Tonight we are doing Amelia Earhart. Wow, that was unscripted. Do you guys know a lot about this story? Not really. I know that she was flying across the ocean, yeah, that’s about all we know, in like a prop plane.

This one’s kind of cool because a lot of the theories are she shipwrecked and she lived out her life in a cave, kind of like Cast Away, kind of like Lost. She just never was found and there’s a lot of weird little stuff, allegedly. It’s really more of a mystery episode. There’s not a lot of conspiracies regarding it, but there’s some. I mean there’s one where people think that she was a spy for Roosevelt and she was trying to spy on the Japanese. Because this is the late 30s, so there’s some there.

Amelia Mary Earhart was born on July 24th, 1897 in Kansas. She grew up alongside her sister Grace, whose nickname was Pidge. Their childhood in Kansas was filled with adventure, exploring the neighborhood and engaging in activities like climbing trees and hunting rats with a rifle. This is what you do in Kansas. They’re still doing that in Kansas today.

I’ve hunted a rat, really, and it was with my hands. I was wearing gloves. I told my wife this like two years after it happened, after we moved out of that house. She was at work and I was at home and I just made food. I think I made tacos and I had the pan with the taco meat still on the thing.

I walk into the kitchen to put my plate away and there’s a rat sitting on the stove looking at me. It’s huge. There was a moment, we were staring at each other, he’s got his little hands up, his hands are moving, and he’s probably thinking, oh, this human just found me, so close. So I put my plate down and I slowly moved to the right to try to get the broom. I don’t know why I thought a broom was going to work, and he dips, he instantly dips, and my wife’s coming home in like an hour.

He goes behind the stove and I’m trying to spear him out, then he goes behind my pantry, and at this time I’m like, I got to get gloves. So I get gloves, luckily he’s still there, he then runs and I dive and miss, and he goes into my guest room. I already had rat traps because we had a rat problem in the garage, so I set up 12 rat traps in the room and I turn the lights off and I close the door.

Then my wife’s calling me, she’s like, hey baby, I’m leaving, I’ll be home soon. I’m freaking out, I’m sweating. So I go in there and I got my gloves on and a hammer. He ends up getting out, he gets into our room, he’s underneath our bed, and I’m throwing shoes at him to try to get him to move. He finally skates out and I grab him by the tail while he’s trying to escape.

I literally went outside and I smashed him on the concrete, swinging by the tail. Then I fixed the house real quick and she came home and she was like, why are you sweating? And I was like, I was doing push-ups. Two years later I told her and she was like, we would have moved.

So the Earhart family relocated to Des Moines, Iowa in 1907 where they eventually settled permanently. During this time Amelia and Pidge received homeschooling from their mom. Financial difficulties arose for the Earharts due to the father struggling with alcoholism, and he had to retire early. Then the grandmother of Amelia passed and that entire estate went to her and her family, so she kind of came into a bunch of money. She was then able to go to good schools and nurture her interest in science, and she even was able to get her first plane and get into aviation.

Amelia’s fascination with aviation deepened over the next couple years. Her first flight occurred in Long Beach in 1920. She was a passenger and was piloted by World War I ace Frank Hawks, and the experience ignited her love of flying. These are propeller planes, old school, kind of scary.

She started working various odd jobs, truck driving, photography, and she saved up enough money to do flying lessons. In 1921 she took her first flying lesson. Six months later, after doing the lessons, she purchased her first plane, and it was a bright yellow Kinner Airster biplane named the Canary.

Shortly after, she set a new altitude record for female pilots by ascending the Canary to 14,000 feet. What’s crazy is she set that record before she officially had her pilot’s license. She was super determined and it paid off when she earned her pilot’s license in 1923. She became the 16th woman to get a pilot’s license. What a crazy stat, to be the 16th person to ever do anything is amazing.

