Futility Closet - 354-Falling Through a Thunderstorm

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 11,000 quirky curiosities from mirror puzzles to phone book portraits. This is episode 354. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1959, marine pilot William Rankin parachuted from a malfunctioning jet into a violent thunderstorm. The ordeal that followed is almost unique in human experience. In today's show, we'll describe Rankin's harrowing adventure, which has been called the most prolonged and fantastic

Starting point is 00:00:45 parachute descent in history. We'll also hear your thoughts on pronunciation and puzzle over mice and rice. On July 26, 1959, Marine pilot William Rankin departed Massachusetts on a routine, high-altitude flight to South Carolina. He passed uneventfully over New York and Atlantic City, but as he approached Norfolk, Virginia shortly before 6 p.m., he saw that a thunderstorm covered the whole area. He climbed to 48,000 feet to fly over it and had just passed the city when he heard a thump and a rumbling sound. His engine had seized, leaving him with no power, instruments, or control over the plane. He had to eject, but he wasn't wearing a high-altitude pressure suit. All he'd have to protect him from sub-zero temperatures and near-explosive decompression

Starting point is 00:01:40 would be his helmet, gloves, and an ordinary summer weight flying suit. He'd never heard of anyone surviving an ejection at this altitude, but there was no help for it. He pulled the handles and shot from the canopy into a wall of frigid air. He wrote later, my body was suddenly a freezing, expanding mass of pain. He had emerged at an altitude nearly 20,000 feet higher than the summit of Mount Everest. Where the temperature in the cockpit had been 75 degrees Fahrenheit, now the air around him was almost 70 degrees below zero, compounded by an enormous chill factor as he shot through the air at several hundred miles per hour.

Starting point is 00:02:18 He wrote, I felt as though I were a chunk of beef being tossed into a cavernous deep freeze. Every exposed part of his body, face, neck, wrists, hands, and ankles, burned with fire and then went numb. At the same time, the pain of the decompression was agonizing. He wrote, I could feel my abdomen distending, stretching, stretching, stretching until I thought it would burst. My eyes felt as though they were being ripped from their sockets, my head as if it were splitting into several parts, my ears bursting inside, and throughout my entire body there were severe cramps. At first he had no sense of falling, only of spinning through the air.

Starting point is 00:02:55 A blinding sun flashed at him through the thin atmosphere. As he descended into the cloud tops, he was surrounded by a kaleidoscope of rotating colors. The sun went by in streaks of reddish-orange, and he caught glimpses of the milky-white tops of the clouds. He had the sense of jumping from a high fence and plunging toward a white expanse. Through the pain of the decompression, he caught a horrified glimpse of his stomach, which was swollen as though he were in a well-advanced pregnancy. He was convinced he would die. No human could survive this pain. But as he passed into the cloud tops, he still felt a feeling of elation and gratitude.

Starting point is 00:03:30 In spite of everything, he was conscious. He told himself, hang on, you might make it yet. You're thinking, you're conscious, you know what's going on. Just ride out this free fall and you've got it made. His body was spread-eagled now, cartwheeling with such force that he couldn't move his arms or legs. He described himself as a huge, stiff blob of helplessness. He tried several times to pull in his arms, but it was like pulling on a stone wall. He wanted to pull them in because something was beating relentlessly against his face. It was his oxygen mask. He'd almost forgotten it. He'd been breathing oxygen in the plane, and apparently enough had remained in his blood to sustain him for a time. But without the mask, he'd almost certainly lose consciousness. He knew his parachute was designed to open automatically at 10,000 feet, but if it failed, he would need to pull the cord himself, and if he were unconscious, he couldn't do that.

