Futility Closet - 191-The Longest Flight

Episode Date: March 5, 2018

The world's longest airplane flight took place in 1958, when two aircraft mechanics spent 64 days above the southwestern U.S. in a tiny Cessna with no amenities. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow the aerial adventures of Bob Timm and John Cook as they set a record that still stands today. We'll also consider a derelict kitty and puzzle over a movie set's fashion dictates. Intro: The Pythagorean theorem can be demonstrated using tangrams. Sculptor Marc Quinn molded a self-portrait from nine pints of his own frozen blood. Sources for our feature on Bob Timm and John Cook: Peter Garrison, "Beyond Endurance," Flying 144:2 (February 2017), 80-81. Marc C. Lee, "A Skyhawk for Everyone: Cessna's Hit Airplane Keeps Getting Better With Age," Plane and Pilot 48:2 (March 2012), 26-30,32-33. "From the Editor's Desk," Cessna Pilot 34:2 (March/April 2014), 2. "Endurance Test, Circa 1958," News & Videos, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, March 1, 2008. Shaun McKinnon, "They Kept a Tiny Plane Aloft for Months," Arizona Republic, April 14, 2013, A1. Warren Bates, "Plane Used to Set Record to Land at Airport Museum," Las Vegas Review, Feb. 11, 1999, 1B. "Hall of Fame," SP's Aviation, July 2015. Gannett News Service, "Risk Takers Make Long Flights Into History," April 13, 2013. George C. Larson, "The Pressure's On," Air & Space Smithsonian 27:1 (April/May 2012), 84. "Museum Honors City," Las Vegas Review-Journal, April 21, 1997, 2D. Ginger Mikkelsen, "Aviation Museum Draws 400,000 Annual Visitors," Las Vegas Review-Journal, June 13, 2001, 20AA. Anders Clark, "The Flight Endurance World Record," Disciples of Flight, Jan. 20, 2015. "Robert E. Timm & John W. Cook, Sr.," Nevada Aerospace Hall of Fame (accessed Feb. 11, 2018). Barry Meek, "The Longest Flight In History - In a Cessna 172," Santa Clara County Airports (accessed Feb. 11, 2018). Shaun McKinnon, "Risk Takers Make Long Flights Into History," Arizona Republic, April 14, 2013. Rebecca Maksel, "Airborne for 64 Days," Air & Space Smithsonian, March 22, 2012. Fred Martin, A Reminiscence Over Old Airplanes, 2010. Listener mail: Helena Horton, "Battersea Has Been Trying to Get Parliament to Adopt a Cat Since 2014 -- and Has Two Which Are Perfect for Mousing," Telegraph, Aug. 17, 2017. Ben Glaze, "'Lazy' Larry the Cat Is So Bad at Killing Downing Street Mice That Pest Controllers Have Been Brought In," Mirror, Feb. 13, 2018. Wikipedia, "Ooka Tadasuke" (accessed March 2, 2018). Roman Cybriwsky, Historical Dictionary of Tokyo, 2011. Kerry Segrave, Lie Detectors: A Social History, 2003. Wikipedia, "Sky Burial" (accessed March 2, 2018). Meg Van Huygen, "Give My Body to the Birds: The Practice of Sky Burial," Atlas Obscura, March 11, 2014. The "Buzzard Lope" performed at the Berlin Blues Explosion 2017. This week's lateral thinking puzzle is based on an item that Sharon read in Dan Lewis' Now I Know newsletter (warning -- this link spoils the puzzle). You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play Music or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!

Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from Pythagoras in tangrams to a sculpture in blood. This is episode 191. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. The world's longest airplane flight took place in 1958, when two aircraft mechanics spent 64 days above the southwestern U.S. in a tiny Cessna with no amenities. In today's show, we'll follow the aerial adventures

of Bob, Tim, and John Cook as they set a record that still stands today. We'll also consider a derelict kitty and puzzle over a movie set's fashion dictates. In 1956, a man named Warren Bailey opened the Hacienda Hotel and Casino at the southern end of the Las Vegas Strip. This was far out of town at the time, a long way from the Sands, the Dunes, and the Flamingo and other gambling halls far out of town at the time, a long way from the Sands, the Dunes, and the Flamingo and other gambling halls. Bailey wanted to be the first hotel you'd see driving up from Southern California. Because it was out of the way, Bailey needed to publicize the hotel, and he was constantly asking his staff for ideas. In 1958, one of them, a slot machine mechanic named Bob Tim, told him about a flight record that had recently been set in Yuma, Arizona.

