Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Done Saren, I got a question for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what's ridiculous, I do it. Okay, remember when
Speaker 1: I was telling you about Applebee's lip gloss. It's still ridiculous.
Speaker 1: But I found another food product crossover ridiculous thing, another
Speaker 1: lip gloss. No, well, I'm going to tell you about
Speaker 1: Velvita right now. At one point they did have Velvita
Speaker 1: nail polish, but that's not what I'm talking about. The
Speaker 1: processed cheese. Yeah, it was like cheese scented nail polish,
Speaker 1: But aside from that, that's not what I'm talking about
Speaker 1: is holding your nails underneath your nose. They invented the veltini,
Speaker 1: the Velvita Martini. It has Velvita infused vodka, olive, Brian
Speaker 1: and vermouth in it and it's garnished with a cheese
Speaker 1: drip and a cocktail pick of Velvita stuffed olives and olives,
Speaker 1: olives and jumbo Velvita shells and cheese. Don't you normally
Speaker 1: have to go to a doctor if you have cheese dripped, Yes,
Speaker 1: you do, and it's very important if you want to
Speaker 1: get one, you have to go to a b LT steakhouse,
Speaker 1: which is apparently some chain of steakhouses. They can lettuce
Speaker 1: tomato steakhouses. I guess you have to order it in
Speaker 1: person in their happy hour, which they call their Golden Hour.
Speaker 1: So you can go to there's one stop. There's one
Speaker 1: in New York, one in d C, one in Charlotte,
Speaker 1: and then in Chicago down. Yeah, go to Charlotte. If
Speaker 1: you're not at any of those places, you can actually
Speaker 1: order an online kit from gold Belly for fifty bucks
Speaker 1: that The kit includes two martini glasses, a gold cocktail shaker,
Speaker 1: to Velvita coasters, a jar of olives, cocktail picks, a
Speaker 1: box of Velvita jumbo shells and cheese, Velvita cheese sauce
Speaker 1: to infuse the vodka, and rimmed glasses, and a Velvita
Speaker 1: brick to stuff all of in a vl teeny recipe card.
Speaker 1: Historians take note, this was when we took the turn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so apparently it was a lot of people lost it
Speaker 1: on Twitter and what have you. But yeah, so that's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: I think of, in all honesty, if somebody served you
Speaker 1: a Velvita teeny, right and they said, hey, Elizabeth I
Speaker 1: made this for you. Would you earnestly and honestly try
Speaker 1: it and say, let's see how this is. I would
Speaker 1: chug it and then go running the road. It's one
Speaker 1: of those things you'd probably like smell like like you're
Speaker 1: in a kem lab and you waffed the air towards
Speaker 1: your face first, and then you're like, all right, then
Speaker 1: you take a sip, and then I think that's the
Speaker 1: dividing line of humanity of the people who are like,
Speaker 1: you know what, this is actually pretty good, and then
Speaker 1: the people who just start dry heaving, like I've always
Speaker 1: wanted to know it a chemical platin hack and stack
Speaker 1: New Jersey tasted like but cheese martini an alcohol together,
Speaker 1: I mean vodka and cheese, just like maybe for solid cheese.
Speaker 1: I'm with the I'm like, freezing to death in the
Speaker 1: Siberian forest, doll eat cheese and drink. That's your only
Speaker 1: consideration of Velvet Tina's Velvita teeny. Yeah, I'll put it.
Speaker 1: I'll put it in a go bag for an emergency
Speaker 1: rock out. So that's ridiculous. Oh that that's a good one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you, I have one for you. Oh you do.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it reaches the heights of Velvita
Speaker 1: teeny probably probably not. It's got I got two words
Speaker 1: for you, sex raft. Oh boy, Yeah, if you had
Speaker 1: to guess, what do you think those two words mean
Speaker 1: when used together? I honestly don't know, but I will
Speaker 1: say that here's the thing. Is that what when we
Speaker 1: do these stories, we know like a title or kind
Speaker 1: of like the basic subject of what the other person
Speaker 1: is going to talk about. But this isn't scripted. I
Speaker 1: don't know what you're gonna say. You don't know what
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say. Um, But we do have the big
Speaker 1: board here at Ridiculous Crime h Q, and we have
Speaker 1: all these index cards with show ideas on them. And
Speaker 1: I've been the past. Yeah, I've been seeing one for
Speaker 1: a long time now, dead center that just says sex raft.
Speaker 1: And I didn't know what it was and I didn't
Speaker 1: put up there, so I didn't touch it. And okay,
Speaker 1: so today's the day, right, yep? If the raft is
Speaker 1: a knocking, oh wait, the rafts are rocking? Is that
Speaker 1: how it goes? Anyway? I don't come a knocking. This
Speaker 1: is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers.
Speaker 1: Heists and cons It's always murder free and ridiculous. Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: I take you through the seventies often. I've got one
Speaker 1: more story for you for the seventies. You'll have to
Speaker 1: forgive me. But I saw this one and I just
Speaker 1: got I was like, I have to just finish off
Speaker 1: my trifecta of seventies insanity. I'm here for it. Okay,
Speaker 1: the years and this is when anthropologist Santiago Genovese had
Speaker 1: a revolutionary idea. Nor so he thought. Now as an anthropologist,
Speaker 1: he concluded that if you wish to understand violence in society,
Speaker 1: and you should start with his most obvious observation. But
Speaker 1: yet when he felt was integral to understanding violence in society,
Speaker 1: and I quote, most conflicts are about sexual access to
Speaker 1: ovulating females. So he decided that obsessive female ovulation was
Speaker 1: the key to world peace, not women's menstrual cycles, but
Speaker 1: rather the fight between men for access and the controlling
Speaker 1: of access of the to them. Rather, Santiago's big idea
Speaker 1: was to find a way to counteract this male tendency
Speaker 1: to violence. And he's like, you know, we just have
Speaker 1: to work out this access to female ovulation. But he
Speaker 1: didn't say, like, oh, ladies, you need to like bend
Speaker 1: to the boil of men. He's like, no, that's not
Speaker 1: the easy answer. I've got a better answer, sex raft. So,
Speaker 1: like Noah, he built an arc, except for instead of
Speaker 1: taking two of each animal, he decided he'd build his
Speaker 1: arc and invite ten young attractive strangers to join him
Speaker 1: for a boat ride across the Atlantic Ocean. Worst reality
Speaker 1: show ever? What are you talking about? A sexy slow
Speaker 1: boat to Mexico, which for him intends sexy and strangers
Speaker 1: sound it's reality TV before they even never thought of
Speaker 1: reality TV. Now, this anthropologist is he He is a
Speaker 1: real like professor. He's at the university in Mexico. He
Speaker 1: has twenty years of experience in the field. He's not
Speaker 1: some fly by night grad student trying to make a
Speaker 1: name for himself. This is a guy who's thinking this
Speaker 1: will be the answer for world peace. Like he earnestly
Speaker 1: believes this. And he had also already taken a scientific
Speaker 1: trip across the Atlantic before. This was where he got
Speaker 1: the idea. And he's like, I can emulate that success.
Speaker 1: I could top that right now. The Atlantic journey that
Speaker 1: he had been on before it was with thor hired
Speaker 1: all you're familiar with Thor hired all. So Cone Tiki
Speaker 1: was where they'd make an a ship or a ship
Speaker 1: according to ancient designs, and he tries to sail it
Speaker 1: across the Pacific to show that Micronesians could contact people.
