Futility Closet - 211-Cast Away on an Ice Floe

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 a bird's word square to an apprehensive percussionist. This is episode 211. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. Germany's polar expedition of 1869 took a dramatic turn when 14 men were shipwrecked on an ice flow off the eastern coast of Greenland. As the frozen island carried them slowly toward settlements in

Starting point is 00:00:38 the south, it began to break apart beneath them. In today's show, we'll follow the crew of the Hansa on their desperate journey towards civilization. We'll also honor a slime mold and puzzle over a reversing sunset. By the 1860s, the British and the Americans were both making active efforts to explore the Arctic and to reach the North Pole. In 1866, the German geographer August Petermann urged his own nation to join in the contest to help establish itself as a great power. So, after an early effort in 1868, Germany launched its first serious Arctic expedition on June 15, 1869, when two ships left Bremerhaven and headed up the east

Starting point is 00:01:23 coast of Greenland. The Germania was a two-masted steamer built especially for Arctic exploration. The Hansa, her supply ship, was half her size and had to be strengthened for the voyage. The two sailed north for five days, hidden from each other by a fog so thick they had to communicate by speaking trumpet. On the fifth evening, they approached the great ice fields of the far north. Their goal was to push as far as possible toward the pole, but in 1869, no one knew what to expect. Everything above the 83rd parallel was still a blank. Some people thought the ice extended all the way to the pole, but others thought it was only a ring and that open sea lay beyond it.

Starting point is 00:01:57 If they could find a way through, they might simply sail to the top of the world. On July 20th, the main ship, the Germania, ran up a signal asking the Hansa to approach and communicate. But the commander of the Hansa, Paolo Friedrich Higaman, thought it read, long stay a peak, which meant they should sail as far westward as possible. So he did that, sailing away from the Germania and into the pack ice. The two ships had agreed that if they were separated, they would meet up at Zabina Island. Germania went there and eventually wintered there, but Hansa never showed up. Sailing into the ice had been a grave mistake because Hansa had no engine. They got within 35 miles of Zabina Island, but then became hopelessly

Starting point is 00:02:34 stuck, frozen into the eastern side of a huge ice flow two miles wide that was steadily drifting south with the pack ice. On September 19th, as cold weather closed in, Hansa's crew of 14 men realized they would be trapped there until spring. Locked in the ice, they had to decide what to do. Since they were drifting south, Higamond hoped they might eventually reach open water and free themselves, but there was no telling whether the ship would last that long. Earlier ships in this predicament had eventually been crushed by the ice and sunk. What would they do then? They couldn't shelter in the boats, with only a thin roof of sailcloth to protect them from the cold. So the captain came up with a unique idea. The

Starting point is 00:03:09 Hansa was a supply ship, and among other things, it carried coal for the Germania to burn. These blocks were 23 centimeters wide, and they had the useful properties of absorbing damp and retaining warmth. Higaman realized they could use them to build a house. He sketched it out, a building 20 feet long and 14 broad, with sidewalls 4 feet 8 inches high and a gable roof 6.5 feet off the ground. They started work on September 27th, choosing a firm spot 450 paces from the ship and using ice axes and shovels to clear the snow for a foundation. They paved the floor with coal bricks, then built walls using snow and water as mortar. One of them wrote,

Starting point is 00:03:46 We had only to strew fine dry snow in the gaps and seams, pour on water, and in ten minutes all had frozen to a firm, compact mass, from which an individual stone could be taken only with great difficulty. The whole thing was finished in seven days. For the moment they used it only as a storehouse because all seemed well so far. The ship, the boats, the crew, and the house were all still drifting quietly southward among the ice fields caught in the Greenland current. The men went back to their regular activities, sewing, mending their boots, and repairing the ship's tackle, and the scientists organized their records and collected weather data.

