And That's Why We Drink - E338 Caramel Apple Eating Ghosts and Moist Brains

Episode Date: July 30, 2023

Recording in progress... please excuse any technical difficulties in episode 338, including Christine being in an entirely different outfit at one point during her story. This week Em takes us on a hypnotizing journey into the world of the subconscious with the story of Franz Mesmer, the father of mesmerizing. Then Christine brings us the mysterious and tragic case of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, that disappeared with barely a trace on its regularly scheduled route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. And don't tell Reddit how intoxicated Christine was at the Taylor Swift concert... and that's why we drink!

all right it looks like we're recording there's no zoom lady to go recording now recording in whatever you think i would have memorized her one line by now i'm pretty sure she says the two words, recording now. No? No, I don't think so. Recording now. Recording in progress. Recording now. Recording in progress.

Is that wrong? Eva, what does Zoom say? Eva? What the hell did she say? Are you gaslighting me, Christine? I feel pretty confident recording now. Recording in progress. No way. Yes. Recording in progress. No way.

Yes. Recording in progress. You don't hear it? I'm so good at it. Well, now it's... Hold on. Do it again. One more time.

Recording in progress. Oh, my God. I'm on Zoom by accident. Hang on. I got to switch over. It sounds like we just hit record eight times and just kept stopping it, which also is entirely possible because we have done that before. Christine, look at you and

your little tie dye what's the vibe here's what's happening there's so many things happening i got all the updates okay you see me okay yeah okay i got a new webcam it's supposed to be like 4k and like really fancy um i don't know why but i just was like let's fucking up our quality you know what i mean So we'll see if it works. It's like on a tripod up there, but you can kind of see more of my background now. A wide lens. Yeah. It's a wide lens situation we've got going on. I went to the Fall Out Boy concert and it was the best night of my life.

Right. Oh my gosh. Did you wear your shirt? No, because I felt like i was a little bit made fun of by people not really why well like i made a comment by me my sister was like oh yeah it looks homemade or something and she was just trying to be supportive but it was like oh no now i'm paranoid so i didn't wear it i was gonna say who say, who do I got to beat up? But it's your baby sister. Not my sister, please. She is not a minor anymore. So there's that. So that's OK. But still, she's my sister.

But look at my, do you want to see my Fall Boy manicure? Remember how I told you I have all these new passions or hobbies? Yes. Yes. I'm familiar with your passions. Those are amazing. I like your little, oh, the thumb is my favorite. I don't know what it is, though. What is it?

It's like they're a symbol they have of like a smiley face that's half smiling and half not smiling. That does seem like your vibe entirely. And then you've got a little French tip and a star. Yeah, and a little like hand-drawn star and then like a little antler. Very cool. Is the antler, does that mean something? It's like from Sugar, We're Going Down, Swing In. Anyway, it was the best night of my life. I got recognized by so many people and it was horrifying because I was extremely intoxicated

and I remember most of the encounters. And then the last one, I started yelling at this poor woman in her face, don't tell Reddit that I'm drunk. And she was like, I won't. And I was like, don't worry. I that i'm drunk and she was like i won't and i was like don't worry i'm fine i hear how drunk i sound okay and i can consciously understand like i was going on this crazy rant and my sister and renee were like can we leave and i was like i just need to tell her not to put it on reddit and she was like i'm not putting what are you wow someone's fears

really came out it was like crazy town it was like crazy town um and i like i got photos of people and i'm like every time it's like you've been tagged i'm like oh nothing's come up yet but i'm like oh god you're gonna see my one eye open like i love christine's one eye that doesn't know how to stay open oh she's so confused that little lie she doesn't know where she's going she's like can we go to bed please um she's already in bed i don't know what you're talking about she's tucked in she's down for the count um but anyway it was the best night of my life and renee came down from cleveland and my sister went with her boyfriend it was just so fun and amazing and um i'm in love

with patrick sumple all over again it's not i'm sorry i'm so surprised yeah i know um but then the next day i was like oh i have an appointment at my gi doctor and i went in they were like we need an emergency colonoscopy on you stat and so literally in two days i have to get freaking camera up my butt yeah again again your butt is getting so familiar with cameras it's getting a lot of action you know she's got a lot of action, you know? She's got a lot of FaceTime. I wonder if her camera's in 4K. Oh my God. Actually, maybe.

I have photos. I hope so. I medically hope so. I have photos, but they're not pleasant. Of your tushy? Of the inside. Yeah. Can I see?

Is that weird? Yeah. No. I mean, I've shown them to you before. I'm pretty sure because they were in Los Feliz with me. And I think I showed you once because you were the only one who offered to see them. And I was like, thank you. Here's my ulcers.

Not to be like gross about it, but I do want to know, you know. Yeah. I mean, I wanted to know. I thought it was interesting. I would see your intestines if I was offered. One day you will be offered just give it like 6 45 50 60 whatever the like recommended age is i'm supposed to get them now every two years for the rest of my life two years every two years yeah and i got my last one

pre-covid so they're like you are late on this and like you we gotta get moving and tomorrow i start i went to walgreens, picked up my prep. And it's like this big of all this powder. And they were like, you have to wake up at 1.30 a.m. and drink it. Yeah, you're going to be, I mean, I know you're going to be miserable. And you know that because you've done this before. But I still feel so bad for you. Well, thank you. Today I'm drinking a cherry Coke, a black cherry cane sugar soda.

Because starting tomorrow, i can't drink anything with red dye in it so you're going full red today so i'm just like eating red which i'm pretty sure i'm also red 40 allergic to but we'll see what happens like i get rashes a little bit when i eat a lot of red dye okay well we'll find out tonight if that um anyway I'm sorry. I've talked so much. How are you? I miss you. I miss you. When did I last see you? A long time, it feels. No, when did I last see you?

In person? Like half a thousand years ago? Yeah, I mean, I can't even recall. I miss your body in the same room as my body. You know what I mean? I know. I think that also is a Fall Out Boy line. You've been speaking in a lot of really mysterious terms.

I'm trying to channel whatever love language you need, you know? Oh my God, that is the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me. Looking at my pictures of my intestines. I'm trying to create faux Fall Out Boy, AI- boy AI generated lyrics and look at your butt. That's so good. You're so good at it. Oh, there actually is a fallout boy line. It's called your inside x-ray or like an x-ray of your insides or something.

So it really does seem like they're on to something. Yeah. How am I here and there? I'm really the main thing. I will evade more medical talk for once in everyone's life. I've had a lot of friends come into town recently, which has been very lovely. But I'm also I think I'm when we're recording this, it's mid-July and I really haven't not had a social thing happen for a while. I don't even know if I said that the right way. I know what you mean. Like I went to, you know, we had RJ's wedding.

My mom came into town immediately after that. Then my friends came into town immediately after that. I just had more friends come into town. And then next week or two weeks from now, I'm heading home to be with hometown friends. I just I just want to take a nap and have no one talk to me ever again. You know, honestly, will it be nice to be home, though, because you can like actually just like hovel yourself into your childhood home? Or is it like too social there too? No, it's definitely not too social there. I revert to childhood when I go to my mom's house and I just

lay under a blanket and I'm like, I'm hungry. I also revert to childhood. But the problem with that is I have, I think my biggest, I have many flaws to be clear. You have one and only flaw. Let's all be real. My least favorite flaw about myself is that I am nostalgic to a fault and I do know that about you for sure and I hurt my own feelings a lot when I go home because in my mind going home the only times I've ever gone home were for like a college break or something and so every time I go home part of me is like real bummed that like first of all half my friends don't even live there anymore and the ones that do have to work and I'm like so you're like it's not the same yeah so I get all all hurt that I'm like driving through

my hometown and no one wants to play with me oh my god I'm always like I don't want to tell well I live here now but before I'd be like I don't want to tell anyone I'm coming home so that I can just sleep for many days yeah I you know it's it's, it's, I wonder how it's going to be this time. Maybe that's my biggest flaw. Well, it's not the biggest, but it's one of them. Quick.

This whole episode will be us just listing our flaws. It'll be four hours long. It's going to be, I was going to say, you said quick. That is a wrong word. Um, I,

it, I think this time around, maybe I'll be happy with the fact that people have to work and can't play with me because I'm socially burnt out, as I said, but usually going home. I'm, I'm so happy with the fact that people have to work and can't play with me because I'm socially burnt out, as I said. But usually going home, I'm so happy to be home. But part of me is always a little sad because it makes me miss the good times about being a teenager. Well, that's fair. Yeah, I'm very lucky.

I very much loved my hometown and my childhood. That's really great. I still have my childhood bed. my childhood and so that's really and i still have my childhood bed and so it's it's whenever i go there everything feels like i'm 17 again including my fucking attitude when my mom's in the room by the way that's what i'm saying that's what i'm saying i'm already i apologize now mom for my behavior because it's going to be crazy they love it they're like no we don't we actually i know she hates it but as soon as i'm gone, maybe she wishes one more day of it. That's what I'm saying.

Like, maybe they just got to dig a little deeper and realize. As a mom now, what is it like to know that one day Leona's just going to be like, you know, have her moment where she's just a little hellish? I don't know. It's so weird because I'm like, I can't even. She'll still love you, but she's going to, you know, she's going to be finding herself. It's going to be scary. You know, I'm a little scared because I'm like gonna you know she's gonna be finding herself it's gonna be scary you know i'm a little scared because i'm like you know it's scary like to have especially now with like the new parenting techniques or like the just you know shift in how we approach children and our relationship with our children like i don't know i'm worried

because i'm like there's a i feel like there's an area that's to maintain of like independence and freedom but also like keeping them safe and i don't know it seems like wild wild west because it's like well we don't know what the internet will look like in 10 15 years like the thought of that is mind-boggling to me is everything ai is it not fallout boy anymore it's just m speaking in ai fallout boy is it just a deep fake of me as like Pete Wentz? Now that, if that's the only thing on the internet, man, then I don't know. Count me in. We have not even, you and I have never even really done our own friendship deep dive into

AI yet. So the next time I see you, I'm going to get you good and high. Maybe a little tipsy. It's going to be the M. You have no idea. Sometimes when I get excited, I really start shouting, but I'm so excited. That is going to be, well, can I come to your hometown? Now I want to play. Yeah, you can. I'm well, I have to be there. I mean, I'm going to see you in 10 days, homie. Don't you have a show? Oh, yeah. Hey. Can I come to your hometown? You're like, I mean, you're contractually obligated to in literally 10 days.

It's like you've agreed to. So, yeah. Yeah, DC, baby. So that means I have to get a plane ticket. Wow. Wee. Wow. Worth it. Okay.

So that's the next thing on the docket after we record. I don't even have my plane ticket yet we record um i don't need to have my plane ticket yet okay so don't worry everyone uh oh one good i'll leave it on this tiny little thing a good reason why i drank this week by the way i'm drinking some starbies i'm having an arnie p a little black tea lemonade what's that flower on it i don't know she just appeared a sticker it's a sticker they just put her on so cute i didn't want to ask questions because i was afraid they'd take my sticker away um you can't have that who gave that to you whoa i was looking for that um i was looking for my post-it note flower

anyway having an arnie p um on this monday and well it's sund for others but Monday to you and me and why do I drink? Oh I in my refrigerator Christine have two caramel apples. You do? Eat in July? It's not even autumn yet.

I'm so naughty. I'm so amped for you right now. There is nothing that this person right here loves more than a caramel apple so i know it plain none of this nonsense with the with the dips oh my god you know me i'm like cover it in every conceivable condiment and item that you can oreo nuts granola i don't care sprinkles i know i just want her just a good old slap some caramel on her uh we went to so many uh one of my friend was in town we just kind of went to a million different shops we went to a candy shop and obviously i was gonna say like it

wasn't a harvest fair it's too early for that it's candy shop but i beelined it to where i thought the candy apples might be and i hate a candy apple i like no i don't know who eats a candy apple but good for you people from 1952 who are probably ghosts now has to buy people i mean like old people from 1952 who now don't exist anymore i don't know a person in my life who enjoys a candy apple. Maybe you are one of them. We're going to hear. We're going to listen. Megan, can you put a poll on Instagram and say caramel or candy apple and see what happens?

Actually, just put caramel or caramel because no one's going to pick candy. I want to know how many sickos there are out there listening. Anyway, not only do I have one, I have a two. And I'm so excited about it. And I'm good. I'm oh, I'm oh, I'm so excited. Oh, every time we fly, even I we fly out of Burbank, obviously. Yeah.

When we're when we're touring and every time we get a layover in Denver, I get so fucking thrilled because the Denver airport, the terminal that we always end up in for our layover has the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and they always have caramel apples. That's right. And every time we have a layover in Denver, I'm significantly happier after the tour because I had a caramel apple that week. Yeah. The chart is like bizarre. It's like roller coaster.

You get to see that demonic horse and stuff. So it is a good time. And that's the truth. Yeah. Anyway. Did everyone enjoy those 15 minutes? Christine, the story I have is real silly. Oh, okay.

It's. What could it mean? What could it mean? It's just. Well, you'll understand what I mean with the silliness. Okay. So this is kind of like a what's it called? Like a biopic of like when do when I do those episodes about a person?

Yeah. I mean, yeah. This is also a bit of a deep dive on some interesting histories. This is also a bit of a deep dive on some interesting histories. So here today, for all of you, I am telling you the tale, the biopic of Franz Mesmer, the father of mesmerizing. Yes. A.K.A. the father of hypnotism. Hypnosis.

Oh, I'm. OK, I'm buckled up sorry i needed to swallow the rest of my cookie it's like are you doing it are you uh conducting mesmerizing you oh you know what oh you know what i just saw if anyone wasn't watching youtube those last few seconds made no sense but i was doing a wave thing with my hands silence you know what um I watched a TikTok recently where someone said, my favorite thing about older white women is when they're dancing, they look like they're casting a spell on the sky because they all do this. You're 100% right. That's what I'm doing. Every time you call me Kermit, because you call me Kermit for my dance moves, what I'm

really doing is conjuring some magic, you know? So how dare you? Anyway, that's my TikTok of the day for everybody to go find. What a fun scavenger hunt for you. Okay. So here's Franz. F-R-A-N-Z. Frank with a Z?

Franz? Okay. Yep. You would think I would know how to pronounce it, but I am terrified every time I mispronounce something. Franz, Franziska, like my sister, Franz. So I am mispronouncing it. No, you're not. You're just saying it in your own accent. In my silly dialect.

So, first of all, before we get into it let's discuss discuss hypnosis dear christine have you been hypnotized would you like to be hypnotized and what would it be for or what would you like done to you anything and everything okay i would love to be hypnotized i i'm afraid i'm too like in like too like neurotic to be hypnotized like i feel like i would be overthinking it the whole time i i'm afraid that I would either fully be like the weakest link, easiest, easiest victim, or I would be victim. Like, this is some sort of like true crime as I'm volunteering. Probably in this in this world, I'm also volunteering for it, but I'm still a victim

because I know I'm imagining like at one of those shows where like they make you sound silly. Kind of a victim. You're balking like a chicken. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I either think I would totally be the easiest person to hypnotize or it would just not work at all. That's my fear. I'm like, I feel like I would be overthinking it.