Speaker 1: He then did it again with the Atlantic, trying to
Speaker 1: connect Africa and South American show that people in West
Speaker 1: Africa could easily make that little jaunt across to basically
Speaker 1: the bubble of Brazil, right and as the currents go there,
Speaker 1: it shouldn't take too long. So he gets a crew
Speaker 1: of anthropologist in him, seven dudes, and they set out
Speaker 1: in a boat made out of papyrus, and they go
Speaker 1: from the African coast of Morocco to South America. On
Speaker 1: day fifty four, the boat sinks in the Atlantic Ocean
Speaker 1: because they didn't have any ovulating women exactly, so they've
Speaker 1: gone about three thousand miles. Right. So a year later,
Speaker 1: Thor and this most of the same crew, they try
Speaker 1: again with a boat called raw To. The first one
Speaker 1: was raw one notes raw To. They try this time
Speaker 1: they use a boat made by the Imato Indians of
Speaker 1: like Tittycock on South America, and their boat works. It
Speaker 1: makes it fifty seven days across the Atlantic, proving with
Speaker 1: physical evidence that a trans atlantic journey like this could
Speaker 1: have been undertaken by people in West Africa, possibly by
Speaker 1: people from South America going back, showing that they had
Speaker 1: the technologies right. So, based on this scientific sense success,
Speaker 1: Santiago the anthropologist is like, I'm gonna take my own
Speaker 1: boat trip. And for his trip, he's like, I think
Speaker 1: you know that whole thing of like we had a sale,
Speaker 1: we had like paddles, that was making it too easy.
Speaker 1: I want to raft, no engine, no sales, no paddles,
Speaker 1: just a platform bobbing and floating across the Atlantic Ocean,
Speaker 1: and on board, I want a dozen or so young
Speaker 1: and attractive strangers with me. And by the way, we're
Speaker 1: going to film it all in eight millimeter. So he
Speaker 1: had cameras aboard too. So I guy said reality before
Speaker 1: TV before there was reality. No no sale, no paddles,
Speaker 1: They're just gonna float on. The current is to take
Speaker 1: between sixty nine days, between ninety days and days between
Speaker 1: basically three to six months. That's how long they just charted.
Speaker 1: No Santiago understands that some people may think it's unethical
Speaker 1: for a forty nine year old professor to include himself
Speaker 1: on a transatlantic journey with a bunch of young, attractive strangers.
Speaker 1: But Santiago he was ready for that. He's like, look,
Speaker 1: I I see where you're coming. And it's not just
Speaker 1: about hookup culture. Although he wouldn't have said that. He said,
Speaker 1: and I quote, the most anti ethical thing I know
Speaker 1: is the fact that a man dies every twenty second
Speaker 1: at the hand of another man in an act of violence.
Speaker 1: To discover and investigate these things, it is necessary to
Speaker 1: be more flexible concerning our concepts of what professional ethics are.
Speaker 1: The problem concerns are survival. So he's like, look, we've
Speaker 1: got bigger fish to fry. Don't get on me because
Speaker 1: I got these ten, twelve, sexty strangers with me on
Speaker 1: my boat. I'm trying to end World War. Don't sweat me. So,
Speaker 1: of course things did not go well. Realize you would
Speaker 1: not be hearing about it here. So you may be
Speaker 1: wondering a few questions, is right off the bat. Imagine
Speaker 1: many questions, like for one, who pay for this sex raft?
Speaker 1: That's a great question, right off the bad That's the
Speaker 1: question I asked. And turns out it was a Mexican
Speaker 1: government what government paid for it? And they paid for
Speaker 1: it through a Mexican government funded television network. Well, yes,
Speaker 1: all I get to say is what exactly? So it's
Speaker 1: a federally funded study. More federally funded science. Now, second
Speaker 1: question the pops in mind. Why would a professor with
Speaker 1: a reputation of like his. You know, he's got clout
Speaker 1: in the field, he's got twenty years experience, why would
Speaker 1: he risk all of that on sex raft? Because it's
Speaker 1: sex raft. I don't know, you know, it sounds like
Speaker 1: maybe something happened and he went a little bit over
Speaker 1: the edge. Boom, Elizabeth spot On. Can you guess what
Speaker 1: happened that pushed him over the edge? Did he get
Speaker 1: a divorce? That's another good solid. It's like a midlife crisis.
Speaker 1: I'll give you a hint. We're in the super crime seventies.
Speaker 1: Was he on a plane that got Remember I told
Speaker 1: you they're out wild and Ramino and folks are always
Speaker 1: hijacking planes. Well, like, it was so bad. Some pilots
Speaker 1: would get hijacked twice in the same year, right, So
Speaker 1: it was so bad that when it would happened, people
Speaker 1: were be like, Okay, we're getting hijacked. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was like people getting bugged. I was reading the other
Speaker 1: day that It's like there was one a month basically exactly.
Speaker 1: So it was like, you know, it's like if you
Speaker 1: had a friend who lost a catalytic converter. Today, you're like, oh, here,
Speaker 1: that happens. That was basically plane hijacking in the seven.
Speaker 1: But the other thing I read in the article was
Speaker 1: that only one person died in that whole long stretch.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a violent thing. They were after the power
Speaker 1: of the having the leverage. They didn't really want to
Speaker 1: kill people. So that's why, in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: why it was allowed to persist. Right, So dude was
Speaker 1: on a plane that hijacked. Yeah, so Santiago, he's on
Speaker 1: a flight to Mexico City and he's going home. The
Speaker 1: plane gets hijacked and redirected to Cuba. So now he's
Speaker 1: not cool and he's sitting there going like, oh man,
Speaker 1: this is not good. You know the reason why he
Speaker 1: went from I'm on a plane going to Cuba too,
Speaker 1: I need to have a sex raft. It was a
Speaker 1: little bit of a jump, I admit. That's an interesting
Speaker 1: trauma response exactly. So there is a documentary called The
Speaker 1: Raft by filmmaker Marcus Lindean, and I highly recommended if
Speaker 1: you liked this story. He goes into great detail and
Speaker 1: you can learn a lot more about it right now.
Speaker 1: The surviving participants as visit the trip and they speak
Speaker 1: about what they endured, and this doc and includes all
Speaker 1: these notes from Santiago, And in one of the notes
Speaker 1: he recounts and I quote it all started with a
Speaker 1: hijacking In November nineteen seventy two. I was flying home
Speaker 1: into Mexico City from a psychological conference on the history
Speaker 1: of violence when suddenly a group of terrorists took over
Speaker 1: the flight. It was too good to be true. I mean,
Speaker 1: imagine the irony me, a scientist who had spent my
Speaker 1: whole career studying violent behavior ends up in the middle
Speaker 1: of a hijacking drama. All my life, I've wanted to
Speaker 1: know why people fight and really understand what is going
Speaker 1: on inside our minds. When the hijacking was over, I realized,
Speaker 1: if I could create a similar situation, it would be
Speaker 1: the perfect laboratory to study human behavior. But where can
Speaker 1: you isolate a group of people and expose them to danger?
Speaker 1: Then I had an idea sex. Sex gonna make your
Speaker 1: sex sex, right, you gonna make you wet. You have
Speaker 1: to keep in mind this is during the Vietnam War,
Speaker 1: right does that part of the quote, No, that's me.
