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