Futility Closet - 250-The General Slocum

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 migrating ice block to a feline reincarnation. This is episode 250. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1904, a Manhattan church outing descended into horror when a passenger steamboat caught fire on the East River. More than a thousand people struggled to survive as the captain raced to reach land. In today's show, we'll describe the burning of the General Slocum,

Starting point is 00:00:42 the worst maritime disaster in the history of New York City. We'll also chase some marathon cheaters and puzzle over a confusing speeding ticket. June 15, 1904 was a special day for the members of St. Mark's Lutheran Church on Manhattan's Lower East Side. They would be taking a steamboat excursion to Long Island to mark the completion of the Sunday school year. This was their 17th annual trip, a highlight of the season for the parishioners, most of whom were working-class German immigrants and their children. To carry them, they'd hire the General Slocum, a passenger steamboat that could be chartered for excursions

Starting point is 00:01:23 around the city. No steamboat in New York could match the Slocum's beauty, opulence, speed, size, and maneuverability. Launched in 1891, she was 264 feet long, with three large open decks and paddle wheels 31 feet across. The captain, William von Scheich, 67 years old, lived on the boat. He was the only captain the Slocum had ever had. On this beautiful June day, about 1,300 passengers, mostly women and children, boarded the ship to cruise up the East River and then across Long Island Sound to Eaton's Neck for a picnic. The ship got underway at 9.30 a.m. As it was passing East 90th Street, something happened in the forward storage cabin below the

Starting point is 00:02:01 main deck. Known as the lamp room, this held kerosene, brass polish, paint, charcoal, and barrels of hay that were being used to transport glasses for the picnic. Possibly a lamp overturned when the ship rolled, perhaps an overhead wire shed a spark, or maybe a crewman absently dropped a match or a cigarette. But somehow, in that room, a fire began to smolder. A few minutes before 10 a.m., a boy approached a deckhand named John Coakley and told him, Mr., there's smoke a boy approached a deckhand named John Coakley and told him, Mr., there's smoke coming up one of the stairways. Coakley had been hired only 18 days earlier. He saw smoke, but not much. He assumed it was just a burst exhaust pipe from the boiler.

Starting point is 00:02:35 And now he made two mistakes. The first was that he decided not to alert the captain. The second was that he went down the stairs to the door of the lamp room and opened it. That sent a brush of oxygen into the room. The hay burst into flames that quickly passed 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The fire was still small, but its heat would help it to spread quickly. Coakley tugged on a piece of canvas, hoping to beat out the flames, but he couldn't free it. So he dropped a sack of charcoal on the fire and ran to find the first mate, leaving the door open and letting in more oxygen. The crew's performance through this whole thing was just terrible,

Starting point is 00:03:08 but part of that is not their fault. They had never even run a fire drill. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, and if he'd only been working the job 18 days... You can't really expect him... They don't have much training for this kind of thing, probably. But still, it's terribly unfortunate. Still. As this was happening, the ship was just approaching Hell Gate, a narrow, rocky tidal strait where the East River meets Long Island Sound. This was one of the most dangerous passages on the East Coast, and it required speed and close attention.

Starting point is 00:03:34 As the captain was beginning to give his instructions to the pilots, a boy called to him, hey, mister, the ship's on fire. Von Scheich thought at first that this was a joke. He said, get the hell out of here or mind your own business. Then he turned back to the pilots. In less than a minute, they'd be through Hellgate and out of harm's way. Meanwhile, Coakley ran up the stairs searching for the first mate, Edward Flanagan. The smoke rising up the stairway was getting darker and starting to billow. He found Flanagan and second mate James Corcoran supervising some deckhands. He pulled Flanagan aside and said, mate, the ship's a fire forward and it's making pretty good headway. The three of them set off running past the main deck cabin, which was beginning to

Starting point is 00:04:08 fill with smoke from the stairwell. A crowd of worried passengers had begun to gather, but Flanagan ignored their questions and ran to the blower that communicated with the pilot house. He shouted, the ship's on fire, and then sprinted aft to the engine room to find the chief engineer, Ben Conklin. He told him, chief, the ship's afire forward. Get to the pump. Conklin turned a valve while a deckhand dragged a hose to the burning room, but the hose was twisted and kinked and the surge of water burst it in five or more places. It was rotten after 13 years of disuse. A porter rushed in with a rubber hose, but in their confusion, they couldn't attach it to the standpipe. With that, the crew gave up on fighting the fire. Flanagan called, get to the boats. In the pilot house, Flanagan's warning,