Speaker 1: I added that the music part, that's me. So keep
Speaker 1: in mind from background context, this is in the middle
Speaker 1: of Vietnam War. Everybody's really worried about. We have carpet bombing,
Speaker 1: we have like just horrific scenes on the news. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's also been renewed fighting in the Middle East. We're
Speaker 1: about to see the yam Kapoor war kickoff. There is
Speaker 1: Pinochet has just let it. It was about to lead
Speaker 1: a coup in seventy three down in Chile. So you
Speaker 1: have all this this tension around the world. You have
Speaker 1: the neoliberal school of economics going around fomenting like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, new governments and juntas according to their idea
Speaker 1: of like oh, yes, we're gonna do proxy wars with communism,
Speaker 1: and Milton Friedman's telling everybody, yes, this is the path
Speaker 1: of freedom. So all this tension, right, and there's economic
Speaker 1: violence and physical violence and it's all culminating and he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: how do we get through this exploited a violent phase
Speaker 1: in history, and he's like, sex raft. That's the answer, man,
Speaker 1: I need to build a sex raft, invite ten strangers
Speaker 1: from me for a cruise, and so that would fix it,
Speaker 1: all right, Sure, so I say that all of this. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind, technically no criminal charges were filed in
Speaker 1: this story, but this did happen in you know, international
Speaker 1: waters where there is no coptical But in this case,
Speaker 1: the captain is the law, and the captain in this
Speaker 1: case is basically the guy running them. Yeah, so you
Speaker 1: can well on the international waters, no one can hear
Speaker 1: you scream. No, that is very very true. So after
Speaker 1: this short break, we'll climb aboard the Journey of sex Raft. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it was the press who called this boat sex raft,
Speaker 1: like Santiago going around and going, hey, guys can hop
Speaker 1: on a sex raft. I thought it like a little
Speaker 1: flag sex right, just like two people like doing like that,
Speaker 1: is it a beast with two backs? Like that's the
Speaker 1: flags top. I'm sorry, so Santiago, because it sounds like
Speaker 1: something you'd see like on lake have a su someone
Speaker 1: with a homemade raft of a sign that is sex raft,
Speaker 1: And everyone's like, kids, don't look over, no, no, no no, no, no,
Speaker 1: they're turning their hands over the eyes of the children. Yeah. Well, Santiago,
Speaker 1: he called his boat something far more demure and pastoral
Speaker 1: and lovely, something that you would probably like. It was
Speaker 1: a colleague, which means home on the water is nice. Nice.
Speaker 1: So he decided to make this home on the water
Speaker 1: the opposite of how life is on the land. He
Speaker 1: on his sex raft would be in charge, but not really,
Speaker 1: he would make sure that women would be in charge.
Speaker 1: So he decided he would hire this Israeli woman as
Speaker 1: the ship's doctor. He hired his French woman as the
Speaker 1: ship scuba diver. He hired like he basically wanted all
Speaker 1: the lowly task to go to the men and all
Speaker 1: the power positions to go to women. He just flipped it.
Speaker 1: How big is this raft, oh girl? About by six ft?
Speaker 1: I'm like, legitimately thinking like six by eight, you know's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people hear that. But twenty one
Speaker 1: by six ft is like two bedrooms, two big bedrooms
Speaker 1: put together essentially just and there are no walls. There's
Speaker 1: a cabin on the center, so imagine a platform, but
Speaker 1: like a flat like rectangle one by thirty six, and
Speaker 1: then there's a like a like a tough shed in
Speaker 1: the middle, kind of like a tough shed, yeah, raised
Speaker 1: with sloped walls, and it has like a cabin area
Speaker 1: and then there's a roof that you can also go
Speaker 1: on top, so it's kind of like two levels of
Speaker 1: the roof is not very big. And then there was
Speaker 1: like a helmsman's area in the back where there's the
Speaker 1: tiller and to steer the boat. And because that's pretty
Speaker 1: much all that, they have this very simple rut and
Speaker 1: you know they didn't but they can't power to me.
Speaker 1: They can't power. They can go back and forth you
Speaker 1: want to, like just not gonna. It's just basically to
Speaker 1: help them steer out of the way of the shipping lanes,
Speaker 1: because if they get into the shipping past, the big
Speaker 1: supertankers will just crush them. And I see them, they'll
Speaker 1: just be chumped from Thank you, ireated that clarification. So
Speaker 1: Santiago he has his dream. He's like, the women will
Speaker 1: run my sex rst. So he says, and I quote,
Speaker 1: I wonder if having women in power will lead to
Speaker 1: less violence or more Maybe men will become more frustrated
Speaker 1: when women are in charge and try to take over power.
Speaker 1: So he's like ginning up everything with like setting up
Speaker 1: situation after situation in terms of his analysis that it's
Speaker 1: the women's fault either. The melication is always this is
Speaker 1: hinged on women, and we have to we can control
Speaker 1: women or negotiating women better. You see right through the game.
Speaker 1: But you know, he has a certain machismo he is.
Speaker 1: He's from Mexico, so he has a little bit that
Speaker 1: that Spanish language machismo where he's thinking about things. And
Speaker 1: you'll hear it later on in quote I'll tell you
Speaker 1: he thinks of them so very much as a man, right,
Speaker 1: so women should be women. So there's this really hard dichotomy.
Speaker 1: He does not have like a spectrum of people for him.
Speaker 1: There are two types of people. So anyway, so the
Speaker 1: captain of his sex raft is a woman. Santiago travels
Speaker 1: to Sweden to personally meet Maria Bjornson. So she's a
Speaker 1: professional Swedish sea captain, one of the first women to
Speaker 1: become a professional sea captain. Now the idea initially sounds
Speaker 1: ludicrous to her. She is a legitimate professional Stampton. So
Speaker 1: she's like a raft with no power, no sales, nothing.
Speaker 1: You just got and you got oh ten sexy strangers,
Speaker 1: and you go on, is there food on this ten
Speaker 1: sexy strangers? And you always he's exempt from there. This
Speaker 1: true descendant of Viking culture. She signs on for this adventure.
Speaker 1: She's like, you know what, it's like, I'm a megababe.
Speaker 1: Everything that's wrong, I'm doing it though. So for the
Speaker 1: rest of the Chris Santiago asked for volunteers. He's like,
Speaker 1: I got enough budget for this one. So he plays
Speaker 1: his ads in international newspapers all around the world, and
Speaker 1: his respondents they see this ad and here's the add
Speaker 1: I'll read it to you that you were opening the
Speaker 1: newspaper in you know, New Delhi and you're saying, oh,
Speaker 1: what what is on the paper? Oh? I need a job.
Speaker 1: Expedition leader looks for volunteers to sail on a raft
Speaker 1: across the Atlantic. Duration three months. Males and females preferably married,
Speaker 1: but participation without spouse, age forty Write letter in details
Speaker 1: curriculum Vita to box zero three seven eight A. The
Speaker 1: times applications will be kept confidential. He wants them married,
Speaker 1: but they don't bring the spouse yes, because he wants
Speaker 1: more conflict. He wants them to be able to have
Speaker 1: something that's restricting their choices. This is so chaotic. Yes,
Speaker 1: that would you apply? No? So wait and does he
Speaker 1: didn't ask for a head shot. He's going to be
Speaker 1: like a tasteful nude or you know, give me your
Speaker 1: in your undy things. He uh, he does? I mean, like,
Speaker 1: so he's going to verify sexiness in an interview. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: he'll He'll take care of that in person, got it.
Speaker 1: He needs to be in the room with that. I
Speaker 1: can't process how chaotic. Hundreds of people apply. Hence strangers
Speaker 1: are selected out of the whole planet. The whole planet.
Speaker 1: I mean it was. It wasn't like the newspapers and
Speaker 1: it's like in the want ads and it's under expedition later,
Speaker 1: so like you had to keep all this in mind.
Speaker 1: So the people he gets to come from different ethnicities, nationalities,
Speaker 1: socio economic backgrounds. But at the time, the press summed
Speaker 1: this up a little bit differently than I'm summing it up. Now.
Speaker 1: Here's how they described it. Quote the raft. This is
Speaker 1: from a U p I wire service report spread all
Speaker 1: around the world. The raft, expected to drift across the
Speaker 1: Atlantic at about two miles per hour, will carry two Jews,
Speaker 1: an Arab and African, one black and one white American,
Speaker 1: a Swede, a Greek, a french Woman, a Japanese, and
Speaker 1: Uruguayan and Genovese. That's how his presses pitching it like.