The following year, unfortunately, they ran out of money, and it’s also the Great Depression time. They had a few bad investments, they bought a plane, different things, and she was forced to sell her plane. She sought employment as a teacher, later a social worker, but despite the shifts in her career she continued to do aviation on the side. It finally stabilized her financial interests, and she started working in operations at Dennison Airport in Massachusetts. In 1927 she flew her first official flight.

So she started to become a little visible because she was a daring woman. It was the time of daring aviation, because it wasn’t really mainstream but it kind of was, and it was getting bigger and bigger. There were air shows, like we have the Blue Angels now. There wasn’t really an Air Force then. They were aces but they were propeller planes going slow, shooting bullets like a little handgun taped to the plane. There’s a famous German ace, and he was famous for his red scarf, but it just shows how slow you’re going.

This caught the attention of pilot Wilmer Stultz, who offered her a role in a transatlantic flight as a log keeper. So she was just keeping the log. But how do they have enough gas going so slow? They would just have big cans, fueling, barrels, actually really important for her later flight is how much gas did she have.

The flight was successful. It took off from Newfoundland on June 17th, 1928, and it landed in South Wales, which was 20 hours later. So that was a 20-hour flight across the Atlantic. Now it’s about four. New York to Dublin is like five or six hours. That’s pretty quick compared to 20, and we’re also going faster now.

Although she didn’t pilot the aircraft, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean. That’s the big famous thing she got. Upon their return they received a ticker-tape parade in Manhattan and President Coolidge came out from the White House. This President Coolidge, it’s right before Roosevelt.

Embracing her newfound celebrity status, Amelia used her influence to promote female aviation through celebrity endorsements and her own image. She was able to finance further flying endeavors and even became an associate editor for Cosmo magazine. She used her platform, as they say nowadays. She collaborated with Charles Lindbergh to advocate commercial air travel. By 1940 she became the VP of National Airways, which later became Northeast Airlines. So this is the birth of US commercial air.

During this period Amelia achieved numerous record-setting feats. In August of 1928 she flew across North America and back. In 1929 she participated in competitive air racing. In 1931 she set a new world altitude record by flying some crazy plane to 18,000 feet. The same year she married George Putnam, who pursued her persistently after his divorce in 1929. They didn’t have any children of their own but she had stepchildren.

I just think, especially in that type of plane, you’re just pissing yourself, right, in cups, in buckets. It’s easier for us with a penis, you know, you can aim it. I’m assuming they probably have a little apparatus in there, like a bed pan, and how about your pants? I guess the women had it harder. You cannot piss yourself for 20 hours, you have to poop before. My guess is that it’s some sort of bed pan and then there’s a chute at the bottom, and you just dump it out. That’s like flying over Missouri and you just get hit with a turd in the head. From that altitude the gravity is pulling it, turd missile.

Now here’s a strange little excerpt and I think it’s important for later, it may lend itself to one of the conspiracy theories. On her wedding day in 1931 the bride Earhart handed her 43-year-old groom George Putnam a letter, and this is what the letter said. You must know again my reluctance to marry, my feeling that I shatter thereby chances in work which means so much to me. In our life together I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me, nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly. I may have to keep some place where I can go to be by myself now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure all the confinements of even an attractive cage.

Can you imagine receiving this letter the day of your wedding from your wife? Here’s what I suspect. He really pursued her so much that she finally was reluctant, and also back then she needed the money, she needed a co-signer. He’s like, I need you here but you can do whatever you got to do, all to further my career.

Back then promiscuity wasn’t really like nowadays, like Tinder. Back in the 30s, marriage was a big deal, it was super taboo. So do you think this letter is she wants to sleep around, or she’s saying I don’t even really want to marry you, you can do what you want? I think it’s do what you want, I don’t want to be beholden. Almost like society expects us to be married, so let’s do it, but you’re kind of like my homie.

