0:00

M Hey everybody, it's

0:02

me Josh, and for this week's s Y

0:04

s K Selects, I chose our episode

0:07

Why Can't We Find Amelia Earhart, which

0:09

first aired in December of two thousand. Recently,

0:13

a photo has been making the rounds that purports

0:15

to show Amelia and her navigator,

0:17

Poor Fred Noonan after they

0:20

disappeared, which supposedly gives credence

0:22

to the theory that the Japanese captured them.

0:24

So I thought it was a good reason and a good time

0:26

to revisit our episode on it. I hope

0:28

you enjoy. Welcome

0:36

to Stuff you Should Know from

0:39

House Stuff Works dot com.

0:46

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh

0:48

Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,

0:51

Chuck Tryan. Jerry's in the other room

0:53

with a golf putter that she's

0:55

going to come in here and swing in us any second now, which

0:58

makes this stuff you should not. I think we're on our

1:01

last nerve today. Yes, well it's Friday.

1:03

It's the last Friday in October. It's

1:05

like three o'clock and we're

1:08

going to get out of here after this. Yeah, Plus we were

1:10

we've been gone a week and then we just get carried in here

1:12

by our minions on our thrones, and

1:14

we were plopped down and we just told Jerry

1:16

to like make it so And yeah, wh wasn't

1:18

that standing ovation from everyone we work with?

1:21

Um? Just amazing. Yeah.

1:23

Yeah, I'm kind of used to him by now, Chuck.

1:26

Yes, do you ever get any Time Life books?

1:29

No, I've never gotten them, but I used to love

1:31

those when I was a kid. The commercials. Yeah,

1:33

there's some cool ones, the Old West ones especially.

1:36

I like the ones that we're just kind of like

1:38

out there, like what the heck is going on? Like

1:41

I first heard of Trepi Nation thanks

1:43

to the Time Life Ancient brain Surgery

1:45

from What the heck is going On series? Yes, exactly,

1:49

very underrated. There's one, um,

1:51

the Wild West once huh. Oh yeah, the once

1:54

killed a man just for snore and too loud. Huh. That

1:56

had a big impact on me. Yeah, I don't

1:59

snore my dad like my dad

2:01

like the World War two ones.

2:03

Yeah, but he liked any think it's Old War two

2:06

for a while and now he's kind of out of it

2:08

really. Yeah, he's like kind

2:11

of, um, well,

2:13

there was a there is a book. It's still in print

2:15

as far as I can tell it's called, uh, it's

2:17

life, not Time Life, because

2:19

I think Time went on with Warner in A O L. Which,

2:23

by the way, someone at Time Life their

2:25

time Warner said that their acquisition

2:28

of A O L was one of the worst

2:30

mistakes in the history of business recently.

2:33

That's not nice. But there is

2:35

a life book called, uh,

2:37

the Greatest Mysteries of

2:39

All Time, and it's

2:41

like a top fifty, and it's things

2:43

like, um, was Anastasia

2:45

a live princess? Anastasia? Did she escaped

2:48

the Bolshevik Revolution? Who?

2:51

That's not really a mystery? How do they

2:53

figure that one out? Yeah? Oh no, I'm

2:55

in Atlantis? Okay? Yeah. I was

2:58

like, you know, they they've

3:00

got that one licked. We can go there, actually,

3:02

if you'll pay for the plane tickets. Um,

3:05

there's Jack, the ripper of our phase. Uh.

3:08

And among them, as she

3:10

should be in all lists of the greatest

3:12

sunse Solved mysteries, is Amelia Earhart

3:16

right. Um. In two thousand seven,

3:18

we saw the seventieth anniversary of

3:20

her disappearance. She just kind of

3:23

flew into history. Uh. And I wrote

3:25

an article about it last summer. UM,

3:28

and I was really shocked

3:30

to find that there is a lot of pieces

3:33

in place that if one

3:35

thing would change, we'd know for sure what

3:37

happened to her. But still this mystery

3:40

endures, um, and it drives

3:42

people crazy and makes them want

3:44

to go like. People spend tons of money

3:47

and time and effort, sure uh

3:49

to try to figure out what happened to her, And some

3:51

people have come up with some theories that are interesting.

