York Times is reporting,
Speaker 1: she seemed down to quote, perhaps if another expedition occurs
Speaker 1: in the future, I will be able to do so,
Speaker 1: the judge road in May, adding, after here many years
Speaker 1: of hearing cases about the Titanic wreckage, that opportunity would
Speaker 1: be quite informative and present a first eyes on view
Speaker 1: of the rex site by the court.
Speaker 3: Fucking God. So, because this is.
Speaker 1: Like, you know, there's there's legal cases around like shit
Speaker 1: that gets pulled up like that's why they declared that
Speaker 1: they can't like sell random shit from the Titanic. They
Speaker 1: had to like take it all together, you know. They
Speaker 1: could sell like access to it as like a you know,
Speaker 1: we've got all this shit in Vegas. You can pay
Speaker 1: to go see it there. You can make money from that.
Speaker 1: But you can't just sell random shit that got adjudicated
Speaker 1: in this court, which is why when the Ocean Gate
Speaker 1: got sued wound up in front of this judge for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, she was like the district or whatever that
Speaker 1: they've picked for Titanic shit, and so basically like there
Speaker 1: was there was kind of a quasi justification. You can
Speaker 1: see the judge being like, maybe I should go, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe I do need to see the Titanic, but it's
Speaker 1: also clearly stocked and trying to get her in his
Speaker 1: weird little boat Colt, you know. And it's what's equally
Speaker 1: unsettling is that in this legal filing where the judge
Speaker 1: is like, this seems like it could be a good idea.
Speaker 1: There are serious unreported issues revealed with the titan Quote.
Speaker 1: On the first dive to the Titanic, the submersipal encountered
Speaker 1: a battery issue and had to be manually attached to
Speaker 1: its lifting platform. The company's legal and operational advisor, David
Speaker 1: Kincannon wrote in the document, which was filed in the
Speaker 1: US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the
Speaker 1: submersipal sustained modest damage to its exterior, he wrote, leading
Speaker 1: ocean Gate to cancel the mission so it could make repairs.
Speaker 1: So now it's it's it's it's cool that this judge
Speaker 1: was still like, I don't know, maybe I'll maybe I'll go.
Speaker 2: Oh god, no, no one can calculate risk, I guess
Speaker 2: is the clear lesson.
Speaker 3: They really like the Titanic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like that's the lesson of the Titanic. People are
Speaker 1: bad at calculating risks, And it's also the lesson of
Speaker 1: the Titanic fandom that they're bad at calculating risks.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, as we've talked about in the ads and the
Speaker 1: pr materials, Oceangate made a big deal about the fact
Speaker 1: that their customers are citizens, scientists. One of the things
Speaker 1: that's weird to me about that David Pogue interview is
Speaker 1: that Stockton does not treat them this way when he's
Speaker 1: talking to Pogue.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 1: So we have clients that are Titanic enthusiasts, which we
Speaker 1: refer to as Titaniacs. Some of their Some of those
Speaker 1: folks are affluent and some are not. So we've had
Speaker 1: people who have mortgaged their home to come and do
Speaker 1: the trip, and we have people who don't think twice
Speaker 1: about a trip of this cost. We have one gentleman
Speaker 1: who had won the lottery. The first tickets had been
Speaker 1: sold for one hundred and five thousand, one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty nine dollars, the inflation adjusted cost of a first
Speaker 1: class berth on the Titanic. But according to Pogue, then
Speaker 1: Stockton Rush saw how much people were willing to pay
Speaker 1: to go to space, and he thought, man, I'm leaving
Speaker 1: money on the table. So a couple of things there.
Speaker 1: Number one, it does feel like you're kind of tempting
Speaker 1: fate by being about, like, well, let's charge as much
Speaker 1: as it costs people on the Titanic to go die,
Speaker 1: you know see. But then to to both have like
Speaker 1: gone through that and then see Jeff Bezos fly people
Speaker 1: up and be like, oh shit, we can actually make
Speaker 1: way more money off these rubes. Right, very cool, great
Speaker 1: science that you're bringing these these these citizens scientists, And.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're a scientist, a citizen scientist, get the fuck
Speaker 2: out of here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're gonna We're gonna do an expedition to see
Speaker 1: how much money I can make off of you. We're
Speaker 1: going to really expand the bands of the bounds of
Speaker 1: human knowledge are e how much cash I can take
Speaker 1: out if your fucking wallet. And again, I haven't actually
Speaker 1: found any evidence of like science that result from the
Speaker 1: trips that these guys did, because they took like twenty
Speaker 1: eight people or so down before this all went to shit.