But I really want to be hypnotized. I know that's part of it, right? Like you're supposed to be like really on board. Both of my parents have been hypnotized. You know, we talked about that because I tried that hypnotherapy, but I don't think like, I mean, I've already talked about it for the phone anxiety thing, but like the first hour was just like talk therapy and it didn't really get to the bottom of anything. And then the hypnotherapy part was like kind of rushed and I don't think I actually was

hypnotized. I was just kind of laying there. So I really, but I really want to, I want to do a past life regression that's what i want to do my mom has been hypnotized uh in like on stage for a for a gimmick so she would she was down for that and then my dad was hypnotized to quit smoking and that worked and the in the water right or the oh my mom oh you're right she was hypnotized to quit smoking and that worked. And the, and the water, right? Or the, Oh, my mom. Oh,

you're right. She was hypnotized for, uh, I wasn't, I, I think that was a Tony Robbins seminar. Oh my God. Are you serious? Okay.

Because I've told you that woman loves Anthony Robbins. Excuse me, Anthony. I'm so sorry. Uh, Anthony. Yeah, no,

I, cause I remember you were saying like, and then she had to carry a water bottle around with her for the rest of her life. Maybe she was hypnotized. Mom, weigh in. It was because she was like one of those like crazed 90s moms who drink only Diet Coke exclusively. Right.

And so I guess they got her to feel like she constantly needs water and nothing else and now she like truly has a full-blown panic attack like slightly flawed uh situation but yeah i get it it worked in the end i guess i mean she doesn't really drink diet coke anymore but um and then my yeah my so if both of them can get hypnotized genetically i feel like maybe i am predisposed to also be like available to that you know i'm so curious like i really i really want do would you ever do like a past life regression yeah for sure do you believe that like believe that it would work like i don't know what if i'm just like inventing stuff in my own head you know yeah i don't know enough about it but i would be down to try

i would love to do it we should do it would not be a fun like youtube series or something yes every episode we just get hypnotized to do something else yeah i mean how fun that would be very fun and prop i don't maybe problematic i have no idea i i feel like uh i feel like there's a lot of people out there who kind of guffaw at hypnosis, but there are a lot of people in today's world who see it as which I think this is where I am currently. If there's more information I'm unaware of, then please check me. But the way I see it now is that it's just like another form of like guided meditation. Interesting. Which also makes me wonder if I would be good at it because I'm really not. I don't like guided meditation. Which also makes me wonder if I would be good at it because I'm really not,

I don't like guided meditation. I can't really get myself to that headspace. Yeah, it's hard. I struggle. I try to meditate and I really struggle with it, but I know I should be doing it more, especially for like lucid dreaming and all that. But yeah, I wonder, because I mean, I know they kind of talk you into like a, aren't your like brain waves supposed to change? I don't know. You tell me about hypnosis. I feel like I'm just taking over. So fun fact, one of the earliest references to hypnotism was in 3766 BC. I like how I was like BC or AD.

And then I was like, wait, that year has not even happened yet. Wow, that's pretty incredible, though. It was this sorcerer who apparently, I don't know, I guess he could tell anyone that he had. I don't really understand. He stared into the eyes of lions, multiple lions, not just one, until they apparently fell under his influence and they would follow him around. And I'm like, I think they were following you around for a different reason. You forgot that you had a sandwich in your pocket. Yeah, you forgot that you're walking raw meat to them.

Yeah, you are the sandwich, actually. Good point. And also, I feel like in the year 3766 BC, you could probably just tell someone that story at a bar and not be true but whatever maybe maybe it is bar at a tavern yeah so uh anyway one of the earliest references we have and hypnotism today is usually credited to a dr franz anton mesmer and he was born in 1734, almost 300 years ago. And in 1759, when he's at 25. Yes, sure. At 25, he began studying medicine at the University of Vienna.

So seven years later, he publishes his thesis and it is called de planetarum influxu in corpus humanum imagine having to write everything in latin you're like it's already hard enough to write a book now i have to write it all in latin it's exhausting i mean in 2023 it is i don't know if that was just if you just happen to just know it a lot better like I have to tell the AI to translate this to Latin and it takes like five minutes. It takes like such a pain in the ass. It's so apparent. It does. I have the translation for us.

Thank God. And it is the influence of the planets on the human body. Oh, that's really cool. It's giving astrology or something like that. Oh, for sure. So Franz thought that the moon and the planets influence our bodies. And thus, and the planets influence our bodies, and thus, if they were influencing our bodies,

they could impact our health. I like that. See, yes, I'm with you. To an extent. Don't stray from that, because I know the way I said that, you were about to back away. I'm also down with that.

I also am down with that, but this is where I feel like I have to give some sort of like almost like QAnon PSA of like the most insidious fringe beliefs stem from something that's easy to swallow. And. And I think it's a slippery slope. Not to I think we say that so often, but it's a slippery slope, like to say, oh, the planets influence our health. And then it's like, well. Then you start to stray from science or medicine and it's like, OK, now we're getting in a dangerous zone. So I like it to an extent in a theoretical way so far. And keep in mind, in the late 1700s, how much science and medicine was there that we still follow today to the T. So like just the leeches. Well, at least for me. Interesting. You mentioned that because here we go. Franz thought that the moon and the planets influence our bodies and thus could impact our health. And it is a very old concept. I'm saying it as if he created this, but he was but he wasn't blowing anyone's mind with this opinion of his back then. There were many earlier historians, doctors, philosophers who all thought the exact same thing that Franz did. bodies affected not just your health but this also included your behavior and your morals your whole personality was based on the celestial bodies and their positions okay this included

plinny the elder who said that i'm sorry everybody because the brain is the moistest organ in our body woof not the tongue fascinating it's not if you have dry mouth i would have loved for you to be the one to raise your hand at his lecture i would have been kicked out instantly first of all i'd be like is she a woman and also a witch but then also she keeps asking the dumbest questions the best part is he could have like been sick that day and you could have gone up and like been his adjunct and you would have been a witch and he would have been respected that's i know so tragic how that happens so plenty the elder was one of these people who thought oh the the planets and the moon are affecting our personalities because an example of it is since the brain is the moistest organ in our body uh it's somewhat like the it's somewhat like the

tides and so if the moon affects the tides, it affects the tides of our body. That's always my argument, to be fair, Pliny. I would have said the same thing. Because I've always said, well, not the moist part. I've never said that. I swear on my life, I've never said that. But I've always said, well, the moon and the tide

are correlated. We're 70% water or something. I was literally about to say that makes perfect sense because in my brain it totally does and in your moist moist brain it totally my big fat moist juicy brain yes um i so you are not alone in thinking that and truly centuries ago people were thinking the same thing um that our body is very much like the tides and so the planets must affect that um franz was one of those people where he was like i love this idea moon's planets affecting our bodies tides yes i'm down and he believed this included our bodily

humors because just like how you said we're 70% liquid, the bodily humors, if people don't know what those are, they're the four fluids that the ancient Greeks swore by that controlled our body. And so if they're fluid and the tides are fluid, the moon must affect our humors. Do you know anything about the humors? I know they're supposed to be in balance and then they believe that sickness was when they came out of balance.

So I know there was like a lot of bloodletting and that kind of thing. I don't remember. Is it bile? Is that one of them? So I don't remember the other three, though. There was. So this was a theory of the ancient Greeks, the four bodily humors, especially Hippocrates. He was down with this. And the four humors, especially Hippocrates. He was down with this.

And the four humors, which humor originally meant fluid, and just fun fact, as you said, if they were in perfect balance, we were healthy. If they were out of whack, then we were not healthy. Okay. And each humor was connected not only to our health, but each one was connected to a personality trait of ours. So there was yellow bile, which made us choleric or irritable. There's blood, which made you sanguine or positive, optimistic, happy.

So it was like essentially anger and happiness. Then there's phlegm, which is like easygoing and patient. And then black bile, which is melancholy or sadness. These are all such gross things. I mean, blood is blood, but the rest. Phlegm is a real special one. Nasty. the rest phlegm is a real special one nasty also health-wise they each uh were they all were associated with a different important organ of yours so blood was your heart phlegm was your

brain yellow bile was your liver and black bile was your spleen so if any of your humors were out of whack it could do it could have something to do with that organ that was leading to sickness. Also, a side effect was if your personality changed. If you were more irritable, you might have more yellow bile than normal. Excess bile. Exactly. And fun fact, a lot of old playwriting had characters where, if you look at them as archetypes,

they were actually just one of the four humors of the time so there was angry people happy people sad people or like easygoing patient people and the so like in the writer's room you'd ask like well what is their motivation and they'd be like we'll black pile yeah that's it it's They're sad. Well, apparently a lot of Shakespeare's writing, if you look at all of the characters, all the people who ever caused drama were always more irritable or choleric. And so they were, I guess they allegedly would have more yellow bile in their system compared to other characters he wrote about, which is such a weird thought thought but there was a whole article on like shakespeare's character archetypes and the four bodily humors it was very interesting guy had a lot of stuff going on and whoever wrote that article had a

lot of time by the way yeah seriously uh these humors also dictated our personalities and our health and early doctors had to figure out which of our humors were out of wax that they could treat it so if you had too much of one or too little of one it would cause illness and doctors had to balance your humors out to get you back to perfect health and because humors were also labeled hot or cold at this time uh treatments would require the opposite to bring you back to homeostasis so if you're let's say your issue was blood too much blood or not enough blood blood was seen as hot and moist yum delicious i like how the scene is that but like it is that well so we do know that yeah and what's interesting too i do like this theory a lot i don't fall for it totally but i do uh think it's like creative

is that each of the humors also had to do with a different element so that we're all connected in nature so blood is hot and moist like air phlegm is cold cold and moist like water yellow bile is hot and dry like fire and black bile is cold and dry like earth that's so interesting i do i like i i appreciate the kind of creativity there i also i'm like oh that's an interesting way if someone said that to me and i was stoned i'd be like you fucking figured it out dude for real you're lucky i didn't take any dummies today because i would be like probably making a big problem for us pr wise i'd be like actually let's bring leeches back and honestly i'm sober before you say leeches today okay so an example of this of like how they would treat a humor based on you know it's defining characters melancholy was often seen as cold and dry so

doctors would prescribe a hot and moist treatment so a lot of times if you were melancholy your insides were cold and dry therefore you should have a hot and moist meal like a hot juicy steak literally beef was the cure to melancholy which i can confirm can confirm steak does not make me sad ever so this is also as you've been saying where we get bloodletting because if you had too much blood i don't know how leeches are the opposite of hot and moist but all right i guess they just suck the blood right out of you kind of cold and moist i would imagine now nowadays, this is all the four bodily humors is considered bunk science. But it was interestingly, the first time that doctors actually saw illness as having direct natural causes. Up until this point, doctors truly just diagnosed like things happening based on

supernatural problems. Wow, That's hard to believe. It was in the, I guess, well, I don't know the timeline here, but a lot of people in the world of bodily humor era, that was the game changer for doctors because they actually started listening to people when they said that they didn't feel good and they didn't just blame it on the cosmos. I mean, that's true. It sounds so ridiculous now, but you're right. The fact that they're even saying it has to do with your physical ailments and your physical imbalance like yeah that is probably a huge leap forward it had to be because now people can try to figure out a way to solve it besides just pray over it or

something you know um or like burn them at the stake or something right and the fine balance of um this is just another last fun fact because i was desperate to figure out why humor now means comedy but point the fine balance of humors and like the the way that they were at equilibrium in your unique body that determined the condition of your body and your mind and that was you know it was based on how your humor sat inside of you so it has over time gone from just the condition of your body and mind it has extended to your temporary state of body or mind and so your humor can change or you can have a moment of humor. And so it was a it ended up being like in good humor. In good humor.

Your mind is in that area currently. That's pretty cool. So now there's your deep dive on the humors. In the 1700s, this concept of balancing humors was slowly kind of fading out of, you know, its big boom. Everyone was obsessed with it until the 1700s. But Franz Mesmer is still obsessed with this idea. He fully believed that people's health would be dependent on lunar cycles. He even mentioned this in his thesis.

He once said that there was a, quote, mutual influence between the heavenly bodies, earth and animate bodies in a continuous fluid and fluid being a humor. OK. And so he thought that all these things were working together. So if all of them are working together, but if something disrupted one of them, then everything else would go wrong and people would ultimately get sick. Does that make sense? It does. Okay.

So in 1773, Franz was practicing as a doctor now, and he's treating this woman named Miss Osterlin. Miss Osterlin? Osterlin? Osterlin? And she, in hindsight, most likely had some sort of seizure disorder. Oh, shit. She was suffering from convulsions, fainting, throwing hindsight, most likely had some sort of seizure disorder. Oh, shit. She was suffering from convulsions, fainting, throwing up, headaches, and apparently also had some mania and delirium.

And Dr. Mesmer was determined to prove that her body's connection to the universe had a block in it a blockage and that's what was causing this keep in mind this was the 1700s and bodily humors was has recently been all the praise so right right right gotcha so what he's saying at the time didn't sound so bananas i will say like i again like going off your kind of q anon thing like i feel like i could almost see this in some new agey groups like fully right like there's a blockage spiritually that's causing your sickness you know like i can kind of see where today people might still lean into that a little bit i can only see like going to get like my palm read and hearing that there's a blockage in the world and that's why i haven't

blockage yeah something yeah yeah i remember when i was like diagnosed with Crohn's and I was just so sick and like my aunts two of them that are a little bit woo woo new agey and kind of went off the deep end would like send me these books on like don't take medicine like how to fix your like you're just not spiritually aligned and first of all it felt very victim blame at the time i was like 18 and i or 19 and i was like so you're saying like stop taking medicine like this is something you need to resolve with your spiritual side and i'm like first of all that's very accusatory but also that's really dangerous to be like disseminating that kind of thing and how quickly that like it went from something that kind of made sense to you denying medicine you know like so yeah and saying like oh don't say

it's your fault you know yeah it felt very uh targeted and like victim blaming so i don't yeah so i do have a very kind of like personal connection to that. Yes. Like a personal irritation with that specifically. And this is where like for maybe the thousandth time, I don't know if I've said it directly into the podcast, but to people willing to listen to me face to face also, like everyone's got their own brand of wackadoo beliefs. I've got my own, like everyone thinks something that sounds crazy to other people. Totally. Me included. got my own like everyone's everyone thinks something that sounds crazy to other people totally me included but the second that you start using it to define a medical situation or you're exploiting somebody someone else's medical situation especially and when there's a power dynamic of i know something you don't know and like trying to guide them towards something that there isn't any hard facts on you know I just this I'm about I'm trying to keep myself from

getting on a tangent about like keep your beliefs to yourself if like something as serious as yeah yeah like don't force them on people who you know especially I mean it really can be dangerous like if I just stopped taking medicine and start eating all these weird mushrooms they were sending me like well there's a lot of people out there in today's world who think like I don't need a doctor Like if I just stopped taking medicine and start eating all these weird mushrooms they were sending me like. Well, there's a lot of people out there in today's world who think like I don't need a doctor. I'm just going to pray that it goes well because God wouldn't deny me. Yeah, that's true. There's also so many angles to it.

Like it's not always like new age like woo woo. Like it can be like very religious or. Yeah, there's a lot of angles to this that are kind of scary. I'm not pointing my finger at any particular belief system in this but it's it is the point of this is it can be very a very slippery slope and yeah it's i mean it goes as quickly as maybe if you believe in you know the cosmos and there's some power out there and celestial bodies. And I mean, you're listening to and that's why we drink. Probably at least 90 percent of you are have heard of astrology and had a deep look at my shirt. Gemini season.