Speaker 1: It's like a box of crayonic crayons of people. It's
Speaker 1: like a Benetton ad that like is walks into a
Speaker 1: bar joke exactly. So it's not telling those goals you've
Speaker 1: noticed is to make this toll trip about it is
Speaker 1: difficult and as dangerous as possible, fraught with tension, racial dynamics.
Speaker 1: Anythink he can do to make people like be likely
Speaker 1: to like come to blows right. And so these ten
Speaker 1: fortunate strangers they meet at the dock and less Palmas,
Speaker 1: Spain in the Canary Islands on May eleven, nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: they all load onto the sex raft and they will
Speaker 1: spend the next three months together on this boat. That is,
Speaker 1: as you asked Santiago. He's planning, also, by the way,
Speaker 1: to collect data for his semi weekly questionnaires, which will
Speaker 1: feature questions like to whom do you feel the closest too?
Speaker 1: And why who annoys you the most on the raft?
Speaker 1: With whom on the colleague have you had sexual contact.
Speaker 1: If you could get rid of one of the others,
Speaker 1: who would it be? This is like this is like
Speaker 1: a high school bully girl quiz that she hands around class. Wow.
Speaker 1: So yes, less ethics. Did they make sure that he
Speaker 1: did he try and make sure they are all diagnosed
Speaker 1: with angry he's already or like need of mood stabilize.
Speaker 1: He's going to keep them from There's no mention about that,
Speaker 1: like there's no mental health inventory on these people. But
Speaker 1: they come from some dire situations, as we'll get into.
Speaker 1: There's also one big problem. Some of the participants didn't
Speaker 1: realize that they were going to be part of a
Speaker 1: science experiment until they were aboard the raft. They were like, wait,
Speaker 1: you're doing what now. They just thought they were going
Speaker 1: to chill on a raft. I don't know what. I
Speaker 1: have no idea what they thought. But they showed up
Speaker 1: thinking like, yeah, man, it's cool. I got a free
Speaker 1: boat ride across the Atlantic anyway. Oh so then you're
Speaker 1: really getting stable, sane folks exactly. So on the day
Speaker 1: the ship leaves, you can believe it, the United Nations
Speaker 1: sends a message to the Collie wishing them success on
Speaker 1: their middle acknowledging that the importance for the hope for
Speaker 1: all people on earth, for world peace to be discovered
Speaker 1: through sex. Right. I thought for sure you're going to
Speaker 1: say the UN sent a message, get back to shore.
Speaker 1: Now stop it, you stop it right now. It was
Speaker 1: more like, good luck, sex Raft. The people of are
Speaker 1: counting on you, God speed, go where no man and
Speaker 1: women have gone before without having sex. They all stood
Speaker 1: on the shore like a single two dropping down their cheek.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful. The sex Raft is going to be in
Speaker 1: and out of radio contact, and so they're suppose they're
Speaker 1: scheduled to get a weather report every couple of days
Speaker 1: over the radio when they can make contact, and they're
Speaker 1: also once a week when when Santiago can make contact,
Speaker 1: he's gonna give a general status update and relay some
Speaker 1: of his notes and so forth. So they're gonna be
Speaker 1: literally on their own for days at a time. Nobody
Speaker 1: will know where they are in the world. Are they
Speaker 1: like fishing and stuff. Yeah, they're gonna have to collect
Speaker 1: food from the from the water, so they they'll be fishing,
Speaker 1: they'll be dragging. They have a plenty of food to
Speaker 1: make it the thirties. How do they get fresh water.
Speaker 1: They have fresh water, they have all the they are
Speaker 1: provisioned for the trip, but they are still going to
Speaker 1: be fishing for extra protein and so forth and fresh
Speaker 1: fresh meat. So trying to meet the crew, right, yeah, defently. Okay,
Speaker 1: So we have already met Santiago Genovese Tatazaga, who is
Speaker 1: the forty nine year old Mexican anthropologists captain of this
Speaker 1: and Captain Creeper. Then there's also Captain Maria Jorne Stump
Speaker 1: from Sweden. She's thirty years old. She's the first female
Speaker 1: press appened. Then there are four men on the raft.
Speaker 1: There is Jose Maria Montero Perez. He is a thirty
Speaker 1: four year old Uruguayan UH former student of Santiago. Then
Speaker 1: they're radio operator Charles Anthony. He's thirty seven years old.
Speaker 1: He's a Greek Cypriot. And there's Aisuki Yamaki. He's a
Speaker 1: twenty nine year old cameraman from Japan. He speaks only
Speaker 1: Japanese and UH a smattering of Spanish. Then there is
Speaker 1: Bernardo Bungo. He's twenty nine year old from Angola. He's
Speaker 1: also a Catholic priest. A Catholic priest on board, because
Speaker 1: why not because being Mexican. He's like, this will up
Speaker 1: to tension because they won't want to get sex in
Speaker 1: front of the priest. Everyone else is like really, and
Speaker 1: if the priest will have sex with people, it's the
Speaker 1: whole thing. Yeah, So Santiago and Vice the priest because
Speaker 1: of the sexual tension, and they tried to get the
Speaker 1: priest to like get involved in the sexual tension and
Speaker 1: none of it goes well. Now for the five women participants,
Speaker 1: there are two scientists aboard. We have a Rashida Manzani.
Speaker 1: She is a twenty three year old from Algeria. She's
Speaker 1: going to conduct a study on ocean pollution right. And
Speaker 1: then there's servants a note. She's a thirty year old
Speaker 1: from France. She's the ship's frogman or the scuba divers
Speaker 1: gonna do any repairs on the steel understructure. Then there's
Speaker 1: Edna Jonas. She's thirty two years old. She's a Czechoslovakian
Speaker 1: resident who's living in Israel and she used the ship's doctor.
Speaker 1: Then there's finally the two Americans picked for their racial complexities.
Speaker 1: There is Faye Evangelina Seymour. She's one of the youngest members.
Speaker 1: She's twenty three years old. She is a black woman,
Speaker 1: and she is the ship's radio operator. Then there is
Speaker 1: the American white woman, a mother of three named Mary Gidley,
Speaker 1: who is thirty six year olds old and responsible for
Speaker 1: navigation and running from her husband who had tried to
Speaker 1: assaulter or killer basically, and so she's on the trip
Speaker 1: to get away from him, and so she leaves her
Speaker 1: three kids with the husband. So, now that we've met
Speaker 1: everyone aboard the ship, Elizabeth, I'd like to close your
Speaker 1: eyes and picture. I don't want it. I do not
Speaker 1: want to take this. It's Mayo are climbing aboard the
Speaker 1: a colleague a sex raft. Now you've signed on as
Speaker 1: this ship's cruise director. And as you poured the sea,
Speaker 1: spray is wetting your face, The wind is blowing your
Speaker 1: hair about, The sun warms your shoulders. The journey you've
Speaker 1: waited for his finally here. Excite it palpable as the
Speaker 1: sound of the seabirds above you. And as you gaze
Speaker 1: at of that wide expanse of watery blue that'll be
Speaker 1: your home for the next three months, you decide to
Speaker 1: dip into the cabin and see what's going on inside.
Speaker 1: You are the cruise directors, so you know, get to
Speaker 1: know the rest of the girl. At the hatch. You
Speaker 1: can hear Captain Maria on the ship's radio, your new boss,
Speaker 1: and then it's cruise ship director. You're like, let me
Speaker 1: go check what's up with the ship's vibe. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: meet my boss. So you clock her vibe and you
Speaker 1: notice it seems a bit Off'm like, what's up? A
Speaker 1: home girl. She's talking on the radio with her boyfriend
Speaker 1: Off and he's on the tug boat that is currently
Speaker 1: telling the sex draft out into the open ocean current.