Starting point is 00:04:21 And if the mask kept flapping against his face, it might come off. As he entered a dense overcast of gray and white clouds, he was able to pull in first his right hand, then his left. He grabbed the oxygen mask and held it to his face. With his left hand, he held the top of his helmet. The strap had been pulling against his neck. Meanwhile, the strain on his legs seemed to ease. He'd fallen into somewhat denser atmosphere now and was beginning to feel better, gathering confidence that he'd survive. He was pleased that he'd eventually be able to describe all this since he'd remained awake. Mentally, he began to review the last instrument readings he'd taken in the plane,

Starting point is 00:04:58 but he was overcome by a powerful urge to open his parachute, mistrusting the barometric sensing device that would trigger it automatically at 10,000 feet. He let go the helmet and reached for the ripcord, then stopped himself. If he slowed his descent at this high altitude, he might freeze to death or asphyxiate when his meager supply of oxygen gave out. It was better to drop quickly into warmer, denser air and open the chute there. He returned his hand to his helmet. He thought, that's good, keep your hands busy, hold your oxygen mask, your helmet. He felt something streaming down his face, around his neck, and freezing suddenly. He took his hand from his mask and saw that it was covered with blood.

Starting point is 00:05:38 He wondered whether he'd broken his nose. Later, he would learn that he was bleeding from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth due to ruptures caused by the decompression. Still, he was falling into heavier air now, and the pain was abating. In the dense overcast, without even a glimpse of sky, he'd lost all sensation of movement. He wrote, I felt as if I were suspended in a soft, milk-white substance and falling as though in some huge, amorphous easy chair, my feet in the air. Only the sound of the rushing air gave him a sense of movement. As he fell into darker and darker regions of cloud, he felt he was in a complete void. He

Starting point is 00:06:10 couldn't tell whether he was spinning, rolling, tumbling, or cartwheeling, whether he was face up, face down, or falling feet first. He was considering the ripcord again when the parachute opened on its own, slowing his descent from more than 100 miles an hour to about 10. It was too dark to see the silk above him, but he could see the risers extending straight up and feel the tension on his torso harness. It should not take long now to descend the remaining distance to the ground. He thought, all's well now. I've got a good chute. I'm comfortable. I'm conscious. I've survived. But after a minute, he felt a slight turbulence in the air and recalled that he'd bailed out over a thunderstorm. The turbulence wasn't bad at first, rocking and sometimes lifting him a bit and letting him fall, but it began to grow stronger. He wrote,

Starting point is 00:06:54 it was as though I had been suddenly taken up in an elevator, two or three rapid rides in succession, each ride a brief but speedy one, ending quite suddenly with a strange feeling of zero-g and a feeling of weightlessness. He was just beginning to feel queasy when the first real shock of turbulence struck, and it stunned him with its violence. He wrote, it hit me like a tidal wave of air, a massive blast, as though forged under tremendous compression, aimed and fired at me with the savagery of a cannon. I was jarred from head to toe. Every bone in my body must have rattled, and I went soaring up and up and up as though there would be no end to its force. As I came down again, I saw that I was in an angry ocean of boiling clouds, blacks and grays and

Starting point is 00:07:36 whites, spilling over each other, into each other, digesting each other. I was buffeted in all directions, up, down, sideways, clockwise, counterclockwise, over and over. I tumbled, spun, and zoomed, straight up, straight down, and I was rattled violently, as though a monstrous cat had caught me by the neck and was determined to shake me until I had gasped my last breath. He was thrown violently in all directions, vomiting repeatedly as the G-forces changed, feeling as if he were fighting not only for his life, but for his sanity. sanity at one point after he'd been shot upward like a bullet from a gun he found himself looking down into a long black tunnel he wrote this was not turbulence this was nature's bedlam an ugly black cage of screaming violent fanatical lunatics having a game with me tossing

Starting point is 00:08:21 me about beating me with big flat sticks roaring at screeching, trying to crush me or rip me with their hands. At one point he felt himself squeezed from top and bottom at once like an accordion. Several times he was whirled up over his own parachute, the blood rushing first to his feet, then to his head. He worried that the chute would fail or lose its billow and sent him plunging to earth. He fought on because he could feel that some of the air in each rising current spilled to the side and then down, giving the vortex the shape of a broad mushroom. If eventually he could be spilled with this escaping air, he might be