A pair of pilots had stayed aloft in a small plane for 46 days. Tim had been a bomber pilot in World War II, and he pitched the idea to Bailey as a publicity stunt. They could buy a small plane and paint the hotel's name on the side, and Tim and another pilot could fly it and try to beat the record. Tim also wanted to spread awareness of how safe private airplanes had become, particularly since the war. Bailey liked the idea and put up $100,000 to buy a Cessna 172, a new model of small plane that had appeared just two years earlier. And to make the cause more appealing, the team decided the flight would benefit the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. Tim was a certified airplane mechanic,

and they spent almost a year modifying the plane. They installed a 95-gallon tank on its belly to hold extra fuel with an electrical pump to transfer it to the wing tanks. They stripped modifying the plane. They installed a 95-gallon tank on its belly to hold extra fuel with an electrical pump to transfer it to the wing tanks. They stripped out the plane's interior, except for the pilot's seat. In place of the co-pilot's seat, they put in a four-foot square foam mat to sleep on. They installed a sink at the back of the cabin so they could bathe and shave. They rerouted the oil lines so they could change the oil from inside the cabin, and they installed an accordion-style collapsible door on the plane's right side. When that was pulled aside, they could lower a platform that the co-pilot could stand on and then operate a winch to haul up supplies from below.

Some of the earlier flight endurance records had been set using plane-to-plane refueling, where the plane that was setting the record was refueled by another plane in the air. That was dangerous. Instead, the team that had just set the record in Yuma had refueled their plane from a car on the ground. A Buick super convertible would barrel along a runway at 70 miles an hour, and the plane would descend until it was just overhead. Then the ground crew would hand up steel milk cans full of aviation fuel. The runway they used was 5,000 feet long, so there was very little time to do this. At 70 miles an hour, they had just enough time to hand off four fuel cans on each run, and then even then the car would sometimes slide off the end of the runway into the desert. In order to transfer enough fuel to keep the plane

running, the car and plane had to make a dozen runs down the runway twice a day. Incidentally, if that sounds dangerous, sometimes the pilot's wives would ride along in the refueling car, and at 70 miles an hour, they would stand up in the car and kiss their husbands as they hung out of the cockpit. Anyway, in Las Vegas, their basic plan was to do the same thing. They got the government to close a remote stretch of highway near Blythe, California, just west of the Arizona border, where the plane could descend to meet a speeding truck. But rather than hauling up the fuel and milk cans, the plane would lower a winch and snag a fuel hose on the truck, haul that up, and insert it into the fuel tank on the plane's belly. They had a high-powered pump that could fill the belly tank in about three minutes, and from there the fuel could be transferred to the

wing tanks as they needed it. That was an improvement on the Yuma plan, but they'd have to do this dangerous dance dozens of times during the flight, with the plane and truck connected by a hose for three minutes at a time, and the truck would have to drive fast enough to keep up with the plane, since planes can stall at low speeds. Using this plan, Tim made three attempts at the record with a co-pilot whose name has been lost. All three attempts ended early due to mechanical failures. First there were refueling issues, then there was a clogged fuel filter, and finally the engine started knocking. The last flight ended after only 17 days, so Tim decided to stop and address the mechanical

problems and at the same time to find a new co-pilot since he and the first one weren't hitting it off. One interesting note here just in passing, on the last of these three early flights, at one point Tim was cruising along at 4 a.m. when he noticed a bright flash of light in the northern sky and made a note of it in his log. They realized later that this had been an above-ground atomic bomb detonation at the Nevada test site 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. It was one of the last tests the government suspended above-ground nuclear testing on October 28th of that year.

Anyway, Tim found a new co-pilot, John Cook, who was also a certified mechanic, and the two of them took off from McCarran Field in Las Vegas on December 4th, 1958. They added a new step this time. After they got airborne, they made a low pass over a speeding truck, and one of the ground crew reached up with a large roller and painted stripes on the plane's tires with a special white paint. That would prove they weren't cheating. The painted tires would be inspected every day, and if they made a secret landing anywhere, the painted stripes would be erased or defaced. There was an autopilot installed on the plane, but Tim and Cook decided