She’s also saying I’m going to be gone, I’m not going to be here long, I’m going to do a prop plane to China, this is a long time. I don’t want you to feel beholden to this thing I’m doing. Maybe she’s also talking about how back then women didn’t work as much, so she’s saying I’m going to be doing my thing over here. I’m not cooking, I’m not cleaning, I’m an independent woman, I’m a vice president. Okay, we figured out the letter, debunked.

So in 1932 Amelia planned a solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic, aiming to replicate Charles Lindbergh’s journey. She wanted to be the first woman to do it, and this was a year later. So going back to the letter, she already knew she had this plan, like I’m going to be gone.

Despite poor weather conditions preventing her from reaching Paris, she became the first female aviator to fly non-stop across the Atlantic. She landed in Northern Ireland, and it was 14 hours and 56 minutes after taking off from Newfoundland. What a badass. Congress awarded her the Distinguished Flying Cross and she received honors from the French government and the National Geographic Society.

Her solo flights continued, including a flight from Hawaii to California, then LA to Mexico City, Mexico City to New York. She just kept going, and back in that day that sounds cool, that actually sounds pretty sick.

At this point this is 1935 and she needed a navigator, and she found this guy, his name is Fred Noonan, and Fred Noonan is who went down with her. Fred Noonan was an aviation navigator born in 1893. He gained prominence for his work as a navigator, particularly during the years of the transoceanic flights. Noonan served in the Navy during World War I where he developed his skills as a navigator. After the war he pursued a career in commercial aviation, becoming one of the most skilled and respected navigators of his time.

For a good period of time Noonan worked as a navigator for Pan Am, where he played a crucial role in developing air routes across the Pacific Ocean. His expertise in celestial navigation was highly regarded and he contributed significantly to the advancement of long-distance air travel. So he was kind of a pioneer of navigation. It’s not like she got some random navigator, he’s the goat navigator of the time.

This is the part that is contested and I’m sure we’re going to get some emails on this, but I’m just going to tell you what I found. He resigned from Pan Am because he felt he had gone too far as a navigator. Meaning he’s the top navigator, you can’t go higher, there’s no room. I dominated this already, I’m going to retire.

Now here’s what’s crazy to me. If you start watching documentaries and Netflix stuff and all this YouTube, they all say Fred was a raging alcoholic, because they’re trying to find a basis to go that’s maybe one of the reasons. But there are a lot of people who say he was fired from Pan Am for being an alcoholic, yet nothing ever says he was fired. He says he resigned and it wasn’t for alcoholism. Maybe he developed some cool ways of navigation that Pan Am wanted to keep, and if it came out he was a raging drunk it would discredit the technology. Or maybe it’s a good old boy thing, he was homies with one of the VPs.

Per the records and his own writings, he only occasionally indulged in booze. So take that as you will, because I watched about three or four documentaries where there was 20 minutes on how he’s a raging alcoholic, all of them said the same thing. They say that on their final flight, every stop they did, he was just at the bar.

But do you think it’s fair, if you’re seen at a bar, does that mean you’re drinking? Imagine you see the captain of your flight at the bar with you, that’s a little suspect. You see a guy at a strip club, do you think he’s a perv? You’re also at the strip club, so the analogy doesn’t really work. But you see a pilot at the bar throwing down with you, then yes, that’s suspect, maybe there’s some validity to this.

There’s a good movie with Denzel where he’s a drunk pilot. He does this impossible maneuver and they’re like, how did you do that? He’s like, I’m drunk right now. They’re like, you have a seven alcohol in your system and cocaine and it would kill any other human. So maybe Fred needs to operate, he operates at a high level under the influence. But the movie isn’t a true story, it’s based on a real flight but not a true story, so the alcohol thing was a dramatization.

We are going to play some of her audio so enjoy. Among all the marvels of modern invention, that with which I am most concerned is of course air transportation. Flying is perhaps the most dramatic of recent scientific attainments. In the brief span of 30-odd years the world has seen an inventor’s dream first materialized by the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk become an everyday actuality. Perhaps I’m prejudiced, but to me it seems that no other phase of modern progress contrives to maintain such a brimming measure of romance and beauty coupled with utility as does aviation.