Starting point is 00:08:55 released and float down. He was still hoping for this outcome when a deafening explosion rent the air, followed by a blinding flash. The thunder was so loud that he felt rather than heard it. He thought that without his helmet, it would have shattered his eardrums. The lightning was so brilliant that even after he'd closed his eyes, he seemed to see a deep red before him. He wrote, I used to think of lightning as long, slender, jagged streaks of electricity, but no more. The real thing is different. I saw lightning all around me, over, above, everywhere, and I saw it in every shape imaginable. But when very close, it appeared mainly as a huge bluish sheet, several feet thick, sometimes sticking close to me in pairs like the blades of a scissor, and I had the distinct

Starting point is 00:09:36 feeling that I was being sliced in two. At each flash, the clouds seemed to boil around him, sending up huge balls of grayish cotton. Afterward, he was lost in a pool of ink. With each thunderclap, he wrote, I could feel the vibrations on my teeth as though a giant tuning fork had been struck against them and held there. He would later learn that this was one of the most violent thunderstorms ever to strike the East Coast. He described it as chaos, hell on earth, roaring, searing, flashing violence. He wrote, the unbelievable torture of a thunderstorm, the fright of it, the terrible physical beating, the twisting and turning and tumbling, the awesomeness of lightning so close it could almost be touched, the vibrating horror

Starting point is 00:10:15 of thunder never meant for human ears, the fierce pounding of hail, the drenching of rain so torrential it might just as well have been an ocean suspended in air. All this, I would have told them, could never be adequately described, for it is an experience with which a mere human has nothing to compare on earth. He was certain he wouldn't survive. In fact, he wrote, at one point I saw such an eerie effect that I thought I had already died. I had been looking up in the direction of my chute when a bolt of lightning struck, illuminating the huge interior of the chute's billow as though it were a strange, white-domed cathedral, and the effect seemed to linger on the retinas of my eyes. For a moment I had the distinct feeling that I was sailing into a softly lit church, and at any moment I might hear the subdued strains of an organ and a mournful voice in prayer,

Starting point is 00:11:02 and I thought I had died. At times he thought that sheer exhaustion might finish him, as if the storm might never end. By a flash of lightning, he glimpsed his watch and saw that it was twenty minutes past six. He thought, my God, you should have been on the ground at least ten minutes ago. You were really trapped. All this time it had been raining torrentially, sometimes so densely that he felt as if he were under a swimming pool and might drown in midair. He thought, how silly, they're going to find you hanging from some tree in your parachute harness, limp, lifeless, your lungs filled with water, wondering how on earth did you drown.

Starting point is 00:11:35 Occasionally, he looked up to check his parachute, afraid that it might collapse or lose some of its panels. At one point, the wind threw him up into it. He felt the clammy silk close around him and was sure it would never open again. But soon he felt a jerk on his body harness and found himself hanging again from the risers. At last, the air grew smoother and the rain began to fall more gently. Looking up, he found he could see the parachute more clearly against the gray clouds. Through a break below him, he glimpsed a patch of green, his first sight of the earth since he had ejected from the plane nine miles above. He guessed that he was down to three or five hundred feet.

Starting point is 00:12:10 He told himself, all I have to do now is make a good landing. He came down in an evergreen forest, battered, drenched, frozen, bruised, and exhausted. The entire descent should have taken ten minutes. His watch told him it had taken forty. He saw stumps among the trees, which suggested that a logging road might be nearby. He paced out a square spiral and found one. The road led him to a cornfield, and beyond that was a highway. But no car would stop for a dazed man in a blood-stained flight suit. After a dozen went by, he considered lying down in the road, but he thought they might

Starting point is 00:12:42 just run over him. Finally, a car pulled over. Rankin said, help me, I'm a pilot. I've just ejected from an airplane. Take me to a hospital. It was a family of six, Farmer Judson Dunning and his wife and four sons. They'd been out for a Sunday drive when one of the boys had recognized a jet pilot and told his father to stop. Rankin gave them his helmet as a souvenir. He learned he was in North Carolina. Rankin gave them his helmet as a souvenir. He learned he was in North Carolina. He'd bailed out in Virginia. The storm had carried him 65 miles southwest.