to take turns flying and sleeping in four-hour shifts. They had one radio to talk to the mechanics at their base and another to talk to their families at home. Tim's son Steve, who was five years old at the time, said later, we were able to talk to my dad on a regular basis. It was a really big deal. And the Hacienda Hotel set up a radio in its lobby so that guests could listen in as part of the publicity campaign. The two pilots settled into a routine. Every four hours, one of them slept while the other flew, did chores, and got some exercise. They also passed the time by reading comic books and playing games like guessing how many cars they'd pass in the next hour. For the most part, they just flew legs around the southwestern desert within a few hundred

miles of their base, but occasionally they flew as far west as Van Nuys and Los Angeles in California to get radio and TV publicity. They were seen most often by the residents of Blythe, California, 200 miles south of Las Vegas, where they did the refueling runs. The Hacienda Hotel cooked meals for them, then chopped up the food and stuffed it into thermos bottles, which the ground crew handed up during refueling runs, along with any extra clothing they needed. They got a special turkey dinner at Christmas that was crammed into thermos bottles. They shaved and brushed their teeth at the steel sink they'd installed in the back of the plane, and they could take precarious sponge baths by opening the accordion door, extending their custom-built platform, and standing in the wind.

Every other day they were given a quart of bath water, a large towel, and a bar of soap. There's one question that everyone asks. The Cessna 172 doesn't come standard with a toilet, and there's no room to install one, even temporarily. So they used a folding camp toilet and plastic bags, which they then drop over unpopulated areas. Mark Hall Patton, the administrator of Clark County Museum in Las Vegas, said, I once asked John's widow if they handed down the waste during refueling runs. She said, no, that's why it's so green around Blythe. Most of the flight was so uneventful that their biggest problems were boredom and fatigue,

but there were some memorable exceptions. Sometimes news photographers would rent planes to fly alongside them to get a story, and Cook would impress them by standing on the platform and cleaning the windshield. At Christmas, they dropped gifts into Tim's backyard for his two sons. Greg Tim, who was six years old at the time, later said they flew by in the airplane in the daytime and tossed out of the airplane candy cane stockings with little parachutes. As they floated down, my brother and I tried to snatch them before they hit the ground. On January 9th, their 36th day in the air, Tim dozed off over the Blythe Airport at 2.55 a.m., just minutes before

he was supposed to awake and cook. Fortunately, they were flying at 4,000 feet, and the plane cruised along on autopilot for more than an hour. Tim woke up at 4 a.m. halfway to Yuma. He later told a reporter, I awoke and was flying in a canyon heading due south. I flew for two hours before I recognized any lights or cities. But they finally got their bearings and found their way back to Blythe. Three days later, after a refueling run on January 12th, Tim took off his clothes and stepped onto the outside platform for a sponge bath. He had just started by brushing his teeth when Cook realized that they weren't going to clear an upcoming ridge unless they pulled in the platform. He shouted the danger and watched as Tim, who weighed 240 pounds, hastily pulled in the platform buck naked with a toothbrush sticking

out of one side of his mouth and toothpaste streaming out the other. They cleared the ridge, but after that they did their toothbrushing over flatter terrain. At about the same time, the generator failed, which meant that the lights and the heater went dead. Winter nights are cold, even in the desert, so they had to wrap themselves in blankets. Cook's log reads, Hard to stay awake in dark place. Can't use radio. Can't use electric fuel pump. Pump all gasoline by hand, using minimum lights. Don't realize how necessary this power until all of a sudden, sitting in the dark, no lights and panel to fly by, flashlight burning out, can't see to fix the trouble if you could

fix at all. Eventually, during a refueling run, the ground crew passed them up a backup generator that was powered by wind, and they attached that to one of the struts in midair. Its output was limited, so they had to light the cabin with a string of Christmas lights. Cook's journal shows that the lack of sleep and physical activity, the constant engine noise, and the daily chores were beginning to tell on both of them. One entry reads, stalled out, overloaded, across the side of an uphill slope, trying to get turned around with a full load in belly tank, and that made us realize what our chances would be at night, very slim. So we stick around airport at night for that beautiful smooth runway. Toward the end of the flight, they started to check each other's work to reduce the chance of error. Finally, on January 23, 1959, they broke the record that had

been set in Yuma, 46 days. By then, the spark plugs and combustion chambers were getting clogged with carbon and the engine was losing power, but they decided to keep going as long as they could to protect their accomplishment. That would be challenging. Cook wrote, we had lost the generator, tachometer, autopilot, cabin heater, landing and taxi lights, belly tank, fuel gauge, electrical fuel pump, and winch. They managed to fly on for another 18 days into the beginning of February. By that time, the engine had loaded up with so much carbon that there was barely enough power to climb with a full load of fuel.