3:54

Um. One was that she

3:56

was actually captured by the Japanese. This

3:58

is right before World Wars prison they

4:01

were kind of adversarial. Of what they

4:03

leave out is that the Japanese actually helped with

4:05

her search, So that's not true

4:07

what But that is a theory that's still going

4:09

on, that she was captured by the Japanese,

4:12

either executed or forced into

4:14

servitude to become Tokyo Rose,

4:16

who was a group of English

4:18

speaking women who basically said,

4:20

g I, your girlfriend back home

4:22

is having sex with um Captain America

4:25

and Superman. Yeah.

4:27

Um, it's true. They

4:29

said things along those lines. It's just

4:31

that's good. Um. Another one

4:33

is that there was an alien abduction.

4:36

That's what I'm signing with. Have you heard of Irene

4:39

Craig mile Bolum. Yeah, that

4:41

was the Apparently, there was one theory

4:43

that Amelia Earhart just assumed

4:45

the life of a New Jersey housewife

4:48

by that name, a successful banker who retired

4:50

to become a New Jersey housewife. She's a very

4:52

worldly woman. She had her pilot's

4:54

license in the thirties. There was a

4:57

lot of stuff that. Um. She actually

4:59

had a mutual end with Amelia Earhart.

5:01

Um. They kind of ran in the same circles.

5:04

Um. And not much as known of her life

5:07

before World War Two. She kind of appears

5:09

out of nowhere. Supposedly, so alleged

5:11

this guy who was about to release

5:13

a biography in nineteen seventies saying this

5:16

lady is Amelia Earhart, and the woman sued

5:19

won one point five million dollars in the

5:21

book was never published, I believe. Interesting.

5:23

Yeah, but the guy was relentless after she died.

5:26

Um, he asked to

5:28

be able to photograph and fingerprint her

5:30

body, and the family was like no,

5:34

but he's taking it, Like exactly,

5:36

why would you not let me do that? You know, because

5:39

excuming your body isn't I think

5:41

it was before she was buried. He was trying to get her.

5:43

Still. I have a theory, Josh I'd

5:46

like to have a theory that if you asked one thousand

5:48

people who Fred Noonon was,

5:51

that nine of them would have no

5:53

idea who you we're talking. Yeah, I had no idea who he

5:55

was until I researched this. Fred Noonan

5:58

was in the plane in the Lockheed

6:00

Electra as the navigator

6:03

that went down um on

6:05

July supposedly

6:07

when you might not have seen him. There's a picture of him

6:09

in their heart and he is the quintessential

6:11

old timey navigator. His

6:14

button down shirts buttoned all the way up to apple.

6:16

He's got like some um papers

6:19

in this front shirt pocket.

6:21

His his his pants are

6:23

pulled up to just below his um

6:26

his nipples, uh, and

6:28

he just looks like he's like all business.

6:31

That's who I would hired a definitely. And he

6:33

was a good guy apparently, um there was

6:35

before before they went off on their um

6:38

equatorial trip around

6:40

the world. Yeah, explained to people. Because some people

6:42

might not even know the back story, we assume everyone

6:44

knows. But what they were trying to do

6:46

was circumnavigate the globe

6:49

along the equator, along the as long

6:51

as you could possibly take to get around the right.

6:53

Obviously not on when shot. They did this in installments,

6:56

but they were definitely not doing it in installments

6:58

of four to pop no. And

7:01

by this time, we should also say, this is nineteen thirty

7:03

seven when they undertook this

7:05

um trip. But by

7:07

this time a Melia he was already

7:10

like this worldwide, internationally

7:12

famous figure. She was a well known pacifist,

7:14

which is pretty cool. Um. She was

7:16

a women's right to advocate, like

7:19

women can do anything that guys can do kind

7:21

of thing. Um. She was a study

7:23

in contrast though apparently like um,

7:26

she had one of her friends had given

7:28

her at fifty chance of surviving this

7:30

trip, and she actually agreed with it.

7:32

Um. And she had said that she wasn't worried for

7:34

herself because she maintained

7:36

this um uh this uh

7:39

what she called a feminine um

7:42

conceit that she was afraid

7:44

of aging. So she wasn't really

7:46

worried about dying. But she was worried about Fred because

7:49

he was like this nice guy with the family. And

7:52

she was right to worry because on July

7:55

second, ninety seven, they disappeared off

7:58

the face of the earth. So what you're saying is she guts

8:00

of steel steel. She had already

8:02

been awarded the Flying Cross UM

8:05

by Congress. She received the National Geographic

8:07

Award from President of Herbert Hoover UM.