Speaker 1: Now soon you will be set adrift to float across
Speaker 1: the Atlantic. This is your last contact with society and civilization.
Speaker 1: And over the radio, the boyfriend Olaf. He sounds worried.
Speaker 1: He's really focused at the moment on the legal paperwork,
Speaker 1: and he's had time on while he's on the tugboat
Speaker 1: to actually read over the contract Maria was asked to sign,
Speaker 1: and all Off is a little worried, like very worried.
Speaker 1: You can hear the concern in his voice. You're like,
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound like a person who is chill. And
Speaker 1: over the radio static you hear him saying, nobody looked
Speaker 1: through the contract, which seems to be a slave contract. Really,
Speaker 1: it says that you should give up your body, your
Speaker 1: mind and everything to Santiago, is that a method of
Speaker 1: a scientist? No, what do you think about it? Tell
Speaker 1: me the truth. You watch she grabs the radio and
Speaker 1: she responds to him, No, it wasn't written anything about mind.
Speaker 1: And you look at Maria, You're like, wow, she's cool
Speaker 1: as all hell, unflappable, personally slipping through the contract that
Speaker 1: I just signed, like oh no, no, no no, no, no, no no, no,
Speaker 1: no no no no, mind and body, mind and body.
Speaker 1: So she's over there suppressing this little rebellious smile. She
Speaker 1: knows something she either. It seems that she's down for
Speaker 1: the adventure. But oh, he's unswa. He's just like freaking out.
Speaker 1: He's like, it was about the mind and about body.
Speaker 1: You should do whatever he wants to at any time.
Speaker 1: That means you, as captain, might get in trouble with him.
Speaker 1: And Captain Maria looks at you. She rolls her eyes
Speaker 1: and she's piped whatever. She pressed the button on the
Speaker 1: radio and she's like, you know what I think about
Speaker 1: that paper? I didn't sign it? Oh love, asked her.
Speaker 1: One of the sign Wait, wait, do you want to
Speaker 1: stay on the raft? Then she's like hmm, and you're like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I want to stay. I'm busy
Speaker 1: putting on the snarkle. I'm getting ready to jump. So
Speaker 1: you're literally now holding You're waiting like unbated breath through,
Speaker 1: waiting to see what she want to say. And then
Speaker 1: you're here, Captain Maria. She holds the button down to
Speaker 1: the radio and she says, I'm going to stay on
Speaker 1: the raft, and you're like, what she wants to take
Speaker 1: the adventure. Meanwhile, you grab the radio from her. You're like, oh,
Speaker 1: bring the swing old and he does this told he
Speaker 1: swings to talk about over you were able to hop
Speaker 1: off the sex raft. They throw the rope back over
Speaker 1: and the tug boat says good luck you and the
Speaker 1: tug boat go back to civilization as sex raft glides
Speaker 1: into the scene. And I lived happily ever after two
Speaker 1: reasonable people. So you dodge that very very sexy bullets. Well, sorry,
Speaker 1: I have to wonder why did you get off the raft?
Speaker 1: Because I'm not I don't trust Santiago in the legal contracts.
Speaker 1: You gonna trust these sex ten sexy strangers not a lick. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: then I'll just tell you what life is like on
Speaker 1: the sex raft without you. Okay, yeah, I'll hear about it.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna do it. For one, he's got a
Speaker 1: lot of rules, which is, you know, whatever it's to
Speaker 1: science experiment, there's going to be rules. He insists that
Speaker 1: there's no reading, no reading of books, and no nobody
Speaker 1: brought magazines, but no reading of books. Right, So what
Speaker 1: they are allowed to do to entertain themselves for the
Speaker 1: endless hours aboard this sex raft is they are allowed
Speaker 1: to sing songs or to tell stories from their own lives.
Speaker 1: Oh that sounds great a right, So this is the
Speaker 1: idea is for people to get board and then do
Speaker 1: either become annoyed and get violent or to like find
Speaker 1: deeper parts of themselves. You got me there in like
Speaker 1: five minutes. That's why I had to bounce out of
Speaker 1: that boat. So I kind of want to hear people
Speaker 1: singing and telling me there's there's stupid stories. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: And also, by the way, in the first few days,
Speaker 1: people are just vomiting everywhere. They're getting just puking on
Speaker 1: each other. It's just it's a horrible scene. People are
Speaker 1: like heads over the side of the boat most of
Speaker 1: the first couple of days, because you know, not people
Speaker 1: who are used to the seat. To Maria born some
Speaker 1: she's like cool with everyone else is like they're all
Speaker 1: in their sexy bikinis, all sunburn and puke and they'll
Speaker 1: thank you. And as I told you, they have to
Speaker 1: stay on out of the shipping lanes. So that's the
Speaker 1: big fight, right, So they're worried about supertankers where they're
Speaker 1: floating along. So there were like like the heads over
Speaker 1: the side they're puking and looking for supertankers. Those are
Speaker 1: the first two days on sex rafts right now. For
Speaker 1: the bathroom, mind you, they have this little area where
Speaker 1: you can kind of like I wondered about that, but
Speaker 1: I'm so gross. It's like kind of like you know,
Speaker 1: like the front like the prows of some boats. They'll
Speaker 1: have like the little area where you can stand as
Speaker 1: like like a you. So they have like that, but
Speaker 1: it's off the side of the raft. And this in
Speaker 1: that little you there, they have like a platform and
Speaker 1: you could sit on the platform and do your business.
Speaker 1: And then for like men's treating women, they get a
Speaker 1: little worried about the sharks in the water because you're like,
Speaker 1: I'm just sitting up here a bloody target, just dripping
Speaker 1: a trail for these people. So yeah, so the women
Speaker 1: they have to do that three months, so that's three
Speaker 1: cycles are going through at least animum. Anyway, that was
Speaker 1: they're worried about. You know what, I don't want to
Speaker 1: keep going. Now you may be wondering, Saron, but what
Speaker 1: about all the sex on the sex raft? No, it
Speaker 1: was not that. Are they hitting it, Zaron? Elizabeth, I'm glad. Yes,
Speaker 1: yes they are hitting it, but like, yes, but where
Speaker 1: do you like one to three people go to have
Speaker 1: sex on a sex raft? You know, it's twenty one
Speaker 1: by thirty six ft right, and they got ten ten
Speaker 1: people with them at all times. So where do you go? Well,
Speaker 1: you can wait till nightfall and you go on top
Speaker 1: of that little like rooftop on the cabin starting hear
Speaker 1: you banging a way up top. Or you can go
Speaker 1: like hang out by look onto the walls and pretend
Speaker 1: like you're vomiting or they're you're holding their hair. The
Speaker 1: other one is that the you can if you're the helmsman,
Speaker 1: if you have the rudder and you're alone at night
Speaker 1: you can like you got one hand on the rudder
Speaker 1: and the other hand on your lover, and then they
Speaker 1: make that one work. In fact, Edna of the Israeli doctors,
Speaker 1: she tells the story. She says, quote for me, it
Speaker 1: was not about love, it was about friendship. It was
Speaker 1: complicated to have sex on the raft because other people
Speaker 1: could always see you. Well, maybe if two people are
Speaker 1: on guard together and you were a little quick, then
Speaker 1: maybe it was possible, but it was tricky because you
Speaker 1: had to use one hand for steering. So she was
Speaker 1: out there hit while she was still on the s
Speaker 1: s urinary traction section. So following all these sexy tropes
Speaker 1: of the day, men all agreed that the French woman
Speaker 1: was the sexiest, and the women all agreed that the
Speaker 1: Uruguayan scientist he was the hottest man aboard. So there
Speaker 1: was his consensus on who, if they were having sex,
Speaker 1: who they'd want to be knocking boots with, which made
Speaker 1: some problems as well. Santiago knows all of this because
Speaker 1: he's asked them who would you want to sleep with
Speaker 1: on the questionnaires, So he's gonna start poking at that
Speaker 1: scene if he can like prime things to get things going. Now, Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: as this raft is drifting across the sea, the captain
Speaker 1: begins to hate Santiago, like just literally despise him. Right,
Speaker 1: and this is not lost on Santiago, he records in
Speaker 1: his notes and I quote today during dinner, Captain Maria
Speaker 1: asked me in front of the whole group, what I
Speaker 1: really want to achieve with the experiment. Everyone got silent
Speaker 1: and waited for my answer. I told her that I
Speaker 1: want to find a way to create peace on earth.