Starting point is 00:04:17 But punctuating this quiet, the storms were growing stronger, longer, and more frequent. The ice began to stir beneath them, sounding now like an ironworks, now like the brakes of a locomotive, and now like the cry of human voices. On October 19th, after a northwesterly storm that lasted several days, the whole ice field began to shake and vibrate, as if it were colliding with the land or scraping over a shallow point on the seabed. As the sound increased in pitch, it became clear that the flow had become pinioned against the coastal ice, and under the resulting pressure, the ship began to come apart. The deck planks bulged upward and the seams burst. One man wrote,

Starting point is 00:04:51 It was a fantastic spectacle as the massive burden of the ship was slowly lifted three meters upward by the ice masses sliding under it, while all about as the splintered ice blocks threw up a high wall. Now came a second blow that set the ship quivering in all its members and, slanting on its side, thrust the ship a few meters sideways onto the high wall. Now came a second blow that set the ship quivering in all its members and, slanting on its side, thrust the ship a few meters sideways onto the ice wall. During this time, the ice under our feet trembled as in an earthquake. Deep chasms gaped open all around us, and we expected every moment that the ground beneath us would disintegrate.

Starting point is 00:05:18 When the ice quake ended, the ship had been lifted entirely out of the water, held aloft with the bow a few meters higher than the stern. That afternoon, as it began to settle again, rats began to flee the ship, and water began to rise steadily in the hold, despite their pumping. The crew began to remove everything that wasn't bolted to the deck. The iron galley range, two stoves, chests of clothing, piles of bedding, barrels of food, the scientific instruments, and the charts, logbook, and diaries were all removed to the house. They had just enough time to saw down the masts and split them into firewood, and then, on the night of October 21st, Hansa slid beneath the ice. The mood was somber. The men knew they'd now have to spend an arctic winter with only primitive shelter. With a long polar

Starting point is 00:05:59 night approaching, they had no way to return to Europe and no way to replenish their supplies except for meat and water. But thanks to their forethought, they now had a house to return to Europe and no way to replenish their supplies except for meat and water. But thanks to their forethought, they now had a house to move into, and they set about fixing it up. I will put a plan of this marvelous house in the show notes. They built beds along each side with wooden headboards to keep their pillows from freezing to the wall, and they added an oven opposite the entrance to use for cooking and heating. On the walls, they mounted bookshelves, the ship's clock, a barometer, and the captain's gilt-framed mirror. They modified crates to serve as tables and stools, and clothing and tools hung from nets in the roof. They even added two dormer windows to get light and air. And they stocked their new home with two months' provisions—bread, conserved meat, a side of bacon, coffee and

Starting point is 00:06:39 alcohol, barrels of cabbage, and wood for fuel. There was nothing for it now but to occupy themselves as the ice field drifted to the south. Higgemann wrote, we were all actively employed and daily order and regularity were rigidly kept up. They built furniture, sewed sails, chopped wood, studied, and explored the flow, which turned out to be about seven nautical miles in circumference and about two miles in diameter. At first the house was bitterly cold, but it grew warmer and drier as the snow deepened around it. Everyone was healthy and, increasingly, happy. Higgemann wrote, In our house it is getting more and more comfortable and, most importantly, dry.

Starting point is 00:07:13 Thanks to that, we are all able to enjoy the best health. Second officer Wilhelm Bada wrote that a newcomer might be astonished to find, quote, with misery the greatest luxury, as in a bandit's hideout, poverty and wealth all mixed up. They spent the nights playing whist and keeping watch for Eskimos and polar bears, and during the day they hunted foxes, bears, seals, and walrus that might stray across the ice. As the winter deepened, the nights lengthened to 16 hours and more, and the temperature dropped to 29 degrees below zero. Storms kept the men in the house for days at a time, but the ice mass was holding together as they drifted south. At Christmas, they built a tree out of pinewood and birch broom, and they