8:10

She was the first woman to cross the Atlantic,

8:12

uh ten years before she'd broken in altitude

8:15

record. UM. She was

8:17

the first woman to fly around the world. So

8:20

all of this in in about a

8:22

ten or twelve year career. She's

8:24

done all this stuff. So when she disappeared,

8:26

the whole world knew. Oh yeah, it

8:29

was big, big news and uh

8:31

she Well, we'll talk about where she disappeared,

8:34

UM broadly because they still don't know for sure,

8:36

which is one of the problems. She departed

8:39

in her Lockkeeed Electra, which

8:41

is to me one of the coolest looking planes ever

8:43

built, shiny silver, just

8:47

really cool looking. Plain. And she

8:49

departed lie Papua New

8:51

Guinea, Yes, Papua New

8:53

Guinea, to probably escape a key

8:55

outbreak. Oh really, I don't

8:58

know. That's the only place that that is found.

9:00

Well, they departed lie to UM

9:04

for one of the longest stretches

9:08

of this of this flight, and they were um

9:10

setting out for Howland Island, which was about

9:14

miles away from when they were going. Right,

9:16

So consider this chuck. They had already flown most

9:18

of the way around the world, they had seven thousand

9:20

miles short, yeah, and then this was the longest

9:23

stretch and it was also um

9:25

it was going to eat up a lot of that last seven thousand

9:28

miles from Papua

9:30

New Guinea to Howland Island. And

9:32

Howland Island itself was pretty small,

9:35

yeah, a mile and a half by a half mile, yes,

9:37

tiny little and it only

9:39

rose twenty ft out of the Pacific

9:42

Ocean. Um. And basically

9:44

these are tolls out there in the Pacific, just

9:47

basically columns coming out of the ocean

9:50

floor and that's it. So

9:52

there's like no shelf on either side.

9:54

I'm trying to land on a postage stamp, I would think,

9:57

right. And it was very apparent to everybody

9:59

in eating noon In and Earhart and

10:02

the US Coast Guard and government

10:04

that this is a very dangerous This

10:06

is probably the most dangerous leg

10:08

of the journey. Um. So they had

10:10

a coast Guard cutter, the Itasca, who

10:13

was tasked with tracking them.

10:15

It was it Tascad. Yeah,

10:17

and they also had two additional ships um

10:19

for markers to help her along. So she

10:21

wasn't just completely out there alone. They were they

10:23

were trying to keep up with her because every you know,

10:25

clearly everyone had added a stake

10:28

in her being successful. And

10:30

I say her and Fred, Poor Fred, he

10:32

just he never gets any accolades. You

10:35

know, no one even knows who he is. No

10:37

one knows who he is. So Fred

10:39

was trying to use um celestial navigation,

10:41

but it was really overcast, so we couldn't do that. Uh.

10:44

They fell out of radio contact and

10:46

at dawned the it Taska picked

10:49

up a transmission where she said

10:51

that noon in kind of figured that they were

10:53

should be just over where they were the

10:57

boat, which was right off of the shore

10:59

of how all In Island, right, but apparently they

11:01

didn't see her and uh them

11:04

the lock keyed Electra and they they

11:07

didn't hear. There was no trace of it. They hadn't pretty

11:09

sure that they were way off, and about an hour

11:11

after that they knew the fuel was running

11:13

low. And about an hour after that they got the final transmission

11:16

from her, which basically um just said, we

11:18

are running north to south. Those were her last

11:20

words that anyone ever heard. Very

11:23

sad so

11:27

about that time, UM

11:30

the news got back that they never showed

11:32

up to Holland Island. UM

11:34

and President Roosevelt, who was a

11:37

friend of hers. He also was a great

11:39

admirer of hers as well. Um

11:42

ordered a massive search

11:44

by the Navy, and remember we said the Japanese

11:46

helped as well. So it was a multinational search

11:49

and rescue UM mission

11:52

that covered a quarter of a million square

11:54

miles. Yeah, that is a huge,

11:57

huge area. Yeah, Texas is um

12:00

a little less than two hundred and seventy

12:02

thousand, so it's it's just slightly

12:05

less than the state of Texas. Right, And it was

12:07

open water that they're searching, right,

12:10

Um, they and and and you know the

12:12

old joke is look at all that water, and

12:14

the reply is yeah, and that's just the top

12:17

of it. Right, that's one of the problems. Yeah,

12:19

exactly, you're scanning area the size of Texas

12:21

and what possibly lies beneath all that,

12:23

right, And um, but you're hoping

12:26

that if, if, if the thing broke up, you

12:28

would find some wreckage, some sign

12:30

of license. They found nothing,

12:34

no, nothing that they could link

12:36

to air Heart or noon and like they just disappeared.

