Speaker 1: Fellow conspiracy realist. This classic is for all our fellow
Speaker 1: aviation nerds out there. It's a little bit ridiculous history.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit unsolved mystery. It's definitely it's definitely
Speaker 1: one that caught us in twenty nineteen. And even when
Speaker 1: we started exploring this, the mystery was decades and decades old.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a story that we've heard about for
Speaker 2: a long time. It's talked about in almost every unsolved
Speaker 2: mystery series that's ever been on television, right because it's
Speaker 2: one of the most enduring ones. A human being that
Speaker 2: was lauded, talked about all the time, a huge deal
Speaker 2: and then just gone.
Speaker 1: Or did they actually disappear? This is the story of
Speaker 1: Amelia Earhart. I gotta tell you, guys, with the benefit
Speaker 1: of retrospect giant crabs, you heard it here first, folks.
Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic hours and government conspiracies, history is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3: Hello, and welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: My name is Noel, and our compatriot Matt is on
Speaker 1: adventures but will be returning soon they call me Ben.
Speaker 1: We were joined with our super producer Paul mission control
Speaker 1: decand most importantly, you are here and that makes this stuff.
Speaker 1: They don't want you to know. Now, Noel, you just
Speaker 1: got off a plane, Is that correct?
Speaker 3: I did, and I got the plane crid and I
Speaker 3: hope I don't pass it on to you in this
Speaker 3: sort of fuselage asque environment that we're currently inhabiting.
Speaker 1: That's fine with me. Honestly. When I have a little
Speaker 1: bit of the cred or a head cold, I love writing.
Speaker 1: It's I don't know it does. It does great stuff
Speaker 1: for creativity. Maybe it's because I don't feel like going
Speaker 1: outside and doing things.
Speaker 3: Also true, man, also true?
Speaker 1: Also true?
Speaker 3: What's you?
Speaker 1: And I have been on a lot of planes, as
Speaker 1: have you Paul, and has had many people listening to
Speaker 1: this show today, and this is a question for everyone
Speaker 1: to think about. You and I can take a sabbage
Speaker 1: answering this too right now, if you'd like, NOL, what
Speaker 1: is the craziest flight you've ever had or what's the longest?
Speaker 1: Are you a person who's terrified of flying? I would
Speaker 1: say you're not.
Speaker 3: No, I'm not. I haven't been on any super long
Speaker 3: flights in a while. But I think I maybe mentioned
Speaker 3: this on our other show, Ridiculous History, when we talked
Speaker 3: about luxury airlines and why they don't really exist anymore.
Speaker 3: Check that one out. But there was one time where
Speaker 3: and this is gonna be this makes me sound such
Speaker 3: a tool, but I'm gonna say it anyway, and the
Speaker 3: quick version, there was one time where I'm used to
Speaker 3: ticking Delta where they have us be chargers and screens
Speaker 3: on the back of the chairs in front of you,
Speaker 3: and I took a Southwest flight for the first time
Speaker 3: and didn't have like a power brick for my phone,
Speaker 3: and I was expected until you have a USB and
Speaker 3: didn't have one, and my phone died and I had
Speaker 3: to be alone with my thoughts for the entire flight.
Speaker 1: It was terrifying, especially if you were It's so strange
Speaker 1: how quickly things become normalized. And if you are expecting something,
Speaker 1: not to crib too hard from our earlier episode on
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History, but if you're expecting something all of a
Speaker 1: sudden it's taken away, it's tough to recover from that.
Speaker 3: It really is.
Speaker 1: It's in a strange way. It's similar to having two
Speaker 1: very different beverages next to your plates when you're eating
Speaker 1: and then expecting you were going to, I don't know,
Speaker 1: drink water, but you accidentally pick up the juice or
Speaker 1: the milk and your mouth goes what why? Or the
Speaker 1: kerosene or the kerosene? I weren't the kerosene very popular
Speaker 1: beverage here in Atlanta. It's strange that there are millions
Speaker 1: of people frankly terrified of flying, especially when you consider
Speaker 1: that statistically, you are much much, much more likely to
Speaker 1: get into an automobile accident than ever to be involved
Speaker 1: in a plane crash. But whether you love fly, whether
Speaker 1: you hate those vast stretches of sky, sun and cloud,
Speaker 1: whether you've been on a plane you know, three times
Speaker 1: a week for most of your life, or whether you've
Speaker 1: never been on a plane or have it yet, you
Speaker 1: have at least some inkling of the story of one
Speaker 1: Amelia Earhart, And this is the topic of our episode today.
Speaker 1: So here are the facts.
Speaker 3: Amelia Earhart was born on July twenty fourth, eighteen ninety seven,
Speaker 3: and she was the daughter of Amy and Edwin. Earhart
Speaker 3: lived with her mother's parents until she was twelve, and
Speaker 3: they were quite wealthy, so she was afforded some privilege,
Speaker 3: including attending private school. And then in nineteen oh nine,
Speaker 3: Amelia and her youngest sister moved to Des Moines. Did
Speaker 3: you pronounce the s? I say de Wine des Moine.