Starting point is 00:07:49 had saved some wax candles for the lights. They shared a glass of wine, exchanged homemade gifts, and ate chocolate and gingerbread nuts. Gustav Lauba, the geologist, wrote in his daybook, In quiet devotion, the festival passed us by. The thoughts which passed through our minds I will not put down. If this should be the last Christmas we were to see, it was at least bright enough. The peace did not last long. On the night of January 2nd, they heard a scraping, blustering, crackling, sawing, grating, and jarring sound under their feet, and discovered to their alarm that the flow had shrunk to an eighth of its former size. They had passed over some sunken rocks that had broken it up. Where before the flow had been roughly circular, now it was a rectangle 1,200 yards long by 400 yards wide. On three sides, the house was now only 200 steps from the edge.

Starting point is 00:08:33 The Greenland coast was only two nautical miles away, and they discussed trying to reach it in the boats, but they couldn't find a path to it through the floating ice. Their once secure world now began to come apart. Just nine days later, at six in the morning, the watch shouted, all hands turn out. The flow had split again, carrying away their stack of firewood, which had been only 25 paces from the house. They carried the boats into the middle of the flow and cowered by them all day, waiting for the end, but it never came. The flow was now only 150 feet in diameter. Higaman wrote, it was a miracle that just that part of the flow on which

Starting point is 00:09:03 we stood should, from its soundness, keep together. They had now drifted into the narrow sea passage between Iceland and Greenland, which forced the floating ice close around them. The flow had become both a haven and a hazard. It was carrying them steadily toward civilization, but it was constantly threatening to collapse before they reached it. On January 14th, with a noise like thunder, the flow split a third time, and a fissure six inches wide opened directly under the house. They emerged to find they were now bobbing in the sea on a shard of ice barely a hundred paces across. Half the men crept into the boats, and the rest stayed in the house, though its door had fallen in and the roof was gone. Higaman, who spent the night

Starting point is 00:09:39 in a boat, wrote, This night was the most dreadful one of our adventurous voyage on the flow. The cold was minus nine degrees Fahrenheit. Real sleep, at least in the boat, was not to be thought of. It was but a confused, unquiet, half slumber, which overpowered us from utter weariness, and our limbs quivered convulsively as we lay packed like herrings in our furs. For five nights they slept in the boats and spent their days building a new house, half the size of the first one. It could hold only six men, so the rest had to remain in the boats. They were all increasingly filthy, blackened by the coal walls of the house, smoke from the lamp, and the dust from the stove, but they were still hopeful. At the end of January, yet another piece of the flow broke away. The water here was transparent, so they could see

Starting point is 00:10:18 that the remaining ice was 30 to 35 feet thick, perhaps still enough to sustain them if no more splits occurred. Their one chance now is to drift into open water where they could take to the boats and try to reach an Eskimo or whaling settlement at the southern tip of Greenland. For the next few days, they drifted slowly south, passing under icebergs 100 feet high. On the 1st of February, they caught a glimpse of some seals, as well as a raven and some seagulls. A fox appeared at their house and grew so bold that he would fetch meat that they threw from the galley and eventually allowed himself to be stroked. Higaman wrote, the creature caused us much fun. It never entered our heads to capture him. The rest of the month

Starting point is 00:10:53 passed quietly and the weather grew fine. Ice and icebergs crowded around them, but they caused no damage to the flow. By March 18th, they calculated they traveled 600 miles down the coast of Greenland since leaving the Germania. By Easter, spring had returned and the days grew longer, but even by the first days of May, there was still no open water. As the flow changed shape in the warmer weather, some items appeared that they thought they'd lost, including a carpenter's chest. The house began to fall apart and its roof started to leak. Before it had stood in a little valley on the ice, now it was on a hill. Finally, on the morning of May 7th, the moment they'd been hoping for finally arrived. They saw open water in the direction of land,

