Citation Needed - The Acali Experiment

Episode Date: March 29, 2023

The Acali was a raft which was used in the Acali Expedition or Acali Experiment.[1] It has also been nicknamed the Sex Raft.[2] The raft had a complement of eleven people: five men and six women. It left Las Palmas, Spain on 12 May 1973 and took 101 days to drift across the Atlantic Ocean and reach Cozumel, Mexico, with a single stopover in Barbados. The experiment was conceived by Mexican anthropologist Santiago Genovés (who had previously been a crew member of Thor Heyerdahl's Ra expedition) to investigate interpersonal relationships in conditions of limited space and social isolation.[3][2][4] The participants showed a restraint towards aggression which created frustration within Genovés and led him to start to try to create conflict, and at one point he took command of the float. Despite these attempts, the group remained peaceful. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

Dude, for the last time, just tell us where you're taking us. Seriously, yes. Look, either I lead you guys to my opening of show ideas, or we all wake up on it. What do you guys want? I know, no, no, this is fine. Thank you. Good, we're here anyways. Ta-da!

It's a box? It's a box. Um, a raft, Tom. A raft. It's for this week's episode about the... I say experiment or whatever it's called. I figure what better way for us to get into the mindset of what happened than doing it ourselves?

Think about it. 101 days at sea, fighting storms and sail, will we be brought closer together by the experience or will we be driven apart? Only one way to find out, right? Eli, we've been on a podcast together for almost exactly six years now. We've done live shows events, conventions and shit together. Like what makes you think being on a raft would change that? Yeah. Oh, you didn't let me finish. There's only one sex robot, and it looks like he'd smob. Okay. Yeah, oh, that'll do it.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, you have a point. Hey, you guys. See, it started already. I'm shitting. Hello and welcome to Citation Needed! Podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we are experts. Because this is the Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts. Because this is the internet, and that's how it works now.

I'm Heath, and I'll be the captain of this just horribly tragic boat thing that I guess we're doing. And I'm joined by the crew first up. We have Castaway Popeye and Castaway Bluto, Tom and Cicero. I am what I am. And that should worry all of you actually. It's just a can of spinach with a bloody smiley hand print on it, float not to see. Exactly, yeah.

And rounding out the crew, we also have no of the powder monkey and Eli, the cabin boy, with arm swimming. I got way too excited, and then I googledled it and I found out powder monkey is not the upcoming sequel to cocaine bearer, but it was kind of cool. I get done. Oh, yeah. Also, my mom said I should take them off when I'm a confidence swimmer and I'm still not.

So they're staying on the last thing. All right, let's get right into it. Tom, what person-placed thing concept phenomenon or event are we going to be talking about today? Today we will be talking about the Akali experiment. Okay, and what is your preamble for you? How about that? Fair, very fair. All right, look, I've done a lot of writing about failed expeditions and voyages, partly because this is citation-eated,

and failure is invariably funny, but mostly because I'm fascinated by the idea of the journey. The conrad-esque odyssey into the unknown as metaphor for our need to understand something about ourselves, about the peculiar condition that is our own humanity. I'm leaning in. So when a listener suggested the Akali experiment, I was only too happy to begin reading about it and I quickly became fascinated here is an experiment, a trek made purposefully for exactly this purpose, not to discover a new land, but to use the very idea of the journey as a method of learning more about who we are as people. And of course, the whole thing was a more about who we are as people.

And of course, the whole thing was a goddamn clusterfuck and a failure. So it just fits right here in the show. Yeah. So someone was walking by as you were monologuing on your perpetual dock and they were like, that sounds like fucking science to me. Let's do that. Okay. So what is the topic within the metaphor about humanity?

The ecology experiment was the brainchild of Santiago Genevue, a Mexican anthropologist who dedicated his life to studying the phenomenon of human violence. A topic his life experiences naturally led him to pursue. Prior to ending up in Mexico, Santiago endured the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, fleeing Spain at the age of 15 only to be arrested in France and thrown into a concentration camp. And having born witness to intense violence and growing up in a world only beginning to recover from the horrors of World War II, Genovies eventually made his way to Mexico.

And there he became one of the first of the nation's physical anthropologists. Santiago became determined to understand what caused violence, to find out if the roots of human violence were inborn features of our nature, or the result of the soup we're swimming in. Well, people are violent in literally any place.

They are under any conditions. So solve before you. Don't do a weird boat thing. No need. No need. I like the fact we had a sequel to World War One. Do you think it's a fucking breath? So engrossed.