It literally says Gemini season. Someone made it for us. And to a lot of people, all of us who are down with astrology think that we're a little nutso. So, I mean, like we've all got our thing but it's just totally it's so dangerous and it can be so slippery so i just give that caveat for no reason because i don't think anyone here is pulling a dr mesmer however i'm just saying it anyway dr mesmer was working on this woman she was having you know some convulsions which in

today's world if he pulled the stunt, it would be incredibly dangerous because she needed real help. He did truly think he was helping her. And he thought, oh, well, your body and the universe have a blockage. And so I'm going to repair that for you. I will create artificial tides to heal you because the tides in you are not getting access to the universe since there's a blockage. So if I create the tides for you or manually kickstart them to read the universe, maybe you will be healed. Does that make sense? Sure. I mean, as far as it can make sense. Yeah. Yeah. So we're declining quickly. Okay. So...

We're rapidly descending okay so he it was like all it took was two bullet points like we were on board and now we're off board yeah i had a feeling that might happen okay so he is he's decided he's going to make artificial tides for her he's going to put you know try to help help things move along nicely so he puts a bunch of magnets all over her because he says magnets are the natural conductors um and i don't know how and i don't know the rest of the story but it seems that although she felt some like burning or prickling or whatever she was magically cured now what i think happened is that she was not cured but she probably went to a different fucking doctor and

he never heard from her again so he assumed that she was like she must be living her life and traveling the world and she's like no i just needed a second opinion or like maybe she didn't have like a like a seizure for a while and so it looked successful you know i don't know but right i'm gonna take a shot in the dark having never been in a room with this guy and guess that he didn't cure her but okay um so franz is now like i mean his ego has ballooned he saved this woman right so he's like this is the golden ticket this magnet thing is working um so through his research which by the way do your own research right he would really love the people who say that today love that love it he loves it through his research he claims that he could use magnets on non-metal elements and and what i mean is people fucking people oh sure he thought i can do it on people

i can heal animals i can even like make artificial tides in water with magnets which riddle me that okay um he called this animal magnetism this was opposed this is opposed to mineral magnetism which is just fucking magnetism just how magnets work just how magnets work right a metal and a metal yeah so if it's not a metal and it's you know a living breathing creature is involved in that category it is animal magnetism gotcha which is interesting because if he coined that, then when I've heard people say raw animal magnetism, what does that mean? Are we going to say? OK, but I just Googled it because I had that same thought. And there's a picture of like Mesmer and it says animal magnetism, a presumed intangible or mysterious force that is said to influence human beings. mysterious force that is said to influence human beings. So I wonder if it's like, oh,

they have this like hypnotic draw almost like they can like charm you. It's how Holly defined Michael Scott. So. Oh, that's right. I mean, I well, OK, I mean, I guess maybe he knew as much about modern medicine as Mesmer did back in the 1700s. But I mean, I've heard the phrase. And so fun fact, this is where it comes from. I guess that that force is magnets or lust. You pick amazing. So both are both.

So he thinks he's discovered animal magnetism and he can do this by putting magnets on someone's body as a conductor for their tides if they aren't working on their own well soon he discovers that animal magnetism can be trained from within so anyone can achieve animal magnetism he does not just him anyone can learn this skill there is hope for me there is hope you could you could figure out animal magnetism and be a healer. Patrick's on lookout. You and I are about to have a moment together that others are not going to understand. Oh.

My heart is beating very fast. Tell me. So what this guy thought, it's an inside joke, everybody. And unfortunately, I cannot share it here um so he believes that he's discovered animal magnetism and he anyone can learn to do this so you can learn to control the magnet the magnetic field within yourself i was like, okay, there are several avenues. This could be,

Oh, quickly narrowing the possibility. Okay. Ding, ding, ding. That was fast. Yeah.

I'm sorry, everybody. I would love to share it with you, but I, for reasons outside of my control, safety reasons for reasons outside of control for privacy, but like, just trust us.

Trust us. I wish I could say something. I can't. It's a doozy. Maybe someday. Maybe someday. Let's just say I know somebody who might be of this mindset and there's no need to go any further with that.

That's all. Just trust us that it's an interesting place to be. It's a lot. And it's, it's, uh, yeah. Okay. Moving on quickly from this. Um, let's just say someone I know in frank mesmer i think would be best friends yeah it seems like so far a lot of the phrasing and terminology and kind of it gets worse christine wackadoo ideas okay let's go let's go bring it on it gets worse for christine everybody else just

like buckle up for the general you you know, the general weirdness, the general gist of this. But trust me, I wish I could say something. There's layers here. So by controlling, he thought that anyone could learn this skill. And all you have to do is learn to control them, your magnetic field and the tides within you. And you can magnetize people with just your hands oh my effing god so you know

this before you did these notes no as i was reading this i was really nervous to figure out how i was gonna say it but it's a little bit startling to hear there's there there's there's an i can't even do it okay um so basically he had been using magnets up until this point now no magnets needed he's learned how to do this just through the hands so um he of course masters this before anybody else and he begins healing patients with his hands to bring their tides to a balance you know for them uh he would also sometimes use a metal wand that i don't understand this part apparently it would like he would use it to like help him i guess his hands weren't enough but he would need this extra magnet just in case he used an extra tough patient right yeah so if someone needed extra help

on a certain ailment or body part he used maybe if they weren't like fully convinced he's like well let me get my magic wand and they're like like, oh, you have a magic wand. Now I'm convinced. It is interesting that nowadays magic is defined as mesmerizing and magicians use wands. But I don't know if there's a connection there. But it is intriguing. I would argue yes, with no basis in reality or fact. Okay. Cool. So he, if he ever needed extra help he would like i guess poke people with us i don't fucking understand anyway this skill of essentially laying hands on somebody to heal them this was called mesmerizing them gotcha and that's where we get the phrase mesmerizing. Everyone, for good reason, seemed iffy about this.

His own alma matters were not supportive of this at all. Other patients started turning on him. One family of patients kicked him out of their house because he tried to restore their kid's eyesight with his hands. And I think they were like, this is too fucked up. And they just kicked him out. Because Kelsa Preece, she couldn't see afterwards. Yeah, good instinct there, parents. Mom, dad, anyone. Yeah.

So in 1778, he's divorced. What? And he's also losing patience quickly. He's like, but look at all my magnets. I don't even need them. She's like, you can keep the magnets. I don't want them. So he's divorced and losing patience.

And so I think he, I don't know if he's like a laughingstock or something, or maybe he just wants to start over. But he ends up heading to France. France fucking loves him oh okay patience lining out the door for him and so now of course with this ego of his i mean describe a narcissist better please um he is he is now essentially thinking he's like this like gift from god you know saving lives all around in ways that nobody else has ever been able to do before and and anyone can learn it if they just listen if they just listen um so he started to he started trying to come up with new tactics that had never been done before um including magnetizing water and then prescribing people to bathe in the water oh now

we're getting into some it's seemingly like uh cure-all situations apparently and i don't know if this is like if this was part of the prescription or if people were just like he couldn't keep up with the patients coming through that he was just doing this in mass. But he started magnetizing water and prescribing baths and multiple patients would bathe together. Oh, wow. So like a like a spa, like a one. Honestly, if he had Zach Bagans business acumen, he would have just created a fucking spa. Right. Like he would full on spa.

But no, he just prescribed like group baths and people would apparently touch their fingers together then they would touch iron rods to parts of their bodies that were in pain or that had illness to them and it would magnetize their bodies and bring their tides and their levels back to an equilibrium and heal them. At some point, I can't help explain this to you. Like, it just becomes, it doesn't make enough sense for me to help. It starts to really devolve. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Except Franz could probably explain it to you very well.

Because these people are going nutso for this guy. He even meets Marie Antoinette. He meets King Louis XVI. He's friends with Mozart. And soon, Franz is Franz is, I mean, you can probably guess what this is heading. But eventually his clientele is almost exclusively young women. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Surprised and not surprised all at the same time. Yep. Animal magnetism is still this concept that's growing and growing and it finds its way into the occult community, probably because it was fringe or, you know, I don't know, wayward people were interested in ways people weren't totally following. New ways of ways. You can start laughing out of nowhere. You can start sneezing out of nowhere. You can start dancing out of nowhere. And so to be mesmerized and all of a sudden you you're doing all these things out of your control. you you're doing all these things out of your control very quickly this leads to the beginnings of hypnosis right so like if you're mesmerized your body just reacts in ways you can't control the big one that circulated was that being mesmerized makes people fall asleep so oh i love that i mean that's what i do i do sleep hypnosis every night yeah i whatever it is i do it every night i love it yeah i gotta say yeah so in the 1780s other doctors are now

magnetizing patients because it just took that whole nation by storm other doctors are trying whatever they can medically and keep in mind this is the 1780s this is like only a few decades ago they started like paying attention or a few centuries ago maybe they finally started paying attention to like natural causes and ailments and the physical body being part of the problem they're like anything and everything is possible medically because they've only just started taking medicine seriously like right in terms of the physical body so they heard this one person has it all figured out so everyone's trying it so these other doctors are now magnetizing patients and from this magnetic trances become a thing there's here's the situation when you're in a

magnetic trance let's pretend you're hmm let's pretend you're the one who's the doctor, right? Sure. That's easy for me to pretend. Okay. So you're the doctor, you know, in quotes, obviously. But there's a doctor or a guy. He is known as the master. Gross.

Oh, no. Oh. And he's the person who knows how to do magnetic trances he's the one who can make people fall into a deep sleep eventually you're trained so well that you can fall into a deep sleep or you can have someone fall into a deep sleep with just one touch similar to hypnotists today and this deep sleep that you're putting someone in when you put them in this deep sleep it is a trance that they called being in crisis which i'm always there wake me up wait yeah i was like isn't this supposed to help me out of a crisis so it's it gets confusing which is why i tried to like give you a role to like pay attention to so if you're the master your whole job is to put this other person in crisis aka deep sleep trance okay uh the in

crisis person is still mentally active but their body is asleep similar to being hypnotized today and they can only be woken up by the master's voice easy enough cool now even though that's essentially hypnotism today this was one step kind of removed because the person that was in crisis was called a clairvoyant. And a clairvoyant then is different than what a clairvoyant is seeing us today. So a clairvoyant was the person that you're hypnotizing, you're putting in crisis, and they had a supernatural ability where while in a trance they could see into bodies like a human x-ray okay i'm i know how q anon this sounds i'm so sorry um no it does yeah i mean i think we can all agree for sure so master hypnotizes the clairvoyant who has this gift that when in trances can look into bodies and see what's wrong with

them so essentially it's like the nurse to the doctor so okay so they're like the assistant almost the assistant not to say a nurse is an assistant but like they are in this scenario like the the second in command to like yes exactly got you got you so if you were to put me in crisis which you do every fucking sunday if i were okay you're the master i'm the clairvoyant you've put me in a trance and now i'm looking at the patient you have and while i'm in a trance i'm able to see like okay so something's wrong with their heart something's wrong with their brain something's wrong here so you're like the vessel that can then communicate that that's fascinating and bananas so while in crisis while i'm in crisis as the clairvoyant you the master would

have me go looking through your clientele of sick people i'd run my hands over them to find their illness and eventually you would wake me up ask me what happened we'd put a report together and you would treat the sick people accordingly wow and the clairvoyance when they would wake up they would say they couldn't remember anything they were truly in a trance um keep in mind this feels really like a huge gimmick to me i mean obviously in a way but like i feel like if the clairvoyant doesn't even remember what they said, how are they accurately reporting what they saw? Unless the doctor is just putting someone in a random trance, deciding on his own what's going on, and then wakes the clairvoyant up and goes, oh, you told me all this stuff. And feeding them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That seems shady. It's a really weird further explanation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That seems shady without further explanation. It's a really weird power dynamic of like, I'm letting you feel involved, but I'm just deciding without having done anything or you having done anything what I'm going to do to this patient. It's just like a weird- And you're not really involved.

You're just like a tool for me. So it's a little weird. Yeah, it feels like a weird extra step when like you could just say like- It does. I wonder why he didn't just well i mean maybe he really was getting them to say things well otherwise i don't see why he he would do it uh what time is it it's time to worry because um a lot of a lot of sources say that my alarm hasn't gone off yet it goes goes off every 20 minutes. Okay.

But don't worry, I'm always ready to worry. Sources say that the best clairvoyants were young women. So chances are he was putting these women into trances or putting them into a deep sleep, doing whatever he wanted, snapping his finger, waking him up and being like, you were such a big help, like helping me determine what's wrong with my patients. So that could be another thing that happened. A little uncomfortable. Gotcha. At any rate, more and more doctors are becoming masters of this ability where they can put

clairvoyance into trances to help them. They believe that this happens because their patients or their clairvoyance into trances to help them. They believe that this happens because their patients or their clairvoyance have a sixth sense in their solar plexus. And when we're in a trance and our usual senses are not activated, the solar plexus goes into hyperdrive and can see and hear things you normally can't. It's like the soul essentially becomes more active, I guess. And that's how you're able to see things in a trance or open a channel that you usually can't access exactly okay so eventually this whole concept spirals more and more and doctors think that they can train their animal magnetism not just to it's kind of like

they're cutting out the middleman now so not only originally they were um putting clairvoyance into a trance and then i think they realized that's one step too much we're hiring extra people that we don't need snip snip snip cut the middleman out i can actually just do this myself and so i can put myself into i don't know if it's essentially a trance but you can train your animal magnetism to feel others illnesses essentially like an empathy skill okay and i mean i have to be honest here like this is where i get a little like eek because this is where well specifically me because i feel like i have done have like studied reiki and gotten like through i think three levels of certification and so i know like this probably kind of goes into that like oh i can feel where the pain is and adjust it like i can see where

the problematic stuff can kind of start to so i don't know maybe i'll do a little self-analysis later and uh well here's my here's my favorite thing specifically about you because uh i feel like i love this segment it happens once a week folks um it happens like actually happens like once a day i was gonna say never but then i was like no m's always saying nice things about me i feel like one of the least attractive qualities in the like um like spiritual industry or field or whatever or in the community is when i'm i want to learn more about something and i'm a willing volunteer and i go somewhere and i i am agreeing to a service right and i can tell right off the bat that it is not genuine or it is not authentic and people are exploiting me in my curiosity one of my favorite things about you is

anytime i've ever asked you to do reiki or akashic records for me you go on this like 20 minute tirade every time where you're like i don't know if it's real whatever i'm telling you take it with a grain of salt okay i'm trying my best that's fair i did you're right i do and when i do reiki also i always ask for permission and say like listen this isn't meant to like medically heal you I just it's something I'm I don't know I'm literally your best friend and you ask my permission like 10 lawyers are in the room like you are so scared of anyone reading your intentions wrong yes that's exactly it and so I think the difference I think just like how you, like there's levels to all of this where we can see things going on in today's world happening here. I fully am a believer that intent and directness and transparency, like full transparency.