Starting point is 00:11:29 and the wind and weather were favorable. At half past 12, the captain declared that the time had finally come to leave the flow and try to reach the coast in boats. Lauba objected at first, but Higaman showed him that their progress had stopped. If they'd stayed in the flow, they'd only circle in an eddy at the bottom of Greenland until their little raft melted out from under them. So off they went. Higa Man wrote, we took one last thankful look at our faithful flow. Through numerous dangers and calamities, from the region of terror and death, it had borne us here in 200 days, into a more hospitable latitude, and now, filled with fresh courage, we might hope for a speedy release. They took to the water in Hansa's boats and spent a month traveling south and now, filled with fresh courage, we might hope for a speedy release. They took to the

Starting point is 00:12:05 water in Hansa's boats and spent a month traveling south and west, sailing by day and bivouacking on flows at night. As the weather grew warmer, they stopped in bays to gather sorrel, dandelion, and sinkfoil to make their first fresh salad in 11 months. At last, on June 13th, they rounded a cape and saw two red houses in a grassy field. They'd reached the Moravian missionary outpost Friedrichsthal, the southernmost point on Greenland that was inhabited by Europeans. There they were even greeted in their own tongue. The missionaries called, that is the German flag. They are our people. Welcome, welcome to Greenland. Higaman wrote, the first word after so long a time heard from strange lips was German. The first sound, our dear German mother tongue, and their people, the first to offer us help and refreshment. Who can describe our wonder and

Starting point is 00:12:48 delight? They had spent 200 days aboard the Flo while it covered nearly 2,000 kilometers, and all 14 of them had survived. When the crew of the Hansa got back to Europe, they were immediately famous. Their sister ship, Germania, had brought back a wealth of scientific findings, but people were more captivated by their own story, which was published in German and then quickly afterward in French and English. All of the sailors from the Hansa got a three-month bonus, and each of the scientists got an honorarium of 500 thalers. Higaman wrote, we cannot flatter ourselves that we have greatly increased the knowledge of Greenland, but we have shown what man's strength and perseverance can accomplish. There's an odd postscript to this story. When I started researching it for this episode, I thought I knew it, and I was upset because people kept getting

Starting point is 00:13:28 the details wrong. I was pretty sure that the name of the ship was the Polaris, not the Hansa, and that they'd been on the west side of Greenland, not the east. I was upset because it seems so careless to get such important details wrong. Well, amazingly, both versions are right. This happened twice. In 1872, just two years after the Germans got home, an American expedition tried to approach the North Pole on the opposite side of Greenland, the west. That October, under enormous pressure from the ice, their ship was driven up out of the water onto an ice floe, and the commander ordered the ship's provisions and stores unloaded onto the floe in the storm. While this was being done, the ship broke free again, leaving 19 people marooned

Starting point is 00:14:03 on the floe with the few provisions that had been unloaded. The Americans faced colder temperatures than the Hansa's crew, and they had had no time to prepare for their time on the flow, as Hansa's had. And where the crew of the Hansa were all men, Polaris's castaways included two women and five children, including an infant eight weeks old. They were really kept alive by two members of the party who were Eskimos and could hunt. Here are some excerpts from the diary of the steward, John Heron. October 15th, we remained shivering all night, saved very little provisions. November 6th, Joe caught a seal, which has been a godsend. Mr. Meyer made a pack of cards from some thick paper, and we are now playing euchre. December 2nd, boiled some seal skin today and ate it. Blubber, hair, and tough skin. The men ate it. I could not. April 14th.