Speaker 3: I want to go with de Moines, Iowa. And that's
Speaker 3: where they were reunited with their parents because their father
Speaker 3: went to work for a railroad company and he moved
Speaker 3: there to join them and take that gig.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they moved him to a new position. The family
Speaker 1: continued to move around from Saint Paul, Minnesota, to Springfield, Illinois,
Speaker 1: and so on. This was not a happy home, you see.
Speaker 1: Edwin Earhart had been waging an unsuccessful battle with alcoholism
Speaker 1: for the entirety of Amelia's life, and this experience with
Speaker 1: a parent who had substance abuse problems gave Earhart a lifelong,
Speaker 1: abiding dislike of booze, along with the deep, deep desire
Speaker 1: for financial security. And you have to you know, you
Speaker 1: can understand it when you think of the disparity she
Speaker 1: encountered in her life. She had very wealthy maternal grandparents
Speaker 1: and then struggling immediate parents, you know, so she saw
Speaker 1: both sides, the have and the have nots of life.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen fourteen, Amy Earhart, Amelia's mother, takes the kids,
Speaker 1: she leaves her husband, and they go to Chicago. In Chicago,
Speaker 1: Amelia graduates from the Hyde Park School in nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 1: Interesting historical side note. In the yearbook, she is described
Speaker 1: as ae the girl in brown who walks alone. It's
Speaker 1: a dubious what do they call them?
Speaker 3: Monica superlative? Yeah, the honorific maybe a thing.
Speaker 1: Honorifics are a thing, but I think honorifics are closer
Speaker 1: to titles.
Speaker 3: He might be right. I think you might be right.
Speaker 3: It's true, the girl in brown who walks along. That's intense. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's almost like a ninja wondering ninja kind of nickname, you.
Speaker 1: Know, unhappy intellectual. I mean, high school Ben Bullen would
Speaker 1: have been all about getting her number, telegram address. What
Speaker 1: did they do back then?
Speaker 3: Noe, not clear, Maybe a particular Morse code right signal.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: But she went on to go to a place called
Speaker 3: the Ogonte School, which was a private high school. And
Speaker 3: this is interesting. I never really heard this. I guess
Speaker 3: it goes straight from high school to junior college, which
Speaker 3: I guess it's like the early year of college or
Speaker 3: is it more of like a community college.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it feels like it's either a community college or
Speaker 1: a prep school, you know.
Speaker 3: Right, because if it was a community college, sort of
Speaker 3: as a sort of like a second like not as prestigious. Right.
Speaker 3: It's a two year program.
Speaker 1: A lot of community colleges have a two year program,
Speaker 1: and so sometimes people, for one reason or another will
Speaker 1: take their prerequisites at a community college two year college
Speaker 1: and then go for the latter half of their college
Speaker 1: career at a more expensive institution.
Speaker 3: That makes sense. So then she went on to visit
Speaker 3: her sister Muriel, who was living in Toronto, and that
Speaker 3: is where she saw someone who had returned from World
Speaker 3: War One and had lost a limb in combat, an amputee.
Speaker 1: Yes, and this moves her. She immediately refuses to return
Speaker 1: to her junior college high school and instead becomes a
Speaker 1: volunteer nurse in a veteran hospital. And then she also,
Speaker 1: during her time working as a volunteer nurse, she also
Speaker 1: becomes a pacifist and this is something that she will
Speaker 1: keep for as far as we know the rest of
Speaker 1: her life. Emphasis on, as far as we know. So
Speaker 1: that's the early days of Amelia Earhart, but of course,
Speaker 1: most of us know her for her aviation.
Speaker 3: Career, that's right. Another first for Amelia was in nineteen
Speaker 3: fifteen when she saw her very first air show and
Speaker 3: had the opportunity to actually ride on an airplane. She
Speaker 3: seemed to become passionate about things pretty quickly. She was
Speaker 3: very driven and had a sense of what her mission
Speaker 3: was in life. I think that's interesting part of her character.
Speaker 3: She knew right away that she wanted to take flying lessons,
Speaker 3: so she went to a place called Burt Canner's Airfield,
Speaker 3: which is on Long Beach, Bulevard in LA from a
Speaker 3: woman with a lovely name, Nedda Snooks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Nedda Snooks, which sounds like a made up
Speaker 1: name but is very real. But again, as I think
Speaker 1: we've said before, on the air, all names are made up.
Speaker 1: At some point. On December fifteenth, nineteen twenty one, Amelia
Speaker 1: finally receives her license from the National Aeronautics Association or NAH.