Aviation, this young modern giant, exemplifies the possible relationship of women and the creations of science. Although women as yet have not taken full advantage of its use and benefits, air travel is as available to them as to men. In aviation they are arbiters of whether or not their families shall fly. And lastly there is a place within the industry itself for women who work. While still greatly outnumbered, they are finding more and more opportunities for employment. May I hope this movement will spread throughout all branches of applied science and industry, and that women may come to share with men the joy of doing.

It’s crazy because it’s exactly what Sean’s saying about that accent, but it’s a little eerie.

So the final flight of Amelia Earhart happened in 1937, and she embarked on an ambitious around-the-world flight, piloting a special craft called the Lockheed Model 10E Electra. It was equipped with enlarged fuel tanks so she could go long distances. She aimed to follow a route that was really close to the equator. Her initial attempt in March of 1937, flying westward, abruptly ended when she crashed in Hawaii.

I wonder what the equator thing is all about, I wonder if it was near the weather. Probably if you follow the equator it’s less premium weather. If you think of hurricane systems, it all happens with the differential between hot and cold air hitting each other that creates these weird storm cells. So maybe if it’s just straight hot everywhere they’re like, it just rains, that’s all.

On May 21st, 1937 she departed Oakland, California in the now-repaired Electra that had problems. It wasn’t a big crash, she survived, so it wasn’t that bad. She was accompanied by her navigator Fred Noonan. Their course was predominantly overland. They made stops in Burbank, Tucson, New Orleans, et cetera.

Can I bring up a point? Does it feel less of an accomplishment if you just stop all the time? It’s impossible to not stop, but they’re stopping every two hours. It’s like, I biked the US, it took me seven years, I biked to Ocala then back. It just seems, it’s not like the Tour de France where they’re actually biking nonstop. They’re like, New Orleans is not on our way, Fred. Yes it is, I’m the navigator, trust me.

They continued their journey, they traversed the Caribbean, they received a warm welcome in San Juan, then they flew to Brazil, making the longest completed leg of their voyage at 1700 miles. Their route then took them across Africa, which stopped in West Africa, followed by a journey east to the Sahel region and onward to Ethiopia. Departing from Ethiopia they achieved the first Africa-to-India flight, landing in Karachi, which was then part of India, which was 1600 miles.

I wonder how they set this up. Do they call ahead, like, yo, we’re Americans, we’re going to be landing in your country? The nightmare of every stop and refueling, and almost all these countries on the back. What if they don’t speak English? You’re like, gas, I need gas, do you take cash, like, what do you do? It’s amazing.

They went from Kolkata, India, they made stops in Bangkok, the Dutch East Indies, they hit monsoon weather one time and Amelia got sick. After she got done being sick she had more repairs on her faulty instruments and she stopped in Australia. They resumed their journey eastward reaching New Guinea on June 29th.

Amelia Earhart’s next destination was something called Howland Island, and this was 2200 miles away from where she took off from in Australia, and this was the longest overwater leg of the journey. In order to facilitate this she arranged, because it’s kind of a PR thing too, publicity, she got help from the US Coast Guard. There was a ship that was positioned right off Howland Island and it was going to be their communication headquarters. The plan was to land on the island, but the ship was going to be there so they could have comms, and just in case something happened. That ship is called the Itasca.

So she departed Lae in New Guinea and the Electra embarked on its voyage. Eight hours later Earhart made her final call to Lae at 1930 hours. The Itasca received a distressing message and it said, KHAQQ calling Itasca, we must be on you but cannot see you, gas is running low. An hour later the last communication arrived and it said, we are in a line position of 157-337, we will report on 6210 kilocycles, we are running north and south. The north and south I think is important because this is her words.