Starting point is 00:04:48 the ship's on fire, had come booming through the blower at 10.06 a.m., just as the ship emerged from Hell Gate. Trying to project calm, von Scheich told the pilots to hold the boat's course and said, I'll go down and see about it. As he stepped onto the deck, a torrent of flame roared out of the boat's lower port side and reached for the decks above. He testified later that it was like a volcano, and he recognized the commotion he was hearing. It was women and children screaming. He went to the stairs hoping to assess the fire, but he said, I got part of the way down and the fire drove me back. It was sweeping up from below like a tornado. He ran back to the pilot house. As darkening smoke began to issue from the staircase on the promenade deck, the Reverend George Haas, pastor of St. Mark's, saw that the ship was in grave danger, but he knew he needed

Starting point is 00:05:29 to prevent panic. He told a group of anxious onlookers that it was probably just coffee burning in the galley, and suggested they move to the stern as a precaution. Then he went in search of his wife and daughter. Ten minutes earlier, word had gone out that ice cream would be served on the main deck, and, one boy later recalled, children were falling all over each other in an effort to get to the tables which held the refreshments. A few feet away, in the engine room, a group of young boys and their mothers were watching the engine when, 13-year-old John L. remembered, suddenly and without the least warning, there was a burst of flames from the furnace room that rushed up through the engine room and flashed out about us. It set fire to their clothes and hair and sent them shrieking into the room where the ice cream was being served. Elle said there was a most terrible panic.

Starting point is 00:06:09 Everyone struggled to get out of the cabin, and those who managed it were pressed against the ship's railing, which soon gave way. When a puff of black smoke wafted upward to the deck above, someone joked it must mean the chowder was boiling over in the galley. Everyone laughed, but the smoke was followed by a sheet of flame, and when they rushed to the railings, they could hear the passengers below shouting about a fire. Almost immediately, one survivor said, there was a loud roar as though a cannon had been shot off, and the entire bow of the boat was a sheet of flames. Already, some passengers were leaping over the rails into the river. On the main afterdeck, when the band paused, its audience heard shouts of fire and joined in the general panic.

Starting point is 00:06:50 Pastor Haas found his wife and daughter, but then discovered that most of the passengers were racing aft to escape the fire. He took his family to the stern railing of the promenade deck and then made his way forward, urging his flock to stay calm. But the passengers now saw a choice between flames and the river, and in 1904, most Americans didn't know how to swim. Soon, a full-scale panic gripped the ship. Haas struggled for it until he could see the flames through the main cabin of the promenade deck. He realized he could slow the fire's progress if he could close the cabin doors. He managed to close the right one, but the left one jammed, probably swollen by the flames. He struggled with it in a torrent of heat and then retreated to the railing, badly burned, and returned to his family. Around him, women were shrieking and clasping their children in their arms. He told his wife and daughter that they

Starting point is 00:07:28 needed to climb to the other side of the railing where they risked being crushed. He helped them over and followed himself, and the three of them stood, clinging to the ship as its interior filled with flames. Women, grandparents, and scores of small children were crushed to death in the press to escape the fire. Kate Kassenbaum arranged her family of ten along a railing and told them to hang on as long as possible. She said, But my words of warning were not more than out of my mouth when there came such a rush of panic-stricken and frenzied people to the stern of the boat that no human being could have stood up against it. When she opened her eyes, she was alone. She said,

Starting point is 00:08:01 Not one of my family was to be seen anywhere. They had been whisked away from me in the mad rush. There were 2,500 life preservers on board, but they were stowed in ceilings throughout the boat, behind wire mesh many more than eight feet above the deck. Boys shinnied up pipes and men boosted each other to reach them, but in some cases the mesh had rusted and wouldn't give way, and in others the vests tumbled to the deck where they touched off a struggle in the crowd. One journalist wrote, Mothers who had started, side by side with an endless fund of sympathy for domestic difficulties, were fighting like wild beasts.