Speaker 1: She was working part time as a file clerk, as
Speaker 1: an office assistant, as a photographer, as a truck driver,
Speaker 1: and she was pinching her pennies. She was scrounging and
Speaker 1: saving and she got a little bit of help from
Speaker 1: her mother, which enabled Amelia Earhart to buy her own plane.
Speaker 1: Think about how extraordinary that is.
Speaker 3: Okay, first of all, like a little bit of scratch
Speaker 3: from her mother to buy a plane, right, And we
Speaker 3: know a little bit about this plane, don't we.
Speaker 1: We do know a little bit about it. It was
Speaker 1: what was called a Kinner airster, just like the Kinner
Speaker 1: air Field. Kinder airster was a two seat, single engine biplane.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't you know, it was still a plane.
Speaker 1: It would get you in the air. You can actually
Speaker 1: see a photograph of Amelia Earhart and her instructor, Netta
Speaker 1: Snook standing together by the airstar. Oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's like it looks almost like one of
Speaker 3: those fighter type planes you would have seen in World
Speaker 3: War One.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a biplane, I guess, yeah, that exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And she loved this plane and she was It was
Speaker 1: such a tremendous moving moment for her to be able
Speaker 1: to purchase her own plane. That's still a pipe dream
Speaker 1: for a lot of people here in twenty nineteen as
Speaker 1: we record this. However, flying as anybody with a pilot's
Speaker 1: license ken assurus can be a very expensive hobby and
Speaker 1: she could afford to buy the plane, but she could
Speaker 1: not afford to continue flying. You know, the maintenance fee's
Speaker 1: fuel fuel definitely. So eventually she sold her plane and
Speaker 1: she bought an automobile. She drove her mother to Boston,
Speaker 1: where her younger sister, Muriel was teaching school, and a
Speaker 1: little bit after that she re enrolls in college. She
Speaker 1: goes to Columbia University in New York City, but she
Speaker 1: doesn't have the scratch again to continue studies for more
Speaker 1: than one year. A little bit dejected, she returns to Boston.
Speaker 1: She becomes a social worker, She joins the National Aeronautics Association,
Speaker 1: and she still in her spare time when she can
Speaker 1: find finds opportunities to fly.
Speaker 3: So I wonder what she thinks. She must have just
Speaker 3: like taken a class or like, you know, rented one
Speaker 3: for the afternoon or.
Speaker 1: Guess so, yeah, that feels like a big trust fall.
Speaker 1: Really rent my.
Speaker 3: Plane, rent my plane exactly. So then in nineteen twenty eight,
Speaker 3: Erhart gets a pretty incredible opportunity. You guys remember Charles W. E.
Speaker 3: Charles Lyndenburg, who became the first person, obviously a man,
Speaker 3: to fly alone across the Atlantic Ocean back in nineteen
Speaker 3: twenty seven. So this guy named George Palmer Putnam was
Speaker 3: the editor of a book about Charles Lindbergh's voyage and
Speaker 3: decided to kind of drum up some pr with a
Speaker 3: sort of a stunt that he would have. We have
Speaker 3: seen it as a stunt at the time. It's like, hey,
Speaker 3: lets let's let's put a lady on a plane. You know,
Speaker 3: we'll make a make a lady do the same flight.
Speaker 3: Because that that's crazy, that could never happen.
Speaker 1: Imagine that.
Speaker 3: Imagine that. Yeah, put a name up in a byplan.
Speaker 3: Goodness gracious, yeah, the the uproar must have been marked.
Speaker 3: So he dubs her lady Lyndy because of yeah, it
Speaker 3: sits just a little bit on the nose and kind
Speaker 3: of a little misogynistic to say, to say the least,
Speaker 3: and decides to make her kind of the star of
Speaker 3: the show. So puts her on a plane with a
Speaker 3: pilot by the name of William Stultz and a mechanic
Speaker 3: by the name of Lewis Gordon, and she crossed the
Speaker 3: Atlantic from Newfoundland to Wales on June eighteenth through nineteenth
Speaker 3: of nineteen twenty eight. But she wasn't flying the plane.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this really bothered her. She never once touched
Speaker 1: the controls of the plane and afterward described herself as
Speaker 1: little more than a quote sack of potatoes. Still, she
Speaker 1: became world renowned as the first woman to fly the Atlantic.
Speaker 1: George Putnam clearly was capitalizing on this marketing opportunity. He
Speaker 1: became Amelia Earhart's manager and later her husband when they
Speaker 1: married in nineteen thirty one. So here's what he did.
Speaker 1: As her manager. He arranged all of her flying engagements
Speaker 1: in step with this exhaustive series of lecture tours, like
Speaker 1: she would lecture for twenty nine days out of thirty one,
Speaker 1: like in a row.
Speaker 3: Jeez. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And eventually she grew irritated because she said, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm reading the press here and people are saying
Speaker 1: that I am not an actual pilot, that more or
Speaker 1: less a puppet that my husband created for public relations purposes.