Just imagine you’re flying to Howland Island and you can’t find the island. It’s southwest of Honolulu, and her next stop would have been Honolulu, she was going to stop there. It’s a long way from Lae, 2200 miles, so that’s almost the entire United States, which is about 2800 miles. That’s insane.

During Earhart and Noonan’s approach to Howland Island, the Itasca received strong and clear voice transmissions from Earhart identifying as KHAQQ, but she apparently was unable to hear the voice transmissions from the ship. Signals from the ship would also be used for direction finding. The first calls, routine reports stating the weather as cloudy and overcast, were received at 2:45, and just before 5:00 a.m. on July 2nd these calls were broken up by static, but at this point the aircraft would still be a long distance from Howland Island.

At 6:14 a.m. another call was received stating the aircraft was within 200 miles and requested that the ship use its direction finder to provide a bearing for the aircraft. Earhart began whistling into the microphone to provide a continual signal for them to home in on. It was at this point that the radio operators on the Itasca realized that their RDF system could not tune into the aircraft’s frequency. Radio man Leo Bellarts later commented that he was sitting there sweating blood because I couldn’t do a darn thing about it.

So she’s talking over the radio but the Itasca is not receiving, she’s trying to keep a solid communication out. It’s almost like if you’re talking and I can hear you but I can’t acknowledge that I hear you. Imagine you’re Amelia and you’re saying all these things and nobody’s replying to you. Please answer me, we’re running out of gas, and I’m stuck with Frank.

At 7:42 a.m. Earhart said, we must be on you but cannot see you, gas is running low, have been unable to reach you by radio, we are flying at 1,000 feet. That’s hella low. This island is pretty tiny compared to Honolulu. When you see this map, Howland Island looks like a pencil, it’s 12 feet in diameter, it’s like a box in the ocean. So she couldn’t spot it, you’re just broadcasting into space, you know that your death is imminent.

It makes it even worse, you know there’s a Coast Guard ship out there that could save you, but where are you? It’s amazing she kept her professionalism, she was communicating the way she should have all the way up to the end. I would have dropped that out way fast, I’m like, you help me.

After this happened, Roosevelt put together the biggest and most expensive search and rescue mission that had ever been done up to that point, millions of dollars. Four and a half million, but in the 30s that was like a billion dollars. They covered 3,100 square miles, that’s massive.

I just wanted to point out one part in what she says, which is, we’re running north and south. From what I understand that means they’re at Howland Island but they can’t see it, so instead of continuing to go straight, because she’s out of gas, she’s going up and down to find it, like a grid search. The idea is that some people think she went up and down, turned around, and that’s why one of the biggest theories is that she made it to Gardner Island, like Cast Away.

Eventually they called off the search, and ever since then Amelia Earhart has been missing. There’s no plane wreckage. Imagine if she’s going north and south trying to look for the island and she was only a little ways off. If she had only gone south, it could be minutes, it’s literally right there. Although she was pretty low, you could see it even if it’s dark, it would have a shadow.

There was a news article that came out recently. What’s funny about the news nowadays is they’re grasping so hard to solve something. The headlines are pretty much, they found Amelia Earhart’s plane, and you read the article and what they did is sonar somewhere near Gardner Island under a crashed plane. They don’t even know they have the plane yet, all they know is that it’s the same size, so it’s hella loose, and it’s sonar too, so it’s not 100% accurate.

So the official explanation says that the plane ran out of fuel, crashed into the sea, and they died on impact. You would hope so, I would hope to die on impact in that scenario, I don’t want to die in the ocean, that sounds terrible.

So you guys ready for the theories? Theory one we kind of already touched on, which is that she just crashed into the ocean. They proposed she ran out of fuel while searching for the tiny island of Howland and subsequently crashed into the open ocean, resulting in them drowning. The theory exists because of the distress calls to the Itasca, reporting low fuel and that she couldn’t see anything. After $4 million spent on a rescue operation nothing was found, and the theory is it’s 18,000 feet down, similar to the depth of the Titanic, which is why it was so hard to find. We didn’t even have the technology, we had to build robots, and it took years.