Speaker 1: I haven't found evidence of like real science that they accomplished.
Speaker 1: But when you watch the ad, it becomes very clear
Speaker 1: that the primary purpose of the because they have scientists,
Speaker 1: actual scientists and other experts that they bring on every
Speaker 1: voyage and their job is to make these customers feel spending. Again,
Speaker 1: it's amazing they're LARPing, right. It's like if you brought
Speaker 1: in like it's like if you were doing I don't know,
Speaker 1: like a fucking Ukraine War larp and you hired some
Speaker 1: like actual veteran Ukrainian soldiers to come in so that
Speaker 1: like some fucking airsofters would feel like they've got the
Speaker 1: real trench experience, right, which I'm sure is going to
Speaker 1: happen in like six months, right, but yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to play you another clip here.
Speaker 5: Maybe best of all are the one on ones with
Speaker 5: experts like Commander Paul Henri Narjalais, leader of thirty dives
Speaker 5: to the Titanic rec site. He and other world class
Speaker 5: experts will be on all our missions to give you
Speaker 5: an unrivaled up close and personal Ocean Gate Titanic experience.
Speaker 13: So for me, it's very well done because it's simple.
Speaker 13: Lee's a lot of equipment and a lot of switch
Speaker 13: and on this one you don't have because you work
Speaker 13: with a screen and with a keyboard, and it's very
Speaker 13: easy to do that.
Speaker 3: If you are not only.
Speaker 13: Your passenger sit and waiting that the time is running
Speaker 13: and just looking outside, you can do something inside. You
Speaker 13: can be really a member of the team and are
Speaker 13: that great.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. It's like a checklist at the Rainforest Cafe.
Speaker 3: It's like a little scavenger hunt.
Speaker 1: It is sad, and it's like at one point, fucking
Speaker 1: Stockton gets asked like are you basically coming up with
Speaker 1: busy work and he was like, well, yeah, kinda yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: They're all like seven year olds that you want to
Speaker 1: give them a job, hand them a fake self, let
Speaker 1: them pretend that they're they're taking an important.
Speaker 2: Note, a little little child steering wheel, like they can
Speaker 2: just turn back and forth.
Speaker 1: The French guy that we heard there was was Paul
Speaker 1: Henri Nargiolis or pH As like he tended to be called.
Speaker 1: And his nickname was mister Titanic because he's done more
Speaker 1: dives down to the reck side, or he had done
Speaker 1: more dives down to the reck site, like thirty five
Speaker 1: I think than anybody else. He was a subcommander for
Speaker 1: the French Navy. And when when when everyone died, folks
Speaker 1: were like, it's a bummer that this like working class
Speaker 1: you know, dude went down with them.
Speaker 3: Again.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say, you know, cheer these deaths.
Speaker 1: Don't cheer these deaths. He was not like a he's
Speaker 1: not like a blue collar leather neck with like a
Speaker 1: copy of fucking Bruce Springsteen album in his in his
Speaker 1: in his hat band. In addition, he was you know,
Speaker 1: he's obviously he's He was an extreme, one of the
Speaker 1: most accomplished submersible pilots in history. He also like ran
Speaker 1: it started and ran several different deep sea like equipment
Speaker 1: companies which he sold. He was on the board of
Speaker 1: I believe it was an LLC that had the salvage
Speaker 1: rights to the Titanic. He was one of the guys
Speaker 1: when we talked about this process of taking a bunch
Speaker 1: of shit fifty five hundred items from the Titanic, which
Speaker 1: then wound up like touring Las Vegas and stuff as
Speaker 1: a thing people could pay to go see. He's helping
Speaker 1: to run the company that does that as well. You know,
Speaker 1: Bob Ballard kind of insinuated that this stuff was grave robbing.
Speaker 1: I'm not calling a dead man a grave robber. I
Speaker 1: don't know that Ballard was. I think it's his exact
Speaker 1: status within the industry is kind of unclear to me.
Speaker 1: But he's not just a working class subpilot. He was
Speaker 1: worth about one and a half billion dollars like this.
Speaker 1: He is also like an entrepreneur right.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Nargalais is again definitely a respected figure for his diving acumen.
Speaker 1: I suspect one reason that he was brought onto the
Speaker 1: project is because he's huge within the Titanic superfan community.
Speaker 1: He's done so many dives down there, and his fame
Speaker 1: would act as an advertisement. Specifically, Nargalai's fame would act
Speaker 1: as an advertisement to the people who are like real
Speaker 1: big Titanic nerds, and David Pogue talks to one of
Speaker 1: these customers in his series, a woman named Renato Rojas.