Speaker 1: She just rolled her eyes and looked away. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: but he does also start to get what he wants,
Speaker 1: because now violence is starting to rear its ugly head.
Speaker 1: So this all happens when a the folks on the
Speaker 1: raft they pull something out of the ocean that changes
Speaker 1: who all of the humans are and in a relationship
Speaker 1: to each other. After this little break, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: what they pulled from the sea and how this crazy
Speaker 1: sex rapt journey comes to a wild culmination. So, Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: you got free of the sex Raft. Everyone else is
Speaker 1: still on the boat rocking their way across the Atlantic,
Speaker 1: and now they've dropped their line into the sea and
Speaker 1: about that will change everything. So what happened is one
Speaker 1: of the dudes was fishing and he caught a shark
Speaker 1: and he pulls the shark aboard. This triggers like a
Speaker 1: blood lust because he decides that he needs to beat
Speaker 1: the shark to death, which is often what happens when
Speaker 1: you have a shark on board. You get a wooden club,
Speaker 1: you hit him in the head a few times. But
Speaker 1: he does this and then it gets a little extra
Speaker 1: and then the other people they all also get a
Speaker 1: little keyed up. Right, And I quote from Santiago's notes. Look,
Speaker 1: he said the heart is still beating. It was like
Speaker 1: turning on a switch. Suddenly everyone wanted to feel the
Speaker 1: flesh that was still warm him with life. Finally here
Speaker 1: it was the violent behavior that I've been waiting for.
Speaker 1: But to my surprise, it didn't come from sexual jealousy
Speaker 1: or from conflicts between the participants. Instead, we witness a
Speaker 1: clear example of crowd frenzy, where people no longer act
Speaker 1: as individuals, but as part of a dangerous collective. That's
Speaker 1: the lord. Yeah, Piggy's about to get it. So so
Speaker 1: this though, is the only flash of violence that he
Speaker 1: really gets to see on his boat. That was it.
Speaker 1: They get their one little flash. They get a blood
Speaker 1: lust up. He gets to see the potential for the
Speaker 1: group violence dynamic, and then everything just settles down. And
Speaker 1: now they're like, you know, almost halfway across the sea,
Speaker 1: and he's like, oh man, what am I gonna do?
Speaker 1: So Santiago is he's getting disappointed with these people. He's like,
Speaker 1: they're they're frustrating my experiment. They're trying to do me,
Speaker 1: so he says, and I quote, they clearly don't understand
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to do. Instead of supporting me, they
Speaker 1: behave like a bunch of children, and and they're getting lazy.
Speaker 1: No one seems to remember that we are out here
Speaker 1: trying to find an answer to the most important question
Speaker 1: of our time. Can we do without war? So he
Speaker 1: instigates violence. He's the one who brings the violence into it.
Speaker 1: He's like, I gotta go with what I know, what
Speaker 1: I love. So he takes that big button marked emotional
Speaker 1: distress and he just twists it as hard as he can.
Speaker 1: He calls her a ship's meeting and he informs everybody
Speaker 1: got to come to the ship's meeting. They I'll get
Speaker 1: there and he's like, look, things are gonna change, Like
Speaker 1: what do you mean what do you things are gonna change?
Speaker 1: You kicked somebody off the boat and he's like, no, no,
Speaker 1: but you know your questionnaires. Okay, We're gonna play a
Speaker 1: little game today called the Game of truth, and I
Speaker 1: quote I began by saying that Edna has written that
Speaker 1: she wants to have sex with jose Maria, but jose
Speaker 1: Maria has written that he thinks Edna is the most
Speaker 1: annoying woman he has ever met because she talks all
Speaker 1: the time. These feelings can't be hidden anymore. They have
Speaker 1: to stop being so afraid of confrontation and be open
Speaker 1: about what they really feel about each other so that
Speaker 1: I can finally get some material to study. He read
Speaker 1: their diaries like this is now one of the most
Speaker 1: unethical experiments ever, like mean girls on a raft like
Speaker 1: this is Stanford prison experiment with me and girls on
Speaker 1: a boat And he's not done so more controversy. He
Speaker 1: goes after the youngest member of the crew of the
Speaker 1: Black Woman from America Fee. He calls her quote a
Speaker 1: primitive and a thief and lazy in order to see
Speaker 1: if calling her black stereotypes will set her off. No,
Speaker 1: of course not. She she didn't go for that. She's like, man,
Speaker 1: you think that this I'm from America. You need to
Speaker 1: try a little harder if that's all you're gonna throw
Speaker 1: at me. Right, So, but he's still desperate for results.
Speaker 1: His racism doesn't work, so he's like, what can I do? Mean,
Speaker 1: So he just keeps reading their diaries. He's just doing
Speaker 1: anything he can to foment like anger, intention and aggression. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: back in civilization, his colleagues have taken to the newspapers
Speaker 1: and they have been anounced him as a total quack.
Speaker 1: So they've written a letter to and it's been published
Speaker 1: in the press around the world. And he eventually hears
Speaker 1: about this over the ship's rand, and seagull comes and
Speaker 1: drops the newspaper exactly right. So during the weekly call,
Speaker 1: he he not mind you, anyone can hear the radio,
Speaker 1: so everybody else, they're all going to get the fact
Speaker 1: that he gets unmasked. So and I quote from Santiago.
Speaker 1: One of the articles is a statement signed by some
Speaker 1: of my colleagues at the university where I've been working
Speaker 1: for over twenty years. They right that the publicity about
Speaker 1: the sex raft is bad for the reputation of the university,
Speaker 1: and from now on they don't want to have anything
Speaker 1: to do with me or my expedition. He's risted all
Speaker 1: for this and he's become basically a failure in his career,
Speaker 1: a total like you know, outcast. And also now he's
Speaker 1: the emotional dictator on a sex raft. So that's good
Speaker 1: on LinkedIn totally. Now at this around this point, the
Speaker 1: radio goes silent, and it wasn't he didn't like break
Speaker 1: the radio. They just is, We're happened to go silent, right,
Speaker 1: So they end up getting lost and they drift out
Speaker 1: of radio contact for four days, and so people are
Speaker 1: to wonder did the sex raft sink somewhere in the Atlantic.
Speaker 1: Planes are sent up into the sky to try to
Speaker 1: find sex Raft multiple days past. Finally, on July eighteenth,
Speaker 1: the search plane spots, Hey, that's sex Raft. So the
Speaker 1: crew is okay, the people wave. Everyone's like, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: still here naked on ship. Not not really, but they're
Speaker 1: safe and they're about to enter the Caribbean sea right.
Speaker 1: And I say they're safe, I mean in that moment
Speaker 1: because right behind them is a hurricane that's forming in
Speaker 1: the warm waters of the Atlantic. Because Captain Maria knew
Speaker 1: about this, she's like real leaving too late season if
Speaker 1: we if we drift too long, we get blown off shore,
Speaker 1: we could have it. And he's like, don't worry, I'm
Speaker 1: from this area. So she's like, okay, I don't know anyway. Satiago,
Speaker 1: when he hears about this coming storm, he's stopped. He's
Speaker 1: totally thrilled. He's like, yes, this is what could be
Speaker 1: the necessary bit to push my experiments over the top.