Speaker 1: So I am going to prove to people that I
Speaker 1: am the real deal, a genuine aviator. And this leads
Speaker 1: her to pilot a Lockheed Electra from Newfoundland, Canada, all
Speaker 1: the way to Ireland. This is impressive because a Lockheed
Speaker 1: Electra is a tiny, tiny, tiny plane. It's a single engine.
Speaker 3: It's true. And lest you think you've made a mistake
Speaker 3: and you're actually listening to an episode of ridiculous history,
Speaker 3: that's sort of how it sounds with just the two
Speaker 3: of us doing a topic like this. I actually kind
Speaker 3: of forgot myself for a second what show we're doing.
Speaker 3: But we're getting there, guys. There's a twist coming, I promise.
Speaker 1: Yes there is. On May twentieth, the twenty first, nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty two, five years after Lindberg makes his solo flight,
Speaker 1: Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly across the
Speaker 1: Atlantic Soul and for the next five years she is
Speaker 1: a champion of women's rights as well as commercial aviation.
Speaker 1: She sets numerous world records, she gets accolades and awards
Speaker 1: from across the planet, and she decides eventually that she
Speaker 1: will circumnavigate the globe, that she will fly around the world, and,
Speaker 1: after a brief word with our sponsors, will walk through
Speaker 1: the infamous last voyage of Amelia Earhart.
Speaker 3: On July second, nineteen thirty seven, just twenty two days
Speaker 3: before her fortieth birthday, Amelia Earhart and her navigator friend
Speaker 3: Fred Noonan vanished partially through their attempt at circumnavigating the globe.
Speaker 3: They vanished. We know this. They vanished somewhere between Ley,
Speaker 3: New Guinea and Howland Island and the navy. The US
Speaker 3: Navy searched the largest swath they'd ever searched for a
Speaker 3: missing person an history at that point, and they found
Speaker 3: neither plane nor crew. Then, on January fifth of nineteen
Speaker 3: thirty nine, Amelia Earhart was declared legally dead after being
Speaker 3: missing for eighteen months. So what happened?
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy. Theories on the disappearance of
Speaker 1: Amelia Earhart have proliferated for almost a century now. The
Speaker 1: official report concluded that Earhart and Noonan were unable to
Speaker 1: land on their their planned destination of Holland Island, and
Speaker 1: that while trying to find this destination they ran out
Speaker 1: of fuel, they crashed into the water and sank. But
Speaker 1: of course that sort of explanation did very little to
Speaker 1: quell suspicion, especially because there were no remains of plane
Speaker 1: nor person to be found. Owned there are a couple
Speaker 1: of different theories that run counter to the official narrative.
Speaker 1: One theory suggests that this is the weirdest one, that
Speaker 1: Amelia Earhart actually didn't die. She not only survived, but
Speaker 1: she returned to the US. She changed her name to
Speaker 1: Irene Bolm b O L A M. And lived a long,
Speaker 1: long life in obscurity. There are actually some books written
Speaker 1: about this.
Speaker 3: But why to what end? It's strange? Yeah, she unhappy
Speaker 3: and I want to do what a weird name? To
Speaker 3: change her name to Bolum? No one suspects them, right, No,
Speaker 3: I guess not right, that's true. It's very clear. I
Speaker 3: don't know van are you? Are you potentially a missing aviator?
Speaker 1: No relation to Bolum? Okay, all right, you like how
Speaker 1: I didn't really answer your question.
Speaker 3: I do like that, you know, I love it when
Speaker 3: you do that. Actually, it's one of my favorite things
Speaker 3: in the whole world. So in a book by Joe
Speaker 3: Class from the nineteen seventies, I'm not quite sure exactly
Speaker 3: what your came out called Amelia Earhart lives. This gentleman
Speaker 3: makes the case that Earhart was in fact captured and
Speaker 3: then taken to Saipan and then to Tokyo, where she
Speaker 3: was a prisoner of the Imperial Palace until nineteen forty five.
Speaker 3: The theory argues that Earhart's secret was used as a
Speaker 3: bargaining chip after the war to allow the Japanese emperor
Speaker 3: to remain in power. What secret has this been?
Speaker 1: The secret would be that they were able that the
Speaker 1: Japanese government was using Earhart as leverage to preserve the
Speaker 1: emperor's standing in the community post World War Two. The
Speaker 1: idea here being that there was a what's the term
Speaker 1: so popular nowadays, a bit of a quid pro quo?
Speaker 3: Oh, yes, clarius, a bit of a.
Speaker 1: Quid pro quo, and that you know, if the Allies
Speaker 1: allowed the emperor to retain the position of the royal family,
Speaker 1: then Earhart would be returned to the US. Yes, of
Speaker 1: course that doesn't explain the name change, right, So bracket
Speaker 1: that we'll get back to that one. There's another much
Speaker 1: more popular theory that we wanted to share with you today.