Starting point is 00:08:32 Appallingly, even the passengers who managed to come away with life preservers found that most of them were useless. Their canvas coverings had deteriorated with time and now simply tore open, revealing that the cork inside had disintegrated into dust. One boy said, I tried six life preservers and they were all rotten, so I had to jump overboard just as I was. Fortunately, he could swim. Survivors realized only after they jumped that cork dust has the buoyancy of dirt. Each life jacket simply absorbed water, becoming 20 pounds or more of dead weight

Starting point is 00:09:00 and dragging people down to their deaths. Elizabeth Kircher tied a preserver to her youngest daughter, Elsie, the only member of her family who couldn't swim, and helped her over the side. She disappeared under the surface and never came up. Her father said afterward she had sunk as though a stone were tied to her. The only one lost was the one who wore a life preserver. Kate Oettinger put life preservers on all four of her children but Willie, the oldest, who insisted he could swim. She said a prayer and they all jumped in. Witnesses later told him that his mother and siblings had sunk like stones. High above on the boat's hurricane deck, six steel lifeboats and four life rafts were fastened to the deck. Each lifeboat was 22 feet long and six feet wide, capable of holding 20 passengers or more. But the passengers found they couldn't free them.

Starting point is 00:09:43 Apparently someone had grown tired of hearing them rattle in bad weather and had secured them with wire. Desperately the crowd tried to rock the boats free, but eventually the flames forced them back. As the ship forged up the river, the wind blew the fire aft. Blinded by smoke, passengers fell down stairs or over the rails and into the water. Children cried for their parents. Sparks and embers were falling from above, setting fire to clothing, and the wind now carried the smells of burning flesh and hair and the screams of desperate passengers. One witness wrote, there are no letters in any language to spell such sounds. Once heard, they are seared upon the memory as with a white-hot iron. Passengers began to jump

Starting point is 00:10:20 overboard in masses. Eleven-year-old Willie Kepler remembered, twenty would jump at once, and right on top of them, twenty more would jump. Abandoned children were simply thrown. One man told a girl, I would rather see you drown than burn to death. Some women handed their babies to young people who could swim, and then themselves drowned. Most women couldn't bear to do that, and either jumped in clutching their children, or threw them clear of the paddle wheels and dove in after them. And in many cases, the rail gave way, or the crowd forced people overboard. The captain struggled to decide what to do. He could try to reach shore, but they were not yet free of the dangerous passage with its shoals and

Starting point is 00:10:53 currents. Or he could turn around and meet the boats that were pursuing them. It's not clear whether he considered that. It would also have stopped the headwind that was blowing the fire aft. What he decided to do was head for North Brother Island off the Bronx shore. It was safe and familiar, and he knew he could reach it, but it was nearly a mile upriver, and it would take at least three minutes to get there. Apparently, that's a terribly unfortunate feature of disaster psychology, is that you'll often choose the riskiest course of action and then stick to it even as the situation becomes hopeless.

Starting point is 00:11:21 I guess it's hard in such a nightmare, panicked situation. To think clearly, yeah. To think clearly and weigh all your alternatives and then to keep re-coming up with a new decision, re-evaluating. Yeah, that's asking a lot. But still, this was... An unfortunate decision that he made, apparently.

Starting point is 00:11:39 The General's locum was made entirely of dry, weathered wood and the fire was spreading rapidly now through its interior. When it burst through the upper decks, it had access to oxygen, and in less than a minute, it engulfed the main deck, cutting off the bow from the rest of the vessel. From there, it moved simultaneously fore and aft. Annie Weber said the flames were sweeping back as the boat raced on, and it was like the breath of a red-hot furnace. In only a few minutes, the flames had engulfed the ship. One survivor said, When I ran back to look for my children, the flames seemed to follow me. A reporter wrote,

Starting point is 00:12:08 no brain can imagine the fullness of that horror. No pen can write it. Feeble mothers covered their babies with their bodies, presenting a living barrier of flesh and blood to the flames that leaped toward their darlings. Helpless, screaming, and praying for mercy, they were shriveled before the fiery breath of the flames. One newspaper described the scene as a spectacle of horror beyond words to express. A great vessel all in flames, sweeping forward in the sunlight within sight of the crowded city, while her helpless, screaming hundreds were roasted alive or swallowed up in waves. A dozen or more vessels were now chasing the steamboat, hoping to pull alongside to bear away some passengers, but most of them couldn't catch up. As they ran, they passed people in the water but couldn't