Speaker 1: Pure So rival man versus nature, humanity versus the sea.
Speaker 1: Captain they have versus the great white whale. He sees
Speaker 1: it all right, and he's just counting it all. Captain Maria,
Speaker 1: She's like, look, I'm taking the sex raft and I'm
Speaker 1: parking it in a Caribbean island, the closest one that
Speaker 1: we can get to. And he's like no, She's like,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about. No, I'm the captain. What's
Speaker 1: he going to do to her? Oh? He says that
Speaker 1: quote from Santiago. If the group comes in contact with civilization,
Speaker 1: it will contaminate the experiment. We need to keep ourselves
Speaker 1: isolated and stay at sea. For the sake of science.
Speaker 1: We must continue, no matter what everyone else is like,
Speaker 1: don't matter, what is my life mother, I would just
Speaker 1: if I'm the captain, I just say I'm the captain now,
Speaker 1: and then I just captain. All right, So I go
Speaker 1: and I parked the boat back. What are you gonna do? So,
Speaker 1: Captain Maria, she's got these ten people counting on it.
Speaker 1: This is exactly what her boyfriend Olaf warned her about.
Speaker 1: She was thinking about sex. Now He's like, oh, meant
Speaker 1: my life right. So he's like, but now I'm with exactly.
Speaker 1: You're cool you and aren't your new life together? Both
Speaker 1: of you are like being like logistical, statistical and safe.
Speaker 1: The fine prints you're working on that it's creating that
Speaker 1: hig Swedish life, all coziness. So their lives are in
Speaker 1: the hands of Captain Maria, right, And she's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I understand what I have to do now. Santiago, as
Speaker 1: I said earlier, He's like no, emphatically no. And so
Speaker 1: I quote once again from Santiago, Maria said she can't
Speaker 1: take that responsibility as a captain. I told her. In
Speaker 1: that case, she is no longer the captain of the raft.
Speaker 1: From now on, I am the captain. So you were close, captain,
Speaker 1: real close. But this is the point the story where
Speaker 1: the feces hits the fans, right, so the science experiment
Speaker 1: is totally off the rails. The sex Raft is about
Speaker 1: to lose all of their lives to a hurricane. So
Speaker 1: what do they do. They batten down the hatches. They
Speaker 1: seal up the sex Raft as best they can. To
Speaker 1: keep in mind, there on a metal square in the
Speaker 1: middle of a her so important to Santiago, most important
Speaker 1: and more important than anyone's lives on the thing, is
Speaker 1: his notes and the camera equipment recording the experiment. So
Speaker 1: he gets those all put in plastic bags and then
Speaker 1: he's like, okay, now we're good. Lock the doors on
Speaker 1: the raft. So because you are there pictures of this
Speaker 1: rat yeah, they're pictures of the raft. I'll put them up,
Speaker 1: thank you, because I need to see because in case
Speaker 1: this this raft sinks, he wants his experiment to move
Speaker 1: on because the answers of world peace. All right, So
Speaker 1: the hurricane is about to hit sex Raft. The skies
Speaker 1: are growing dark, the rains have come, the season began
Speaker 1: to pitch and roll. The storm strikes, and they all
Speaker 1: sit there in silence, wondering what's going to come of
Speaker 1: the rest of their tiny little lives on this vast,
Speaker 1: vast ocean, locked in the metal box with a madman,
Speaker 1: and the hurricane luckily passes over them. They don't get
Speaker 1: the eye of the storm. They get the back side
Speaker 1: of you know, coming from the south. The back side
Speaker 1: is not terrible. Yeah, on sex raft, The backside is
Speaker 1: not dangerous. Why do you set these things up? Okay?
Speaker 1: Because because I like you? Thank you. Santiago records in
Speaker 1: his notes that the hurricane must have changed directions and
Speaker 1: only brushed us by the tail. I looked at Maria,
Speaker 1: but she did not look back. Mary has still just
Speaker 1: not given him almost noticed. Now at this point, Santiago's
Speaker 1: mutiny is officially changed everything because the crisis he had
Speaker 1: hoped for, that all the dreams of violence and aggression
Speaker 1: had come to pass, and he's the source of all
Speaker 1: the dreams of aggression. He becomes the crew's whole focus
Speaker 1: of their ultra violet fantasies. And they're sitting there and
Speaker 1: they decided that Santiago is a threat to them. In
Speaker 1: the in the words of a Tom Clancy novel, he
Speaker 1: is a clear and present danger. So they decide we
Speaker 1: may have to kill him. We're like, we're weeks from
Speaker 1: the shore, but we may have to kill him. So
Speaker 1: they have a meeting about it. Now, three of them
Speaker 1: get on top of the roof of the boat and
Speaker 1: a late at night, they talk about explainable accidents and
Speaker 1: like how a person could fall off a boat, and like,
Speaker 1: what would happen if during the next storm somebody just
Speaker 1: fell over one quick and dirty accident, we're all suddenly safe.
Speaker 1: Another on another woman's face, she's like, well, what about
Speaker 1: if we just took all the ship's medicine and we
Speaker 1: just gave him all of it? And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: They're like yeah, so this is by the way, this
Speaker 1: is Mary the white amer can Fay the Black American
Speaker 1: in Aisuki the Japanese guy. They are the three plotters
Speaker 1: trying to decide to kill him, and they agree only
Speaker 1: speaks Japanese and Spanish. So yeah, they're doing like hand gestures,
Speaker 1: take the needle in the horb, load it up again.
Speaker 1: She's like, quoting from the Murder on the Orient expresses
Speaker 1: like the dream of like we put all of our
Speaker 1: hands on the plunger and we all pushed down together,
Speaker 1: so we're all culpable. And they're like, yeah, they finally
Speaker 1: decide we'll just toss them into the sea. That'll be
Speaker 1: the easiest thing to explain. Nobody no murder, right, So
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, they're they're pretty much set on this plan.
Speaker 1: But then they decide, you know what, we still have
Speaker 1: our humanity, consider we are not these people. And then
Speaker 1: they kind of fall back from their plan and then
Speaker 1: times change, and then their murderous desire melts away like
Speaker 1: you know, like that like sand. And then they displayed
Speaker 1: impulse control. Yes, exactly, very important. Santiago never learns about
Speaker 1: his near death by his science experiment because they don't
Speaker 1: put this in the questionnaire. They at the bottom to
Speaker 1: Santiago desperate to kill you. So he does, though, mind
Speaker 1: you end up having a panic attack while he's on
Speaker 1: the boat because he's starting to realize that he's the problem.
Speaker 1: So and I quote, well, if I was a boy,
Speaker 1: I learned that men never cry. We control ourselves. But
Speaker 1: suddenly I couldn't anymore odd on the deck, I thought
Speaker 1: about the experiment. I realized that the only one who
Speaker 1: has actually shown any kind of aggression or violence on
Speaker 1: the raft is me, the man trying to control everyone else,
Speaker 1: including himself, and so he just freaks out. He breaks down.
Speaker 1: He has this total like cascading, emotional like avalanche. And
Speaker 1: at the same time they find out at night this
Speaker 1: run the same time, they've accidentally drifted into the shipping lane,
Speaker 1: and so while he's having his crisis, they see that
Speaker 1: a supertanker is headed right at them. And so it's
Speaker 1: the middle of the dark of night. I got a supertanker.
Speaker 1: They can't see them, and their captain, who is self
Speaker 1: declared he's having an emotional crisis. He should have been
Speaker 1: working through this stuff back home, but instead he draws
Speaker 1: all these people. Okay, keep going his ten sexy strange.