Speaker 1: Renata worked for a bank. She I think probably would
Speaker 1: describe herself as like upper middle class. She's not a billionaire,
Speaker 1: she says, she's not even a multi millionaire, So I
Speaker 1: think this is someone who is well off, but not
Speaker 1: like a plutocrat, right, not someone who can like buy
Speaker 1: an election. But she's got enough that she could spend
Speaker 1: one hundred and five thousand dollars on this because she's
Speaker 1: kind of nuts about the titanium, right, which is one
Speaker 1: chunk of it. You know, maybe Stockton was lying when
Speaker 1: he said people mortgage their homes for this, but like
Speaker 1: that's not outside of the bounds of Like there's definitely
Speaker 1: Titanic fans who would do something like, you know, burn
Speaker 1: their life savings to get to go on this thing.
Speaker 1: Those guys exist too, which is interesting to me. And
Speaker 1: she makes the note or she says like when she's
Speaker 1: interviewed by Pogue, Pogue asks, like, when you told people
Speaker 1: that you were spending almost the price of a small
Speaker 1: house to do this one day trip.
Speaker 3: Did you get any reactions?
Speaker 1: And Renata was like, most people think I'm crazy by
Speaker 1: spending all this money and trying to go down to
Speaker 1: see Titanic. My response is, dreams don't have a price.
Speaker 1: Some people want a Ferrari, some people have children, some
Speaker 1: people buy a house. I wanted to go to Titanic,
Speaker 1: and I feel like, first off, I feel like that's
Speaker 1: kind of crazy.
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's that's nuts, But also that's fine. Like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you if you're willing to die or
Speaker 1: risk death to go see this boat and you're willing
Speaker 1: to burn up all of your money to do it, sure,
Speaker 1: why not?
Speaker 3: Like really, when it.
Speaker 1: Comes down to it, I'm not going to get bent
Speaker 1: out of shape when you die. But like, okay, everyone
Speaker 1: has the right to want to love something so much
Speaker 1: that it kills them, even if that thing is a
Speaker 1: actively stupid.
Speaker 3: I do believe that, right, So I guess whatever.
Speaker 1: Now I will say I am happy that like when
Speaker 1: this thing went down, It's again, all of the people
Speaker 1: on this boat, with the exception of that nineteen year old,
Speaker 1: had the resources and the experience to know that what
Speaker 1: they were doing was silly and like they kill them right,
Speaker 1: all of them had the ability to be informed of everything.
Speaker 1: I brought up in this episode about how like slipshod
Speaker 1: this thing was. I am glad that like Ranata or
Speaker 1: some other harmless Titanic maniac was not on the sub
Speaker 1: when it went down. You know, it was people who
Speaker 1: absolutely had the resources to know better. I don't know,
Speaker 1: you can you can feel about that however you want,
Speaker 1: but it seems at least like less fucked up to
Speaker 1: me than if it had been a bunch of people
Speaker 1: who saw that the movie seventy seven times in theaters
Speaker 1: and like poured their pension into fucking Russian Gate. And
Speaker 1: the Titanic movie is kind of the thing that looms
Speaker 1: over all this hubbub from the day that it's sunk.
Speaker 1: The boat captured people's imaginations, both because of how many
Speaker 1: people died on it and because they were all rich
Speaker 1: and famous. There's all this mystery. James Cameron turned that
Speaker 1: fascination into a modern fandom, which I will say, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's cynical for James, Like he wasn't doing
Speaker 1: this to cash in on the Titanic, Like obviously he's
Speaker 1: obsessed with it too. He is the biggest of the
Speaker 1: crazy Titanic maniacs, right Like, does seem legitimate for him,
Speaker 1: But Ocean Gate definitely kind of callously cashed in on
Speaker 1: the film, and you can see some of this in
Speaker 1: the ad which apparently when you finish the dive, they
Speaker 1: would let you pose with like a replica of the
Speaker 1: heart of the Ocean and take pictures, which is both
Speaker 1: a fundamental misunderstanding of the movie. Right she like dumps
Speaker 1: it in the ocean because these guys are obsessed with it,
Speaker 1: and it's like disrespectful because of all of this person
Speaker 1: she loved died, All of these people died, and all
Speaker 1: they care about is this stupid piece of glittery jewelry,
Speaker 1: right Like, I think that's that's one of the things
Speaker 1: that Cameron is saying in the movie. And then they're like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: pose with this thing. Take a picture with it right
Speaker 1: above the graveyard. Anyway, play the clip, Sophy.
Speaker 3: Next dive.
Speaker 5: Excitement, Thrills, an adventure on the high seas.
Speaker 4: I just loved every minute of it.