Starting point is 00:12:48 stop to help them. One pursuer wrote, to see the faces of those little ones who drifted by struggling against death but just out of our reach was agony to every one of us. Only one boat managed to get alongside long enough to take off some passengers. The tug, Walter Tracy, accepted a shower of children, some simply thrown by parents and bystanders. After a few seconds, the captain pulled away for fear of catching fire or being destroyed by an exploding boiler. He later told reporters, until my dying day, I will hear the anguished cry that went up as I cut loose the burning boat. And in the water, desperate people tended to cling to anything that would support them, including other people. Strong swimmers

Starting point is 00:13:23 became targets for weak ones. Most of the people were dressed in their Sunday best, and few of them had the presence of mind to get rid of their shoes and excess clothing. Men and boys were wearing full suits and ties, and many women were wearing ankle-length, long-sleeved dresses and high-heeled shoes. As they neared the island, the boat's interior collapsed entirely. The decks fell into the center, and the ship beached itself on the island's western edge, 20 feet from the shore. Closest to the slocum was a boat from the Department

Starting point is 00:13:50 of Corrections. Cox and Carl Rappaport dove off the bow and began to help the people in the water. The first he brought back was a little boy who clung so tightly to him that he had to be pried loose. Next were two babies, both still breathing. By the time he'd retrieved his seventh person, Rappaport was completely naked. He'd lost all his clothes, struggling with people in the water. The tug's sumner pulled up to a paddle box and accepted a score of passengers. The goldenrod passed by as well, and, the captain remembered, men, women, and children hailed down on my decks.

Starting point is 00:14:20 Ships everywhere threw life preservers, barrels, planks, chairs, anything that would float. At the very end, a little boy could be seen climbing the flagpole on the top deck in a desperate effort to escape the inferno. He appeared to be about six years old. Hundreds of people watched him climb, inching upward as the flames mounted higher. At last he reached the top and the crowd shouted, hold on, though it wasn't clear how he could possibly be rescued. Then the pole fell backward into the burning cavity of the vessel and he was lost to sight. In the days that followed, some remarkable tales of survival came to light. One 10-month-old boy had floated to shore uninjured. His parents were dead, and he lay unclaimed in a hospital until his grandmother found him. 15-year-old Clara Hartman

Starting point is 00:15:00 was found face down in the water. Her body was towed to shore and wrapped in a tarpaulin. Four hours later, she was found to be breathing. And 11-year-old Willie Kepler, who had joined the excursion without his parents' permission, escaped the disaster but was too afraid of punishment to return home. When he saw his name listed among the dead in the next day's newspaper, he said, I thought I'd come home and get the licking instead of breaking my mother's heart. So I'm home, and my mother only kissed me, and my father gave me half a dollar for being a good swimmer. Charges of negligence and dereliction began to fly immediately, and public sentiment quickly turned against the steamboat owners and inspectors. Seven directors of the Knickerbocker Steamboat Company were found guilty of criminal negligence,

Starting point is 00:15:38 as were the captain, the first mate, fleet commodore John Pease, and a safety inspector. Von Scheich spent three and a half years in Sing Sing and was released on parole in 1911. Altogether of the 1,342 people on board, an estimated 1,021 had died, making this New York's deadliest disaster before 9-11. A year after the fire, on June 15, 1905, more than 15,000 people attended a memorial service where 18-month-old Adela Libanu unveiled a monument symbolizing faith and courage, grief and despair. At six months old, she had been the youngest survivor of the disaster, and as the 20th century unfolded, she would gradually become the oldest. Shortly before her death in 2004 at age 100, she was asked why the Titanic is better remembered

Starting point is 00:16:20 than the General Slocum. She said, the Titanic had a great many famous people on it. This was just a family picnic. The disaster would haunt its victims for the rest of their lives. Robert Osmers, son of survivor Otto Osmers, told Newsday in 2004, whenever we went to a restaurant or any public gathering place, the first thing my father would do was check to see where the exits were. And when we went to Coney Island, he wouldn't go in the water. I never asked why, but I know it was because of the slocum. His fears were understandable. The disaster's horror had been compounded by its senselessness. The remains of the General Slocum were raised and converted into a coal barge named Maryland,

Starting point is 00:16:55 which sank for good off the coast of New Jersey six years later in 1911. Her owner said, ill fortune always followed her. I'm glad she's gone. We talked about some early marathons in episodes 236 and 241. Andrew Anganes wrote, Since you have been on the topic of marathons, you might be interested in the MarathonInvestigation.com website. This man uses the abundance of time and photograph data, which are common in large marathons these days, to catch cheaters. He has identified hundreds of cheaters and has caught some high-profile people. For the number of cheaters caught using modern technology, it makes one wonder how many historic cheaters have gone undetected.