Speaker 1: He's making me get angry, and I'm not an angry person.
Speaker 1: So what do you think he does in the face
Speaker 1: of this emergency, something stupid. Well, he's not at all
Speaker 1: calm in the face of emergency. Instead, he just starts
Speaker 1: screaming and run around the tack of the wrap yelling
Speaker 1: that's what the that's what everyone says that he did.
Speaker 1: He just starts a giant supertanker casing them down, and
Speaker 1: he just screamed. He's just screaming, running around head but
Speaker 1: just kicked him right into the ocean. Yeah, Fay the
Speaker 1: Black American. She runs, gets on the radio and she
Speaker 1: tries to calling the supertanker. The supertanker is no response, right,
Speaker 1: Captain Maria steps in. She's like all right, she at
Speaker 1: the time, she's totally implacably calm, just the exact opposite Santiago.
Speaker 1: She tells the crew get from road flares. They start
Speaker 1: waving road flares over their heads. A supertanker sees the
Speaker 1: road flares and goes into a vase of actions, barely
Speaker 1: misses the basically pushes them off into like the wake
Speaker 1: of its giant exactly, but they live. So she's the hero.
Speaker 1: She's the captain now, so everybody recognizes this, even Santiago.
Speaker 1: So what does he do? He decides, like a former
Speaker 1: cult leader, to fall inside of himself and collapse. Then decides,
Speaker 1: no more note taking, no more meetings, no more games,
Speaker 1: no more any questionnaires. I'm just going to grow my
Speaker 1: beard more about my salt water tan. So he retreats
Speaker 1: to bed. He starts complaining about an infection. People are like, yeah, whatever,
Speaker 1: you got an infection. Doctors like he really has an infection,
Speaker 1: So he like wills an infection upon himself and Peace
Speaker 1: returns to the raft. Everyone now is calm, they're dancing,
Speaker 1: they're singing, they're happy. They're making meals again because they
Speaker 1: have a common enemy, the shunned exile, who has brought
Speaker 1: them all together and they're giving them a group dynamic.
Speaker 1: So he's pushed them into this in group out group
Speaker 1: dynamic that is so key to human society. He finds
Speaker 1: the thing he was and he did it non violently,
Speaker 1: but anyway, the sex Raft finally arrives in Mexico after
Speaker 1: a hundred and one days at sea. It's a strange moment.
Speaker 1: They finally made it to the other side. They all like,
Speaker 1: are so glad to be back on dry land. They
Speaker 1: get off the sex Raff, they spend the night on shore.
Speaker 1: The next day they come back to the sex Raft,
Speaker 1: not because they want to go back on. They don't
Speaker 1: need to get their stuff and meet and say like,
Speaker 1: let's let's have some you know, resolution for what we
Speaker 1: just went through. He's like, oh, thank you guys all
Speaker 1: for coming back to the sex Raff, thank you for
Speaker 1: doing This's like, by the way, I have one last
Speaker 1: questionnaire for you. So then in like an hour's long
Speaker 1: hangout session, he has them filled the questionnaires. They filled
Speaker 1: the questionnaires. He apologizes to Maria. He's apparently very calm
Speaker 1: and very kind, and everyone's impressed by it. He asked them,
Speaker 1: what did you think of my experiment? And they're like,
Speaker 1: it was a total failure. This is the worst thing
Speaker 1: I've ever done. And everyone, I guess not everyone. Three
Speaker 1: people say it's a total failure. Ultimately, though, um, the
Speaker 1: majority of them say it's a success because they learned
Speaker 1: things about themselves, they learn things about humanity, so forth
Speaker 1: and Faye, she said it's a huge success, which surprises
Speaker 1: everyone because he was picking on her and they all
Speaker 1: saw it right. And she says, and I quote, it
Speaker 1: was always them and us. We started out as them
Speaker 1: and us, and we became us. And then she pointed
Speaker 1: out something that Santiago had missed, and she said, and
Speaker 1: they quote, I think Santiago's experiment was a huge success.
Speaker 1: But I think he missed it because we could talk
Speaker 1: to one another with sophistication and depth and understanding and love,
Speaker 1: and isn't that the answer to violence? So boom, there
Speaker 1: you go. Sex raft gonna make you sex sex? So
Speaker 1: I think I think Maria won sex raft. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: she definitely won. She like the reality show Big Winner
Speaker 1: and then fan favorite his fee and I, let's say
Speaker 1: the rest, Like, I have a soft spot for Edna
Speaker 1: because she was having sex while piloting a boat. Now
Speaker 1: I'm just into that. I'm like that, that's cool. Oh
Speaker 1: my goodness. So I asked, what's our ridiculous takeaway? Seculous
Speaker 1: to take play is be careful to kind of want
Speaker 1: as to respond. And also, this is just there were
Speaker 1: so many red flag I think there's a way to
Speaker 1: get the answer that they got without being on a
Speaker 1: sex raft for three monthsout risking the lives of people. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the the thing I was thinking about, and
Speaker 1: I was reading all these different stories reading on the
Speaker 1: newspaper accounts, is that it was so obvious on the
Speaker 1: face of it, both that it would fail and to
Speaker 1: that no lessons would be learned. People would just be
Speaker 1: hung up on the sex raft part of it. They
Speaker 1: would never really go like, oh, what did you learn?
Speaker 1: What did you find? Tell us about your observations. Some
Speaker 1: people would buy the book, but they would not be
Speaker 1: buying the book because they wanted to read his science.
Speaker 1: They wanted to read the drama, the emotion, the sex.
Speaker 1: So the thing is is that human beings. Ultimately a
Speaker 1: rather simple and that Fee got it right. With our
Speaker 1: group dynamics are pretty consistent. There's in group behavior, there's
Speaker 1: out group behavior. There's wanting to punish the exiles and
Speaker 1: the outcast. We have been doing this for any So
Speaker 1: if you take that dynamic as your starting point as
Speaker 1: opposed to women's ovulation is the key to world peace
Speaker 1: or whatever is his starting point was. And you actually
Speaker 1: look at the observables of humanity as opposed to these
Speaker 1: like ineffables that he's going for, like men want to
Speaker 1: fight over the smell of a woman's ovulation, whatever the
Speaker 1: hell science he came up with, then you can actually
Speaker 1: get to something meaningful and which is what feeded and
Speaker 1: and I'm glad they made the documentary because that is
Speaker 1: where you get that quote. So out of all this stuff,
Speaker 1: it is the observation by one of the participants forty
Speaker 1: three years later that really gives value to sex raft,
Speaker 1: A lot of value in the sex raft Make your
Speaker 1: Way raft, Well, thank you for joining us. I'm Zarin Burnett,
Speaker 1: I'm a sex raft and over there is Elizabeth Dutton
Speaker 1: sex Raft. You can find his online. A ridiculous crime
Speaker 1: on both Twitter and Instagram. You gotta tip for us
Speaker 1: about a ridiculous crime you'd like to hear about let
Speaker 1: us know about it. You want to confess a ridiculous crime,
Speaker 1: hit us up email is that ridiculous Crown at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. Thanks for listening. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Dutton and Zaron Burnett, produced and edited by Captain
Speaker 1: of the Sex Free Rat Dave researches by our Frogman Extraordinaire,
Speaker 1: Marissa Brown. Our theme song is by Finnish chiropractor of
Speaker 1: the Soul Thomas Lee and Oakland's finest radio operator, Travis Dutton.
Speaker 1: Executive producers are Ben Bone, Ticky Boland and No Three
Speaker 1: Bedroom Apartment on the Water Brown. We Die Say It
Speaker 1: one more Time. We Dequeous Crew. Ridiculous Crime is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. Four more podcasts to my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.