They finally ended the flight at McCarran Field on February 7, 1959. 200 people came to see them land. Cook said there sure seemed to be a lot of fuss over a flight with one takeoff and one landing. Both men had to be carried from the plane, which was grimy and streaked with exhaust. Their total time aloft was 64 days, 22 hours, 19 minutes, and 5 seconds, which beat the previous record by 18 days. They had flown 150,000 miles, the equivalent of circling the world six times at the equator. They had refueled from the speeding truck 128 times during the flight,

and the little plane's engine had run continuously for 1,559 hours. Their feat brought publicity to the hotel as they'd hoped, but Tim also said, if we have proved anything, it is that light airplanes provide a safe and economical means of transportation. Our flight has shown that businessmen can fly small planes with confidence in aircraft performance. Afterward, Tim went back to work at the Hacienda Hotel, and Cook continued his career as a pilot. The plane was displayed at the Hacienda Hotel for two years. Then, after the publicity faded, it was sold to a Canadian Bush pilot who flew it north. Before Tim died in 1978, he reminisced about the flight and told his sons that he longed to locate the plane.

His second son, Steve, made a concerted effort and finally found it on a farm in Carrot River, Saskatchewan. He brought it back to Las Vegas in 1992. John Cook died in 1995, and the Hacienda Hotel was demolished in 1996, but the plane remains. It's hanging from the ceiling of the baggage claim area at McCarran International Airport. The flight happened almost 60 years ago now, and Bob, Tim, and John Cook still hold the record for the longest airplane flight in history. Hall Patton, the museum administrator, said no one has broken that record since. The first thing that was up longer was Skylab, and that doesn't count. Partly that's because Bob, Tim, accomplished his goal of proving the safety of private airplanes. The American public saw that if a light plane could stay for more than two months without a mishap, then private aircraft were safe and reliable. There was no need to prove

that a second time. But another reason is that Bob, Tim, and John Cook put the record so far out of reach that beating it would be extremely unpleasant. Tim's son Steve said, staying in the air for 65 days in a little plane the size of a Toyota, not landing, the noise, the danger, flying at night, all the various things that could have gone wrong that didn't. My dad was in his early 30s and it almost killed him. My dad and John Cook were very lucky to have survived that, let alone break the record. Sometime after the flight, a reporter asked John Cook if he'd ever do it again. He said, next time I feel in the mood to fly Endurance, I'm going to lock myself in a garbage can with the vacuum cleaner running and have Bob serve me T-bone steaks chopped up in a thermos bottle.

That is, until my psychiatrist opens for business in the morning. Futility Closet is supported primarily by our phenomenal listeners. We just wouldn't be able to commit to the amount of time that the show takes to make if it weren't for the donations and pledges we get. If you'd like to contribute to the celebration of the quirky and the curious that is Futility Closet, you can find a donate button in the support us section of the website

at futilitycloset.com. Or if you'd like to support us in a more ongoing way, you can join our Patreon campaign where you'll also get access to outtakes, extra discussions on some of the stories, more lateral thinking puzzles, and updates on Sasha, the official Futility Closet podcast. You can check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the link at the website. And thanks again to everyone who is a part of Futility Closet. We have a couple of updates on Larry, the current chief mouser for the UK,

a subject of great interest to a certain member of our household who definitely sees herself as claiming that title here. Victoria Edwards wrote, Dear Greg, Sharon, and Sasha, I have just listened to episode 179 and greatly enjoyed your coverage of the clearly very serious and not at all frivolous press coverage of the 10 Downing Street chief mousers past and present. I have long been familiar with Larry, but hadn't realized his predecessors had also been covered in a similar way. Here is a link to an article ending with the Telegraph's timeline about Larry, containing such highlights as a photo of rival mouser Palmerston being ejected from 10 Downing Street. I guess all those security measures you mentioned in episode 179 don't work against moggies. Thank you for all the great episodes so far, and I look forward to many more to come. The article that Victoria sent reports on how the Battersea

