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