Yeah. And to not say, oh, forget medicine and science. Do this instead. Like I would never suggest someone do reiki and not follow up with their primary care or their doctor like that is not my intention no i i mean i also this is just like like a preferred interest but if i am going to do any spiritual work with somebody i love when they're this i please understand how i'm saying this i love when they have a chronic illness or like understand like there's there's a need for true medicine on top of what we're doing. And yes, yes, there's

like an appreciation for appreciation. Yes. For the yeah. Not like I love that you're chronically ill. Like the close mindedness. Yeah, exactly. Like I appreciate that there's people out there who are thinking like I am literally i have 10 doctor's appointments this week but yes let me definitely do an akashic reading because at the very end of the day it could be fun but you know or or or it could just be random i don't know i think i think your your worries about being clumped in with them it is not okay i appreciate that i appreciate that i yeah thank you um because these people are saying i will cure your blindness you know like gosh which like first of all you don't even get you shouldn't have to cure that like it's first of all yeah there's a lot again layers layers layers it but for so many for so many people of this time

especially in a time when let's get into it, folks, with the patriarchy and the power dynamic of a man who can only be a doctor, a man telling you what's going on. If you don't come back to him, he's probably going to assume that it was just a success and he healed you. And on top of that, like you weren't allowed to even today, women can't second guess men or authority in a lot of spaces. And so I feel like if a doctor looked at you and with enough confidence waved his hands and said, you're cured, a lot of people would believe it. And maybe it's the power of suggestion, maybe one in a thousand it actually works on. But, you know, it's anyway, I'm going off on my own tirade. Sorry. No, I'm with your tangent. I just don't want to

extend it in a whole nother direction. So keep my mouth shut. I'm trying to keep my mouth shut. And i i'm hosting a podcast right now so it's very hard it's a tough cookie anyway doctors not like christine in the spiritual realm uh they're all now deciding that they're empaths and they can which is hysterical to me that you know just like in such a power dominated space they're like oh now i'm an empath and i can understand people decide they're empaths i think that's very fun for everybody exactly exactly so now they're like we don't need the magnets we don't need our hands we don't need clairvoyance all we have to do is just like sit with ourselves and we're empaths and we can

just feel what's wrong with you and if you can feel how your patients feel then you can diagnose them more accurately the irony and this is apparently called doubling so soon doctors said that they could go into trances they could double without even touching somebody to you know make anyone fall asleep no need for clairvoyance um and they could just connect with another body's magnetic fields and tides and diagnose them immediately so very astral vibes right okay soon people are choosing to put themselves into trances to connect with others and this morphs into medium work so it's almost like the clairvoyant side they were going to get their own job. Yeah.

There was one actually named Mademoiselle Gilbert Rochette. And she was able to go into her own magnetic sleeps where she would communicate with spirits and angels and all this. And this, again, seems woo-woo. But how many people out there are mediums who can connect with spirits? And people I back and believe, too, by the way. I'm not saying mediums are all woo-woo, but how many people out there are mediums who can connect with spirits? And people I back and believe, too, by the way. I'm not saying mediums are all woo-woo. But to the point that you made earlier, there are some people that just exploit the community. So take it what you will. Animal magnetism stays popular throughout the 19th century.

And masters during this time start writing out some best practices finally and do you want to take a shot in the dark uh what it takes to be a master who is able to be an empath and do trance work and heal people you probably have to pay like um 65 installments of $9.99 and get a mail-in certificate? I don't know. Correspondence school? Even better and even less surprising. You have to be a man. You have to be 25 to 50. You have to be in good health with, can you believe it? A lot of self-confidence. Okay. So I'm none of those things. Let's be clear. Gotcha. Not one, not a one. So over time, they start saying that it's a master's will that influences magnetic tides. So now they're essentially God, right? Like they're doing

deity work. It seems one guy named Kludge, Kludge uh he starts looking into mesmerizing and even defines them by stages and other stages of mesmerizing you can get as a patient um so stages one through three i guess easy to hard whatever um those stages one through three are when you can influence a patient's tides and they will feel side effects of it, like sweating, drowsiness. They'll maybe feel like their skin, like a rash. Then there are stages four through six where patients will seem alert during their doctor appointment, but they're essentially hypnotized. And this is called sleep wake, when you look awake, but you're essentially hypnotized and this is called sleep wake when you look awake but you're asleep okay so you're like kind of like you hypnotize hypnotize like at a hypnosis

show when everyone's sitting there and they look totally fine but they've been hypnotized they're look they're acting weird okay but they're acting a little odd so to be able to sleep wake it actually took a patient many sessions to master that skill. And it even took even more time for them to be able to remember what happened while they were asleep. So it almost now feels like this like weird package you can get like a plan or something where it's like, oh, well, if they want to upgrade you like platinum level plan. Yeah. It's like if you want to come in and we'll do like stage one, you'll feel a little sleepy afterwards, but, you know, we'll influence your magnetic t stage one you'll feel a little sleepy afterwards but you know

we'll influence your magnetic tides and you'll feel a little better or we can go to stage four through six and not only will you be seemingly awake but maybe one day you can even remember what happened to you oh and the i mean the expense well we do offer a payment plan and can you really put a price on and since we're in the states the insurance is just not going to cover it oh certainly not what insurance let's start there okay so patients uh these patients who i guess if you i don't think there actually was like a package but in this metaphor we've got working on here uh if a patient was able to be mesmerized into stage four through six where they are just like almost a seemingly fully you know a fully awake person like ascended

to yeah they could also learn to stomach see huh which is when this so weird i don't what a weird thing it's really devolving now where stomach seeing, I don't even know how this helps you. There's not even a medical reason for this, but apparently you can like learn to stomach see, which means a doctor can put an item next to your stomach. And with your eyes closed, you know what they put next to your stomach.

So what the fuck is that about? Can you imagine if I went to the doctor talking about my fucking heart condition and they were like, but your tummy knows that a deck of cards is sitting next to it, doesn't it? They're like, let me see your tummy. And what part am I holding up? I'd be like, get the fuck out of here. That is bizarre. I mean, OK, here's what I will say, which this is not in defense of this absolutely batshit crazy situation you're talking about but i do know that

there is quite a bit of gray matter in our guts that are uh oh interesting linked to our brain basically don't tell any of them that because they'll lose i know i know but apparently that's a real thing that um there is gray matter in your insides. Interesting. The same as what's in our actual moist, moist brains. So our moist, moist tummies are also. They got a little thinking going on down there. They're so smart.

That's how my tummy has excellent taste. Like follow your gut. Like there's actual gray matter down there. that there's actual gray matter down there. I would love to see a research paper on, I don't want anyone to be put in life-threatening situations, but however you could replicate them having a gut feeling or something. It would be so interesting to see if the gray matter is affected or a cause of that at all.

Yeah, and I wonder wonder i feel like um i feel like i need to look this up so because i don't want to like just be putting out like totally fake news um but i'm pretty sure that's a real even if it's not real connection even if it's not real this is something we should add to our um table of contents for the next time we're in the room together and you're a little stony baloney. Totally. Talk about the brain in my stomach. And then you can hold up a deck of cards.

And then we can use our stomachs and eat something, you know? Oh my God. That sandwich that we were talking about earlier. I've been thinking about it this whole time. Well, apparently you could also stomach hear and your stomach could hear what the master was whispering into your belly. Which like, couldn't you just like hear? Anyway. Just hear what they were whispering.

Whatever. That makes you remind me of when I was pregnant and I'm like, don't fucking talk to my stomach, you freaks. I talked to your tummy and there was nothing you could do about it. You did, but not like just strange men who were 25 to 50 you know like stop talking to my child understood i was like yo you definitely heard me say some shit to your kid yeah yeah oh yeah and she heard it too she's still thinking about it i know that's why she like kind of gives me that like stank face whenever i show oh yeah she's, what are you doing here? Well, to be fair, you were like demanding she get out right now.

And yeah, she didn't. So, yeah, she's stubborn. Interesting. Couldn't have gotten that from Christine. No way. Just quick, quick fact from a website that I have not vetted, but is called Micronutrient Solutions. That's either really useful or not at all or like totally fake yeah but they are quoting a professor of biobehavioral sciences at the university of california who says the system is way too complicated to have evolved

only to make sure things move out of your colon a big part of our emotions are probably influenced by the nerves in our gut and the gut compromising. Nope. Well, mine is compromising myself and my health, but the gut comprising the esophagus, stomach and intestines is the only organ in the body that it has its own nervous system, allowing it to function independently from the brain known to scientists as the gut brain is made up of 100 million neurons on the wall of the small intestine and around the spinal cord. So there is like some, you know, this lack of clarity on like what does it actually do and mean. So maybe we will get some studies in the coming decades. But I always thought that was so fascinating.

It's crazy in 2023 that our bodies are still a goddamn mystery in a lot of ways. I mean, think about it. That moist brain of ours, all we know is it's moist. Nobody's learned anything else about it ever. Yeah, that's true. And that's it. Funky stuff. Well, I know that.

I know that's not true, guys. I just feel like being dramatic. Well, I was on board fully. Thank you. Apparently, we can have stomach C and stomach here. I don't know how that helps at all. I don't know why doctors are even teaching us to do that. But

these talents ended up being later added to the line of gimmicks that fraudulent mediums would use on people because just like those other stories I've talked about where someone was lying in bed, but they knew what happened three towns over, you know. Right.

Or they could read an unsealed envelope. It's the same kind of thing. Great point. Okay. And I don't know if these patients, like, were in on the joke. I have no idea how that worked. I saw stomach seeing and stomach hearing and needed to address it. We needed to. So this whole time mesmerism was in France and Germany until the 19th century,

but then it moved to Britain and the U.S. and it continues to grow to a point where at one point early on, Boston had over 200 mesmerists in the city alone. So it's like, holy shit, doctors are taking this thing and flying with it. Yeah, no shit. The term hypnosis was originally created by James Braid. It comes from the Greek word sleep, and it became a synonym for being mesmerized. And soon hypnotism was being tested in all fields of medicine.

It was actually used during surgery during or it was used during surgery before anesthesia and somehow somehow it actually worked sometimes which is so freaky to me um patients would have no pain or memory of an operation i don't know how that fucking works the power of suggestion i guess or maybe there was one person who was just really sleepy. And like, I mean, maybe it was like, you know, that they talk about being able to like if you're put in a trance. OK, and this is where I'm going to go off the wall even further, which I know instances of extreme pain, like almost like leave their body, like to like leave the physical sensations behind. And honestly, I as I said, both my parents have been hypnotized. I don't know how and I not that I'm like the world's biggest skeptic at all. And I'm actually much more of a believer in this kind of stuff. But I'm I'm aware that I have no idea how it works, if it works or if I'm being completely duped. But I'm not totally against the idea of just having an out of body experience or being able to tap yourself in like a brainwave state where you're like much more relaxed or much more yeah no i think like i think hypnotism can change your

your brainwave state so i don't know it's possible i mean in today's world if it's seen as like a guided meditation maybe these people just knew how to be really fucking like zen back then like maybe maybe someone just was really all about mindfulness before it was a thing and like just was able to tap out or like all i know is i fucking wish they taught me that before my stupid vein surgery i would have loved oh i was thinking about you when i heard that episode about the the woman who was able to do that because i was like man that would have been nice for him to figure out it would have been so nice and like the girl who apparently slept through it before me I'm like were you

maybe were you mesmerized so hypnotherapy is now uh really only exclusively used in mental health fields and even then it's still controversial but uh Freud loved hypnotherapy if that gives you a non-ringing endorsement wow uh he particularly loved to use hypnotherapy on women dealing with hysteria so cool so there you have that so there we have it uh it also became used for bringing back old memories to process trauma and just to tie in another episode, hypnotherapy was famously used in the Barney and Betty Hill abduction case, which was episode 49. Interesting. Episode 49, my lucky number. Did I do that on purpose? Someone listen to episode 49 and tell me if that happened.

You let me know. I probably mentioned that it was my favorite number. It sounds like something I would have said. Today, it is sometimes used to relieve anxiety, depression, PTSD. As I said earlier, it's now more about mindfulness or meditating. It can also be used to stop addictive behaviors such as cigarettes or to try to start behaviors like dieting, which again is very controversial. And it is suggested that if you're going to use hypnotherapy for anything like dieting, which again is very controversial. And it is suggested that if you're going to use hypnotherapy for anything like dieting or things that could, you know, be damaging to your body, it's best to improve your perception of your body versus having someone hypnotize you to do an action on your body. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a hundred percent. So PSA fully, like we're not saying go get hypnotized and do a crash diet. And you know what? Maybe someone has done it out there and it's worked, but

you know, that's not my place to say. Doesn't seem like something we should endorse. People also use it for past life regressions, as Christine said earlier. And some people believe that self-hypnosis is possible and can bring us to other realms or to help us communicate with other worldly beings, which we are both very pro-medium and those who have the gift. I don't know if you have to go into a self-hypnosis, but apparently that's one way to do it. I'm telling you, I actually like that. I can kind of believe because I'm like, I know that if you go into a deep state of meditation, I mean, I believe

that you can. I mean, I probably sound so wackadoo, but I believe that it's possible to reach your higher self or reach your spirit guides. So, I mean, I mean, I'm kind of like, OK, I could get on board with that. I mean, there's a reason that we're friends. It's because our wackadoos see each other, but they see each other and they hold hands. I mean, I very much am on board with you that I think, again, this is I I find myself labeling hypnosis or whatever, you know, trance work is as a type of mindfulness or a good intentional spiritual communication or trying to do like self-work on improving

yourself or ascending in some way. Right, right, right. Whatever it is, I feel like if it's done with good intentions and you really are trying to respect the process of it and you're not exploiting people in the process yes fucking go for it like if it works for you absolutely if you feel safe and comfortable and excited to try it why not you know and uh i don't have to tell anyone here because you're already listening to and that's why we drink but if you would like to learn more about hypnosis there are plenty of sources for you. Lots of books, lots of all sorts of good stuff. And if you have a hypnosis story you'd like to share, we would love to hear it.

So we actually folks, if I would love to hear. Yeah. Can we request that? Maybe for not August 1st, because apparently we're recording that tomorrow. So that certainly won't work um but maybe for uh for September yeah um and just if you would email us your hypnosis stories we would love to hear it and we'd love to hear how many of them are successful and how many of them are not and if you've got a hopefully I'd love to know also like what the experience is like or like if if you if it worked on you, if you felt like it was effective for a certain reason.

I mean, I selfishly I'd love to know. I also do think that hypnosis is I I've never had it done to me, but I like to believe that it is a helpful tool in the world of processing trauma. And so I've never I've never done it. to me, but I like to believe that it is a helpful tool in the world of processing trauma. Absolutely. I've never done it, but a lot of people have said- With the right provider, with the right provider, I will say. Not with a Dr. Frank Mesmer. Or not like your YouTube. I mean, I know you-

Right. I've done YouTube self-hypnosis, which is pretty cool, but I will say- I didn't even know that was a thing. Oh my God. I've done a self-hypnosis past life regression. But I was about half an hour in. And I was like, I swear to God, Em. I was, like, in it.

And then Gio started barking like crazy. And I don't think, like, my heart, like, fell out of my, into my butt. I was so scared. But you can just wake up out of it if you need to. Yeah, I was so startled that I was like, God damn it. And now every time I want to do one, I'm like, gee, I was just going to bark again

and scare the absolute shit out of me. So one day I'll do one, but I've had friends who've done them on YouTube like with some success. So, you know. I've had, I've only known one person to do hypnosis as part of their trauma work. And...