I love this part of the story. So engrossed and enamored of his study of violence was Genevieve's that when he found himself a board and airplane that was hijacked by terrorists, he recalls thinking that the situation was quote, too good to be true. Yeah, that was a quote from him. He loved it, rather than being terrified by the experience Santiago busyed himself taking notes on the behavior of the hijackers and the hostages, treating the experience as a rather sudden and unexpected experiment rather than an actual threat to his life, which by the way, it absolutely was.

It sounds like every scientist in every horror movie, great start so far, man. Sorry, hostage guy, quick thing. When you hit that child with the buddy you're gun, just then, did you yell, die now or buy now? Because it's, I'm just taking notes, it's for a science thing. Now that hijacking and what he learned from it, sparked a thought for Genovese. See, they're trapped in the confines of that airplane

was a nearly perfect experimental model. Nope. Nope. See, high above the ground, the situation was perfect isolation. The plane provided a way to eliminate outside variables. Once safely back on Terra-Fermis, Santiago began to muse about how to recreate the situation that he had experienced in a way that would give him more time to carefully study violence and its causes without possibly exploding.

What does he think an experiment is? Did he like hear the phrase in a vacuum and thought to himself, God it, so the only true boxing matches in space. So this story ends up with this guy fighting Batman though, right? Probably with this airplane hijacking. It's the exogenous factory. Now, as luck would have it, Genovies was also somewhat obsessed with the sea. She just three years prior to having been hijacked, he had participated in an anthropological study

that sought to prove that the papyrus ships available to ancient Egyptians were capable of traveling across the oceans. And in 1960, 90s, that sailed with Norwegian anthropologist Thor unpronounceable as part of the crew of a papyrus ship that departed from Morocco on its way to America. It's the contiki guy. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And he'll get himself an episode one of these days. There were actually two ships that set sail.

There was the Ra one and the Ra two, but one of them was shipwrecked in a storm. The other, however, actually made it all the way across the goddamn ocean, traveling 3,000 miles and eventually landing in Barbados. Yeah, they were super pissed that the paper airplane beat him by like six days. They were so mad. Guys, the letter in the bottle passed us again. Let's just pick it up. Let's just, we sent that.

Is that a what arm guy on a bicycle? I didn't get out here. I didn't get out here. I knew. Santiago knew that the isolation of a sea voyage would allow him the perfect laboratory for his study of human violence. Can you hear the words you're saying, Santiago? Can you hear them out loud?

Things you're saying. A drift on the open ocean cut off from outside influences, he would be able to observe and track human behavior in a way that he hoped would give him unique and unadulterated insights into the causes of that violence provided, of course, that he provoked just the ever-loving shit out of people. And this at the stage, for the Echali expert, a his studies of violence in monkeys led him to conclude that much violence was the result of sexual tensions. Quote, most conflicts are about sexual access to

ovulating females. He noted, it would the same be true for violence among people. That would be about ovulating monkey ladies. I'd be like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, speak for yourself. He didn't test it though. Yeah, you could put him on a boat. And to find out, he commissioned a construction of a raft for his grand experiment. Note that I did not say boat there. This was a raft and not by seafaring standards, a particularly large one. The Eccale was basically just a big, floaty rectangle, measured 12 meters by seven meters.

And it had a single sail. It had no engine to keep it moving at all. And the ideal was just to stick this goofy, barely seaworthy lump into the water and then float across the entire damn ocean from the Canary Islands to Mexico with just a bunch of people aboard in stressful conditions and then, you know, see if Peggy's head ended up on a pike at the end of the trip. and then, you know, see if Peggy's head ended up on a pike at the end of the trip. Sorry, he didn't feel like he had enough hay studies of human beings turning violent under stressful conditions. He needed a buoyant one to really lock in that hypothesis.

Yeah, this is, this doesn't sound like a science. This is a sociopath who knows how to write a goddamn grant proposal, right? Right. That's since he was looking to create tension, he needed people who weren't experienced mariners and who he thought would be under ever increasing stress on the trip. So the crew assembled were selected specifically

because they were all sexually attractive. Okay, you ever get forced to watch reality TV with somebody? This is what I'm fantasizing about for the cast every time I'm forced to watch reality TV. Beyond just being sexually attractive, he sought to enhance the tension by selecting mostly married people. Many of them had children as well who would miss their loved ones and also feel conflicted and guilty about wanting to get it on with the sexy randos. He chose to surround them. Hey, Captain, I think I understand most of the sailing equipment here, but why are all these pizza boxes with holes cut in the bottom under here? What do we have? I'm just saying look who's safe from the angry fuckboat.