Speaker 3: That's right. Another widely held belief is that Earhart and
Speaker 3: Noonan actually did touch down on a remote South Pacific
Speaker 3: island called Nicu Maroro. You okay there in I thought
Speaker 3: they did agree. I'm not a native speaker and I'm
Speaker 3: not either, but we always try to do our best.
Speaker 3: And this at the time of their disappearance would have
Speaker 3: been uninhabited and was known as Gardiner Island. The Airhart Project,
Speaker 3: which is a division of the International Group for Historic
Speaker 3: Aircraft Recovery or TIGER or Tiger GHAR, I still think
Speaker 3: it's pronounced Tiger, and it's an organization dedicated to investigating
Speaker 3: this hypothesis. So TIGER has been investigating the island since
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty nine and they've collected a ton of intriguing
Speaker 3: things related to the case, improvised tools, remains of shoes,
Speaker 3: in aircraft wreckage parts, which is consistent with Airhart's plane
Speaker 3: an Electra exactly.
Speaker 1: They also discovered that a few years after Earhart vanished,
Speaker 1: a British colonial officer found the remains of a castaway
Speaker 1: on what was then called Gardner Island, now known as
Speaker 1: Nico Morero. The bones were sent to Fiji for analysis,
Speaker 1: but ultimately they were misplaced and lost. Let's fast forward
Speaker 1: to the future. During Tigers Tigers twenty ten expedition, their
Speaker 1: team found some of the most compelling clues they had
Speaker 1: ever seen. They were looking around in a spot where
Speaker 1: they had previously identified what was likely the remains of
Speaker 1: a campfire, and they found three pieces of a pocket knife.
Speaker 1: They found shells that have been cut open, glass cosmetic
Speaker 1: jar fragments. Thereof little bits of makeup and and bone
Speaker 1: fragments that they thought might be from a human being. Now,
Speaker 1: let's let's put our skeptic hats on because we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about a History Channel documentary. Did
Speaker 1: you hear about this one?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: We know how a History Channel and a lot of
Speaker 1: the cable TV channels have those investigative shows, and sometimes
Speaker 1: they're top notch, very well researched, very honest, and other
Speaker 1: times they're a little too George Suklos, you know, saying
Speaker 1: ancient aliens kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: The fro mm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's less of a fro.
Speaker 3: And more of just like a wild hairdo.
Speaker 1: Let's say it's a main Yeah, he's a he's a
Speaker 1: nice guy.
Speaker 3: I've heard I like his I'd like his whole name
Speaker 3: and hair situations. Fun to say, it's got a nice mouthfeel. Yeah, No,
Speaker 3: it's true, and this one was of that variety. No,
Speaker 3: was it good?
Speaker 1: Well, this is the question we leave to you and
Speaker 1: your fellow listeners. Right the name of the document who
Speaker 1: was Amelia Earhart? The Lost Evidence? And it dives headfirst
Speaker 1: into the theory that Noonan and Earhart were captured by
Speaker 1: Japanese forces. In the documentary, there's a retired federal agent.
Speaker 1: His name is Les Kenny and less. Kenny and his
Speaker 1: team searched through records at the National Archives to find
Speaker 1: any overlooked clues to the disappearance of Aarhart.
Speaker 3: That's right. He and his team found a photograph that
Speaker 3: was stamped with official Office of Naval Intelligence marks that
Speaker 3: read Marshall Islands, Jalui Atoll, Jalue Island, Jaluwe Harbor and
Speaker 3: the photo a ship can be seen that's towing a
Speaker 3: barge with an Airplan on the back of it, and
Speaker 3: then nearby on a dock you can see several people.
Speaker 3: And Kenny argues that the photo had to have been
Speaker 3: taken before nineteen forty three because US Air Forces conducted
Speaker 3: more than thirty bombing runs on Jalui in nineteen forty
Speaker 3: three and forty four. He believed are through that was
Speaker 3: like a range of time, so they did it quite frequently.
Speaker 3: He believes the plane on the barge is the Electra
Speaker 3: and that the two people are two of the people
Speaker 3: on the dock are Airhart and Nonan.
Speaker 1: And then we have a way in also in the
Speaker 1: same documentary from Doug Karner and Kent Gibson. These are
Speaker 1: forensic analysts, and Karner looked at it and said, Okay,
Speaker 1: no one is messed with this photo, meaning no one
Speaker 1: has altered it. It was from that time and is legit.