Speaker 8: It has exceeded anything I thought it could ever be.
Speaker 3: Titanic is the ultimate dream.
Speaker 14: I mean, this is definitely probably one of the most unique,
Speaker 14: interesting things I've ever done, even going to you know,
Speaker 14: I've been to Everest, but this is more unique this.
Speaker 4: Of course, guys spent Ever.
Speaker 11: I think there's more in the I think there's more
Speaker 11: in the clip, but of course that guy spent Everes.
Speaker 3: Yes, was the dream come true. But as I look at.
Speaker 14: This will no doubt be the best experience of my
Speaker 14: entire life.
Speaker 5: Come join us on our next expedition. Don't miss the
Speaker 5: opportunity to be part of history, the Ocean Gate Titanic experience.
Speaker 3: There's truly nothing else like it.
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: That is true. There is nothing like imploding. You know,
Speaker 1: it is a unique you know, lots of people. Look,
Speaker 1: a ton of rich people know what it's like to
Speaker 1: die of gradual hypoxia atop Mount Everest. You know, very
Speaker 1: few rich people have imploded at the bottom of the sea.
Speaker 1: You could be one of the one of the few.
Speaker 11: Uh yeah, to mind blowingly uh like like they're like
Speaker 11: blissfully ignorant. They're like choosing to to not educate themselves,
Speaker 11: and it's like it's sad.
Speaker 1: Well, and it's also just you can see it's such
Speaker 1: like a he's marketing this again. He really is like
Speaker 1: a modern Hammond figure from the Jurassic Park. He's marketing
Speaker 1: this is like, this can be a part of the
Speaker 1: Oh your friends did Everest. You know, they paid one
Speaker 1: hundred grand or whatever it takes to like force to
Speaker 1: like make you know, they paid all that money to
Speaker 1: have locals like stop them from dying on the big
Speaker 1: stupid mountain that rich people want to climb because it's
Speaker 1: it's the one that rich people climb. Well, good news.
Speaker 1: You can impress your friends with the thing that they
Speaker 1: haven't done. You know, they haven't been Titanic yet, so
Speaker 1: you'll have loved him.
Speaker 4: Fucking l Ron Hubbard.
Speaker 1: First off, l Ron Hubbard absolutely would have loved this,
Speaker 1: and second l R H never would have gotten on
Speaker 1: that submer.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: If there was one thing that man.
Speaker 4: Understood, it was yah, you would have set children.
Speaker 3: A kid film it for him. Get one of my
Speaker 3: boys down there.
Speaker 2: Honestly, the fact that like like a Tom Cruise type
Speaker 2: or I guess Tom Cruise specifically hasn't been on this
Speaker 2: thing has to be due to the fact that scientology
Speaker 2: handlers literally googled this and when he inevitably was offered
Speaker 2: and they were like Nah, you're not doing this.
Speaker 1: I you know, I honestly, I feel like Tom Cruise
Speaker 1: never would have done something like all of the He's
Speaker 1: like James Cameron, Right, he'll do insane shit, that's a risk,
Speaker 1: but he's going to like do it methodically by best
Speaker 1: practices because he doesn't have a death wish, right, and
Speaker 1: he's not like there's a degree for whatever else is
Speaker 1: going on in Tom Cruise's head. He's able to rationally
Speaker 1: a praise risk to his body.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, absolutely it's wild.
Speaker 1: But these people were not. Now I haven't seen like
Speaker 1: a perfect list of all the folks who went down
Speaker 1: on these trips or who had booked tickets. The success
Speaker 1: of their first trip to the Titanic in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one brought a lot of new investments. That's when like
Speaker 1: they started really getting money like pumped into them. But
Speaker 1: from what we're shown on screening in the customer testimonials,
Speaker 1: I tend to suspect that the client list was an
Speaker 1: even split of like super rich people who are doing
Speaker 1: this to impress, just to impress their friends. Right, they're
Speaker 1: in the they're like Hamish was right where they have
Speaker 1: this their adventurer travelers right, they're paying for these kind
Speaker 1: of peak adventure experiences. And then the other half of
Speaker 1: them are crazed Titanic fans, some of whom are also
Speaker 1: super super rich, and some of whom are just kind
Speaker 1: of like normal rich, you know. So Pogue's story gives
Speaker 1: us some context on one of the crazy rich adventure
Speaker 1: seekers too. Most of our fellow expeditioners were rich people
Speaker 1: seeking adventure, like a hedge fund guy with his son,
Speaker 1: an artificial intelligence pioneer who'd sold a bunch of companies,
Speaker 1: and Shinrick Baldota, who runs a massive industrial conglomerate in India. Pogue,
Speaker 1: and you have a nickname, Shinrick.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: They call me the wild Monk Pogue, the wild Monk Shinrick, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I look like a monk. I'm very calm, but
Speaker 1: I have these dream interest that I do. Going to
Speaker 1: a live volcano in Vanadu two times, to an article
Speaker 1: on an edge of spaceflight. It's seventy thousand feet in
Speaker 1: the mid twenty nine, swimming with the blue whales, catching
Speaker 1: crocodiles in Botswana with National Geographic So like again, he's
Speaker 1: just like listing this like like a like a rich
Speaker 1: kidst like everything he got for his birthday that year.