It turns out the ranking of our guest's attractiveness wasn't so bad. But this means that the grant proposal had to say, I want to watch sexy, wet people punch each other. How did nobody stop? Does that sound work convincing in Spanish? Why would anyone stop this as an other way to pray? Thank you. That's a, I would love that TV show.

That should just be what it's called. Sexy what people punch each other. I would never turn it off. Yeah, that's fair. That's called the Bachelorette, man. That's interesting. I also chose the widest cross section of people you can imagine, many of whom did not share a common language.

I hope that difficulty communicating would just make all things more difficult. And he wanted a microcosm of the world aboard his raft, isolated from everyone and unable to just tap out of the experiment. He chose a Japanese photographer, an Angolan priest, a French scuba diver, a Swedish woman as the boat captain and Israeli doctor, a waitress from Alaska, among others. And of course, Santiago was also part of the experiment himself, acting both as observer and participant. He's going to get in a teleporter with a fly eventually, isn't he? I just I

want to see the look on his face when the 15th person asked, Hey, why is everybody so much better looking than you? I was just ranking them. And I can tell you how he feels. The rap's design was also made to foster tension by essentially eliminating anything remotely approaching privacy. Santiago figured that if he could create sexual tensions, but eliminate privacy and opportunity among the young hot people, he could heighten the sexual tension without allowing easy chances for release or pair bonding. The sleeping quarters were communal, basically just a big open space in the interior of the raft without partitions for privacy. The interior of that tiny little thing you were talking about. I don't know. Yeah, the test run in the 12 person canoe with fuck drawers.

That was super peaceful. No good data there. I'm gonna change it up for the real one. Now, and then there were the facilities or rather the lack thereof. And keeping with the designed lack of privacy, there was no bathroom on the raft. Wait, what?

Yeah, they just had kind of a plank that stuck out over the side with a hole cut in it, that the participants had to climb out onto and then just shit into the ocean and full view of everyone. Okay, I feel like this is gonna backfire. That's bonding. Right?

How did that eye contact? In the documentary I watched, titled The Rraft about the experiment, a couple of the participants reminisced about having to shit in the ocean with the waves sometimes being large enough to splash up and just bidet clean them as they did their sit and shit. Sharks followed the boat and female participants worried about menstruating, attracting and

exciting those sharks. If Eli was on the boat, the sharks wouldn't have to choose between shit and blood. So yeah, that goes for us. And I'm told I'm never more cherubic than when I'm sleep farting. So missed opportunity. Santiago. I bet he like could have inspired some violets on the boat. Sorry, I'm getting it. I absolutely mean it. They wouldn't have got it off the dock. They wouldn't have untied the raft. The women on the raft were given the most important jobs. A subversion of the

more patriarchically typical power structure you would expect in the early 1970s. Again, deceiving it just stir up some fragile male ego violence. Musing quote, this will not backfire, I guess. Not, probably fine. Quote, I wonder if having women in power will lead to less violence or more. Maybe men will become more frustrated when women are in charge and try to take over power. This is probably my favorite part of the experiment

because spoiler, it absolutely did, but not at all, how he anticipated pinnacle. Now if at this point you may be wondering like I was, what exactly the plan would be for Santiago on how to actually handle violence. If it broke out aboard the ship, here I have to tell you that there appears to be no plan for that. Like he wanted it to happen. No plan. I'm not kidding at all.

I watch a documentary. I read at least five good sized articles on this experiment. And while there's much to be made of all the efforts of Genevieve's to create the conditions for violence. I literally can't find anything at all that might address what exactly his plan would be to not all end up dead if any of his plans had actually worked. Okay, so basically he set up Elron Hubbard's C-org,

but like without all the safety features and responsible management of soccer technology. Cool. So we'll see how that goes after a quick break or some op-rop-up of nothing. Mr. Gervis, yes, Frampton. I have some questions about your proposed experiment. Yes, Frampton, what are they? Right, so I'm reading your abstract and it appears to be, quote,

I'm going to trap a bunch of sexy ladies with me on a boat in the middle of the ocean and they're in charge But they're also scared and they have to let me watch them poop and sleep next to me. It's the rules Yes, Frampton I are you are you sure I can't convince you to just higher a prostitute or two instead? I don't know Frampton will they let me watch them poop off his side of a bowl? I don't know, probably not actually. Then no deal!

For science! No, no, not science. And we're back. When we left off, a motley crew of supermodels was making very hard eye contact and shitting and fucking each other on a bad mitten court in the middle of the ocean while a nerd rode along next to them taking notes and I'm assuming masturbating. What's next in the science, Tom? All right, so I think I know I've set the scene well enough

for you. Santiago, Genevieve, he created what he thought would be the perfect laboratory for a violent, sexually charged, murder boat with no plans to do anything, but just take notes if shit went full, Lord of the flies thousands of miles into international waters. But and here is my favorite thing ever.