12:39

Um. And actually FDR took a lot of

12:41

flak, we should say, because he spent four million

12:44

bucks in the middle of the Great Depression

12:46

just to search for this one person or

12:48

well these two people see poor Fred noon

12:50

in Um, but he

12:53

always stood by that as far as I know. Um.

12:56

Again, though, is a fruitless search. And

12:59

they turned up thing right. I think they'd

13:01

be a great band name. I know I say that, but poor Fred

13:03

Noonan that's a good one. I

13:05

have to remember that in case l cheap over

13:07

breaks up. Uh.

13:10

After the navy search, they basically discontinued

13:12

their search and said, you know what, we can't find

13:14

her and Fred and um,

13:18

we're going to send a destroyer out to Gardner Island.

13:20

It was called Gardener Island back then and now

13:22

it's uh nick umar roo nick

13:25

kumar ro nikumaroo. And

13:28

uh they did this because radio transmissions

13:31

on her frequency we're being broadcast

13:34

in that area there were, which is pretty

13:36

substantial. Yes, this is an uninhabited

13:38

area. And um, this

13:41

is still an unexplained aspect

13:44

of this mystery. There were sporadic

13:46

bursts of radio transmissions um,

13:49

and no one still can say why

13:52

they were. They were from some guy named Fred noon and so they

13:54

didn't pay exactly. They're

13:56

like, who's that he's seen? Ali, I guess he's

13:58

a swimmer. Um. So

14:00

They basically sent a couple of dispatch planes

14:03

um to that island, found nothing and said,

14:06

all right, we're calling off this area. That

14:08

she's not out here, there's no evidence

14:10

of life. Right, and that would

14:12

have been that that was seven right,

14:15

and the planes went back to the destroyer

14:18

their aircraft carrier and left. Uh

14:21

and that that that wouldn't that probably

14:23

would have been the end of the association between

14:25

Gardener Island or or Nika

14:28

and Nick umar ro Ro and Amelia

14:30

Earhart had it not been colonized by the British

14:32

and ight hadn't not been

14:34

for their pin shot for colonization. Yes,

14:37

period. If British imperialism didn't

14:39

exist, this probably these

14:41

these artifacts Nember would have turned up. But there

14:44

um there how they like to

14:46

colonize things. They colonize

14:48

this remote outpost actually gathered

14:51

up some other islanders nearby and

14:53

said, hey, you're gonna live here now. Um.

14:56

And when these islanders went on the island, they found evidence

14:58

that a castaway had been there recently.

15:01

They found some pretty jarring stuff,

15:04

right Chuck, Yeah, And I mean most

15:06

certainly a castaway, because they found a woman shoe,

15:09

a man shoe, liquor bottle,

15:12

well, yeah, and a container

15:14

for a sextant, which is one of those you

15:16

know, those are the cool looking navigational device

15:18

that you hold up and it looks like something at a League

15:20

of Extraordinary Gentlemen or something, which Fred

15:23

Nowtan had on the plane with them, of

15:25

course he did, you know Fred. Uh.

15:28

And then they also found um, certainly

15:30

not the least of which would

15:32

be human skull and bones. Yeah.

15:35

Here's here's where this thing would be just

15:38

done, probably in my opinion, or

15:40

where they just say this is them. Yeah, yeah, um,

15:42

they found one set of human remains.

15:46

Um. The the islanders

15:48

took this to the governor of the island.

15:51

His name was, uh, Gerald,

15:55

I can't remember, Gerald Gallagher, Thanks buddy.

15:58

They took it to Gerald gallaghery Gallagher

16:00

says, I suspect I know who this is.

16:03

Let's get a physician looking at this. The physician

16:05

examines it, and the bones are promptly lost

16:07

forever. No one has any idea what happened to

16:09

him. Luckily, this physician took pretty

16:12

methodical notes and wrote

16:14

descriptions and drew drawings with the bones, and

16:17

so in the nineties some forensic anthropologists

16:19

got their hands on these notes and they

16:21

said pretty much unequivocally that

16:23

these bones were the bones of

16:26

a woman of Northern

16:28

European ancestry who

16:30

was about five ft seven and Amelia

16:33

her heart was five eight. Well,

16:35

you would think they're off by an inch. It wasn't her

16:38

exactly, But in this day and age,

16:40

you have to have DNA evidence to controvertibly.