Speaker 1: He's I got this, I get this, and I get
Speaker 1: to who is and you know, I get to go
Speaker 1: to space in a mid twenty nine May.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It really is like just like you know, toxic masculinity
Speaker 2: will continue to kill people, but this is genuinely pathetic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's such an insult to like actual exploration.
Speaker 1: I think about like the Apollo like whichever I always
Speaker 1: forget was it eleven?
Speaker 3: I No, I wasn't eleven.
Speaker 1: That was the first one that actually made it there.
Speaker 1: But like the moon landing guys, right, all of whom
Speaker 1: had like one of the I think it was Apollo one,
Speaker 1: like it it fucked up on the landing pad and
Speaker 1: caught on fire inside and because there was like too
Speaker 1: heavy O two in the mixture, like all of these
Speaker 1: guys like burnt to death horribly, nightmarishly, and like the
Speaker 1: dudes who landed on the moon were their friends and
Speaker 1: knew that, and like and still knowing that, decided like, no,
Speaker 1: fuck this shit, we are like we are going to
Speaker 1: go into space and do this thing because it will
Speaker 1: expand the bonds of human like knowledge and achievement in
Speaker 1: a way that matters it's worth our lives to do
Speaker 1: this thing like this kind of like breathtaking and honestly
Speaker 1: to a degree like selfless willingness to explore, which is
Speaker 1: you know, you see the same shit with like Yuri
Speaker 1: gegaron right, it's like speaks to some of the best
Speaker 1: things in us, and then these guys being like what
Speaker 1: if we commodify, Like I am willing to commodify this.
Speaker 1: I want to buy a ticket so that I can
Speaker 1: pretend to be that guy. As long as you promise
Speaker 1: me I'm safe, you know, as long as like I
Speaker 1: get I want to afterwards, I'll play up the danger,
Speaker 1: but like I don't really want to die. There's a
Speaker 1: story that came out a couple of weeks ago about
Speaker 1: this this fucking I think he was an Instagram influencer
Speaker 1: who like did a bunch of mountain climbs with gram It.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was a TikTok guy, but like he was
Speaker 1: one of these dudes who does these like things in
Speaker 1: films himself, so everybody thinks that he's you know, like, oh,
Speaker 1: what a cool, adventurous life you lead, And like things
Speaker 1: went wrong on Everest and the one of the shrip
Speaker 1: is on his team carried him down the mountain on
Speaker 1: his back, which is that guy is risking his own
Speaker 1: life for you. It is so hard to save people
Speaker 1: on Everest, Like not only is like hiking down a mountain,
Speaker 1: like hiking down a gentle hill slope with a human
Speaker 1: being in gear on your back is a lot for
Speaker 1: most people. And this guy goes down Everest that way,
Speaker 1: and afterwards, this fucking influencer dude like blocks him on
Speaker 1: TikTok or Instagram whatever happy is because he doesn't. He's
Speaker 1: ashamed that, like the guy had to save him that,
Speaker 1: like he didn't get to pretend to be the big
Speaker 1: bold adventurer, Like it fucked up his brand that he
Speaker 1: had been saved by this. Like any reasonable person somebody
Speaker 1: does that for you, Like that dude's going in the
Speaker 1: will right, like you know, like you take care of
Speaker 1: Like that's like the most incredible thing a person could
Speaker 1: do for another person is like gamble their life to
Speaker 1: save you. And like it speaks to the attitude of
Speaker 1: these fucking adventure traveler, dark tourist freak gasp motherfuckers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it presumably has been what it's always been.
Speaker 2: We just now have like the evidence of things like
Speaker 2: blocking someone on Instagram or whatever that. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: it's not like they were. They were better before you
Speaker 2: got to imagine.
Speaker 1: No, no, it's not. I mean some of them were.