Starting point is 00:15:04 God, it will soon brighten up. Together, they spent six miserable months on that flow, which drifted more than 2,400 kilometers south before they were finally picked up by the ceiling steamer Tigris off the coast of Labrador in April 1873. All 19 people survived. Jeff Henry wrote, Hello Sharon, Greg, and Sasha. I was listening to the segment on goose chasing border collies in episode 206 and was reminded of Piper, the airport canine. Piper patrolled the Cherry Capital Airport in Traverse City, Michigan, keeping the runways free of geese and other wildlife that could be a hazard to aircraft. Sadly, Piper passed away earlier this year, but had become somewhat of a celebrity here in Michigan. Trained dogs have also been used to scare geese away from parks and beaches,

Starting point is 00:15:54 as heavy concentrations of droppings can cause unsafe levels of E. coli in the water, forcing the closures of beaches and swimming areas sometimes for weeks at a time. I love the podcast and look forward to seeing a new episode in my feed every week. So Piper the airport canine was a border collie who was tasked with keeping the runways and taxiways free of critters of all sorts. He performed his duties wearing goggles, ear protectors, a special vest with a custom beacon light on it, and sometimes little boots to protect his feet from the hot pavement or ice and snow. Apparently, Piper was so popular that Brian Edwards, the airport operations supervisor, who variously called himself Piper's owner,

Starting point is 00:16:36 handler, and dad, did a Reddit Ask Me Anything about Piper two years ago. One of the questions he was asked was, how do the pilots react to seeing your dog run around the airport? And his answer was, ha ha, that is the best part. I can't tell you the number of animals he's been called. To name a few, bear, cat, skunk, coyote, wolf. It's now a joke between the control tower and I. Just come up with a random animal when the pilot asks. Oh yeah, that's the airport's Komodo dragon. Tower likes to call him the seeing eye dog for the guy in the truck. A wolf with goggles. Piper, who was named for Piper Aircraft, was trained by Edwards for a year and a half in his spare time before Edwards approached the airport director to show him what Piper could do and get

Starting point is 00:17:21 approval to work with him. He said on Reddit, Honestly, I'm still shocked he said yes. Although dogs do take a certain amount of training, they can be more useful for long-term scaring away of wildlife than simpler methods like shooting pop guns at them, as the wildlife can learn that the loud noises are harmless and start ignoring them, or quickly come back after the noise is over. If they get run off by a dog, though,

Starting point is 00:17:44 they are more likely to take that seriously and think twice about returning. Yeah, I was going to say, I bet that's more effective than any technological solution they came up with. Right, because they apparently, you know, they would have the instinct to be afraid of a dog running after them. And the dog sort of knows what the goal is and can adjust to any... That's true, too....any tactics they come up with. Edwards was clearly very fond of and proud of Piper, so it was sad to see that Piper had passed away a few months ago. I'm sure Edwards has been feeling the loss. There is still a really nice website dedicated to him,

Starting point is 00:18:15 and he really was an adorable dog, very photogenic in all his work gear. So link, of course, in the show notes if anyone wants to check that out. Also on the subject of bird-scaring dogs, Peter Salstrom wrote, Perhaps ten years ago, I was on the board of my homeowners association in North Metro Atlanta. We had a persistent problem with Canada geese clogging up our roads, eating our lawns, and defecating all over everything. The previous board had tried putting out some rubber coyotes, which apparently weren't any more convincing to the geese than they were to me. Then salvation! We learned of a local man with four border collies who would take care of these goose problems. He would let the dogs run around for a few weeks so the geese got used to them

Starting point is 00:18:58 being around. Later that season, when the baby geese had grown up and all the geese started molting and were unable to fly, he'd set the border collies loose to herd all the geese into the back of a big truck, and he'd release them on the border between Georgia and South Carolina. We hired him and the service worked like a charm. No more geese, no more problems. So when the collie man came by to try to interest us in a service to have his collies continue to occasionally patrol the area, we politely declined. This turned out to be a gigantic mistake. Not only do about 25% of the relocated birds return, but it turned out that the man also had a lucrative goose removal business at several other corporate

Starting point is 00:19:36 campuses in that area. For many of these geese, relocating to our neighborhood became a fantastic option once the border collies showed up at their former homes. Anyway, goose herding seems to be lucrative work if you can find it, and if you subscribe to it, make sure you pay your maintenance fees. That's a good business. So you're just shooing the geese from one spot to another. I was thinking about that. You're right. The geese just keep getting moved around and become somebody else's problem temporarily. It's like a never-ending business for yourself. Exactly. Robert Au wrote, Hi, Sharon, Greg, and Sasha.