Starting point is 00:13:14 At the hospital, he was treated for frostbite, decompression, a cut tendon in his hand, and assorted lacerations, welts, bruises, and sprains. During the examination, the doctor remarked on the lines in his skin. Rankin's torso had swollen so much during decompression that it still bore the impress of the seams in his flight suit, as though he himself had been stitched together with bluish-red thread. They wheeled him to a small room, and he was about to put his head on the pillow when he thought to ask about his airplane. They told him it had crashed in a wooded area near Scotland Neck, North Carolina. The plane had been destroyed, but no one had been hurt. near Scotland Neck, North Carolina. The plane had been destroyed, but no one had been hurt.

Starting point is 00:13:50 After many evaluations and assessments, William Rankin returned to his duties as a marine pilot. He retired in 1964 and passed away in Oakdale, Pennsylvania in 2009. He is still the only person known to have parachuted into a thunderstorm cloud and survived. At the time, he said, I hope it never happens to another human. But in 2007, something similar happened to German paraglider Eva Wisniewska, who was training for the world championship when her glider was drawn into a thunderstorm over New South Wales. Wisniewska was unconscious for most of the hour-long flight, but her GPS unit and tracking log show that she was lifted to an altitude of 32,000 feet. After plunging again at 100 feet per second, she woke up to find her clothes frozen and her harness covered with icicles. She scraped the ice from

Starting point is 00:14:30 her GPS unit and managed to land near a farmhouse. Like Rankin, she was remarkably unhurt. She suffered only frostbite, cuts, and bruises. Doctors think that her unconsciousness slowed her heart and other vital organs, conserving heat and reducing her need for oxygen. Organizer Godfrey Wenis said, It's beyond the word incredible. It's beyond unbelievable. Her chance of survival was a minuscule little dot in a very big ocean. In episode 347, I read an email from Nick Madrid, who addressed a question we'd raised about pronouncing names of people and places,

Starting point is 00:15:21 whether we should use more American versions of names or something more like how locals would say them. Nick introduced us to the concept of roticity, pronouncing an R before consonants or at the end of a word. Whether a dialect is rhotic or not is considered to be one of the most prominent distinctions between different varieties of English, and Nick thought that while it's generally a good idea to pronounce place or personal names as the locals or name owners would, switching roticity is distracting and confusing for listeners, meaning that since my speech is normally rhodic,

Starting point is 00:15:52 I should not attempt to say Cotta for Carter or Melbourne for Melbourne. Our discussion of Nick's email prompted a really nice amount of feedback on this topic, putting it up there with divided trains for topics we've gotten the most emails about. I'll do my best to share a representation of the many thoughtful and interesting perspectives we received. First off, several listeners pointed out that saying that American and Canadian English are rhotic and that British English is not is overly broad, and that there are non-rhotic dialects in the U.S. as well as rhotic ones in the U.K. For example, Christian Dainton sent an email with the subject line

Starting point is 00:16:31 rhoticity or the letter arg. I wanted to agree with the listener who said that rhoticity probably shouldn't be changed when pronouncing names from other English dialects. I come from a part of England that does have a rhotic accent, and I wouldn't dream of pronouncing Mr. Carter's name in the way he suggests, regardless of what he says. It would be unnatural coming from these lips. Doreen Kelly said, I am Scottish, and I roll my R's and put them in everywhere I can. We might be a small island, but we don't all speak the same here. And Toby Wardman wrote, most British accents, including mine, are non-rhotic, but not all. My wife is from Cornwall, where they do have

Starting point is 00:17:10 rhoticity. She says the R in Cornwall. I don't. We've been living together for a decade, but we still have fun with noticing the differences. One consequence is that some words that rhyme for me don't rhyme for her. There's a TV show called Dora the Explorer, which we both watched as children, but she didn't realize that the title was supposed to rhyme until she heard me say it one day, whereas to me, it was obvious. Also, since my accent essentially has one less available sound than hers, there is also potential for entertaining confusion, since she can distinguish between words such as pawn and porn,

Starting point is 00:17:44 whereas to me they sound identical. By comparison, most U.S. accents are rhotic, but again not all. Listen to how Bernie Sanders pronounces the ends of his words and you'll find that he sometimes drops the r in the same way a Brit would. Nothing is simple. And most of the people we heard from thought that we should stick at least somewhat to our own accents when pronouncing names. For example, Julie DeShell wrote, I think it is typically best to do it in one's native accent and not that of the bearer or the local. My reasoning for this is that people tend to have great difficulty pronouncing words in