Starting point is 00:17:46 Marathon cheating may seem harmless, but a better time in one race may earn you an entry into another race, such as the Boston Marathon. Cheating may take away an entry from someone who legitimately deserved it. investigation was started in 2015 by Derek Murphy, a financial analyst from Ohio who dedicates himself to catching marathon cheaters, devoting up to 20 hours a week to the task. After a big marathon, he gets to work, pulling up the online results and looking for any potential red flags. Murphy was inspired by the site letsrun.com, whose users also try to determine instances of marathon cheating. Several of them worked together to investigate whether a Philadelphia radio personality had cheated in the 2014 Lehigh Valley Marathon in order to qualify for the Boston Marathon, which started Murphy wondering whether this was the only

Starting point is 00:18:36 instance of this type of cheating. He quickly discovered that it wasn't. I think most people aren't aware of how much cheating goes on in marathons, he says in an NBC News story. In the first year and a half of his efforts, Murphy estimated that he had uncovered 250 cases of marathon cheating. Murphy's first major probe was an analysis of the 2015 Boston Marathon finishers, and he found evidence that 47 of them had cheated to earn their spots in the race. Based on his work, he thinks that up to 5% of all marathon entrants may be fraudulent. The Guardian reports that after almost every major race, a handful of the runners are exposed as having cheated, and they say that thousands of

Starting point is 00:19:17 runners were disqualified after the 2018 Mexico City Marathon. I found that Murphy had a post on his site about how for that race, 29,555 runners crossed the start line at the beginning of the race, but 32,645 runners finished the race. He reports that over 5,000 of that marathon's competitors were disqualified for finishing a race they didn't actually start, as well as other infractions. I wonder what the most extreme case is, like how close to the finish line somebody just stepped in. He said it appeared in that race that many people ended up joining it halfway through, you know, more than halfway through. It was kind of crazy. I'd never thought about it, but you're right. Especially in the past,

Starting point is 00:20:01 that would have been pretty easy to do. Yeah. Without getting caught. Yeah. I mean, apparently there are a number of people still doing it today when it's harder. So you do have to wonder how many people have throughout history. Marathoners may cheat for various reasons. Some may be seeking publicity or acclaim, while others are trying to qualify to run in the prestigious Boston Marathon, a lifelong goal for many runners.

Starting point is 00:20:25 qualify to run in the prestigious Boston Marathon, a lifelong goal for many runners. In order to keep his task more manageable, these days Murphy focuses his efforts on the runners who qualify for the Boston Marathon. Marathon rule breakers typically fall into one of two categories, course cutters who don't run every mile of the marathon and bib swappers who have the tag with their race number and electromagnetic chip worn by a faster runner. Those chips are read by timing mats that are placed along the route, and that data, as well as photos of the runners taken by cameras, is all posted online, making it easy for armchair investigators like Murphy to look for discrepancies. For example, when Murphy analyzed all the data for the 2016 Philadelphia Marathon,

Starting point is 00:21:03 one of the U.S.'s biggest marathons, he quickly found 12 runners who apparently had qualified for the Boston Marathon by cheating in Philadelphia. In many cases, their splits or the amount of time it took them to run different sections of the race didn't make sense. Like in one case, based on his splits, a runner would have needed to have run the final miles in world record time. Murphy also found a couple that he suspected had cheated together, with the husband running with his wife's chip in order for her to get a faster time. He looked into their history and found more races with odd results. In some, the timing mats showed the husband and wife having identical splits,

Starting point is 00:21:40 meaning they had to have run the whole course side by side. But the photos showed him crossing the finish line alone while she was caught on camera miles behind. When Murphy confronted them, the couple, whose names aren't identified, admitted to cheating in at least five races, with the husband carrying his wife's chip. Apparently the first time it happened by accident, when they mixed up their bibs and she posted a better time than he did. After that, she felt pressured to keep up such good times and he went along to make her happy. The ruse had allowed her to earn coveted Boston Marathon qualifying times and in one case a trophy. The wife said that she'd convinced herself that it wasn't really cheating because she always ran the full distance at each race just more slowly than her official times. She said,

Starting point is 00:22:24 I think the human mind can justify just about anything. That's just outright cheating. It's hard to convince yourself that it ain't. I guess she figured, well, I did run the race. The popularity of marathons has ballooned in recent years. According to the NBC article, only 25,000 people completed a marathon in 1976, but more than half a million people completed one in 2015, and more than 17 million had participated in some kind of running event. This enormous growth means that just managing to run the 26.2 miles is no longer quite as special of an achievement as it used to be.