16:43

Right. Sure, so the bones go missing,

16:46

we can't get a DNA match. But consider

16:48

that on an uninhabited island,

16:50

right where they think that Amelia

16:53

Earhart might have gone down, the remains

16:55

of a woman of Northern European ancestry

16:58

who was pretty much the same high his

17:00

Amelia heart were found a few

17:02

years after disappearance. I say

17:05

score, I say scores, game, set

17:07

match. But they also found some other cool stuff. Um,

17:10

and the area of the island was called seven Site,

17:12

and that was the little encampment that

17:14

they believe, you know, was used by them. And

17:17

they found some other cool stuff like clamshell

17:19

fragments that basically

17:22

they were smashed open by

17:24

somebody right and exposed to fire, which

17:27

you know, unless they were struck by lightning, that's

17:29

pretty much definitive evidence

17:31

of human use. Well, yeah, and they also

17:34

found bones of fish and birds and turtles

17:36

that had been exposed to fire. So in other

17:38

words, somebody was cooking up something to eat. Uh.

17:41

What else did they found? They found, Um, they

17:43

found pieces of bottle that show signs

17:45

of use is cutting and sawing tools.

17:48

Yeah. UM. They also found a little

17:50

piece of a knife, UM, which

17:53

they managed. I don't know how they did this, because

17:55

you sent me this link. There's a picture

17:57

of just the knife blade. And

17:59

they went back and managed to identify

18:02

it as a type of jack knife

18:05

that was produced within this time period by

18:07

this company Rhode Island, so it

18:09

was it was produced from ninety ninety

18:11

two or something like that. And then they

18:13

went back this year. This group called

18:15

the UM we should say their name the

18:18

International Group for Historic Aircraft

18:20

Recovery or TIGAR. Yeah,

18:22

they've been I think three or four different times

18:25

over the years to this island. They went this summer

18:27

as I was writing this, they were preparing the expedition

18:29

and they found the rest of the knife. UM.

18:32

And this is where they hoped to get DNA

18:35

evidence from. Well yeah, and not the reason

18:37

that the knife discovery is important or

18:39

the rest of the knife. They originally found

18:41

the blades only, and then they found

18:43

the knife this summer, and it showed that the knife

18:46

blades had been forcibly removed

18:49

from the knife, indicating

18:51

that maybe that they took out

18:53

each blade too. Maybe and of course you're speculating,

18:56

but maybe to attach it to an end

18:58

of a spear or something like that for fish fishing.

19:00

Anyone was seeing castaway knows what that's

19:02

all about. I saw that the other day again by the way um

19:05

there. They also found Gardner

19:07

Island, by the way, became uninhabited

19:10

in nineteen sixty three. There was a prolonged drought

19:12

and the British government, we're just like, just forgive

19:14

it, everybody, just leave Um

19:17

and the group

19:21

Tighar when they went to excavate

19:23

around there, they found in this abandoned

19:25

village folk art made

19:28

of aluminum aircraft metal right,

19:31

which they can't definitively prove came

19:33

from her plane. Obviously, there's

19:36

a lot of circumstantial evidence of female

19:38

castaway handicrafts or maybe Tom

19:40

he was the big crafty guy, but there Um,

19:43

I don't think Tom made it. I think

19:45

Amelia Earhart made it. I think Tom was

19:48

maybe kill an impact or drowned and Amelia

19:51

made it to the island and died

19:53

there alone, quite

19:56

possibly, and she may have even eaten him. Now

20:00

that's a that's that's a new theory.

20:03

I think you'd launched. I don't know that goes

20:05

in with your disappearance of the Neanderthals.