None of it worked at all. Not really. The participants in the study did find one another attractive and there was at least a little bit of sex on board. But because he'd made it so difficult and annoying, there wasn't really a lot of action. If two people happened to be on watch together at night while everyone was asleep, they could get some business done,

but someone always still had to keep at least one hand on the tiller, so just sort of awkward and not really worth the effort. Ah, strong disagree. That's the whole new meaning to Dutch rudder. Yeah. And since people weren't really fucking that much, they also weren't pairing off and they weren't really getting jealous.

Nobody was getting laid over much and nobody was really that sexually frustrated. It just, it wasn't a thing. In fact, pretty quickly, everybody just started getting along. Like really, really well, the participants stripped of opportunities for other diversions. They weren't even allowed books to read while on board. really really well, the participants stripped of opportunities for other diversions. They weren't even allowed books to read while on board. They fairly quickly found ways to bond. The lack of privacy rather than making people ornery seemed only to help participants shed their natural inhibitions and shyness and seemed instead to make them more open and helpful

to one another. And so, Yago was so mad. So mad. He is so mad about this guys for real. And rather than violence, participants begin to teach each other songs from their culture and build deep bonds of friendship. I feel like I love this. This sociopathic nerd is just riding along next to him. He's furious. He's trying to do like ventriloquism slurrow words in language. He's like, no, I'm trying to start fights. But they're all just like, let's work on our acupuncture.

But this wasn't a study of friendship and fellowship. This is supposed to be a study of violence. So Santiago began to provoke the participants, revealing the answers to very personal surveys and questionnaires that he had routinely solicited from the human guinea pigs. He forced everyone to sit together in the communal area of the raft while he read aloud answers to questions like, who do you find the most annoying on this raft and who would you most like to have sex with? And basically, he made them rate the attractiveness of the cast of the raft and then looked around expectantly for someone to please bludgeon someone else at least a little bit.

Who would you like to most have sex with? Who were okay? Who wrote your mom on all these servants? That's childish. He grabs one dude's wrist, starts punching another guy with his hands or something. I rather than cause division among the participants, however, everyone just started to really dislike Santiago. Who it turns out had the most fragile ego on the raft and barely readily Santiago had become socially isolated from the group with the participants beginning to resent being provoked while they were just trying to hang out and shit on the heads of sharks.

Okay, you guys are nothing like every stripper I've ever met who was actually super attracted to me. A couple of months into the float, the raft entered the Caribbean sea, but the timing was not ideal. It was now hurricane season and a tropical storm was brewing around them. The captain, a Swedish woman, if you'll recall, insisted that the raft make for the nearest available land, but nobody had gotten beat up even a little bit yet. Genovies didn't want the experiment to end before someone got slightly killed. In the only display of actual male ego fragility, Genovives then mutinyed against the captain, seized control the raft and forced the crew to tie shit down and ride out a tropical storm on a big

dumb floating direction. Now miraculously they survived the storm, but now everyone was just super pissed, but only at Genives who they rightly felt had nearly killed them all so he could take notes on violence. The captain was especially furious, having been summarily deposed of her authority and her expertise, disregarded to assuage the ego of Santiago. It was at this point that the only contemplations of violence aboard the Akali were noted. In the documentary The Raffed two participants discussed the secret

conversations they had contemplating murdering Genovies. One noting that they should all put their hands on the same knife and quote, plunge it into him so everybody was guilty. We would wrap him in a sheet, carry him over the railing and drop him in and quote, okay, I like the all stab thing, but what if we strap a knife to the plan chat of a weathe? No, but you do it. You're going to get away with murder using this one simple trick. I fucking love it. Vecgers.

But you know, they didn't kill Santiago. Instead, he was likely saved by his own incompetence, see a few days later, after riding out the storm, another existential threat loomed in the distance, this time in the form of a massive commercial ship that was bearing down on them. Remember that their dumb raft had really no significant ability to maneuver over much, so they weren't able to get out of the way. As strike by the massive ocean liner would have crushed the raft into flotsam and killed everyone on board.

Genives, the recently self-appointed captain, just completely panicked. Luckily the actual captain did not, and she quickly seized control of the raft from Santiago and using flares alerted the larger ship to their presence and avoided catastrophe. Just one guy furiously shitting over the side to maneuver the raft out of the way. The EI of the crew stepped forward with his fists on his hip, you know, step aside friend. My time to shine is upon us. Get me dairy. Get me dairy. Get me dairy.