Starting point is 00:23:03 These days, the glory for many is in how fast you do it. The wife I mentioned earlier said, the first question anyone ever asks when you run a marathon is, what was your time? Not like, how was it? Congratulations. What was the experience? It's, what was your time? But as Andrew noted, these cheaters can take a precious spot away from someone who has worked very hard to earn one. Daphne Madeline, for example, finally scored a qualifying time at the 2016 Boston Marathon after multiple tries. But because so many people qualified that year, the race organizers ended up setting a lower cutoff for her age group, and she missed getting a slot by 28 seconds. Madeline said, I turned myself inside out to run a nine-minute mile

Starting point is 00:23:47 personal best at the age of 41, and it really stinks if someone who cheated got to run and I didn't. In a New York Times article from April, Eli Ashe, race director of the California International Marathon said, it's just like the college admissions scandal, taking a spot at an elite college that someone else earned. And the California International Marathon has now actually hired Murphy to analyze its race results to look for possible cheaters. Maybe I don't have the right mindset. What would it mean? Like, if I did that, and I said, hey, I ran the Boston Marathon, and you asked me what my time was, and I gave you some impressive answer, what meaning does that have if I know I cheated? Like, I don't, I guess I get some social cred if you don't discover

Starting point is 00:24:29 it, but is that worth it? I guess it is to some people. While Murphy tends to focus on those who qualify for the Boston Marathon, other groups who also make an effort to catch race cheaters focus on some of the other races. After the 2018 London Marathon, a thread was started on the Runners World Forum titled, London Marathon Cheaters, Let's Do This. The forum members focused on identifying negative splits from the race, or times that would indicate that a runner had completed the second half of the race faster than the first half. They quickly found, for example, an Irish runner in the 60 to 64-year-old age category who appeared to have run almost 9 miles in 15 minutes, which my math tells me would be almost 36 miles an hour, though he insisted that he had run every step of the course. In many cases, these course cutters who end up taking some other form of transportation for part of the route don't seem to plan their

Starting point is 00:25:25 actions in advance. The Guardian reports that when confronted with the evidence against them, many runners who cheat in this way explain that they had intended to run the full race until they got too fatigued or were injured, and then they might make a snap decision that they can't later admit to. It seemed to me that the same competitiveness or pride that pushes a runner to do marathons in the first place might kick in a bit too much at times and then end up pushing them towards this kind of dishonest behavior. They just want to finish the race. Yeah, and you're right. That's a good point. The kind of personality that would be attracted to running a marathon in the first

Starting point is 00:25:57 place would have a stronger incentive to finish with a good time. Yeah. Obviously, in the case of bib swappers, usually there would be some sort of advanced planning if the point is to have someone else wear your bib. I suppose we could imagine some lateral thinking puzzle type scenarios where you get someone to wear your bib without them realizing it, but in most cases, it's a premeditated collaboration. In some cases, bib swappers even pay faster runners to run for them. But certainly there have been some cases where course cutters have also planned their deception in advance. One of the most notorious of these cases was Rosie Ruiz, who appeared to win the women's category of the Boston Marathon in 1980,

Starting point is 00:26:36 with the fastest time ever for a woman in that race. Her performance stunned the running world as she was a relative novice in marathons and didn't appear to have the sort of physical conditioning that is usually seen in a world-class runner. When she crossed the finish line in Boston, she was barely sweating, didn't seem particularly fatigued, and none of the other runners had seen her pass them. Spectators later reported seeing her come out of the crowd with less than a mile to go in the race, and then a witness came forward who had seen Ruiz on the subway the previous year in her runner's bib while she was supposed to be running in the New York City Marathon,

Starting point is 00:27:10 the race that had qualified her for Boston. In the end, she was disqualified from both races. How could she have expected to get away with that? Maybe she'd done it before. That's true. Benjamin Sturmer, who sent a very appreciated pronunciation help for his name, wrote, Hello, I've finally joined your Patreon campaign after many years of loyal listening. I'm so sorry to have taken so long to support you financially, as I'm a huge fan of your work.