20:08

That's right, they melted, Um,

20:11

you you were. The reason we're talking about these objects

20:13

that they've recently recovered, though, is because

20:16

they're trying to get some DNA called

20:19

touch DNA off of a few

20:21

of these items. They submitted ten I believe out

20:23

of a hundred. It's one of the reasons why finding that knife

20:26

was very important. Is huge because

20:28

I believe they submitted the blades, and then they found

20:30

some glass from what looked

20:32

like a cosmetics star and a

20:34

couple of buttons, and they submitted these

20:36

things to a place in Canada. And

20:39

I think as of today, I still don't

20:41

think they have the results

20:43

of that DNA testing done. That

20:45

I see that they had it done yet so guarded,

20:48

but they wouldn't be such enormous news that we

20:50

would have known. That's what I think, um

20:52

Chuck. There's a lot of people

20:54

out there who also think that her

20:57

plane sur survived intact

21:00

and is at the bottom of the Pacific. That's

21:03

awesome, And people still I think tig

21:05

are included um undertake

21:08

sonar searches of the ocean bottom.

21:11

Uh. And there's a good chance

21:13

that the plane did make it. Um. They

21:15

were flying supposedly at about a thousand

21:17

feet, which is extremely low, and they

21:20

were doing about a hundred miles an hour, which

21:22

is pretty slow for a plane,

21:24

especially a Lockheed Electra, so conceivably

21:27

didn't necessarily bust into a million pieces.

21:30

Yeah, so it's possible it's still out

21:32

there at the bottom of the ocean. Well,

21:34

I I am totally sold. And I know

21:36

I said like every single Jack the Ripper

21:39

killer we brought up. Yeah, he sounds like

21:41

the guy. But I'm completely convinced

21:44

that this is where she spent her last days like you,

21:46

and that she ate Fred noon In. I don't

21:48

know that Fred or Fred.

21:51

Uh. We should also mention too that UM

21:53

they use a new well new

21:55

to them at least ground penetrating radar g

21:58

PR for the first time on this last trip

22:00

to summer, and that is when you can

22:02

actually look beneath the surface for anything that was

22:04

buried. Like Fred, it's magic

22:07

and um. They they didn't

22:09

find anything though, because not because there was anything

22:11

there necessarily, but there were lots of roots and air

22:13

pockets underneath the thing.

22:15

And I get the feeling that this looks

22:18

since you're looking for something buried, looked for pockets of air,

22:20

and so that it was completely in conclusive. They

22:23

threw in the ocean. She may have also pulverized

22:26

his bones to cover up her abomination.

22:30

Yeah, I wonder it's I

22:33

think this is what happened. I wonder how long they survived though.

22:35

I wonder if it was weeks

22:37

or months or what. Well consider

22:39

it. I mean, if her plane

22:41

went down in ninety seven and they

22:43

started colonizing at ninety eight,

22:46

she lasted less than a year. But

22:48

can you imagine if she like just gave up

22:50

and then like a week later the British come

22:52

to colonized Gardener Island. Yeah,

22:55

I mean, how horrible would that be? So she she

22:57

made it less than a year, if she made it to Gardner

23:00

Islander, Nicol mro ro what

23:02

I'm surprised about, And maybe she tried to do this

23:04

and Fred tried to do this. I'm surprised she didn't

23:07

leave something behind, like

23:10

instead of doing a handicraft. Maybe try and

23:12

scratch the name Amelia

23:15

into the aluminum and bury

23:18

that or something, or maybe it's something is

23:20

there and they just haven't found it yet. Yeah, there's a tree

23:22

that says crow with towing on it because she was a history

23:24

buff, Amelia

23:27

was here. Well that's uh, that's it as

23:29

it stands so far. Huh. You think

23:31

we'll ever do an update if they find her. We

23:34

always say we will, and we never do, and we never do.

23:36

So the answer to that question is no. If

23:38

you want to learn more about Amelia Earhart

23:41

and see a picture of how

23:43

cute Fred Noonan is and it's little old

23:45

timey aviator get up, you should

23:47

type air heart into the search

23:50

bar at how stuff works dot com. It's e A R

23:52

H A r T and that should bring it

23:54

up. I would think unless

23:57

we have articles on other air hearts, think

24:00

so. I guess it's time

24:02

then for a listener man. All right, Yeah,

24:07

I got one here. I asked for rehab experiences

24:09

quite a while ago, and I've got one

24:12

that I meant to read earlier, and here it is, and

24:14

I'm gonna jump around here. It's kind of along. Uh.