Speaker 1: And then Kent Gibson specializes in recognizing faces, and he
Speaker 1: says it's very likely that the two individuals they point
Speaker 1: out on the dock there are Earhart and Nonan. Both
Speaker 1: of them also say that the ship in the photo
Speaker 1: is a Japanese vessel called the Koshu Maru, and they
Speaker 1: think this is the ship that took Earhart and Nonin
Speaker 1: away after they survived that crash landing. If that is
Speaker 1: you believe the television show, that's where we have our
Speaker 1: skepticats on, you know what I mean, because we have
Speaker 1: to ask ourselves, not in any way being a derogatory
Speaker 1: toward the experts in the show, nor to the History
Speaker 1: Channel or what have you. We have to ask ourselves
Speaker 1: how much of this we believe? And it's it's a
Speaker 1: good question. We have to ask ourselves how sincere or
Speaker 1: how disingenuous some of these outfits can be.
Speaker 3: You know, what was the name of the ship in question.
Speaker 3: The Koshu Ma rooms have the same as the Kobayashi
Speaker 3: Ma room.
Speaker 1: That is similar. I thought the same thing, but it
Speaker 1: is not the unsolvable scenario and Star Trek isn't it.
Speaker 3: Though an unsolvable scenario. I'm sorry for the Amelia Earhart version.
Speaker 1: We could call it like that Maru, the Aarhart Maru,
Speaker 1: the kosh kosh kosh.
Speaker 3: Remember bats Maru? That was always my favorite Sanrio character.
Speaker 1: Oh god, yeah, barely bats ma little?
Speaker 3: Was he a penguin?
Speaker 1: I can't remember.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Let's see, this is not important. We're
Speaker 3: taking a little sidetrack here. Bats Marou, penguin with four
Speaker 3: little spiky hairs coincidence.
Speaker 1: Always looks like he's in the just the worst moods.
Speaker 3: He's a little cranky guy.
Speaker 1: He's you know, he's.
Speaker 3: Got dead eyes. He's staring you like, uh, like he
Speaker 3: wants to murder you. Yeah, want to double down on that. Yes,
Speaker 3: weren't you finger wagged by the public? I thought you were.
Speaker 3: I thought somebody reached out and said something about how
Speaker 3: that they didn't think it was very nice that you
Speaker 3: would malign Kristen Dunst his eyes in.
Speaker 1: That well I don't think it's very nice that they're
Speaker 1: anti dead eyes as someone who has a pair of
Speaker 1: dead eyes themselves.
Speaker 3: Funny story. Again, don't want to get derailed too much,
Speaker 3: but this is worth describing buddy of ours. You we
Speaker 3: we both know. His name is Connor Ratliffe. He's a
Speaker 3: comedian with the Chelon's Brigade. He made a podcast called
Speaker 3: Dead Eyes because he auditioned for a band of Brothers.
Speaker 3: Remember that television sequel to Saving Private Ryan that Tom
Speaker 3: Hanks had something to do with. He directed and he
Speaker 3: was cast but then fired in the eleventh hour and
Speaker 3: an agent made the horrible mistake of telling him mister
Speaker 3: Hanks says, he decided you have dead eyes, and now
Speaker 3: you're gonna and that now he like made a podcast
Speaker 3: series about how he wants to like track down Tom
Speaker 3: Hanks and get to the bottom of this whole dead
Speaker 3: Eyes situation. So you can check that out. It's on
Speaker 3: it's on the interwebs.
Speaker 1: It's to be fair to Kirsten Dudds, who is I
Speaker 1: think a great actor. I'm particularly doubling down on her
Speaker 1: role in Interview with a Vampire, not her fantastic turn
Speaker 1: in that series of cheerleader movies.
Speaker 3: Do you remember those? What was it?
Speaker 1: Bring it On?
Speaker 3: Bring it On? Bringing On was great? Yeah, Stomp the Yard.
Speaker 1: Now that that was. That was another one, right, It
Speaker 1: was more of.
Speaker 3: A stomp movie. It was in that same time time
Speaker 3: there were a lot of what is it bringing on?
Speaker 3: So what she just said, Yeah, no, there's another one though,
Speaker 3: you got served. That's right where it's like I'm gonna
Speaker 3: dance up on you remember South Park made fun of that.
Speaker 3: It's so funny. Ben, I was just briefly scrolling through
Speaker 3: Instagram and our friends over Unladylike posted today this maybe
Speaker 3: is going to be pressing it for the story. A
Speaker 3: headline from back in these days, Amelia Earhart weds gp Putnam,
Speaker 3: but Atlantic Flyer will remain Miss Earhart for business purposes
Speaker 3: and writing exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was a huge, huge deal. This is one
Speaker 1: of the most famous people on the planet, no smoke,
Speaker 1: no hyperbole. So it's no wonder that there was such
Speaker 1: an extensive, expensive search for these missing aviators, and it's
Speaker 1: also no wonder that the media became obsessed with it.
Speaker 1: It's correct, it's absolutely correct to be skeptical of the
Speaker 1: the television show. Again, we're not saying it's not true.