Dogs and Cats Home has been trying since 2014 to get Parliament to adopt a cat to deal with what the Telegraph describes as a rampant mouse problem. The charity has two cats they are specifically recommending for the position, suggesting that it would be much more cost effective than the 130 pounds a year currently being spent on pest control. The Telegraph claims that MPs are pleading for a cat, as mice have been swarming through their offices and causing havoc in the tea room. And they quote an MP as saying, my biggest worry is that it was only the bongs of Big Ben that was scaring the mice off to any extent at all. The article notes that Whitehall currently has five mousers in residence

with Larry in 10 Downing Street, Palmerston at the Foreign Office, Gladstone taking the role at the Treasury, and Evie and Ossie in the Cabinet Office, but that Parliament has been left catless. A spokesperson for Parliament attributes that sad state of affairs to the fact that Parliament is housed in a public building that receives hundreds of thousands of visitors each year and is also surrounded by a great deal of traffic, and thus isn't really feline-friendly. As Victoria noted, the second half of the article has a fun, photo-filled timeline of some of the notable events of Larry's tenure as Chief Mouser, which includes a shocking amount of scrapping with other kiddies, most notably Palmerston, who moved into the nearby foreign office in 2016. Larry was installed as chief mouser in 2011 after being recommended by

the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, apparently based on the fact that he was very interested in mouse-type toys. But it turns out that that might not be the best gauge of a moggy's mousing abilities, as James, another of our British listeners, sent a link to a recent article from The Mirror and wrote, Pest controllers were brought in at 10 Downing Street 29 times in October and November last year as Larry the chief mouser's not up to scratch. Although it sounds like the pest controllers are also not up to scratch if they're being called out 29 times.

And I'm very sorry to have to report that the Mirror states unequivocally that Larry the Cat is failing in his role as Chief Mouser. They say that between sleeping and fighting with Palmerston, he just seems to be completely neglecting his main duties of rodent control. As James said, in October and November 2017, pest controllers were called in for 29 incidents involving mice or rats and a further three times for birds, which really makes me wonder about Larry's credentials as a self-respecting cat. There were seven calls for insects, which I'll give him a pass on,

and interestingly, one call to deal with a critter classified as other, which left me wondering what the heck else they are dealing with on Downing Street. And in what is probably not going to help promote improved feline relations, the Mirror reports that last September, Whitehall rival Palmerston was revealed to have killed at least 27 mice since his arrival in Westminster in April 2016. I wonder if there's some provision for impeaching a cat or removing them somehow. Removing them from office if they're neglecting their duties. Maybe not. I also have some updates concerning some lateral thinking puzzles, so spoiler alerts

here. A couple of listeners wrote in about John Napier's supposedly clairvoyant rooster that was going to help him catch a thief from episode 184. Laura Mertz wrote, Hello, podcastites and podcat. After hearing your lateral thinking puzzle involving a soot-covered rooster lie detector test, I thought I would point out a person doing such a thing in the 1700s would have plenty of historical precedent to follow. Kerry Seagrave's book on a history of lie detectors documents Chinese, Arab, and Indian tests in antiquity, whereby the accused had to grab a donkey's tail in a semi-dark room. If the donkey brayed, they were guilty. In fact, the tail had been previously saturated with powdered carbon. Clean hands meant a guilty conscience. I have read various dates for

these tests ranging from 500 BC to 1500 BC. The Chinese also used a rice test, where the accused would put rice grains in their mouth and then spit them out. If the rice stuck to their gums and tongue, they were considered guilty, because guilt and nerves cause dry mouth, causing the grains to stick. Don't believe everything you read online about novel lie detectors, though. The myth about police using a Xerox machine with a page saying he's lying coming out whenever the interviewer thought the suspect wasn't being truthful is just a legend. The Radnor, Pennsylvania Police Department, where the event supposedly took place, has denied that it happened and is rather befuddled at the attribution. It did make a great episode of The Wire, however. My husband and I love the podcast and look forward to it every week.

Thank you for the always entertaining and enlightening experience. In his book, Lie Detectors, A Social History, Seagrave says of these early lie detector tests, even at this early time, it was often the psychological effect of the test that was more important than the actual working of the test. That is, if the accused believed the test was infallible and would brand him as a liar, then it did. And he notes that this principle still applies to the modern lie detector tests, where the first order of business is still to establish a belief in the test itself. That's really interesting.