That’s a search and rescue mission, they’re just looking for if somebody’s out there floating, surviving. It’s not like they’re looking for a sunken plane or the actual evidence down there. They’re just looking, you see a raft or some debris. Most of that debris isn’t built to float like nowadays, it’s straight up steel, cast iron. Maybe if you saw oil, but how are you going to see oil? That shimmering thing off the water, oh, that’s just a wave.

The plane at this time was about 80 miles per hour, just to give you an idea. That prop plane is hella slow, and they’re going 1600 miles, that’s like 20 hours to everywhere. If that’s a theory, then what’s the problem, why did they mess up? Maybe a navigator gave her the wrong bearing, and the island’s tiny, and maybe it’s cloudy and they have rudimentary technology. I read somewhere if you take off from LA to New York and you’re 5 degrees off your path, you end up in Miami. He could have been off by just a little bit and by the time they get there it’s a little speck of an island.

Another theory is that she successfully landed her plane not on Howland Island but Gardner Island, which is just south of it. This is presented by the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, that suggested she landed there and eventually perished on the island, living in a cave like Cast Away. Is there anything there at Gardner Island, did anybody live there? Various searches have been conducted including Navy planes and private individuals, but there’s not really conclusive evidence on the island. They did find bones and they did find a shoe from the 1920s worn by a woman.

What’s crazy is there’s a guy named Robert Ballard, he’s the dude who found the Titanic. He did his own search, he’s like, I am the authority on finding things, but he came up with nothing, went to the island. In March of 2011 ongoing efforts continued and they found bones on that island, and they analyzed the DNA from the bones, however it was inconclusive. They established they were the bones of a human but there was no discovery of aircraft, no huts on the island, nothing aside from that shoe. That shoe could have floated in, or honestly she went through a thrift store, that’s why it’s from the 1920s.

The coolest theory, I wish she crashed into the ocean, she swam, she started living off coconuts and living in the cave, and she discovered ancient technology and she’s actually still alive now. She had her own little Wilson to play with. I love that movie, that was the saddest moment ever, I was so close to crying, over a volleyball. That story is a little insane, he happened to be the smartest man on earth, he created a calendar in a cave with a little light. I might do a rewatch.

Theory three, some speculate that Earhart and Noonan were captured by the Japanese and pulled from the crash site. There was a photo found in the National Archives depicting a woman resembling Earhart and a man resembling Noonan on a dock in the Marshall Islands. The Japanese capture hypothesis suggests they were taken prisoner by Japanese forces in the Marshall Islands. Some believe they were captured after the plane crashed, or were shot down.

But how far away is this island from Japan? Pretty far. They knew they were there, they have the radio frequencies, there’s a Coast Guard ship in the area picking it up, it’s got to be a thousand miles. There’s no way the Japanese happened to be sauntering over here like, oh, look what we found, boys.

Here are the alleged eyewitnesses. Some Saipanese women claim to have witnessed their execution by Japanese soldiers. The theory is that they were captured and then a woman claimed to have witnessed them executed by the Japanese. There’s no independent confirmation of this. It’s one of those, I saw them kill him, and it could have been anybody. How did she know, did they translate from Saipanese?

Let’s take up this photo. This is the photo they claimed, and apparently that’s Earhart, but you can’t even see their faces. The only thing I can actually extrapolate for a fact from this picture is that they’re wearing shirts and there’s boats around them, everything else is a shadow. Regardless, it was later found out that it was a picture from a Japanese coffee table book and the photo was taken years earlier. So a lot of people go, have you seen the photos of her on Marshall Islands? That’s what that is, on the Japanese coffee table book.