Oh, interesting. And they said that it did help i don't think they i i feel like movies have really ruined our perception of what hypnosis looks like yeah but it seems like they were just really relaxed and able to just kind of tap into things that they're usually building walls up to and Yes. So it was... If it's helpful for you in that way, too, I would... I'm not endorsing it

to, like, go do it, but if it feels like something you would be interested in trying for yourself, then it's available to you. I've been doing some trauma work as well,

and the counselor I'm seeing did a hypnoregression on me, and I guess maybe that was hypnotherapy. It was over Zoom, so I feel like it wasn't as like... Yeah, intimate. Yeah, that intimate, like that traditional, like you're laying down and, you know. But it was pretty insightful,

and I really feel like I was able to jump back to things that happened that a I didn't think were related, but it turns out like to this, this thing I'm trying to work through. And then I was like, afterward, I was like, Oh, my God, like, I'd never clicked that that thing that happened when I was 10, like has something to do with this current trauma do you know what I mean like it's it was really cool so I found that very effective I didn't feel necessarily like I was like hypnotized but maybe I was I don't know it was a hypno regression I don't know what that is about but um if you were also stuff I pulled up and I didn't really consciously remember it and I just said it out loud. And then later I was like, oh my God, I completely had forgotten that ever even happened. Like it was really cool. Yeah,

it was really cool. Also, if you happen to be someone who has like, if you're on the other side, if you're the hypnotist, I would love to know if I'm either mess something up or if there's more to it. Cause I'd love to know if there's like levels to this like absolutely is there like a light hypnosis you can like test out before you like really agree to like a full in-depth situation like yeah is there like best practices that people should look for or try to follow I mean I'm I'm also like so intrigued by this topic but I'm like you where it's sort of like kind of new to me I don't know too much it's also i know we've talked about it already like like silver blue in the face but it is also one of those topics where i have to hold a mirror up to myself from like i have a lot of particular beliefs and how quickly could i myself devolve

into falling for some deeper more problematic stuff because if like when i started this topic i was like i'm fully fucking on board this is the best thing i've ever even seen and i'm totally i mean hello like we're like all about the astrology we're all about the planets and the tides and and so all it took was one sentence for me to go oh like if i were a little less able to critically think this could be a disaster for me so yeah anyway i um just another psa that please be careful out there and if you are someone who is practicing medicine on people and it is not a documented medicine or documented practice and others are maybe not a very proud of it or are scared of it or are unsure of it or they can't go for second opinions easily maybe second guess if you should be doing it you know yeah yeah or steering them

in a certain direction yes yeah i that's a great point um it's kind of a it's a lot of a lot of landmines to walk through you know it's like it's a dangerous episode everybody i'm trying real hard over here to to make sure i'm making my points clear we've definitely covered more um what do you call it more um loaded topics for sure but this definitely does kind of um kind of edge on onto the the scary q and on type stuff so maybe everyone do a little self-work and just make sure that we're in tip-top shape when it comes to just analyzing what's around yeah yeah i think that's the best way to do it just keep your eyes open unless you're being hypnotized because then you have to close

them. I don't know how it works. Keep them closed. Anyway, please take me away before I get on my soapbox again, Kristen. That was a really good story. Thank you. That was really good. When you said it at first, I was like, haven't you covered this?

But no, I think we just talked about it on rituals a little bit, but never really delved into it. So I thought you did a great job. It was. I don't think I've ever covered a hypnotist yet. I also would like to cover our favorite Mr. Crentist Creston. Oh, Crentist.

Crentist the dentist. The great. Creston. Kermit? Oh, Creston. Like, I really can't get it right um cremant i never mind okay uh like i'm it's starting to click that all of these sound way too similar no creston crentist kermit then christine and cremant oh wait did you say that? And Kremit. I don't even know. Okay, so I am very excited about this topic. It is one that I've been hoping to do for months,

maybe years. And a couple months ago, Eva sent me an article on Medium. And I want to give it a shout out because, first of all, I'm like every other embarrassing i'm i'm like every other millennial in the embarrassing way that sometimes i will like see a news article and i'll like kind of skim it and then be like oh i read this article you know okay but this one like i fucking read it like i sat there probably for 45 minutes to an hour and like really like dug into all the details and it is an article on medium by uh kyra dempsey is the author and um and so kyra dempsey is actually an analyzer of plain oh i haven't even told you this topic yet huh okay i have no idea what's going on. So sorry. Okay.

Let me tell you what we're covering today. We are covering the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Oh, excellent. Oh, yeah. Okay. I'm so glad because I don't know enough about this. And it's one of those topics that I have always kind of smiled and nodded with people and like hope that they just stop talking about it before I look like an idiot. Yeah.

And it happened during a time we were probably like, I don't know, in college and grad school, like trying to work, trying to like didn't have cable, didn't have nice Internet. Like we were probably just out of the loop, you know, at least that's what I tell myself. But it is something I'd always kind of known about on the periphery and always been really interested in and so when Eva sent me this she just like knows me so well she's like oh I just read this interesting article and I was like I didn't text her back for like almost an hour and then I was like oh my god I just read the whole thing I'm obsessed and then i sent the article to our researcher and said um let's fucking cover this like i'm i'm really amped about it um and the reason i brought up uh kyra dempsey's medium article that's the one that i read and uh according to her uh bio on medium she is an analyzer of plane crashes holy crap that's a very specific but important job and

can i mention too that like i didn't know that when i read this article but i was like damn this person is doing the most in-depth and comprehensive and like able to understand for a layperson job at this article and like of course now i'm looking at i'm like oh of course they do this for a living like but that just adds more credence to this whole article i think she did like an incredible job so a lot of the information comes from that um but there have been like some documentaries and other things um i listened to a podcast called uh black box down which is just about true crime in the sky and i was like i can't listen to more than one episode of that because i think i'm gonna freak myself the f out i'll say that's a

bold move when all we do is fly right that's crazy i know and sometimes i do venture into that space when i'm feeling brave and then i'm like why am i doing this to myself i leave tomorrow or delusional brave is the incorrect term and you are correct to call me on that. So not brave. Just like feeling, what's the word? Feeling like throwing caution to the wind. Like really just not thinking about the consequences. When you're in your hammering curtains to the wall era?

That, yes. When I'm in my Justice for Leeches era, which I have entered, and probably which i will remain uh i just got used to you guys liking possums now i'm gonna have to deal with this shit it never ends okay so let's get into it m malaysia airlines flight 370 was a regularly scheduled international flight on a passenger Boeing airplane, specifically a Boeing 777-200ER. Now, a lot of this info, you know, has been broken down and kind of written to be understood by, like, the average, you know, non-aerospace expert. Like you? Like me and you uh but i'm hoping just i guess just let me know if you're like confused by anything the way it's written because i i it i hope it makes sense

but if it's also confusing tell me thank you i will i also want to say then because i without even knowing what you're about to say if you have to make that kind of claim i know the mental gymnastics you've done in the last few days to figure it out for yourself was crazy so congratulations and i'm proud of you no you know it's so funny as i was like because our researcher molly ended you know did like the main core set of notes and of course like I knew the story already because I was I had read this article but then I was like I need to like reread this article just so that I can like like today just so I'm like really prepared and on it because it's been a few months since I read that article so uh medium has a saying on the app where they'll

where you can listen to the article. So I was like running errands and listening to the article and I was like, oh my God, I was getting all fired up all over again. So yeah. And I will say it's probably because Kyra Dempsey is so good at being able to write it in an easily understandable way. But there is a lot of terminology and a lot of like moving parts so tell me if anything is confusing okay i will be calling myself a an aerospace engineer at the end of this and honestly i will sell you sell you i will sell you a certificate i was gonna say send it but i'll probably sell it to you for a price 9.99 over the course of the next highway robbery Hang on a second. But yeah, you'll deserve it. So in any case, this airplane, the 777-200ER, first flew for British Airways in 1997.

There were 422 models of this plane built in total. It's considered a very reliable plane. It's a Boeing, you know, 777. We've heard of it. So airlines operated this model specifically for decades. As of 2021, there were 182 of these planes still active globally. 183 were in storage. 42 were no longer usable. Nine were scrapped and six had crashed. no longer usable, nine were scrapped and six had crashed. So Malaysia Flight 370 was among those ill-fated six that crashed, presumably. Okay, sure. At 1241 a.m., this is where it all begins, on Saturday, March 8th, 2014, Flight 370 took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport, and that is the capital city of Malaysia.

Its destination was Beijing Capital Airport in China. There were two flights every day on that route. So this is a very normal route for this plane to be taking. And the overall travel time would be about five hours and 34 minutes. So this is a red eye. There were 239 people on board, 227 passengers, two pilots, 10 other crew members, and then 31,517 pounds of cargo. I don't know how many pets, if any, which also makes me upset. Sure. The plane taxi to the runway took off without any issues, climbed to cruising altitude 35,000 feet. The cockpit remained in regular contact with the ground, letting them know they were at cruising altitude as expected. In fact, the captain, who we'll get into later, was so thorough, he actually repeated the routine calls

to report the altitude twice to make sure all the info was to the right people. Essentially, everything was operating as usual for the first 40 minutes of the flight. However, at 1.07 a.m. Like, it's upsetting to think about this, too, like putting yourself in their shoes because you think, you know, the flight took off at 1241. So now at one seven, they're like up, up in the air. And I just imagine it's a red eye. People are like falling asleep and getting comfortable and it, it like makes us feel more darker. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It just, it makes it feel, I have a bad habit or a good habit, but sometimes a dangerous habit of like really putting myself in the shoes of whoever's story I'm covering.

And definitely, you know, it's good and bad. Also, well, that that time frame is really like right when people are starting to calm down from the jitters of travel. Yeah. Like, OK, like everything's OK. We're smooth. We've plateaued like we're, you know, lights are now off. You know, it's just it makes it a little more. It hits home more. So 1.07 a.m., the plane's computer communication system sent a standard transmission that displayed the flight's path.

And it was en route to China as planned with no deviations. en route to China as planned with no deviations. At 1.19 a.m., the plane MH370 was at the end of Malaysian airspace flying over the South China Sea. So the Kuala Lumpur Control Center initiated the transfer of control to the control center in Ho Chi Minh City, also called Saigon, depending on there's apparently a little bit of conflict over which of those terms is the appropriate term to use. Um, but from what, uh, you know, Molly and I could find there, it's debate, it's hotly debated. So I'll just, you know, say both for now. Um, Ho Chi Minh city also called Saigon in Vietnam. And essentially what that means is they were flying from their Malaysian airspace into Vietnamese airspace.

So it was sort of like we're passing on the, you know, response. Crossing international boundaries. Exactly. So now it's basically, theoretically, Vietnam's. Problem. Problem. Yeah, like responsibility to be in touch with this airplane so malaysian control radioed the cockpit as they were leaving malaysian airspace and said

malaysian 370 contact ho chi minh 120.9 good night the first officer on the plane on the flight responded all right good night malaysian 370 that would be the last words they ever heard from this flight so at this point tracking of the plane should have been transferred like i said from malaysia based controllers to vietnamese controllers because it was now in vietnamese airspace but mh370 even though they had just radioed goodnight back to Malaysia, never made contact with Ho Chi Minh. So one minute and 43 seconds after the goodnight comment, we're switching to new airspace at

1.20 a.m., the transponder on the plane went dead. One minute later? One minute and 43 seconds later. So something happened, we think, in those two minutes. In that something happened in those two minutes. Hmm. There would be no further communication from the plane. Air traffic controllers on the ground

follow the paths of every flight using radar and each plane appears as a little blip on their screen sort of like that classic look of a radio of a i'm sorry of a radar you know where the blip is moving through and it's scanning do you know what i mean i got you okay. Okay. So it shows the location, but that's it. The little lip doesn't say, like, flight XYZ heading in this direction. It's just a dot. So that's how they can track it. So controllers will know there's an aircraft.

They don't know who it is or where they're headed. For more detailed information on a flight and its path, controllers rely on planes' transponders. Now, a transponder essentially... What? I was going to say, and that's been turned off after two minutes. Yes, so that is the thing that turned off right after they said... A minute and 43 seconds after they said goodnight to Malaysian air control. So what a transponder does is it sends electronic messages

which communicate a plane's flight number, altitude, speed, and where it's heading. So it's basically what you would imagine they radio back to be like, we're this many feet and we're this altitude, you know, just like the usual jargon that pilots, I imagine, would say to ground control. But they basically just like one minute, 43 seconds later, just off the grid. No information. It just shut off. Yes. Okay. When the transponder went out, controllers on the ground lost access to all of that.

They can't access where the plane is. They can't access the altitude, speed, where it's going. Essentially, Flight 370 could be flying at any speed, at any altitude, in any direction. I know. It's almost like they go dark, you know? And that's also like, I mean, I don't know anything about this stuff, but it seems like that's a massive risk to every plane in the sky now because there's just like a rogue. Fair point.

Like, it's like if we're on the road, there's just like a random person driving maybe in the wrong direction on a highway. Yeah, fair point. Nobody knows. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So alarm bells didn't go off right away. I think there was a little confusion. So Malaysian controllers assumed, as they had already said goodnight, that now the plane was in Vietnam range.

And so it was Vietnam's job to pick up the communication. But when Ho Chi Minh didn't hear from the flight, you know, they continuously tried to get in contact knowing that this plane was supposed to be in their airspace, but they just could not hear anything. So according to protocol, Ho Chi Minh was supposed to reach out to Kuala Lumpur within five minutes of lost contact. But instead, they tried to reach the plane for 18 minutes with no answer before they finally got in touch with malaysia okay so 19 minutes go by they're getting no response they finally contact kuala lumpur who was like let us check they reached out to mh370 and also got zero response

so now is where panic ensues because... Sure, the plane could not even be in the sky at this point. Nobody knows where it is. Fear and confusion, chaos. Kuala Lumpur contacts Malaysian Airlines Control Center, who reassured them, listen, don't worry, Flight 370, we just checked, it's en route over Cambodia. But here's the first plot twist.

This plane was not supposed to be flying over Cambodia or toward Cambodia. Oh, shit. Had nothing to do with Cambodia. What's more, Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, reported they had no information and had not spotted this plane. So there's all sorts of mix-ups happening here. and had not spotted this plane. So there's all sorts of mix-ups happening here. Controllers had no idea what the Malaysian Airlines Control Center was even talking about or why they were saying, oh, don't worry, all's good.

They're in Cambodia. It's like, why? And no, they're not. It didn't make any sense. But they have no transponder information. So there's no way to double-check this. And because they don't have a way to double check it, controllers instead start following the flight through a global air trafficking product called Flight Controller. Okay.

So using Flight Controller, they were relieved to see that the flight was still in the air and on the original flight path to Beijing where it was supposed to be going. and on the original flight path to Beijing, where it was supposed to be going. Unfortunately, what they didn't realize until a little bit later is that flight controller, if a transponder goes out, it no longer shows the accurate location. It just shows the original predicted path. Does that make sense? So the transponder goes out.

If the transponder is on and reacting with flight controller, they can map out where the plane is. If the transponder goes out, it'll just show you this is where it's supposed to be going, like the original flight path. On Find My Friends, I turned Allison off one time when I was trying to test something. I unfriended her on Find My Friends while she was driving home. And when I was trying to test something. I turned, I unfriended her on find my friends while she was driving home. And when I went to go look at it a few days later, it still said she was on the highway on the way home. Is it kind of like that? We're like, oh, she's not on find my friends anymore. She's off the grid, but it's, it's still showing the original

past. It's sort of like that, except it would have probably shown like, she's she's making like if if allison's phone went out and say she okay there's a stupid example but kind of going off that say allison is driving you're tracking her location to make sure like she gets home safely and halfway through uh her find my friends or her flight controller uh transponder her transponder goes out so she's no longer emitting like the signal of where she is it's as if your find my friends would just continue the path that she was supposed to be taking so so it's like still in motion yeah so it's like showing the actual path yes it's like showing the plane on the predicted path even though for all we know the plane is fucking in the ocean or like somewhere.