Starting point is 00:20:11 Your recent discussion of Vassar's Director of Geese reminded me of another non-human university employee you might enjoy knowing about. Hampshire College has a slime mold as a visiting scholar. It takes a non-human perspective towards modeling, among other things, addiction and migration. The website of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, lists Fisarium Polycephalum as a visiting non-human scholar that began teaching at Hampshire in the spring of 2017

Starting point is 00:20:40 and notes that the slime mold is the first non-human scholar-in-residence for the college. Physarium polycephalum, whose name means many-headed slime, is a plasmodial slime mold, an enormous single cell that has thousands of distinct nuclei but that acts as a unit, with its different parts exhibiting cooperative behavior that's intended to optimize conditions for the whole organism. Experimental philosopher Jonathan Keats, who invited the slime mold to the college to model various scenarios of human social problems and hopefully offer solutions, said of these superorganisms, Their self-interest is inseparable from their collective interest.

Starting point is 00:21:20 The same is true of us humans, only our society doesn't realize it yet. interest. The same is true of us humans, only our society doesn't realize it yet. Keats and other fans of the slime mold feel that these organisms can help us to think about and see the world freed from our usual human biases. Keats said, we can look to the slime mold as a way of being able to see how we might behave for our collective good. Although P. polycephalum has no brain or central nervous system, it appears that it can still remember, learn, and solve problems. Experiments find that slime mold will remember where it's already been when exploring a new environment and learn a maze in order to get to food most efficiently. irritating but non-harmful, and then learn to put up with it in order to get to food more quickly. Even more interesting, when you combine a slime mold that has learned this lesson with other naive slime molds, the new fused organism shows the results of the learning. And this holds even if you split the naive slime molds back out from the fused organism. They still show the learned

Starting point is 00:22:21 understanding that the irritating substance isn't harmful. That's fascinating. And they don't have a brain. And they do not have a brain. That's hard even to understand. Yeah, well, we tend to think of things from a very human-centric point of view, right? So if you don't have a brain, you must not be able to think. Slime molds have also been shown to solve networking problems, such as modeling transportation systems. For example, if you place a slime mold on a map of the U.S. and put food sources at major cities,

Starting point is 00:22:51 P. polycephalum branches out to create a pattern that is very similar to the U.S. highway system. This experiment has been successfully replicated with maps of several other countries, as well as the train system around Tokyo. Given that the slime molds can recreate these systems in a matter of hours or days, as opposed to the decades that it took humans to design them, it's hoped that this ability could be used to help figure out, for example, the optimal placement for public health clinics to serve rural populations. And by the way, when these highway replication experiments were run on the maps of a number of countries, the slime molds branches most closely correlated with the highway systems of Belgium, Canada,

Starting point is 00:23:35 and China, suggesting that the highway systems of these countries are the most efficient in terms of minimizing the travel distances between population centers. That's amazing. It's a shame they're called slime molds because it's kind of an off-putting name. It is a little off-putting. Seriously, that's really fascinating. It's hard to kind of called slime molds because it's kind of an off-putting name. It is a little off-putting. Seriously, that's really fascinating. It's hard to kind of take them seriously, huh? And so I'm sure I have not done justice in describing these unique creatures. So for anyone who is interested in learning more or seeing pea polycephalum model a transportation system, I'll have links in the show notes, including to a TED Talk video that's a good starting point for appreciating these truly unusual organisms.