Speaker 1: We're not saying it's manipulative. We're just saying be aware
Speaker 1: of be aware of the motives behind some of those
Speaker 1: sorts of programs. Anyhow, there are other things that add
Speaker 1: tantalizing bits to the cauldron of conspiracy here. One is
Speaker 1: that a number of the residents of Marshall Islands claimed
Speaker 1: they witnessed the aviator's land there, and the Marshall Islands
Speaker 1: issued stamps commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Aarhart flight,
Speaker 1: and the stamps show Airhart's plane crash landing at mili
Speaker 1: A Toll and the recovery of that plane by the
Speaker 1: Koshu Maru. This leads to one quite okay, So this
Speaker 1: is a lot of fun as a thought exercise to say,
Speaker 1: what if the people on the plane survived the plane
Speaker 1: crash just difficult thing to do, and what if Japanese
Speaker 1: forces took them captive? The big question is why on
Speaker 1: earth would they take her captive? We'll tell you after
Speaker 1: a word from our sponsors, and we're back. So people
Speaker 1: who believe this theory don't believe that the Japanese forces
Speaker 1: were just randomly capturing people for fundsies. And they don't
Speaker 1: think that they captured Earhart specifically because she was a celebrity. No.
Speaker 1: You see, people who believe in this post crash survival
Speaker 1: abduction scenario also believed that Amelia Earhart was a spy
Speaker 1: was working as a secret agent for Uncle Sam. Partially,
Speaker 1: this is based on the fact that she did have
Speaker 1: a documented close friendship with Franklin Roosevelt and his wife
Speaker 1: Eleanor Roosevelt.
Speaker 3: And folks who believe this theory tend to suggest that
Speaker 3: the plane crashed after the pilot's veered off course in
Speaker 3: order to pursue a spying mission over japan occupied islands
Speaker 3: in the Pacific, right.
Speaker 1: And the thing about that is it feels plausible because
Speaker 1: they're in the right place. They have a great cover,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, They can always fly over
Speaker 1: smilings and then just say that they got lost, right.
Speaker 1: And this is fascinating to me because we have seen
Speaker 1: accusations similar to this kind of thing happened before in
Speaker 1: the world of espionage. As a matter of fact, a
Speaker 1: few years back, there were three three Western students arrested
Speaker 1: in Iran because they had apparently crossed over the border.
Speaker 1: They were arrested as spies. They were all in their
Speaker 1: early twenties and there ostensibly they were just hikers with
Speaker 1: a very bad sense of direction, and that story kind
Speaker 1: of disappeared from the news, but it is an excellent
Speaker 1: cover story to just say, whoops, we were you know,
Speaker 1: we were in the air for so long, we just
Speaker 1: got a little mixed up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it doesn't really quite add up.
Speaker 1: It's a little.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things where you kind of just
Speaker 1: suck in air between your teeth and go all right, yeah, maybe.
Speaker 3: My teeth are cold sensitive. I can't suck air between
Speaker 3: my teeth like, oh man, I know, it hurts me
Speaker 3: right to the core of my root.
Speaker 1: Well probably the yeah, the roots of your dental roots.
Speaker 1: It probably. It probably makes you seem like a nicer
Speaker 1: person because you don't have that expression in your nonverbal vocabulary.
Speaker 3: I do this though, suck my teeth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I remember a few years back one of
Speaker 1: my friend groups literally banned me, suspended me for a
Speaker 1: while from saying tut tut. It's very tut, man, I know,
Speaker 1: and then I just describing things as tut.
Speaker 3: This one tut is a little less egregious. I would
Speaker 3: argue yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, also it's it's a little more dismissive. It's calling
Speaker 1: some tut means you don't have time for both tuts.
Speaker 3: Oh dang, you're right because tut tut's scolding. But tut
Speaker 3: is almost like, sh yeah, you're a real sucker. I
Speaker 3: don't even have time for the second tough for you.
Speaker 1: And I've actually been able to propagate that way.
Speaker 3: That's weird. I use it.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows what we mean when we say it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and every time I just want you to know. Man,
Speaker 3: every time I use it under my breath, I give
Speaker 3: you credit. Thank you very well.
Speaker 1: That must be an interesting conversation for people. And so
Speaker 1: this is strange though it's plausible, No, it's possible. It
Speaker 1: is plausible that spycraft will be conducted that way, but
Speaker 1: it's a little bit of a leap to say it
Speaker 1: was definitely air Heart. The story, however, does not end there.
Speaker 1: We mentioned those the British forces that found those thirteen bones,
Speaker 1: including a skull, on the island. They sent a telegram
Speaker 1: after the discovery. This is back in the forties, and
Speaker 1: they said it was possibly the skull of Amelia Earhart.
Speaker 1: But doctors who examined it at the time said it
Speaker 1: belonged to a short European male. Even now some people
Speaker 1: dis agree with this assessment. But here's the question. If
Speaker 1: the thirteen bones they found did in fact belong to
Speaker 1: Amelia Earhart, what happened to all the other bones in
Speaker 1: a human skeleton? Where did they go? There's a weird theory.