Speaker 1: I know the guy I think was Edmund Hillary, who
Speaker 1: was like one of the like he and Tenzig Norgay,
Speaker 1: who was a sharp like with a first summ at Everest,
Speaker 1: and if I'm not mistaken, they both worked it out
Speaker 1: to where like they basically would not let anyone know
Speaker 1: who was the first. That was kind of important to
Speaker 1: Hillary because he wanted he didn't want to just like
Speaker 1: for Norgay to get forgotten, right, because he was like, well,
Speaker 1: obviously I wouldn't have made it up without this guy.
Speaker 1: We did this together. Like again, the difference between an
Speaker 1: actual explorer, which Hillary for sure was, and what these
Speaker 1: people are doing. You know, it's even the difference between
Speaker 1: like fucking James Cameron and what these people are doing. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Big Jim, So what are we gonna do? So there
Speaker 1: keeps being stuff come out about this, Like right before
Speaker 1: this episode went out, I ran across the story about
Speaker 1: a guy named Arthur Loible who was He's one of
Speaker 1: the guys who went down to the Titanic with Ocean Gate.
Speaker 1: His first trip was delayed by five hours because of
Speaker 1: electrical issues, and the second dive was abandoned for unknown reasons.
Speaker 1: And then on on the Titans' fifth dive, which he
Speaker 1: was down for before it left, a bread from a
Speaker 1: balancing tube on the vessel broke off and they reattached
Speaker 1: it with zip ties and like you know, again, plenty
Speaker 1: of signs.
Speaker 3: Look, it's one of those things.
Speaker 1: If like Loibel had been on this thing when it
Speaker 1: imploded or Shinrik, you know, I don't think I would
Speaker 1: have cared too much about it, and I don't really
Speaker 1: I don't feel bad. Everyone here should have known what
Speaker 1: they were getting themselves into, and they made a choice.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: You know, Hamish Harding made his money in the private
Speaker 1: jet industry and was a seasoned adventure tourist. He had
Speaker 1: every opportunity to understand this was a bad idea. I
Speaker 1: think he just wanted, you know, he was a gambler
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, and I think he was
Speaker 1: kind of addicted to this. And I don't know about
Speaker 1: Nargalais Cameron. James Cameron didn't appearance because he and pH
Speaker 1: were friends and he was like I don't understand it, Like,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make sense to me why he did this.
Speaker 3: I don't know the guy.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to try to psychoanalyze him. I did
Speaker 1: find interviews with him where he would talk about stuff
Speaker 1: like when he was at the bottom, you know, in
Speaker 1: earlier dives near the Titanic, he would find himself almost
Speaker 1: staying to the point where his batteries couldn't handle it anymore,
Speaker 1: or where like his oxygen was kind of low, and
Speaker 1: have to like force himself to come back up. He
Speaker 1: was just so entranced down there. And I don't think
Speaker 1: he obviously I'm not saying I don't think he was
Speaker 1: like suicidal, but he talked a lot about how you know,
Speaker 1: if it goes wrong, you're dead before you realize anything
Speaker 1: is wrong. He was an old man, he was in
Speaker 1: his seventies. I think he had just kind of made
Speaker 1: peace with the fact that this was what he loved
Speaker 1: and he would take do anything he could to get
Speaker 1: down there, and you know, if he dies, he dies.
Speaker 1: So I don't feel bad for him. Again, he made
Speaker 1: a a a certainly an educated choice to be in
Speaker 1: that situation. I certainly the only one I'm actively glad
Speaker 1: about is rush because he deserved he got all these
Speaker 1: people killed. He would have gotten more people killed, and
Speaker 1: he would have like become a made money helping to
Speaker 1: frack the planet if he could have.
Speaker 3: Like fuck, I mean, he's like, like he's.
Speaker 2: A very smirking piece of video to who really does
Speaker 2: just like this.
Speaker 3: You know, it's if you're not going to feel like
Speaker 3: any stuff.
Speaker 2: Like this is justified, you know, fine, But like the
Speaker 2: man was literally asking for it several times on video.
Speaker 1: Yes, he desperately what he begged the universe to kill
Speaker 1: him at the bottom of the ocean, and like, so
Speaker 1: I will say, the only person I really do feel
Speaker 1: bad about on that boat was Suliman Dahwood. It was
Speaker 1: that the nineteen year old son of Shazahwa Dahwood, who
Speaker 1: was a Pakistani billionaire. He was obsessed with the Titanic.
Speaker 1: He was kind of an adventure tourist previously. He desperately
Speaker 1: wanted to do this. One family source says that Shazada
Speaker 1: or that Suliman his kid, was like really scared and
Speaker 1: didn't want to do this, but like it was father's day.