Theory four, there are claims that suggest that Earhart’s mission was not just pioneering aviation but acting as a government agent for the United States, a spy. According to Randall Brink, author of the book Lost Star, Earhart’s true objective was not to reach Howland Island but to gather intelligence on Japanese installations for the US government. Brink theorizes that Earhart and Noonan’s flight was a covert mission intending to document Japanese activities in the Pacific prior to World War II.

It’s not that crazy. She was also looking for funding and prestige and they were probably like, we’ll buy you whatever. It’s perfect, she’s already famous, they’ve been making her famous, and you would never suspect a woman pilot to be spying. What’s interesting is this one would go back to the other one, that maybe she was shot down by the Japanese, because they say she’s a spy. How would they know? Maybe their intel’s really good, or maybe it was Frank, Frank’s a double agent.

There’s a movie that came out in 1943 called Flight for Freedom and it popularized the notion that Amelia Earhart was involved in espionage for FDR. That rumor led to the suggestion that Earhart made propaganda broadcasts as Tokyo Rose, but then George Putnam, her husband, investigated it and found no evidence to support it. It’s like, he’s investigating that, of course he’s not going to find anything.

If you guys don’t know what Tokyo Rose is, it was a name given by the Allied troops in the South Pacific during World War II to all female English-speaking radio broadcasters of Japanese propaganda. Their programs were broadcast in the South Pacific and North America to demoralize Allied forces. So they were the women who spoke English, and they would talk about propaganda to demoralize Allied forces.

Last theory, the last theory is that she faked her own death, changed her identity, and lived out her life somewhere else, all to get rid of her husband. In the 1970 publication of Amelia Earhart Lives, authored by Joe Klaas, the book proposes that Earhart survived the plane crash in the Pacific Ocean, then was captured by the Japanese, then was rescued by the US forces, then was made a spy, then was covertly returned into witness protection, and then lived out her life as Irene Bolam in New Jersey. This one’s instantly debunked, a homie wrote a book about it.

Do you think somebody that famous could make it into witness protection? No way. Anyone who gets a ticker-tape parade for anything, she looks not normal, with the short hair, and she’s super tall and slender, she just doesn’t look like a normal 1930s woman, so she would probably stand out.

So what do you think happened to Amelia? I think they crashed, she died on impact, and she’s just somewhere, I don’t even know. I think Frank messed it up hard, that’s a long trip, even if he wasn’t drunk it’s a lot. What’s the longest flight you’ve been on? Ten hours, probably. Germany is 14, I did Hong Kong, that’s 13. Just imagine this leg alone is 20, you’re 20 in a metal thing with a bed pan. What do you eat, you bring food, provisions, beef, turkey, of course you probably have multiple meals.

What’s the longest you’ve driven on a road trip yourself, no sleep? I did it from Florida in 42 hours, I stopped multiple times but no sleep, I was 18 years old. I stopped at Denny’s and sat there with the coffee for like two hours. The most I’ve done myself straight was 16 hours, and it gets wild, you’re seeing things by the end, not like you’re seeing aliens or UFOs.

You know what gets me, by the time this happened the navigator had navigated them throughout the whole plan pretty much, look at how close that is to being done. At first I was thinking, but I actually don’t know how easy it is to make a simple mistake like that. Navigating over land and over sea maybe is not the same thing, a different animal. So that’s what I think is probably the most probable, he just messed up on navigation on the way there. No one’s 100% all the time.

Here’s what I think happened and I hope it happened. I think she made it to an island, the South one, Gardner. If we’re talking about what I hope happened, I hope she was a spy, that would be sick, they should make a movie about that. If I had to be specific, I bet she made it to an island but she was injured and then she just died pretty quickly. She crashed on the water and then somehow made it, she was close enough to the other island to swim there, but she was injured. What about Frank? He died before the crash, somehow he was in the water before the crash.

You know what’s cool is that nowadays we have the black box, but sometimes they lose that, like the Malaysian flight, they still haven’t found that. We’ve got to do an episode on that. Okay guys, that’s what we got tonight.