For all we know, Allison's car is not going. She turned around and is going the other way. But since the transponder is off, all you see is the predicted flight path. So they have this like brief moment of like, oh, relief. Thank God it is on the way. But then they realize it's like on its default. The default is to show what should be happening but we don't have a transponder to confirm any of this so that was a very big disheartening moment when they were like

okay never mind so back to square one at 3 30 a.m controllers were informed of this they that's when they kind of had to admit okay we have absolutely have absolutely no idea. This plane, MH370, is officially lost, completely lost. So 15 minutes later, 345 a.m., the crisis director finally declares a code red emergency, which is an emergency that requires immediate response protocol. The control centers and Malaysia Airlines spent another two hours trying to contact the flight by radio and multiple satellite phone calls which went unanswered. They were already at this point suspecting a crash, you know, because why else would they not be responding? But people, of course, continued to hope that maybe the communication systems went down. Yes? Sorry, I didn't want to interrupt you. No, no, no. I know someone out there is screaming that i won't

just let you say the story no but i'm also very by the way while we're all here round of applause you're doing a great job oh thank you and thank you to marianne but definitely ask as many questions as possible i feel like there are so many bizarre twists and turns so we all know what happened with ocean gate the submersible and uh you know how when they were saying like only this many hours left until there's no oxygen only this many hours left did they have was there any discussion like that when it came to like how long they could last in the sky yes fuel yes okay yes they had like the amount of fuel and that definitely comes into play they did that's a great question they had the amount of fuel that um and how far they could like predict how far it could get depending on i mean the tough part is they don't know

which direction it went but right it was not on course, but they did, they were able to say like, by now this plane should have run out of gas or fuel. So they are hoping, you know, like against all hope that this plane, maybe the communication system went down and flight 370 would somehow land in Beijing against all odds. So at 630 a.m., like I imagine everyone's just peeing their pants in nervousness. The flight is supposed to land in China.

Does not appear. Everyone at Beijing airport is just like waiting to see something come out of the sky. Like high intensity. And you know, like people at the airport or at least the higher ups know about this. And I'm assuming other people, most people don't because they haven't made a public announcement. So that must be like a bizarrely tense day at that airport. Especially this was 2014. And I feel like if you're at an airport after 2001 and if you can feel tension in the air, all your feelers are up. Like what the fuck is going on?

Yeah. No, 100%. You like are hyper aware of like any anomaly in like a travel on a travel day. And I've seen like situations where you see like kind of the air traffic people. And I don't know who everybody is, but they're wearing uniforms and they're all speaking in hushed tones. And I'm like, is it something I should know? After 9-11, if I ever see a security guard looking nervous at an airport, I'm not flying. It's a very scary thought. It's a really scary thought. And so I'm imagining there was high tension there at the Beijing airport, especially

as the minutes ticked by and the plane did not land. This is when they really felt like, okay, something has gone terribly wrong. Malaysia officially launched a search and rescue operation near the plane's last known location, like the last time it had pinged over the South China Sea, thinking, you know, well, it had probably crashed here and we'll start searching. Then at 7.24 a.m., Malaysia Airlines had to make, and I feel terrible if whoever had to step up and do this, a public announcement about the missing plane. And suddenly the news broke worldwide, creating just like an international media storm. And of course, devastating the families of the 239 people who were expected to just land a couple hours later in china i can't imagine i can't the terror the full terror it really like this plane topics like really get me uh it's for a lot of people a lot of people have flight anxiety

about like will i deal with turbulence not will will I go fucking missing? Seriously. Seriously. It's a very scary thought. So, you know, I understand if people are like, nope, not for me. Like, I get it. So things are looking pretty damn bleak. Several countries, including the U.S., sent boats and planes to the South China Sea to aid in the search. And they expected to find signs of the plane within hours or at the most a day or a couple days. And fun fact, when a plane crashes in the ocean, especially such a big jet, the bulk of the plane sinks deep underwater. So what searchers do is they look for lightweight debris like seat cushions, insulation, life jackets that would obviously float to the surface.

And of course, tragically, bodies of victims who hadn't been strapped into their seats. And these would float to the surface in a situation like a large plane crashing into the ocean. However, search efforts can often be complicated by the amount of trash in the ocean. You know, you see like something floating and it's like fucking styrofoam yeah you know it's just like us humans being complete assholes and just throwing plastic at the fish um but when searchers finally do find what they're looking for if they do uh this is like more of just a hypothetical or like how this usually works. If they do find what they're looking for, the debris obviously will have floated away from the crash site. And so then I think this is so fascinating.

They have to do basically mathematical calculations that involve the ocean currents to work their way backward in time to where the crash would have occurred. Can you imagine having that as like a bonus question at the end of a test? I would. Do you know that three times in this I write parentheses? Is this what calculus is? Because like, I don't know what calculus is. But like every time I read that, I'm like, oh, is that what? And so when they say, oh, you'll never use math in the real world.

I'm like, somebody's doing it. Not me. But somebody used math to save lives or to try to save lives. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To do very smart things. And there's more of this kind of like ingenious, like new ways of trying to search and rescue that actually are now being implemented as protocol because of this crash.

So we'll definitely get into like how things have shifted. But so now they're looking for this plane in the South China Sea and the hours are ticking by, but there is no sign of Flight 370 debris. And so something is not adding up. They're like, well, it is not here. That evening, Malaysian Airlines engineering department contacted the CEO of the company with some startling new details. So the department had reviewed Flight 370's satellite communication information, and it turns out that at 2.39 a.m., Malaysian Airlines ground controllers had made a satellite phone call to the plane, and nobody answered the call, but the plane's satellite data unit registered the call, which means the plane was still in the air at the time of the call.

Okay. And that was at 2.39? 2.39. Now at 7.14 a.m., another satellite fall connected to the plane's satellite data, which meant the plane was still in the air 45 minutes after it was supposed to land in Beijing and six hours after its communication went down and that couldn't be a fluke that couldn't be a no the satellite pinged it that it was that it was they they called to the plane and the uh transmission was received they weren't they didn't communicate back um but the transmission was received which means it was still operating and it had in the air for sure not just like i believe so because i

think because it's like a satellite like it's meant to track flying objects wow so i'm i'm quite sure uh this is confirmation that it was still in the air. So what does that mean? If it lasted an hour longer than it was supposed to in the sky? Well, I mean, I think they all typically have more fuel in reserve. You know, like I don't think it's like they have the exact amount of fuel just to get from point A to point B in case they have to reroute or something like that. But it was still shocking because they thought, oh, well, this is probably just your, I mean, I hate to say cut and dry plane crash, but like the systems went down and we can't find the plane.

Presumably it crashed. But no, hours and hours later, this thing is still in the air, apparently. Yeah. So far, I'm thinking like someone put in an autopilot and hijacked the plane or something. That is a theory. Okay. That is definitely a theory. Okay.

So more satellite data would continue to come to light. A satellite over the Indian Ocean that was operated by a British company. Oh, that's the other thing. There are a lot of like private companies that also have kind of satellites and things in the air that they can like volunteer their information like it's not governmental tracking like federal tracking it's more like specific private companies that have um some sort of a satellite up there and they can you know say oh we were able to ping the plane at this time. And so they did. They offered up some information. The satellite contacted the flight. Oh, sorry, I didn't even finish this sentence. And so that's what they did. The satellite over the Indian Ocean operated by a British company

had actually made contact with Flight 370 in the early morning. So the satellite contacted the flight with a series of signals called handshakes. And I'll just real quick, like tell you what a handshake is. Basically, it's when the satellite recognizes the airplane in the air and like pings it, like sends an electronic query. And the satellite will then tilt in a position to receive a response if the airplane sends a message back. But the flight never completed the handshake. They never sent a message back. It was sort of as if like picture like you're calling the plane over the phone and they're not answering.

But you know it's there. So they pinged it like they're like, oh, OK. So with those handshakes, they can see right about or at least an area of where the plane could have been as it moved um but again there was no like conscious response from the plane so uh the plane was sending these signals called handshakes right and even though the plane should we address that you're in a different oh yeah sure okay um hey everyone remember that time when christine fell asleep mid podcast and we had to redo uh the podcast the next day i didn't fall asleep she didn't fall asleep but after we recorded by the way we're now the middle of this podcast is a different day.

And we realized that there were more notes to go. So here's what I did. I accidentally deleted like a page of notes somehow. And when I got to the end of my notes yesterday, as we recorded the episode, I was like, oh, shit, I missed like a huge chunk of notes. Where are they? So I went and found them. And now we're recording them the day later. So it's going to skip from this to like us yesterday.

So there's just like one page where these notes. I'm so sorry. We're in a bit of a, this is a weird like glitch in the matrix. It is. We're in the middle of two sets of the same day. Going fast forward, then back again. And future us that you hear in a few minutes won't know that we're doing this. So it's kind of trippy.

And I apologize, but I was explaining to Em about the handshakes that the satellite was sending to the airplane. And essentially they send this handshake and the plane is supposed to respond, but it wasn't, it never picked up. it never picked up. However, the satellite could still see that flight 370 was flying every hour until 8.19 a.m., until it went out of range. So basically, this plane is still in the air at 8.19 a.m., and that means it was still in the air more than seven hours after takeoff and nearly two hours after it was supposed to arrive in China. So in other words, they were like starting the process to look for the wreckage before the plane had ever even gotten out of the air. Isn't that wild? Yeah. It makes you also wonder like so how much I mean, I know there was more fuel, but I guess the jet truly needed.

But how much fuel? I would want to know the math of like how much fuel is there in total on this plane and how far can it get if it's now exceeding its destination? You asked that yesterday. I was like, I'll let you know. And then I apparently deleted the entire bullet point. But I have it right here. I'm still desperate for the information. Okay, good.

I'm so glad. So I will tell you in like two bullet points. I don't believe you. No, I will. I don't. Delete. Oops. No.

Authorities began to suspect foul play, kind of like you did at first, right? Like they believed someone on board deliberately disabled some of the flight's communication systems because if the plane is still in the air but not responding like it seems intentional so here you go m at takeoff the plane was equipped with 108 200 pounds of jet fuel i don't even know what that means okay you asked for this information i know i know okay the trip that was planned to beijing would consume an estimated 82,000 pounds of fuel. So this is I'm getting hives just thinking back to like math class. I don't like what was the original number? One oh eight thousand.

One hundred eight thousand. OK, so that's like 20. Well, and then it was 26, 26 more. I don't know. I think it is 26. 26 more? I don't know, Em. I think it's 26,000 more. Okay. Like, I literally believe you. I have no idea.

Okay. Okay, now I feel like we're, now I'm nervous. 108,200. Wait, shit. 108,200 minus 82,000 is 26,200. You're so smart. Okay. Okay.

So that is how much would be in reserve, 26,000 pounds of fuel. Okay. And that would be enough to travel, here you go, an estimated seven hours and 31 minutes total. Wow. And the original flight was scheduled for five hours and 34 minutes. So almost two hours more of fuel is on board. So it's weird because the plane had plenty of fuel to divert to multiple airports if there were an emergency. Like if something had gone wrong, they could have diverted to it's not like they were stranded over the ocean with not enough fuel the whole time.

Like they could have landed somewhere safely. So this is also why they thought maybe this was foul play. So now they're obviously thinking, where the hell did it go if it's still in the air at 8 a.m.? So engineers worked out a way to estimate the flight's location using the satellite data. Every time the satellite sent a handshake, the amount of time it took for the signal to reach the plane and like bounce back, they were able, it's like genius, they were able to use that to create like potential paths saying, you know, I don't know, it reminds me of like if a train is traveling at this speed for this many miles, like which I don't know, it reminds me of like, if a train is traveling at this speed for

this many miles, like, which I could never understand, but obviously much smarter people than I are on this. And so they were able to kind of do this ingenious kind of hack where they saw how long the signal took and they were able to route multiple different potential routes that this plane could have taken. And it wasn't precise by any means, but it was at least a good idea of the flight's path in relation to this satellite. People who are into like aeronautics and like that make that their job. I don't think I've ever understood until now what maybe their job entails.

But like having to do math about planes is crazy. That also like requires you to think of people's human lives at stake like oh my gosh i remember my friend's dad had all these like textbooks about like airplane history of aviation and i would look at it and go like well i'm not a i'm not a girl girly in stem i know that much and i'm three like i figured that out early i feel like um it's very much i mentioned this to you when it came out but back at the last spider-man movie he and spider-man defeats dr strange because he uses math and like oh yeah and he says like you know what's cooler than magic math and like i just knew that was gonna be on like an

educational poster somewhere every poster in every middle school you know it yeah you know it like you know like get my cricket machine out and start like profiting off that you know marvel's gonna sue me i just can't believe like you know they said it they planted that line to make it a promotional to merchandise it for sure to merchandise it yeah i totally agree spider-man if he were hearing the story he'd be like can't agree math saves lives so like i already figured out where they are with my spidey senses yeah um so next i had to determine uh which way the flight went because there are multiple options and data showed it was moving away from the satellite but of course they didn't know in which direction.

So using the information I told you about the plane's fuel load, they were able to rule out several possibilities and they were kind of like narrowing down the potential paths this plane could take. So this was apparently, and I mean, unsurprising to me, a groundbreaking method of searching. A man named William Waldock, who is a professor of accident investigation, said, quote, in terms of search and rescue, they're probably going to have to rewrite the book after this. They are like totally reengineering, so to speak, the entire way that they're doing search and rescue here. Yeah. So in the end, they determined that the flight either headed northwest,

doing search and rescue here. Yeah. So in the end, they determined that the flight either headed northwest, crossing China and India into Central Asia over Kazakhstan. And the other possibility was that the flight veered southwest. So on that route, the plane would leave land completely and just fly over open ocean, over the Indian Ocean, which also doesn't make sense, you know. 25 different countries joined the search effort and the northern route was ruled out because none of the countries that this path would have been on reported seeing any flights that matched in their airspace okay so basically searchers were like this plane went out over the indian ocean like we can pretty confidently say that searchers deployed 43 ships and 58 aircrafts to the only remaining

possibility, the southern path over open ocean. This search area was vast. William Waldock told CBC News, if it really is out there in the Indian Ocean, they're going to need a lot more than that, a lot more than the 43 ships and 58 aircraft. So on land, family and friends of the passengers and crew, of course, could do nothing but wait and just be like. In total anxiety and despair, I imagine some of them were trying to hold on to hope, but others already began mourning at this point. It's horrible. It's horrible. On March 24th, which was 16 days after the flight vanished into thin air, an emergency meeting was called in Beijing to notify the victim's relatives that they had ended rescue efforts and they were calling it quits. Malaysia Prime Minister Najib Razak confirmed that Flight 370 was lost in the Indian Ocean, officially is what they were saying. The flight didn't have enough fuel to continue south and it had no place to land on its route over water. And the Malaysian Airlines CEO said, we have to assume beyond all reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and none of those

on board survived. Wow. So of course, this became an international tragedy. And I'm going to list real quick. The passengers on board were citizens of the following countries, Malaysia, Australia, Russia, New Zealand, China, France, the United States, Canada, India, Iran, Indonesia, Taiwan, Netherlands, and Ukraine. Jeez. Oh my gosh. I have chills. And I don't know, again, the details on the ages, which I don't think I want to, to be honest. It's just it's it's horrific. The International Buddhist Organization, Tzu Chi, sent teams to Malaysia and China to provide specialized emotional support to the victims' families, which I thought was like.

That's beautiful. Really beautiful. beautiful. And, you know, the world is in mourning and like fear, but the search for the plane continued because they wanted to find this black box. And Flight 370 was equipped with two black boxes. One recorded data on how the plane was functioning and the other recorded noise in the cockpit, including pilots' conversations. So black boxes are equipped with battery-powered beacons that send out these sort of pings to indicate their location, and ships can use special sonar equipment to detect the sonic signals underwater

because they essentially sink when the plane crashes into water. The batteries would only last 30 days, and authorities were like, shit, we're running out of time. We're already 16 days into this search. We don't have much time left. Yeah. So working against the clock.