Speaker 1: This was like kind of their father's day thing that
Speaker 1: they were doing, and he felt like kind of pressured
Speaker 1: to go with his dad. Another article I read said
Speaker 1: that he was going to try to like do a
Speaker 1: Rubik's cube at the bottom of the sea and like
Speaker 1: be the first person to do that. I don't know,
Speaker 1: Like I feel like he was the one who was
Speaker 1: both being pressured by his dad, which is not a situation.
Speaker 1: That's like most nineteen year olds are capable of being
Speaker 1: pressured by their parents and also not doesn't have the
Speaker 1: life experience to have known what he was getting himself into.
Speaker 1: I don't feel it all bad for the rest of them.
Speaker 1: They all made their bed and now they get imploded
Speaker 1: in it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's yeah, I know that's that's like the clear
Speaker 2: dark moment in this and then everything else. That's really like,
Speaker 2: especially the more you learn it is like these people
Speaker 2: are unbelievably repellent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they they chose this. They chose to like make
Speaker 1: a dumb gamble. It's like feeling bad that somebody puts
Speaker 1: their life savings on like twenty one black on a
Speaker 1: craps table. Well, I guess that sucks for you, but
Speaker 1: like what did you did you really think that was
Speaker 1: good work? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Anyway, Yeah, this is like this is like to put
Speaker 2: your money where your mouth is of like all my
Speaker 2: apes are gone, Like yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, are you laughing at the fact that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, somebody lost their life saving by by far.
Speaker 2: The least this time we could we could have a chuckle.
Speaker 3: You know what? Maybe maybe yeah.
Speaker 2: This is also one of the first episodes I've been
Speaker 2: on where something resembling justice happened.
Speaker 3: So I don't know where I am.
Speaker 1: Like one thing I'm frustrated about is that, from what
Speaker 1: I can tell, a lot of like mainstream sources are
Speaker 1: trying to portray him as like this this tragic figure
Speaker 1: where he was he just loved exploration. He was pushing
Speaker 1: boundaries so much, and you know, this horrible, horrible thing happened.
Speaker 1: We're like, no, this is the already of a drunk driver, right,
Speaker 1: Like this is like it's like if it's like if
Speaker 1: a guy like crashes his fucking car into a school
Speaker 1: bus because he's hammered, and he's like, well, he was
Speaker 1: boldly experimenting with how much cocaine and vodka he could
Speaker 1: manage a motor vehicle on. You know, he was pushing
Speaker 1: the frontiers of human knowledge.
Speaker 2: He's certainly pushing pushing, but it's like, come on, yeah,
Speaker 2: the fuckers.
Speaker 3: A dumb one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like what's the dumbest boat that you can get
Speaker 1: people killed on?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Like again, and you know the folks that are that all,
Speaker 1: they get all onry about like, well, people have died,
Speaker 1: so we have to like be super somber about it.
Speaker 1: You know, if that's the way you want to react,
Speaker 1: we can. But like I do, remember how the most
Speaker 1: popular thing on the old Internet was the fucking Darwin Awards,
Speaker 1: and say what you want about it. But sometimes people
Speaker 1: do stuff that makes it hard to be sympathetic for them,
Speaker 1: you know, like if you, if you, if you pay
Speaker 1: to compete in the International Russian Roulette Championships, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to feel bad if you.
Speaker 3: Yourself, you know, like you got you. You were the
Speaker 3: one who chose to do that, no one made you do.
Speaker 2: I think it's just like all the sympathy stuff, it's
Speaker 2: like that is so unbelievably asymmetric, you know. Again, I
Speaker 2: think my response to that, I think I said a
Speaker 2: last episode is like fine, if you if you don't
Speaker 2: think it's appropriate, you know, to quote hate these people.
Speaker 2: I just know that I personally love them less than
Speaker 2: anyone else who was inconvenienced unfairly ya this week.
Speaker 3: That's all. That's where I'm at. I love them less
Speaker 3: than that.
Speaker 2: I also love them less than any amount of money
Speaker 2: we spent trying to find them.
Speaker 3: But that's fine. Yeah, quote unquote.
Speaker 1: That's a whole that's that's a whole other conversation too,
Speaker 1: because like, I don't know, I think the coast guards
Speaker 1: attitude is reasonable where they're like, well, we don't we
Speaker 1: don't talk about like what it costs, like we are
Speaker 1: not We do not make rescuing people into like a
Speaker 1: you know, a cast benefits sort of thing, like that
Speaker 1: is not what the Coastguard's job is. I do feel
Speaker 1: like maybe we as a culture should have a conversation about,
Speaker 1: like when do we make rich people pay for getting
Speaker 1: rescued in situations like this?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: It's probably good for the Coastguard to not ever think
Speaker 1: about things that way, right, same thing with like any
Speaker 1: kind of search and rescue people. Yeah, that's not what
Speaker 1: they're there for. It's like a firefight. Firefighter shouldn't be calculating,
Speaker 1: you know, to what extent is this how much is
Speaker 1: this house worth versus.