Get me dairy. A Santiago, Genevieve's who had created the perfect conditions for fragile male egos to get all but hurt when women were control, sank into a deep depression when his fragile male ego became but hurt. And he retreated to the interior of the ship and he just laid the Spondent in bed unable and unwilling to recover his interest in his own experiment after being humiliated from his double reverse mutiny. Santiago, buddy.

You fountain because your attempt to study the most common and boring of human phenomena failed. You're fountain because your attempt to study the most common and boring of human phenomena failed? You're poutin' because you're a tempest study, most common boring of human phenomena failed. Okay. Well, after 101 days at sea, the Eccale successfully made its way to Mexico. But the experiment was a bust. Reporters had found out about the experiment and seized on the salaciousness of good-looking young people boning out at sea for science, and they popularly recristened the Eccalei the sex raft in all the papers.

Santiago's university colleagues disavowed Jettavis after all the press to create distance from the unpopular experiment. And despite an unbelievable amount of data and record keeping tracking everything from lunar cycles and wave heights and menstrual cycles, there's just no real usable data about violence and human nature. And despite all of his attempts to recreate the awesomeness of being hijacked by terrorists, Santiago only proved that people don't kill each other just because he made fucking annoying and inconvenient.

I bet there was shitting data. I bet there was some useful shitting data. I'm just saying, all right, if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be that people don't kill each other just because he made fucking annoying and inconvenience. It's good to know at this point it's good to know one condition in which humans don't kill each other at the very least right? Yeah, we got to make fucking an only and are you ready for the quiz?

I am ready for the quiz. All right, Tom, the raft you've got to admit is a pretty lame name for the documentary on this experiment. What should it have been called? No boy. Hey, Jenna,ay say anything. So mean. Santiago, fuck yourself.

Not good. See? The not that much love boat. I just did. D none of those none of those above those above the best. You got that one right. All right.

So if the university hadn't disavowed Genevieve's what was his next planned experiment? A, seeing who could set off the loudest firecracker outside of Eli's kids bedroom. B, seeing what happens when you make a bunch of jet lagged already anxious air travelers walk through a slow cattle line for 45 minutes, then follow a bunch of inconsistent demands barged out of my impression, cabblier, underpaid fucking security guards that are about X-ray their junk. C, seeing if he could transmogrify himself into a literal asshole or D, Seeing if he could transomography himself into a literal asshole or D They're stand for prison. Oh

It's good. I Not stand for pretty to try to trick me with that one. It's I think it's B I think it's that I think it's the year at the airport. It is. Yeah. This is the guy that came up with airports You gotta yes All right, Tom to pass the time the people on the boat would play board games while they were on the open air toilet. What was the most popular game? A, Toots and Ladders, B, Chode names, C, Game of Thrones or D, Oh, oh Oh, I feel like it's a toss up between Game of Thrones, which is just beautiful and Toots and Ladders, I gotta go with Toots and Ladders. Oh, I think you're right.

Yeah, cuz you like win somehow. So yes, you're correct. We're not. No, you win. Cecilia you win. You announced. No, I win. I win somehow so yes, you're correct. Yes, we're not No, you win Cecil you win you announced you know, I win definitely one I win I won No I write next week Eli picks me. I you can pick yourself Here's what I'll do I'll win I'll win win and I'm anonymously allow Eli to pick someone. Go, Adieu.

Thank you, Cecil. I think you. Oh, okay. We were next week. Excellent. Well, first Tom Noah Cecil and Eli, I'm Heath. Thank you for hanging out with us today. I'm back next week.

And Cecil will be an expert on something else by his own sense. But Eli announced it between now and then. And then, you know, Tom and Cecil on be an expert on something else by his own choosing but he liked it. Between now and then, from the junior Thomas Cecil on a part of distance, and you can hear Eli knowing myself on God off of movies, skating atheist, skeptic rat and D&D monies. And if you liked join the ranks of our extremely generous patrons, you can make a purpose or donation at patreon.com slash citation pod. We love those people and you too can buy our love with money. That is exactly how it works 100% and if you'd like to get in touch with us listen to past episodes

Connect with Sun social media or take a little show notes check out citation pod.com And if you're a high enough patient, we'll let you watch while we shit on off the side of a boat You don't need to be a person for that. You just need to ask. Just ask me. Some of us will be a medium for me. Yes sir. Yes, Frampton.

I'm looking over your next experiment. It says I'm going to need like hundreds of pictures of women's feet, don't worry, it's for science. Yes, for Anton, questions? No, but I just wanted to hear myself say it out loud, I guess. Well, then go. Yeah, no, I'm on it. you