Malaysia, China and Australia worked together to comb the immense area of sea. They picked up several pings on their sonar equipment and they were getting their hopes up. But it turns out that. Oh, my God, this is is like i don't know i don't want to like i don't want to it's just embarrassing maybe for them i think because it turns out the pings were coming from their own equipment oh my god selves and i just imagine that would be so devastating when you're like oh my god we're hearing something you know yeah i'm not saying like oh they did something wrong i have no idea but it must just have been so they're so probably wired that they got confused about disheartening yeah yeah who yeah who knows and there's multiple

teams coming in with equipment so essentially it turned out these signals were false and were probably pinging on themselves which sucks because if you only have like 14 hours left and now you're like directing a whole hour but 14 days i feel like it's like wasted time now that like you've yes trying to find these other pings and it was you the whole time it's almost like oh we've just concentrated our search in this one area thinking it was here turns out we could have spent that time you know searching more searching more. Yeah, it's got to be really, really disheartening. So after, you know, the time passed, they basically ran out of hope that they would ever locate the black boxes. So the only remaining option was to simply start looking for the wreckage underwater. So on October 6, 2014, authorities began to search

along the path or the arc where the plane last flew before it was lost to the satellite. Okay. They searched over 74,000 square nautical miles of ocean floor. Holy shit. This is a massive amount of space and it's not even as much as they would have wanted to, to be able to, but the funds,

you know, and the time just weren't there for that. That's still, to me, that's an impressive amount of time. A massive amount. Yeah. No luck. No luck. Nothing. In 2015, locals on the island Reunion, which is east of Madagascar, found a piece of a Boeing 7-7 in the sand during a beach cleanup. Boeing 7-7 in the sand during a beach cleanup. Now, authorities were able to use serial numbers printed on the metal to confirm that it was actually a piece of Flight 370. And this was essentially their confirmation that MH370 had gone down over the Indian Ocean, but they still

found no sign of the actual plane or any of the people who had been aboard it. So in January 2017, nearly three years since the incident, all three countries officially suspended their search. Meanwhile, a man named Blaine Gibson, who is a former lawyer from Seattle who specializes in wreckage hunting, started his... I know. What a Tinder bio. What a hobby. Okay. I like long walks on the beach looking for shrapnel of an airplane. Yeah.

That's all. So he started his own search along the coast of Southeast Africa, and he discovered 11 pieces of debris thought to belong to MH370. of debris thought to belong to MH370. As of 2021, 33 pieces of washed up debris have been confirmed to be connected to that plane. Oh, wow. Okay. So it's definitely, I mean, obviously. So they have found pieces. And I will say, like in the Black Box Down episode I listened to, the guy who hosts it is kind of an expert on these things and he explained like they couldn't say a hundred percent that this uh it was called a flapperon and it's like a just a part of a plane and it had a number stenciled on it and it was from a boeing 777 and they were able to say like

odds are this is from the plane they can't sayly 100%, but we're pretty sure that it's from the plane. So, in January of 2018, so this is years later now, a private search and salvage company called Ocean Infinity launched its own search effort. The company told the Malaysian government that they would conduct a search, but if they found nothing, they wouldn't require payment. But if they did find it, then the Malaysian government would pay them for their services. Okay. It's basically like a no-find, no-fee. Like, you know those lawyers that are like, if you don't win, you don't pay, or if we don't win your case, you don't pay our fee. You know what I mean? And so the Malaysian government agreed, and this company, Ocean Infinity, spent six months and millions of dollars scouring underwater mountains and caverns with its cutting-edge submarines and sonar equipment.

Unfortunately, they found nothing. And so they spent those millions and didn't get paid for it and didn't find anything. Left with absolutely no physical information about the flight's final hours, investigators had to look elsewhere for answers. One odd detail of the incident was that according to phone data records, this creeps me out, the flight at point was in within range of a cell phone tower while it was like off the grid that means if anything was wrong or if anyone suspected anything was wrong why did no one make an attempt to make a phone call like you know on the plane when usually you're out of service but like they crossed through areas where there was cell phone service and you'd think like if you were in danger or you were someone's looking at their phone or trying

to send a message yeah that somebody would have sent something but that did not happen so the thought now is were they incapacitated the whole flight or did they or perhaps they had no idea they had gone off course and they were yeah. And they were just like in the plane, like chilling, sleeping. Yeah. So next interesting point. For most of its path south, Flight 370 flew in a straight line out to sea. But the initial turn it took to go off course. So basically, you can see when the flight is going on its intended course.

Then all of a sudden, when it goes off course, it makes such a tight turn that this tight turn could only be accomplished manually without autopilot by a very experienced pilot. Wow. Yeah. So now I'm starting to wonder, like, if they didn't get hijacked by like let's say like an expert pilot that happened to be a passenger on board who and a terrorist and a terrorist waits for everyone to either fall asleep or hurts everybody so they don't try to have access to their phones or anything takes over the pilot the only other thought now is like was the pilot like a double agent or something and

like just like the pilot knew what he was doing the entire time well there's another theory m you're you're nailing it sorry i feel like i'm spoiling things for you no you're saying the exact things that like are running through everyone's mind as they're discovering this because it's like wait a second so a pilot would have had to make this. It's not like some random person could have gotten a hold of the controls and pulled this off. I mean, it could be seen as suspicious that that pilot was so anal about making sure every single thing was right and perfect. I thought that same thing. Like he mentioned all the altitude things twice, even though it wasn't required. Yeah. he mentioned all the altitude things twice even though it wasn't required yeah calculating and i wish i knew if that was his norm like does he always say everything twice or like this time

was he like just so you know we are at this point right maybe he's just a good fucking pilot and a victim and like exactly and that's why it's also really messy and kind of icky because you're like i don't want to make these assumptions. I mean, we don't know. And so it's like, but yeah, we will definitely get into the pilot because there is some more very intriguing information. Okay. So in flight simulations, nobody was able to make the turn as quickly as MH370 had. And if this turn would have taken place, which it did, the maneuver sets off alarms in the

cockpit. And essentially it turned so tightly that if it had tried to turn any tighter, the plane could have stalled and fallen right out of the sky. Like this is an extremely dangerous move. Also, would people like just be toppling out of their seats yes other people yes actually i will mention that as well like if you weren't sort of strapped in you would have gone flying and going down potentially like concussed or who or dead who knows so the real maneuver that this flight actually pulled off was extremely risky and so it's like it it's like either something went terribly wrong and they were trying to like fix it do you know what i mean like maybe they took the turn because they were trying to avoid something or maybe it was like an intentional move by the pilot um one theory is paints the

pilot in a heroic light so author ian higgins suggests perhaps a fire broke out in the cockpit shattering the windscreen and causing rapid decompression the cabin would have quickly lost oxygen uh the passengers would have died and the pilot who was potentially wearing his oxygen mask uh but had no access to the controls because the fire had destroyed them uh he knew he would have to land the plane but he didn't want to hurt anybody else so he turned toward the ocean to crash the plane where they wouldn't hurt anyone and he would just go down with the ship so to speak down with the plane okay okay and that is a you know heroic thought like if he knew everyone else was dead and he was like well i don't want any more casualties so i'm gonna die along with

the plane you know that is definitely heroic um But the issue with that theory is that this fire would have had to start in a highly specific part of the cockpit to create this scenario. And this isn't something that has ever occurred in any Boeing 777. The plane was well maintained. It had no former equipment issues that could have caused a fire that they knew of. And investigators even conducted experiments like they would take replicas of the cargo that was on board to see because they knew what was on board and so they were like trying to see like if anything could have started this fire and they could never replicate it so that theory is like yeah really just not even likely at all just a

theory it's like probably not but but it's possible, I guess. So about an hour after the flight stopped responding to any air control, there was a temporary loss of power in the satellite communication equipment. However, the power was restored at 2.25 a.m., and that's kind of how we know the plane continued to fly for roughly six more hours. Okay. So if some sudden catastrophe like a fire or explosion, who knows what, had knocked out all of the plane's equipment, then why did the satellite equipment only turn off temporarily and then get turned back on?

Right. And why? I'm fully on board with the hijack theory at this point there's okay interesting so far okay oh okay shit never mind so no no no keep it in mind because it's a theory it's definitely a theory okay so ian and others considered some other decompression disaster that could have deprived the plane of oxygen. And like perhaps the pilots couldn't use their oxygen mask for some reason. And they would have gone into something called hypoxic confusion, which is like the loss of oxygen and you're kind of delusional and you kind of getting like all gloopy. kind of delusional and you you're kind of getting like all gloopy yes and you do things that you wouldn't normally do in your right state of mind okay and so the thought is maybe they had flown

off course in hypoxic confusion until they eventually died and then like just spiraled toward the ocean but this theory would require one or both of the pilots to be so hypoxic that they couldn't think clearly, but still survived without this oxygen for two hours. Somehow. Oh, OK. Right. So the chances of that happening would be nearly zero. Like if they were running out of oxygen, presumably they would not have lasted another two hours going like completely off course in confusion. They either would have been unconscious or dead next investigators considered terrorism or a

hijacking of the plane however no terrorist organization ever took credit for the incident which kind of makes a whole hijacking plot moot yeah yeah it's almost like well of course the first thought is someone hijacked the plane but then it's like but why like no for what nobody said oh we did this you know and that kind of is usually the point of uh of a big act of terrorism like that so that kind of just didn't make sense they did, do extensive background checks on every single passenger aboard the ship, which I thought was kind of interesting. It is so smart. It feels a little invasive if you're the family member. Yeah, but I get it. You know, if they're really trying to solve this thing, pretty much nothing suspicious came up. So there were two Iranian passengers who

were flying with stolen passports, but after doing a little investigating, it turns out they were trying to make their way to Europe to seek asylum. God, that's so sad. Okay. Horrific. And they had no connections whatsoever to any criminal organizations.

Obviously... I'm sure some really awful people had opinions anyway. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And of course, you know, it's like a fake passport that's already like alarm bells. But it turns out that they had a reason. Yeah, they dug into it and they legitimately were going to Europe to seek asylum.

It was their ultimate plan. There was another issue. OK, so this is where we get back to the whole pilot uh theory because flight 370 had disappeared expertly like creepily expertly i mean you saw how well i'll get into it but its communication went down at the exact moment ground control was transferring from malaysian airlines to vietnam airspace so it took longer to notice than it would have any other time if it were just flying through the same airspace yeah then we have that harrowing turn the plane took which required extreme skill by an experienced pilot um and it's amazing the jet it's like something something most pilots could not pull off.

Like a Mission Impossible situation. Basically, yes. Next, the flight carefully towed the line on the border of Malaysia and Thailand. And one theory is that perhaps it was trying to stay off the radar of both of those countries. Oh, OK. Thai military controllers actually picked up the plane on their equipment but they assumed malaysia had it under control and malaysia meanwhile hadn't even noticed it because they thought oh well they're in vietnam by now you know so it was almost like this person

knew how to disappear it had to be a i mean obviously it had to be a pilot originally for the turn but to even understand like flight courses and flight plans and how air control would work and how they would ping you you know to turn off all of the transponders right at that time yeah and now i think i mentioned this later but like the interesting thing too about uh the the satellite remember how it turned back on yeah one of the theories is that the pilot turned off all the equipment but didn't realize that the satellite would reboot and so there would be a trace of where they were and so so it was like the only hiccup in their plan yes it's almost like exactly it's almost like he turned off all the equipment so he wouldn't get traced or tracked, not realizing that the satellite would turn back on and be pinged.

So, you know, that's a theory. I just want to be clear. That's not that's just one theory of why this may have happened. So. It's hard to believe that all of this, the turn that the, you know, straddling the country lines, the borders, turning off the equipment right at the right time. It's hard to believe that these are all sheer coincidences. So now investigators are turning their attention to the two pilots. So we have two characters here.

We have 53-year-old Zahari Ahmed Shah, and he was an extremely experienced pilot on Boeing 777s. And he was an extremely experienced pilot on Boeing 777s. He had 18,000 flight hours under his belt, 8,600 of which were on this exact plane. Wow. So he was an expert on this plane. Then there was the first officer of the flight named Fareed Khamid, and he was 27 years old. And he had only had 39 hours of flight training on the 777 but this was actually the final flight before he would be officially cleared to be a pilot of this plane wow so this was like

his last like step before he could pilot this aircraft investigators were totally stumped when they looked into these guys because Farik the first officer was 27 uh he was bubbly friendly he posted often on social media grinning ear to ear in different cockpits like he loved his job um he was actually engaged to a pilot he met at flight school um and he was like this close to becoming you know like the next pilot of this really big plane. Like so things were looking really up for him. So it didn't seem likely that this was something he would have commandeered or he would have planned out for a nefarious purpose. Then there's 53-year-old Zahari, who was reportedly happily married with two adult children and seemingly no issues in his personal life until they began to interview people who knew him more personally.

Uh-oh. Yes. So Zahari had been separated from his wife and living alone in their home. He had been having multiple emotional affairs with several women. He told friends that between flights, he would just often pace around the empty rooms of his house. He slept with flight attendants and he obsessively followed two models on social media, like almost to the level of like cyber stalking them,

like pretty aggressively followed them. Some people in his life believed he was suffering from severe clinical depression, especially after this separation. And people people were worried about him. He was described as a compassionate person. And people were saying they were they were extremely worried about him. And it was difficult to watch him go through this part of life but flip side of that is you know people living a hard life going through a divorce it doesn't necessarily mean you turn to mass murder right you know what i mean like sure it's not totally fair to be like must be him because his life's messy you know like

i'm sure if you went into the personal details of everyone on that plane there's probably a lot messier stuff and statistically he also wasn't the only one with clinical depression so exactly exactly so it's a little it's it's sort of like he had the ability to pull this off and he had some conflict in his life so it seems more likely that it was him at least than the first officer who sure was young and i don't know didn't seem to be going through anything too tough it's hard to say but then a malaysian police report was leaked and it contains some more troubling news that pointed at zahari this report revealed that zahari liked to play flight simulators which is a very common thing among pilots to play these flight simulators and like i don't know plot out routes and like just either actually plot out routes or mess around and you know so that in itself was not weird and he would often upload the playthroughs to youtube okay but they found on his computer hidden in a systems file

that was almost like it wasn't with all the other clips it was sort of hidden and it was a flight simulation he had never uploaded and the flight in that simulation followed a path eerily similar to the strange path that the MH370 had taken including that really aggressive turn well ding ding ding I know so in the simulation the plane took similar turns to the flight he flew the plane straight into the Indian Ocean and terminated the flight near the arc where the real Flight 370 made its final ping to the satellite. So it was like hauntingly eerie to watch this. Now, I will say, I will say, I have taught, like, of course, I found this to be like oh my god like shocking evidence but you know reading several articles on this watching um there's a docuseries as well and I talked to

I forget if it was it doesn't matter but I think it was my brother and like he had done some deep dive into this too and apparently like it's not that damning like it sounds really damning to a layperson but apparently like this is not a that weird of a thing to do i don't know i'm having a hard time like wrapping my mind about or around what are the odds that you would have this flight simulation plan and then sure it just happens to occur in real life yeah there is the possibility it is also though but it is eerie either way you know it doesn't it doesn't help clear his name it does not and it doesn't prove anything but it also doesn't help his case yes yes that's honestly probably the best way to put it so this simulation which he had never uploaded, he had pre-programmed it in multiple short clips,

essentially so he could skip ahead to different parts of the route. Instead of having to play the entire multi-hour path, he could skip forward to the turn. I'm going to skip forward to going in this direction um it almost seemed like he had made the simulation with like a goal in mind like almost practicing it so i was gonna say so do you think if if he's the one that we're looking for um do you think he was planning or could he have been doing the flight simulation? And then some of that, you were saying the lack of oxygen, maybe he thought he was in a flight simulator and recreating it. Could he have been on drugs or something and thought he was in his flight simulator? Could he have been on drugs or something and thought he was in his flight simulator and like trying to.