Starting point is 00:18:19 languages with which they are unfamiliar, or honestly, even in ones with which they are familiar, so that it can sound comical and insulting to try to imitate the local dialect. There will, of course, be exceptions to this. Hopefully, we all know Thames does not rhyme with James. But when I hear someone try to imitate my resplendent trash accent from Philadelphia, I'd rather them not even try. And a few others made that same point, that it can be rather tricky to correctly pronounce things in an unfamiliar way, something that I can absolutely attest to. Julie also said on the topic of roticity, in America, we certainly have dialects that are more rhotic than others. In fact, in Philadelphia, we have a situation with the name you mentioned

Starting point is 00:19:02 in the podcast, Carter. The Philadelphia Flyers have a goalie named Carter Hart. Philadelphians would typically say this name rhodically. However, another player on the team and one of the commentators for the team are from Boston and have made their pronunciation of it, Cotta Hot, pretty popular. I couldn't tell you how Carter himself feels about it. Cotta hot. On the topic of my pronunciation of cotta, Ewan Cowison wrote, I thought I'd throw in my two cents or two pence, I suppose.

Starting point is 00:19:39 I can't comment on how people would like their own names to be pronounced, but personally, I would agree with the other listener who wrote in and suggested that unexpected non-rhotic pronunciations are quite jarring. I can say I also hadn't realized that Sharon was saying Carter, not Kata or similar. I thought it was a German name she was saying. And other listeners said the same thing, that they didn't understand what name I was trying to say when I said Kata. Happily, Steve Carter from the UK, whose name had raised the issue in the first place, sent an email with the subject line, I release you. It brought a smile to my face to hear the recent letters about the pronunciation of my name and the subject of

Starting point is 00:20:16 pronouncing names seems to go deeper than I had imagined. I'm a huge accent geek and sometimes adjust individual words to the local style. After several funny looks from waiters in New York when asking for water to drink in my English accent, I switched to a semi-rhodic water and it smoothed the transactions for the rest of the visit. Moving house from the north to the south of England prompted me to shift some vowels, particularly grass, to gross, in order to have the listener hear what I was trying to say without getting distracted by how I was saying it. I've done this with a couple of work colleagues' names, but it's too strange to be the only person in the room saying someone's name with the Greek consonants or Tamil emphasis, so I'm now faced as you are with the need to consciously choose

Starting point is 00:20:59 whether to anglicize these names. As to my name, the pronunciation guide was only intended as a curiosity. It would do me a great honor to hear it henceforth in your own gently North Carolinian voices. So from now on, I'll definitely be saying Carter. Several other listeners also mentioned having to try to adapt their pronunciations depending on who they were trying to talk to in order to avoid misunderstandings. For example, John Chong Holdaway, an Australian, wrote, I used to play frisbee with a Texan named Barb and she got so confused every time I would yell out something to her on the field, wondering why I was yelling at someone called Bob. She was pretty sure there was no one called Bob on the team. A Texan Bob sounds exactly like an Australian Barb. Like you, Sharon, I like to pronounce people's names correctly, but I could never make a Texan Barb sound natural as

Starting point is 00:21:51 part of my normal accent. And Romy Higgins wrote, British English speaker here, whenever I visit the U.S. and introduce myself to new people, I found I have to say my name Romy in an American accent so that people understand me. Otherwise, they think I'm saying Ramy. Similarly, I spent time in France and Spain studying during my degree and found very quickly when ordering a drink in Starbucks that I had to adopt the local accent for them to be able to correctly write my name on the cup. The only problem was that I really struggled with rolling my R's the way Spanish people do, so I ended up adopting a Spanish pseudonym whenever I went there.

Starting point is 00:22:26 That's a good solution. Yeah, just come up with a different name. I guess the whole point is to make yourself understood. Yeah. So it makes sense to make some adjustments if, you know, if the alternative is that people just won't understand what you're saying. Right. Then I guess you have to do, as you said, make some adjustments.