Starting point is 00:24:06 In episode 206, I also discussed a potential treatment to kill varroa mites, parasitic mites that can kill honeybees. Eric Knutson wrote, Hello, Greg, Sharon, and Sasha. Call it a tempest in a teapot. Bee pot? But the quote you read on the podcast from the American Bee Journal, if you don't worry about varroa, you're either wildly ignorant or not a beekeeper, is actually a pointed barb directed at natural beekeepers such as myself who do not treat for the Varroa mite. We've been called everything from bee havers to terrorists, I'm not kidding,

Starting point is 00:24:40 by establishment beekeepers such as the folks at the American Bee Journal. It's hard to convey just how controversial this topic is. The reasoning those of us in the no-treatment camp follow is that we should keep bees that are naturally resistant to pests like Varroa rather than keep bees that need to be propped up with chemicals. The bees I keep here in Los Angeles are feral, which is to say that they've been living without tending for many years and relocated from places such as walls, electrical boxes, trees, and kitchen vents.

Starting point is 00:25:09 We know treatment beekeepers rely on natural selection to provide us with healthy stock. Keep up the great work. I had actually thought that the comment about people not worried about Varroa was directed at people like me, as I will freely admit that before David Bismarck's email on the subject, I was completely ignorant of the issue. But I had no idea that I was walking into a controversial subject, though sometimes it does unfortunately seem that there are rather few human endeavors that don't manage to give rise to at least some amount of controversy. So thanks to Eric for that perspective from the other side, and maybe there is still more that we humans have yet to learn about cooperation from slime molds.

Starting point is 00:25:59 And now for a story that I happen to see that manages to combine dogs and honeybees. A Maryland state employee is training dogs to inspect beehives for fowl brood, which is a bacteria that can be spread from hive to hive with very harmful effects on bee populations. This can be a serious issue as honeybees are often sent around the country to pollinate crops, and the beekeepers don't want to be sending this bacteria with them. So Sybil Preston, the chief apiary inspector for the Maryland Department of Agriculture, trained her Labrador retriever, Mac, to help her spot foulbrood. While human inspectors need to open up the hives to look for evidence of the bacteria, Mac can just sniff at the comb and determine if any of the larvae have died from foulbrood. Preston has said that four people working full-time cover less than half of the hives

Starting point is 00:26:39 that Mac can. Mac's training took nine months, and Preston has just started training a young Springer Spaniel. Before training the dogs, she sought advice from Mark Flynn, the canine unit commander with Maryland's Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. Flynn trains dogs to associate important scents with their toys, which in the early stages of the training are impregnated with the scent that they're trying to imprint on the dog. Flynn said, we're looking for those dogs they'll jump into water to get the ball, the ones completely obsessed with their toys.

Starting point is 00:27:09 Because when a dog is searching, he believes in his heart he's trying to find his toy. And Flynn finds that you can use this principle whether the dog is searching for contraband cell phones or drugs in prisons or a foul bird in beehives. That's like the dog at the airport. It's really impressive that someone even thought to do that, let alone that it works, you know, that we can get a dog to do this task

Starting point is 00:27:29 and be more efficient than a person. Yeah, so we covered lots of very helpful canines today. We must look so helpless to dogs, you know. Why do you need me to do this? Thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. We really appreciate hearing your comments and updates, so if you have anything you'd like to add, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I am going to give him a strange-sounding situation, and he has to work out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions.

Starting point is 00:28:04 situation, and he has to work out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Dan Lardner. A man is seated by the ocean one evening, and never leaving his chair, he observes the following phenomenon. He watches the sun set, and after about half of it sinks beneath the horizon, he sees it slowly rise again until the full disk of sun is visible again in the evening sky. It continues to rise for several minutes, whereupon it is seen to change direction and set again, the second time setting completely, not to rise again until the following morning in the east, as is customary.

Starting point is 00:28:34 How can this have happened? And Dan says, it should be noted that the man is completely sober in the event, and the sighting is not attributable to any sort of hallucination or delusion, and maybe he wants all of that noted because this actually happened to him. Oh, really? Yes. So he was sober and he wasn't hallucinating.