You know, that's really interesting because I kind of had that same thought of like maybe he had done that so many times. And then when something did happen, he was like, oh, I can do this turn. I've practiced it a million times. You know, like maybe it was like in his subconscious, like if it wasn't something he had done and he was trying to. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, to me, it sounds pretty damning. Mm hmm. I think.

I don't know. And that's just me. And I don't know that much. It would require an explanation. That's for sure. I would like to know what the heck that was all about so uh kyra dempsey a plane crash analyzer in her article for medium that i mentioned earlier proposed a new theory now um this is where when i found out that kyra was a, you know, plain, what did I say? Flight crash analyst or

something badass, something really kick ass, uh, an analyzer of plane crashes. Yeah. So when I found that out, I was like, oh, okay. That lends a whole new sense of credibility to this theory that she's posing because i assume she knows more than the average person about plane crashes for obvious reasons so this is the theory that she proposed in her medium article like just a potential she said perhaps zahari the main pilot told fariq the first in command to go take care of something in the cabin, sort of just like sending him on like a little quick errand, or maybe he waited for him to go to the bathroom.

And once Farik left, Zahari locked him out of the cockpit, put on his oxygen mask, and then cut the plane's oxygen, lights, and communication equipment. The cabin, in this case, would rapidly depressurize, and Zahari would then have begun his violent two-minute turn off course. That's how long—it's a two-minute turn. That's how, like, aggressive this turn is. It's a steep turn, yeah.

I feel Eva's and my, like, motion sickness, like, bubbling up. Yeah. So anyone who wasn't buckled in like for reek for example who would have been just running an errand out there or like in the bathroom would be violently thrown off their feet and out of their seats like you had probably unconscious probably serious injuries would have occurred especially with no oxygen like you're definitely gonna be unconscious including everyone who's flopping around back there if they weren't buckled in.

And the shocking thing too, is like Farik, who's supposed to be in the cockpit, his oxygen mask is in the cockpit. So like he'd be cut from oxygen and would be thrown violently. And he would not have had time to get to his oxygen mask. Plus he was locked out of the cockpit, if this theory is true. So that makes sense why no one would have been looking at their phone when they were by a cell phone tower.

A cell phone tower, because they were all unconscious. And then dead. Yep. Makes sense. So presumably, in this case, Farik would be unconscious or dead by the time Zahari finished turning the jet those two minutes. And in another 10 minutes, the passengers who had survived this dramatic violent turn and had gotten a hold of their oxygen masks, their oxygen would have run out in 10 minutes. Which is just like the scariest thing I've ever heard. Like a plane full of 200 some people like all suffocating to death.

I mean, it's horrific. It's horrific. So basically, this would assure to Zahari that everyone on board would be dead for the next step of this theoretical plan once everyone was dead zahari could then repressurize the plane and restore certain equipment and that could have been when the satellite communication back came back on and he didn't realize that it had flipped on because he kept all the rest of the communication lines down. So he may not have realized about the satellite. According to this theory, Zahari would have followed nearly the same path from his flight simulation until he was home free over the Indian Ocean

and eventually the plane would have just run out of fuel and crashed into the ocean. And that was... It would have been a mass murder suicide that's the theory and you know that is such a big accusation to throw at someone who can't defend themselves and who for all we know tried to do the opposite and save people we don't know and so it's like a very tough line to walk because you know this is just a theory um and it's it's like a very tough line to walk because, you know, this is just a theory and it's it's possible. But for all we know, it happened. Nothing like that.

It is the best theory someone has been able to come up. I think it is the most sound sound. Yeah. Sound. It's the worst as far as like. Just the tragedy of it, but it's probably the most logically sound to me yeah so that being said nothing is really certain without the crucial black box evidence from the flight and if sahari really were guilty of a murder suicide plot he probably would have which

i didn't know they could do this pilots but probably would have disabled the black box when he cut communication at 121 a.m yeah i didn't even know you could do that either i'm like you gotta fix that folks and i think they actually did do a lot of upgrades to the black box after after this specific incident so in that case the black boxes would still give us even if we found them and listened if he had turned them off with the communication equipment we wouldn't even know like it wouldn't have even given us answers which is also so frustrating in the end we learned some valuable lessons from the lost flight or at least the you know airplane community did because black boxes are now required to have a 90-day battery life instead of 30 oh wow because originally they were

30 and they emit pings um so that if they fall into the ocean you have like 30 days to find the pings of the black boxes they are now required to have a 90-day battery life instead of 30 to you know buy crucial time and search efforts the international civil aviation organization also requires all planes built after 2021 to include independent tracking devices that signal the plane's location once every minute wow which i'm like wow i'm shocked that didn't have exist before just like a gps tracker on a plane yeah that's not wild like i feel like if you asked me renee has an air tag on her dog you know i feel like you i mean with find my friends i have an air tag on allison and she has one on me so i don't have one on you and every time i ask i'm rejected so i at this point

it's a it's a bit of a running gag for us, but you are welcome. I'm glad it's funny for you because I have Eva's and I don't have yours. You're welcome to have mine. I don't give a shit. I've asked, so I'm obviously not welcome. And you have mine. No, I don't.

Oh, it says you and Lisa Lampanelli can both see my location, but I can't see yours. I truly can't see your location at all. Oh, really says you and Lisa Lampanelli can both see my location, but I can't see yours. I truly can't see your location at all. Oh, really? I have Allison, Mom. Oh, you know why? You know why? What?

Because you had my location for so long, and then I got so irritated that I deleted it. I was like, fine, Em, if I can't see where you are, you can't see where I am, which is at home always. Oh, okay. Well. So I deleted you, and I'm sorry. Glad to know. You don't have to add me it's it's it's it's a big it's a big ask so i won't i won't do it um in any case hello gg uh where were we oh so now planes have to signal their location every single minute, not just like on the hour a potential like satellite happens to see it.

Hi, Leona. Oh. Can I see you for one minute? Sorry, folks, but she climbed all the way up to see me. Do you want to say something into the microphone? What do you have to say for yourself? Do you want to say something into the microphone? What do you have to say for yourself?

Can you say... Can you say Mothman? Can you say... Can you say hello? Hello, woof woof. Hello, woof woof. Hello, woof Woof Hello Woof Woof Can you say hello Funkle M? Hello Woof Woof Close enough

Say bye bye Bye bye Good job That's enough. Okay. No. Say bye-bye. Bye-bye. Okay. We tried. I tried to get Mothman on the record, but next time. Anyway. We got hello, woof, woof. So Gio got a hi.

I didn't. But, you know, it's okay. You got a hello, blah, blah, blah, blah, because I think she didn't know how to say Funklem. I've gotten M out of her once in my life and that's true i should have just said m maybe that's easier i was trying not to respond so the camera would stay on you but i it was very i think with zencaster now i think they're um both side by side oh perfect okay well then i just looked like a tool no but also she couldn't hear you because i have headphones on so i don don't think that it would have made a difference.

It would have been me hearing, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, and would not have relayed to her. So I'm so sorry about the interruption. That was Leona's podcast debut as quoted. Isn't that beautiful? She can officially be quoted. And she basically said bye-bye. She said hello, goodbye. She said hello to the basically said bye-bye so she said hello goodbye she said hello to the dog bye-bye to you and that's all she wrote yep uh okay so we're almost done here i promise but um you know like i said now flights are pinging every minute which

i think is great please keep track of where my plane is at all times uh flight data recorders black boxes should also stream which i love stream their information to ground control sites so they're not just like locked in the black box they can stream that information to just like the internet just like general no no just to the flight to air control like to well well that's useful to show that wasn't a thing before that's what i'm saying i'm like man they really took a lot for them to kind of figure that one out i feel like if you if at pub trivia if they said when was that available i would have not said as of 2014 i would have been like when the white brothers were like hey we went up up to the sky for two minutes.

I would have made sure everyone knows where we are at all times. I would have assumed there was something at least since like the 90s, you know, think or at least since 2001. Mm hmm. Just saying. So in any case, flights at this point should not simply be able to vanish without being tracked um these black boxes also should stream their information to ground control sites and they should float these motherfuckers didn't float they didn't no they sunk to the bottom with the plane oh please i literally would have never thought that they were anything other than buoyant. I mean, if the airplane seat is buoyant and you're supposed to wrap your arms around it,

you'd think the black box could do it, too. But what do I know? So kind of end of the story is Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is still missing today. It has inspired countless conspiracy theories as you can imagine some people believe the plane flew into a wormhole and is trapped in limbo others say it was taken by aliens uh and blaine gibson you know the wreckage hobbyist or whatever he is who found that um flapper on on the beach so in his search for pieces of the plane he actually started getting death threats from people who felt like his discoveries were threatening their theories

about like time warps and government cover-ups and he was like yo i'm just reporting what i find okay uh of course the tragedy also inspired pop culture uh There's a TV show called Manifest. I don't know if you ever watched it. Nope. I started to watch it and I got so freaked out by the plane crash. It's not really a spoiler. It's kind of the whole point. very okay let me just tell you it's about a flight that goes missing for over five years and when the plane reappears and lands at its destination the crew and passengers don't realize any unnatural amount of time has passed it's almost like they like skipped forward it's a really cool concept i think um it's really international authorities don't know what to do with these people who have been gone for five years and their families have like been trying to move on and think they're gone and not to be that person not to be that person but it is uh identical to avengers when they blipped out of existence half the universe blipped out of existence for five years and now they're all coming back and having

to like cope with their families grieving for five years oh shit yeah see i mean similar concept and to be fair uh in a comic-con interview in 2018 the director said he actually thought up the plot years before the malaysia airlines incident but nobody cared about his pitch until years later when flight 370 made missing planes topical and then they were like oh now we want to do this show so he's like I promise I didn't write it like about the Malaysian Airlines incident. It was only then that like interest sparked. Yeah, exactly. So until it's found, which hopefully will be, the fate of Flight 370 will remain a mystery. And interestingly, just this March 2023, Ocean Infinity, that same company that did the no fine, no fee deal with the Malaysian

government, they announced that they have new evidence that may actually lead to the plane's discovery. Now, yeah, so I'm like waiting. I'm so excited to find out what it is. They didn't reveal any details, but the company does plan to bring this information to the Malaysian government for consideration. And again, Ocean Infinity is doing their no fine, no fee deal. So if they fail to locate the flight, the government doesn't have to pay them a cent. And they kept their word on that in 2018. So they plan to keep their word on it now. And the Malaysian government restated that we'll only resume the search if they are presented with compelling new evidence of where the plane might be. Wow. Another quote unquote fun fact, more of an M

style fun fact, is that during the previous extensive search of the seafloor, which I didn't even get into because like it's there's just all these maps of where they search. I mean, one of the search areas was like the size of Minnesota and it's like in the ocean. Like it's there's just all these maps of where they search. I mean, one of the search areas was like the size of Minnesota. And it's like in the ocean. Like it's just so much. It just seems like almost hopeless sometimes, you know. So during the extensive search of the seafloor, searchers actually discovered several shipwrecks from the 1800s that had never been found. Huh.

It's weird that that patch of water was just never explored before i mean it's i don't know literally out in the middle of nowhere like oh okay well that is very fun fun fact it is it's pretty wild so it's you know it's eerie to think like a hundred years ago 150 years ago these ships vanished without a trace which is like so tragic and traumatic to think like oh similar similar things happened back then not on a plane but you know the terror of being on a ship and knowing you're in the middle of nowhere and knowing you'll never be found um but it makes you also think, like, if that occurred 150 years ago and we found it last year, maybe in 100 years we find a plane, you know,

or maybe in much less since our technology has advanced so much. So, you know, it's possible. It's possible future generations or even our generation might discover Flight 370 and give a little bit of closure to the families of the victims. Because according to K.S. Narendran, whose wife was aboard the flight, quote, After all that has been done and said, we don't know what happened. We're in the same place as we were on March 8th, 2014. For all of us, finding answers remains a critical matter.

So they're still living with so many questions. I can't imagine. It's just it's a really tragic story. To not have the closure to know, like, did they suffer? Were they scared? Precisely. Part of you just prays that they were just sleeping because it was a red eye and they had no idea yep and it just was like a you know snap of the finger and things went wrong and hopefully there wasn't suffering but you know it's just like without knowing you know your mind goes so many places and part of me is like so i don't know if like the if it's part of me is toxic or stupid or just like ignorant to the size of the earth but in my mind i'm like it can't be that hard to find a fucking plane like it can't be that hard but then you say things like oh part of the ocean the size of minnesota is like in the middle of like an expanse that's just

and and by the way i think part of the reason it was so hard to find is because there were multiple possible paths it could have taken i mean it was a full radius of wherever it was last found they don't know and then like when they did more calculations they were like actually it could have gone even farther but they didn't have the and it's so expensive also oh yeah these kinds of searches so like there's only so much money they're going to put toward it before they have to say, like, we're just wasting resources. So, you know, there were actually protests when the Malaysian government announced they were stopping the search and saying everybody has perished is what we're assuming. has perished is what we're assuming and you know there were the families protested that for understandable reasons because they really wanted to know uh i mean i get it but i also definitely get why there were protests like i know i know i know it's a hard thing to be it's a hard thing to

like fall fall on either side really i mean i i can totally see why people would just want someone to not give up on them and their families and friends and especially when you're just like so desperate and it i feel like part part of it too is like there were so many searches that like it felt like any day now we could have it like that kind of hope and then that like it's like what we talk about in in cold cases where it's like you get a lead and it feels like finally there's hope and then that like it's like what we talk about in in cold cases where it's like you get a lead and it feels like finally there's hope and then it gets snatched away again um it just feels like a uh a really really horrific thing for for the families involved um especially i mean especially the pilot when they're like who knows you know what really happened but to have all this speculation

about like your dad or whatever being like this mass murderer and not really knowing um anyway yeah so it pretty pretty dark stuff um well i know it was sad christine but that was that was a very good story and not to like pat myself on the back here, but the Frank Mesmer story, I think that was one of my favorite topics to cover recently. And I think this was one of my favorite episodes we've done. This was a good one. And I feel like very mysterious. A lot of questions that I'd love to hear from people on, which is always kind of fun. that I'd love to hear from people on,

which is always kind of fun. I mean, most importantly, do you like Candy Apple or Caramel? Because I need to weed some of you out. But the rest of it, I feel quite good about. I feel like this is, and you know, I want to point out too, like I waffled on doing this story because it's not necessarily true crime,

but I just love like the, you know, I don't love. Well, mystery happened, but I just I just I'm so intrigued by the mystery of it and trying to figure out, you know, what what could have happened. So, well, and my my story was not paranormal, but you know what? Every now and then we like to branch out and just see past lives a few times. That counts. How far can we make a story like paranormal spooky adjacent yeah yeah yeah how far tendrils stretch that bubble but uh no it's still a great episode and way to bookend it christine because you just reminded me i have two caramel apples i need to attend to so excuse me everybody what if allison ate one? Just kidding. That's not a nice thing. I'd scream. I'd truly scream.

She wouldn't do that. She might because there's two and she might think one is for her. So I actually have to go check on that. It's actually extremely upsetting. That's why we drink.