That the lie detector tests go back so far? Yeah, and that it sort of would work. Right. At least in principle. Right. As long as the accused believed that the test was going to work, then it would work. Yeah. Also on the story of the thief catching rooster, Eric Cohen wrote, I first encountered that story in a children's book, The Case of the Marble Monster by I.G. Edmonds, 1961.

in a children's book, The Case of the Marble Monster by I.G. Edmonds, 1961. Except in that case, it wasn't John Napier, but the Honorable Judge Ota Tadasuke, and it wasn't a clairvoyant rooster, but the dusty statue of the god Jizo. Wikipedia tells me that there really was a Judge Ota Tadasuke, but it does not tell us which of the tales about his wisdom are historically grounded or whether that particular story is one of those traditionally told in Japan or one which the author wrote himself. We will need further research to learn how the story went from Ota to Napier, or Napier to Ota, or originated somewhere else entirely. Like Eric, I found that Ota had been an actual Japanese judge and that he was renowned for his wisdom and rather creative

ways of administering justice. There are a couple of stories that are commonly attributed to him, but I couldn't find one about the dusty statue. We might need one of our Japanese listeners to let us know if that particular story is traditionally told in Japan or seems to have been invented by Edmonds. Ota was first appointed to a judgeship in 1702, which was more than 80 years after Napier's death, and I doubt Japan was receiving much word about the doings in Scotland at that time. So if both men did actually use this method, then they likely came up with it independently, though it seems to me entirely possible that Edmonds may have invented a few stories about Ota for his book. What I did find on Ota made it sound like there are many different stories told

about him. So as Eric said, it's difficult to know which ones are actually grounded in history. But then again, we don't even know for sure that the story about Napier is actually true. It's entirely possible that both of those stories were based on the older tests that Laura had written in about. On a different animal-themed puzzle,

Ben Olson wrote, Hi, Sharon, Greg, and Sasha, and hi to Doug, too. When I was listening to the lateral thinking puzzle in 186, I assumed that possibly the vultures were dying because they were eating humans, like Sharon guessed. I mistakenly assumed that Nepal was one of the regions where people perform sky burials, which are funerals where humans are left to be eaten by the vultures. And Ben included a link to the Wikipedia page on sky burial and said, warning, the images are not for the faint of heart. Thanks for making Mondays a little bit better.

Sky burial is the practice of leaving a human corpse to decompose from the elements or to be eaten by animals, often scavenger birds such as vultures. According to an article I found on the subject on Atlas Obscura, the sky burials in places such as Tibet reflect the Buddhist tenet for compassion for all animals. So the idea is that a body, which is just a shell for the spirit, isn't of any use to the owner once the spirit has left it and so should be used to nourish other creatures such as vultures. The rituals involved in these practices of preparing the bodies to be more easily eaten by the scavengers may strike Westerners as being a little grisly or gruesome,

but I suppose that it actually is rather natural, and it's also very pragmatic in places such as Tibet, where much of the land is solid rock and there are few trees, so that makes burial or cremation impractical. Makes sense. On a similar note, James Hendrickson wrote, Thank you so much for all the hard work and passion you put into your podcast. I often find myself passing on summaries to friends and family over dinner, coffee, and commutes.

Just a quick note of serendipity, I happened to come across an interpretive dance style known as the buzzard lope, and it reminded me of the vulture cow puzzle presented in a recent episode. I thought it might be amusing if only loosely related, but here's a video of it being demonstrated. It appears to have very old origins and can further emphasize the critical, perhaps sacred, role of scavengers in an ecosystem. Thanks again for helping to bring attention to issues impacting the balance of species in such interesting ways. And the video James sent a link to

notes that the buzzard lope is a dance that has its roots in West Africa and that came with the slave trade to the southern U.S. The dancers represent buzzards approaching a dead animal and the accompanying song, Throw Me Anywhere, Lord, is a reference to the fact that slaves didn't usually get proper funerals. And for one final note on sky burials,

Tony Waltieri wrote, I booked a trip to Mount Kailash in 2015. Shortly before our departure date, a massive earthquake struck Nepal and travel to Western Tibet was banned. We went anyway and were fortunate enough to exploit a window where travel was again allowed. The upshot was that we were in Darchen when it was almost entirely empty of tourists. It felt abandoned. Kailash is a popular spot for sky burials, but owing to the vultures being poisoned, feral dogs in the region had taken over their task. They've developed a taste for human flesh, our guide Tenzin told us, just as he dropped us off at a guest house where we were the only guests,

the outhouses were 400 yards away across an empty lot, and the sound of barking echoed in the night. Thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. We are continually amazed at the depth and breadth of knowledge of our listeners. If you have anything you'd like to contribute, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to present him

with a strange sounding situation, and he has to work out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions. This puzzle is based on something that I read in Dan Lewis's Now I Know e-newsletter. One of the actors in the film Return of the Jedi is required to be accompanied by crew members wearing brightly colored vests at all times during much of the filming of the movie. Why? All right, I don't know this. Yeah, I was worried.