Starting point is 00:22:41 On the topic of how to pronounce local place names, Toby Wardman wrote, I suspect the whole issue is one of those questions for which there can never be a single definitive answer because there are so many blurry boundaries and edge cases within the various categories. For instance, the rule Greg suggested, use the English name for the city if there is one, otherwise use the local name, sounds logical, but how do you apply it? One complication, as Sharon indicated, is accent. We might all be native English speakers, and we might all agree that the English county where I was born is called Yorkshire, but we would pronounce it differently because of our different accents, with or without rhotic R's and with different vowels in the second syllable.

Starting point is 00:23:23 It would seem weird to expect you to say Yorkshire, just as I wouldn't be expected to be made to say California. But where does accent stop and language begin? Cases like Wien versus Vienna are easy. But the city of Bahrain is pronounced locally, I understand, with a glottal fricative in the middle. The same sound is at the end of the Scottish word loch. When I say Bahrain without the fricative, the middle. The same sound is at the end of the Scottish word lach. When I say Bahrain without the fricative, am I using an English translation of the name, or am I saying the local name in my English accent, which doesn't have the fricative, or am I just ignorantly mispronouncing the local name? I now live in Belgium, and my adopted home city is called Mechelen. The Dutch

Starting point is 00:24:01 ch is that glottal fricative again. When I'm speaking English to fellow Belgian residents, I usually say it with the fricative, since that's what everyone calls it around here. But when I'm talking to friends back home in the UK, I tend to say mechelen, since otherwise I feel pretentious, a bit like using the French pronunciation of Paris in an English sentence. Finally, some cities have more than one local name. Mechelen is also called Maline in French, and since Belgium's official languages include both French and Dutch, who is to say which is correct if you're speaking English? Not to mention the fact that Mechelen also has a rarely used English version.

Starting point is 00:24:38 So, yeah, a lot to sort through when deciding what to call a place. I guess this kind of thing will come up more and more as the world gets smaller, you know? We're all communicating more and more across great geographic distances now, more than we used to. Yeah, I mean, back in the days of just radio, you wouldn't have to worry so much about an international audience as you do nowadays with podcasts. All the time, yeah. Toby also helpfully sent a link to an article on the perils of place name pronunciation written by a pronunciation linguist with the BBC pronunciation unit. Some of the BBC guidelines for saying place names are to use a standardized version of local pronunciation for places in English-speaking

Starting point is 00:25:18 countries and to use an English form of a place name for non-English-speaking countries rather than trying to use a local form. For places that don't have established English pronunciations, they recommend using a pronunciation closest to the local pronunciation that's still in accordance with more typical English sounds. So pretty reasonable guidelines, I thought, although I'm sure there will always be unclear cases. And lastly, here are some perspectives on the question of how we should be

Starting point is 00:25:46 trying to pronounce the capital of Victoria. Ewan Cowison said, Melbourne can sound a bit like Melbourne to non-Aussies, but if you listen carefully, they actually are pronouncing the hour in there. It's just quite soft. If you were to ask an Australian to say Melbourne and then Melbourne, they definitely wouldn't sound identical. However, if an American pronounces it Melbourne with a rhotic American pronunciation, at least the meaning is clear to all listeners, even if it's not how locals might pronounce it. And John Nickerson wrote,

Starting point is 00:26:17 You were discussing whether to use an American or Australian pronunciation for the city of Melbourne, which you characterized as Melbourne versus Melbourne. At the risk of adding another voice to the confusion, I've always found that the name sounds most natural and recognizable if pronounced Melbourne, regardless of your accent. You're not alone in this situation, though. I've heard other American podcasters attempt their own Australianized pronunciation and come up with Melbourne.