24:17

This is from Scott and in two thousand five,

24:19

he had pretty much worked himself into a rehab

24:21

hospital. He was working three different

24:23

jobs, hit a wall, couldn't

24:25

decide to walk this way or that way, or even pick up a pencil,

24:28

so he went to the er. After a fifteen

24:30

minute interview with a psychiatrist who

24:33

he said was quite attractive. I'm not sure why he told me that,

24:36

he said. She left and a guard came

24:38

to stand outside the room and she said, you know you're

24:40

not just gonna take a break. She said,

24:42

you need to be checked in. And this is

24:44

how I learned of the seventy two hour hold,

24:47

where a doctor decides you're at risk. So

24:50

that's what happened to him initially. Next

24:53

I wound up in an ambulance for a trip to a

24:55

cyclocked downward called Station two.

24:58

It sounds like the beginning of a very bad movie,

25:00

like a horror film exactly.

25:03

They dropped me off behind two heavily locked doors, and

25:06

the next thing you knew, I was relieved of my laces and

25:08

belt. Now I should say I was

25:10

not suicidal. I was just really out of ideas.

25:13

I don't I don't know what that means, out

25:15

of ideas like he was. He had he was indecisive,

25:18

he couldn't know. I think he means he was just burned

25:20

out, was having a nervous breakdown, out of

25:22

options, out of ideas. Yeah, it sounds like it. I

25:25

spent eight days in Station twenty two and saw some interesting

25:27

things, and here are a few. A meth addict

25:29

was admitted. She looked like she should weigh about a hundred and ten

25:32

to a hundred twenty pounds, but she weighed more

25:34

like eighty. She took one drink of orange

25:36

juice promptly dropped to the floor like a sack

25:38

of bones. And this is what I learned. What

25:40

a code red was the crash cart,

25:42

the e er in the whole parade. After

25:44

leaving Station twenty two, I transferred to a place

25:47

in the suburbs for a twenty eight day program. It

25:49

was pretty cool. I met a very well known author and

25:51

many other fascinating people. I

25:54

saw the girl sneaking out of the guy's room. The

25:56

whole thing had to bear the A A rhymes

25:58

and sayings, and I totally understand

26:01

Sandra Bullock. In twenty eight days, now the

26:03

big news was the guy who wrote a million little pieces

26:06

I was coming the next week because he had stayed

26:08

there before when he was writing the book, and

26:10

the Oprah people came on site to work out camera

26:12

locations in blocking and uh,

26:15

two days before they were to descend the

26:18

I made it up scandal occurred, so I never showed

26:21

clearly. Um, and here just a few

26:23

other little tips. People in rehab are insane

26:25

about sweets. I think there's a definite

26:28

link between sugar and addiction. Everyone

26:30

seemed to want to hook up with something sweet.

26:33

Um. I have seen that heroin sickness looks

26:35

worse than dying in a fire. Wow,

26:38

that's pretty bad. That's pretty bad. And a surprising

26:40

number of people were repeats I'm talking like,

26:43

yeah, this is my seventh time here. And

26:45

I also saw a lot of people who snuck off for a drink

26:47

and got kicked out. So Scott

26:50

is doing much better now. He is back on track, living

26:52

a great Lifett and he says,

26:55

I love what you guys do and how you do it. I

26:57

now give Takiva and co Ed and

26:59

pretty much pace the halls into your next episode.

27:02

Awesome, Thank

27:04

you very much, Scott. I'm very glad you're feeling

27:06

better. Right, took as long as you're not

27:08

pacing the halls of Station twenty two. Buddy. Um,

27:11

keep in touch with this on Facebook and Twitter?

27:15

Yeah, yeah, you know quickly? Can I say that?

27:17

If you have written listener

27:20

mail, we don't answer all those anymore

27:22

because there's just too many. Facebook is a great

27:24

place to submit questions

27:26

and get answers quicker or

27:29

at all. That's uh Facebook,

27:31

Yeah. Dot com slash stuff you should know, but we

27:33

still read the listener mails. Twitter

27:37

is uh s y s K podcast.

27:39

We also have that Kiva team k I

27:42

v A dot org slash team slash stuff

27:44

you should know. Coed's website

27:46

is c O E d U C dot

27:48

org. Um, and you

27:50

can always email us. Like Chuck said, we don't always

27:53

respond. I do sometimes, do you

27:55

still? Yeah? Okay, um, send us

27:57

an email to let us know what you do and

27:59

what you think you would do, or what you should

28:01

do when you run out of ideas, wrap

28:04

it up, send it to us at stuff

28:06

podcast at how stuff works

28:08

dot com For

28:12

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28:14

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28:16

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28:19

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28:22

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