Whenever I have like an interesting piece of trivia or an anecdote i always worry you might know it but okay i get these movies mixed up is does this have something to do with the the character that the actor was playing yes two people wearing brightly colored vests accompanied by crew members wearing brightly colored vests yeah at all times during Accompanied by crew members wearing brightly colored vests, yeah, at all times during the filming of the movie. Everywhere he went? Yeah.

Including off set? Yeah. Would this still have been necessary if he never went off set? Um, hmm. Probably less necessary, but they might have even wanted

to have done it on set, I can imagine. Um, did it have to do with protecting his safety? Yes. Really? Yes. Was it something to do with protecting his safety yes really yes was it something to do with a costume yes all right um i don't even okay so you've got two guys wearing this is that to alert other people that he's in the area so that they won't?

You know, this is for the benefit of other people so that they'll keep mindful of the danger? No, I don't think so, if I understand your question correctly. It's to protect the actor. Yes, it is. From other people who might otherwise collide with him, like run into him, just walking? No, no, no. Because that's what I have in my mind. no it's not like that uh is it is it is it because the person in the costume can't see well no that's not it or can't perceive their own environment well right that's not it

because that would make sense yeah that would make sense so Yeah, that would make sense. So the actor is wearing the costume and just walking around between takes. Yes. And would be in danger of some injury? Not exactly. Not exactly. Would be in danger. They were worried he would be in danger, yes. Because you've got to figure the guy...

Do the guys in the vests do anything except just walk around next to him? They do nothing except just walk around next to him. But it was important that they be in brightly colored vests. I'd ask if it would help if I could narrow down who the character is, but I don't think I'm going to know them well enough to be able to just figure that out. Would that help me? It might help you, and I think you would know the character. So i don't think i'm going to know them well enough to be able to just figure that out but would that help me it might help you and i think you would know the character so it's one of the main characters it is what movie is it return of the jedi um that was the movie that came out third chronologically in terms of it was uh filmed in

82 no i know the one you mean i'm just trying to remember that movie that's quite a long time ago now um okay it's one of the characters that's associated with star wars let's say they didn't do this yeah and whoever this was just walked around yeah and this misfortune happened whatever it was they were trying to guard against yes that would help you to know too what they were trying to guard against would the person be physically injured yes they were worried that the person would be physically injured yes okay would he be injured by his own costume? No, no, but he would be injured because he was in the costume, but not by the costume. Is it because people would mistake him for? Yes. That's what they were afraid of. I was half joking and asking. No, no, no. That's what they were afraid of.

I'm trying really hard to remember that movie. It's been a while. There's a character who could, when he's in costume, could be mistaken. Yes. For something that is not a character. Right. And people would, oh, is it R2-D2? No.

Is it that people would mistake it for some piece of equipment or... Oh, that's an idea. No. You could mistake R2-D2 for like a trash can. Right, let me tell you. It was the actor who played Chewbacca. I had that in mind, but what would be the danger then? Well, they were filming the movie in the Redwood National Park in California.

So if you saw Chewbacca from a distance and didn't know it was Chewbacca in California, you'd think it was Bigfoot. You'd think it was Bigfoot. That's exactly right. Are you serious? I'm dead serious. Apparently, the Pacific Northwest is the general area in which Bigfoot is believed to be living in. And so they required Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca, to be accompanied by crew members so as not to be mistaken for Bigfoot and shot. As I said, the filming was in early 1982. A brief film that was purportedly of Bigfoot had been shot in 1967 in Northern California, and it set off this whole Bigfoot craze in the area. And for several years, there was this intense search for Bigfoot, dead or alive, right? And so they were really afraid that if people saw Chewbacca from a distance

or maybe even up close that somebody might try taking a shot at him. That's, I hate to say it, that's probably wise. Yeah, I mean, it would look sort of like Bigfoot if you think about it. And that might even have worked for all we know. Yeah. So this was a happily non-fatal puzzle. I'm sure it was especially happily for Peter Mayhew that it was non-fatal. And we can always use more lateral thinking puzzles. So if you have any that you'd like to send in for us to try, please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. This podcast would not still be here today

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