Starting point is 00:27:39 I have wanted to ask you a question for quite some time. It's a very silly question, but I feel I'll never stop thinking about it if I don't get it off my chest, so here goes. At the end of each podcast, when promoting your Patreon campaign, Sharon mentions the additional lateral thinking puzzles subscribers gain access to. For a long time, Sharon consistently referred to these as extra-lateral thinking puzzles. And I would always smile because my ear parsed that phrase as extra lateral thinking puzzles, which for whatever reason delighted me. For the last few months, though, Sharon has stopped saying extra. Always it is more lateral thinking puzzles or some other similar phrase. So I end every episode a bit sad and curious. Why the change? Is it possible that you're trying to avoid the same funny misperception that I so enjoyed? Or is there some other explanation? Thank you for humoring my silly question and keep up the phenomenal work. So thank you for writing, Benjamin, and for joining our Patreon campaign. I hadn't realized that anyone might have noticed the change in wording,

Starting point is 00:28:38 and now I'm wondering how many other people were sorry or confused about the change. We actually got this email from Benjamin a few weeks ago, so if anyone has been paying attention, they might have noticed that I did change it back to extra lateral thinking puzzles a few shows ago. The answer to the question is that a few months ago, we started adding in a new type of bonus post on our Patreon page, which was some further discussion on some of the stories from the show. So I started saying that our Patreon supporters would receive this extra discussion on some of the stories and the show. So I started saying that our Patreon supporters would receive this extra discussion on some of the stories

Starting point is 00:29:07 and switch to saying and more lateral thinking puzzles just to avoid repeating the word extra. But I'm kind of tickled by the idea of extra lateral thinking puzzles and maybe one day we'll have to try some of those if anyone comes up with any for us. Though it sounds like that could be a bit intimidating. The lateral ones can be hard enough.

Starting point is 00:29:26 Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We really appreciate everyone who takes the time to send us feedback, updates, and questions. So if you have any of those that you'd like to send, 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 give him an intriguing sounding situation, and he's going to work out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Lex Beckley.

Starting point is 00:29:58 A man drives past a cop going the speed limit, but still gets pulled over for speeding. Why? Does it matter what he was driving? No. Does it matter where this happened? No. Well, that's a very definitive answer. A man drives past a cop driving the speed limit.

Starting point is 00:30:14 Yes. So he's driving, let's say, a car. Yes. On a street, right? Like a regular, with a posted speed limit. Yes. And when you say he gets arrested for speeding, what an odd puzzle. So was he doing the speed limit? Was he under the legal speed limit?

Starting point is 00:30:32 He was doing the speed limit as he drove past the cop. So was he accelerating then and wound up going faster and the cop saw that and caught up to him? All right. then and wound up going faster and the cop saw that and no all right had he been going faster and slowed down by the time he reached the cop yes oh but that's not it but that's how did the cop know that um did they that's too obvious did the cop have a radar guard that let him sort of measure his speed at a distance no are there Are there other cops involved who just saw this further up the road? There are other cops involved. But it's not just that they radioed over, hey, there's a guy who's been speeding over at this end of town. Right. That's not quite it. Is the guy himself a cop? I don't know why that would solve the puzzle.

Starting point is 00:31:21 Okay. There are other cops involved. Are there other people in the speeding car, the car that was speeding? No. But you can presume, let's presume that no cop actually caught him speeding, yet they knew he'd been speeding, is basically the crux of the puzzle. All right, so does that have to do with, how do I ask this? Like if you saw him at literally the other side of town much very recently and then somehow he appeared by this other cop suspiciously soon that would imply that he had traveled quickly to get from one place and that's

Starting point is 00:31:57 basically it right a cop a cop saw him and noted this the license plate and the time and radios it to the next cop and he gets to the next cop too soon. So even if you slow down when you see the cop, they can work out that you must have been speeding at some point. You couldn't possibly have traveled the distance, yeah. Lex said, this is something that's been on my mind since high school

Starting point is 00:32:15 where my calculus teacher made up a similar scenario for us to figure out. Shout out to Mr. Hankey in Greencastle for still making me paranoid when I see a cop on the side of the road and I'm going the speed limit. So thanks to Lex for that law-breaking but completely non-fatal puzzle and for demonstrating an actual use for most of us for something learned in calculus class. If anyone else has a puzzle for us to try, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com.

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Futility Closet - 250-The General Slocum

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