Starting point is 00:26:43 Perhaps this all would have been easier if they had retained the name of the original settlement, Batmania. And yes, Batmania might have been more straightforward. According to Wikipedia, Melbourne had a number of proposed names, including Bear Brass, Bear Port, Bear Heap, Bear Herp, and Batmania, named for John Batman, a founder of the settlement, before receiving its current name in 1837, after the then British Prime Minister who was the second Viscount Melbourne. So apparently it's all his fault. And Mike Berman wrote, I'm sure you've been inundated by hordes of Aussies writing in about the pronunciation of Melbourne, but here I am nonetheless to add my

Starting point is 00:27:25 opinion in the mix. Aussies always find the American pronunciation somewhat grating, but I don't think it's due to its roticity, as you mentioned in the last podcast. I believe it's due to the emphasis and the second syllable's vowel sound. Specifically, put the emphasis on the first syllable and replace the O-U with a schwa, Melbourne. I'm no expert, but I'd guess that that's the best middle ground between mimicking the local pronunciation without sounding like you've suddenly changed accents. As for the pronunciation of every other city and person out there, you're on your own. Thank you so much to everyone who wrote to us. We always appreciate hearing what you all have to say. So if you have any comments for us,

Starting point is 00:28:06 please send those to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me a strange sounding situation, and I have to try to figure out what's going. Greg is going to give me a strange sounding situation, and I have to try to figure out what's going on by asking yes or no questions. This is from listener John Richard. My friend Gareth loved a certain kind of rice that was sold at his local corner bodega. One day he noticed that the boxes had been nibbled by mice, so he bought all of the ruined boxes. Why? he bought all of the ruined boxes. Why?

Starting point is 00:28:50 He figured they must be particularly tasty if the mice wanted them. Well, Greta, that's a good guess. Why would you want boxes ruined by mice or nibbled up by mice? Was he afraid that the bodega was going to stop selling this rice, and so he better buy whatever they had? You're close. You're very close. Was he afraid the bodega was going to be shut down for health reasons? No.

Starting point is 00:29:13 Oh. Okay. Like, if it had a mice infestation, they were going to be shut down by the city or something. Was he afraid that he wouldn't be able to get this rice in the future? Yes. So he was willing to take damaged boxes rather than risk having no rice? Yes. Hmm. Did his fear of there being a lack of this rice somehow connect to the mice?

Starting point is 00:29:47 Or was it just incidental to each other? No, I'll say yes to that. It does connect to the mice. Was it specifically mice? Hard to answer that. Does it matter where this is? No. Does it matter when?

Starting point is 00:29:57 No. Were there signs of mice problems elsewhere in the store? Let's say no. Did he think the mice had nibbled on the boxes prior to them getting to the store? Or did it matter? No, that does matter, and no. So he thought that the mice had nibbled on the boxes while they were at the bodega. Yes.

Starting point is 00:30:30 Okay. You're very close already. I know. I'm just trying to figure out what is it that I'm not seeing. Mice were nibbling on the boxes of rice, so he was afraid the bodega was going to throw them all out? No. And he wasn't afraid that the bodega was going to shut down or stop? Well, I mean, yes, he probably was afraid they were going to throw them out. I mean, they couldn't sell them in that state. But he bought them. But he bought them because... Well, did he buy them to eat the rice? That actually doesn't

Starting point is 00:31:03 matter. We could say no to that. Oh. Was he going to plant them and grow his own rice somehow? I mean, normally he ate the rice. No. Okay, so he bought these boxes, and he might have just thrown them out himself. Yeah, the nibbled boxes. Because he was worried about what would happen if he didn't do that.

Starting point is 00:31:23 He was afraid the bodega would stop stocking the product. Yes. Oh. The answer is that he wanted the store to keep stocking the rice, so he didn't want the shopkeeper to think that the rice had sat unsold long enough to be eaten by mice. So he bought all of it. Oh.

Starting point is 00:31:37 Oh. Which works. Yeah. John Richard. Thank you. And we are always on the lookout for more lateral thinking puzzles. So if you have one that you'd like to send in for us to try, please send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:31:54 Futility Closet is supported entirely by our phenomenal listeners. If you'd like to help support our celebration of the quirky and the curious, you can find a donate button in the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com. Or you can join our Patreon campaign, where you'll not only help support the show, but also get more information on some of the stories, extralateral thinking puzzles, outtakes, and peeks behind the scenes. You can find our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see our website for the link. At our website, you can graze through Greg's floor legium of over 11,000 phrenic futrils. Browse the Futility Closet store, learn about the Futility Closet books, and see the show notes for the episode with links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any questions or comments for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by my remarkable brother-in-law,

Starting point is 00:32:51 Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 354-Falling Through a Thunderstorm

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