Speaker 3: How much is this costing?
Speaker 1: But like if you choose to live in the middle
Speaker 1: of like a fireplane and like burn your trash every day,
Speaker 1: maybe I don't know, maybe some of like if there's
Speaker 1: a fire, maybe you should get in trouble.
Speaker 3: I don't know, like whatever. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The counterpoint to that, though, is that like firefighters, maybe
Speaker 2: not individual firefighters or fire captains. It's not you know,
Speaker 2: they're not exactly calculating the value of a home, but
Speaker 2: the fact, you know, there is asymmetric service for different areas,
Speaker 2: and those just so happened to line up with race
Speaker 2: and socioeconomics. So like there's a world where like making
Speaker 2: it a soft policy that gets violated in like soft
Speaker 2: ways is actually contributing more to the inequity. Like again,
Speaker 2: lots of other people died even at sea last week,
Speaker 2: and you know.
Speaker 3: These guys for sure got top tier service.
Speaker 1: No, they got more money has been spent on them
Speaker 1: than has been spent like rescuing refugees whose boats you know,
Speaker 1: capsized in the Mediterranean. Probably ever, like maybe ever, and
Speaker 1: again I do think you know, look mea kopa here,
Speaker 1: I just spent a whole week talking about Stockton Rush.
Speaker 1: And it's because like I don't know, I thought it
Speaker 1: was interesting, and this is what I decided to read about. Course, right,
Speaker 1: there's an extent to which, like I was just follow
Speaker 1: the story because I'm fascinated by stories of like Hubris,
Speaker 1: like especially like tech Ass and Hubris. And at a
Speaker 1: certain point last week it was like, oh shit, I
Speaker 1: ran out of time to research anything else. I guess
Speaker 1: we're talking stock and Rush.
Speaker 3: But it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, what I do think is amazing about this
Speaker 1: is that it is like a perfect, perfect like Icarus story.
Speaker 1: Like it really is like the whole thing, like every
Speaker 1: beat down to the last beat. Yeah, like last story. Note,
Speaker 1: it's amazing if I may, it's anyway.
Speaker 3: Dickarus. Yeah's is all right?
Speaker 1: Well listen, folks, that's the episode. If people try to
Speaker 1: tell you, you know, this guy was an explorer, you can
Speaker 1: now tell them why they're wrong. But if a friend
Speaker 1: of yours, someone you know, or whatever brings up a
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory about how like these people got murdered, because
Speaker 1: it won't expose that the Titanic was blown up with
Speaker 1: a bomb to stop people from you know, opposing the
Speaker 1: Federal you know, uh or the FED or the moving
Speaker 1: away from the gold standard. Right, if you want to
Speaker 1: do that ship, if that's, if that's, if that's, if
Speaker 1: that gets brought up to you, just make sure that
Speaker 1: person knows that stocked and rushed his granddad or whatever
Speaker 1: was running bohemian growth. You know, throw that in there.
Speaker 1: You can add, you can make the problem worse. Why
Speaker 1: not at this point, Yeah, you know, might as well.
Speaker 2: Right, if they're gonna believe that ship, there's no saving them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, give them, give them a little something, something more
Speaker 3: to think about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Andrew, anything you want to plus, Uh.
Speaker 3: That's it. Yeah, Oh, I'll just I'll just do a
Speaker 3: quick plug.
Speaker 2: I know we're off sync on timing, okay, uh yeah,
Speaker 2: let's see my podcast is you know.
Speaker 3: Is this racist? And we do premium episodes.
Speaker 2: Uh, you could subscribe at suboptinal pods dot com, which
Speaker 2: is where we do the non racist fun stuff.
Speaker 3: So uh yeah, if.
Speaker 2: You've enjoyed any.
Speaker 3: Of my bullshit, check it out.
Speaker 1: Please whoa, Yes, check out Andrew t guest Extraordinarior and
Speaker 1: the next time, the next time multi millionaire you know,
Speaker 1: son of an oil dynasty asks if you want to
Speaker 1: see the bottom of the ocean, you don't do whatever
Speaker 1: you want to do.
Speaker 2: I'm not your fucking dad, Like pretty sure Robert saw
Speaker 2: your dad.
Speaker 4: Okay Bye. Behind the Bastards is a production of cool
Speaker 4: Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our
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