Speaker 1: It's that giant coconut crabs consumed the flesh and carried
Speaker 1: away the bones, and coconut crabs actually do that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Have you seen a coconut crab?
Speaker 3: Did we not talk about them in the Cryptid sequel episode?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 3: They are mistaken because they're so bonkers looking.
Speaker 1: They're gigantic.
Speaker 3: First of all, these creatures are crazy looking. Yeah again,
Speaker 3: I forgive us if this is redundant, but they look
Speaker 3: like something of like a face hugger meets a lobster
Speaker 3: meets a crayfish meets a crab. And they're they're heavily armored,
Speaker 3: and the limbs are all kinds of cthulhu esque, and
Speaker 3: they can crack coconuts. They just wrapped their weird you
Speaker 3: know in this arms what do you call them? Limbs
Speaker 3: around these coconuts and they can crack them right open,
Speaker 3: and as we all know, that's it's a hell of
Speaker 3: a job.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely this. They look like the hybrid of a
Speaker 1: lobster and crab that also took a lot of steroids.
Speaker 1: They look like that arthropod that's been juicing. And what
Speaker 1: we found is that they are capable of moving bones,
Speaker 1: So they could have taken those other one hundred and
Speaker 1: ninety three bones in the human skeleton and moved it around.
Speaker 1: But at this point we have to pause and ask ourselves,
Speaker 1: what is the most likely sequence of events here? Well,
Speaker 1: remember the Amelia Earhart Lives guy class. It turns out
Speaker 1: there is a real Irene Bolum and she was super
Speaker 1: not cool with being accused of being Amelia Earhart. She
Speaker 1: sued Klaus's publishers for one point five million dollars and said,
Speaker 1: I'm not Amelia Earhart. I've got pictures from of myself
Speaker 1: from the thirties that prove it. Stop bugging me and
Speaker 1: pull this book from publication.
Speaker 3: She holding up newspapers of the day. Come on, it's
Speaker 3: the only thing that's going to take to convince me.
Speaker 3: You gotta hold up a newspaper.
Speaker 1: That's the only thing that checks out.
Speaker 3: Yea, so.
Speaker 1: We have another we have another series of developments here.
Speaker 1: Doctor Aaron Kimberly, a researcher at the University of South Florida,
Speaker 1: was recently asked to examine some of those bones that
Speaker 1: have been rediscovered at a museum on this island, Nico Morou,
Speaker 1: to see if they might be Earhart's actual bones, because,
Speaker 1: as we said before, they have been examined in the past,
Speaker 1: but they mysteriously disappeared in Fiji, and now experts are
Speaker 1: thinking the bones have been found again at a museum
Speaker 1: and cultural center in Kiribati. The bones were stored in
Speaker 1: this large box where there are several sets of different
Speaker 1: remains that have all been stored together. One set was
Speaker 1: female and matched Earhart's rough description. As we record now
Speaker 1: just this year, just a little while ago, these bones
Speaker 1: were sent for DNA testing, and the plan is to
Speaker 1: compare the DNA from the bones against the DNA of
Speaker 1: Earhart's one living niece. So while a mystery remains for now,
Speaker 1: we're closer to a solid answer than we've ever been before.
Speaker 3: Wait, so this is ongoing, This is like the tests
Speaker 3: are in the mail.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like October of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: That's pretty cool. When are we gonna hear We don't know.
Speaker 1: You know, it's weird because we get these close calls,
Speaker 1: these tantalizing brushes with answers in DNA cases all the time, Like.
Speaker 3: There was one involving the Zodiac Killer that was you know,
Speaker 3: the team we worked very closely with it does the
Speaker 3: Monster Zodiac series. We're really hoping it was going to
Speaker 3: be a big scoop at the end of the of
Speaker 3: the series and it did not pan out.
Speaker 1: If I'm not mistaken, yeah, absolutely, or we're still waiting,
Speaker 1: right and this is another waiting game. That's where we'll
Speaker 1: leave it today. But we want to hear from you.
Speaker 1: This concludes our episode, but not our show. Let us
Speaker 1: know what you think happened to Amelia Earhart. Do you
Speaker 1: think that there's enough evidence to prove that either she
Speaker 1: or Noonan or both of them survived for a time
Speaker 1: after the plane crash. Do you think it's just a
Speaker 1: case where humanity likes a good story and a good mystery.
Speaker 1: What do you think the DNA will find.
Speaker 3: Were they secret lovers?
Speaker 1: Were they secret lovers? Were they secret spies?
Speaker 3: Also a question, and.
Speaker 1: That's our classic episode for this evening. We can't wait
Speaker 1: to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 3: It's right let us know what you think. You can reach.
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