Starting point is 00:28:53 Okay, the first thing I think of is like the midnight sun, like there's something to do, it takes place in high latitudes near the pole? No. No? No. Yeah, that was the first thing I thought of when I was originally reading it too, but there is a different answer. Even that doesn't really work.

Starting point is 00:29:05 Okay, do I need to know specifically. Even that doesn't really work. Okay. Do I need to know specifically where it happened? That might help. Did it happen at a certain latitude? No, I don't think so. I mean, is that the important thing? No. You say he never leaves his chair.

Starting point is 00:29:20 Is that artfully worded? I mean, is the chair stationary, and is it an ordinary chair chair and does it matter? You're asking way too many questions. Do we need to know more about the chair? That might help. Is the chair on the surface of the earth? I'm going to say no. Wow. Is it above the surface of the earth? Yes. Is it in a vehicle of some kind? Yes. Is it above the surface of the earth? Yes.

Starting point is 00:29:44 Is it in a vehicle of some kind? Yes. Wow. Okay. So the apparent motion of the sun, is that due to the chair's movement? Some of it. Okay. Is the man's occupation important?

Starting point is 00:30:00 No. He's not like an astronaut or something? Correct. So a man's sitting in a chair that's in a vehicle above the surface of the earth that's moving, he sees the sun setting in the west, starting to set. Yeah. But then it rises again. Yes. You look very careful. Yeah, yeah. So you said something that you made a little jump, you made a little bit of an assumption or a jump in something that you've said. So one part of what you said isn't completely right. A man sitting in a chair that's above the surface of the earth

Starting point is 00:30:30 and moving. Is all of that true? For part of this, yes. For part of this. Does it start on the surface of the earth? The chair? The chair is not on the surface of the earth. Is it not in motion through all of this?

Starting point is 00:30:49 Correct. Okay. So it starts out stationary and then moves up? Yes. And that would explain why the sun comes back into view? Yes. Because he's rising. Yes.

Starting point is 00:30:58 So we can see further over the horizon. Yeah. But then does the chair come back down again and that's why the sun seems to drop again? No. Yeah. But then does the chair come back down again and that's why the sun seems to drop again? No. Okay, so the chair just goes up and stays, I guess, however high it goes. Yeah. So then the sun just keeps setting as it normally would and just disappears over the horizon and rises in the east the next day. So he's in a chair that goes up. Is it in a balloon? You said some kind of vehicle? No, no. It's in some kind of vehicle that rises above the surface of the earth. Which would be? An airplane? An airplane. That's what it is.

Starting point is 00:31:26 Dan says, the man began his sunset gazing while seated in the cabin of a commercial airliner awaiting departure at Los Angeles International Airport. As the airplane took off, it gained altitude quickly enough

Starting point is 00:31:37 to change the observational angle of the sun relative to the horizon such that the sun was seen to rise back up over the ocean. As the plane leveled off at cruising altitude, the normal rotation of the earth caused the sun to set again. That would be neat to see, to actually watch. Yeah, that's why he said it happened to him. So thanks to Dan for that puzzle,

Starting point is 00:31:54 in which we are very glad that nobody died in the making of it. Very glad. And if anyone else has a puzzle for us to try, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. puzzle for us to try, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. This podcast is supported primarily by our fabulous listeners. If you would like to help support our celebration of the quirky and the curious, you can find a donate button in the support a section of the website at futilitycloset.com. Or you can join our Patreon campaign, where you'll get outtakes, extra discussions on some of the stories, more lateral thinking puzzles, peeks behind the scenes, and updates on Sasha, the official Futility Closet mascot. You can find our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see our website for the link. At our website, you'll also find over 10,000 concise curiosities,

Starting point is 00:32:48 the Futility Closet store, information about the Futility Closet books, and the show notes for the podcast. If you have any questions or comments for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. All of our music was written and performed by Greg's outstanding brother, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 211-Cast Away on an Ice Floe

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