Stuff You Should Know - (Approximately) 10 Things That Vanished Mysteriously

Episode Date: February 25, 2016

Sometimes things - like dentures, airplanes or even people - go missing. And when they never turn up again they become enduring, and engrossing, mysteries. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there.

So this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. Wait a minute, Jerry's not there all of a sudden. It's as if she's vanished without a trace. No, she's right there. There's just a miso dust lingering in her, where she once sat. Jerry, do you eat a lot of miso? It seems like she's eating miso soup a lot,

but she probably just did that once, and I extrapolated that over years. She's eating Indian food right now. I know, our tiny little city, it smells like we need a spice kitchen. Yeah. You know what that is? It's a kitchen full of spice.

No, it's a second kitchen for cooking really stinky food. I didn't know that. Yeah. I need it, I want a spice kitchen, so I can cook my rich game meats that Emily can't stand the smell. What's your favorite game meat? I'm just kidding, I don't like game meats.

Oh, what do you like that's stinky? Oh, I mean, dude, if I cook bacon or country ham or steak and the Josh Clark cast iron. Hand fry? Hand steak, it stinks at the house for two days, you know. She's just like, oh my God, we're like dead animal in here. You need to get like good air purifier, air filter.

Works wonders. Well, we don't have a stove hood yet, which is that's probably the biggest rub. Yeah, and I think like depending on the stove hood, I think some are just kind of like, but there's ones out there that are really good. Yeah, I bet those are the expensive ones. Yeah, but I'll bet you can find a good one

that's at a lower price point. Maybe, or maybe I could just hire a guy that got a window right behind the stove to just sit a little short guy to sit in the window with some fireplace bellows. That'd be good. Or one of those people who like fan things with palm fronds.

Yeah, maybe that's cheaper. Yeah. Well, I don't know. Over the life of your stove, probably not. Weirdest start ever. So Chuck, you remember when David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear? I remember it happening, I didn't watch it.

You didn't watch it? No, I've never been a big fan of his magic work. Even as a kid? No, not into it. Well, I guess you would have been about 15 at the time. I could see like being like, this is dumb. Yeah, so you were 11, it was the coolest thing ever. Yeah, I was like, oh, there's no way

he's gonna be able to do this. Oh my gosh, he did it. What is that even? I feel like, if I remember correctly, he put up basically a curtain around the Statue of Liberty and suddenly dropped it and the Statue of Liberty wasn't there. I'm sure it's all smoke and mirrors. Well, of course.

You mean it wasn't real magic? Well, I don't think so. I'm pretty sure it was. Was it dark arts? I don't think so. I don't think Satan was involved. It was too patriotic for that, you know what I mean? Sure.

But anyway, my point is to this super lame intro is that David Copperfield brought the Statue of Liberty back. It didn't disappear forever. It just disappeared temporarily. That's amazing. But there are some things, mostly people, and some socks that do just disappear forever, that have disappeared forever,

and who's like mysterious experiences are still unsolved to this day. It's pretty good. Do you lose a lot of socks? No. No, Yumi does her laundry. She keeps tabs on the socks. Well, they make little tabs that you clip on

to keep your socks together when you go in. Makes sense. And I've also seen, there's this one company that tried to sell socks as three socks. So you always had a backup. A superfluous sock. I know. Genius.

It didn't. I don't know if that took off like it should have. Coulda. Who knows? The person who invented it, they know. Exactly. Believe me, they wake up every day, and they're like, three socks was a great idea.

So let's talk about some of these things that have disappeared without a trace. Yeah, this is one of our famous top 10s. It'll be, what, six to eight? Something like that. Long? Yeah. Solomon Northrop, number one.

Have you seen 12 Years of Slave yet? Man, still? No, it's sitting on my DVR, staring me in the face, daring me. You need to just go home today and watch it. Daring me to be sad and watch it. You just got to get it over with. I know.

It's, there's a certain amount of catharsis to it. It's not just going to bring you down to the depths of depression and leave you there necessarily. Yeah, I've been ticking off the really sad ones at a rate of about two per year. Like, I just watched Beast of the Southern Wild like a few months ago. I haven't seen that one.

That's a good one. Is it good? Yes, very tough movie. Is it? But yeah, long story short, I need to watch 12 Years of Slave. OK. I'm shamed.

I didn't mean to shame you. I'm just saying. It's like the third time I've been shamed about this. It's a good movie. So Solomon Northrop was the, he was the man who wrote the memoir on which the movie was based because it's a true story about his life. Yes.

And he was born free, an African-American in 1841 went, well it says here, was lured from his home in New York to Washington DC and then kidnapped, forced into slavery in Louisiana. Yeah, he was lured by being basically hired as a musician. And while when he went to DC, he was kidnapped and sold into slavery. And man, it just gets worse from there.

Well, they're like, you should come down and play the 930 Club in DC. Basically, yeah. He's like, great, let's do it. And they're like, oh, by the way. There is no 930 Club yet. There's just horrific slavery on a plantation in Louisiana. Wow.

So he actually, spoiler alert, for those of you like Chuck who haven't seen the movie, he is basically rescued from slavery. OK. He figures out a way to basically pass a message along and the people who know and can confirm that he was born a freeman, come and get him, which is pretty great.

Yeah. And at the very end of the movie, in it it says basically like the circumstances and date and whereabouts of Solomon Northrop's death are unknown. OK, so they just finish it with like a, they do, a graphic. Yes, but basically, it's almost like an off-handed thing. You don't think anything about it.

Right. But it turns out, he disappeared. Right, it was mysterious. Yeah, like people don't know where he went. He went back to the North and ended up working in the Underground Railroad. There's some rumors that he became a spy for the Union during the Civil War.

That's good. And at some point, he went on a, you know, he wrote 12 Years a Slave. Yeah. And he went on a book tour, an abolitionist book tour. And he never came home from it. Yeah, and 1863 was about the last time that there were any records of his existence.

And there are a bunch of different theories out there of what might have happened to him. One that, while he was a spy, he was captured and killed. Right. One is that he was kidnapped again and sold into slavery. But I think I read that a lot of people just count that because he was kind of too old to be valuable at that point as a worker.

Yeah, you can see it. And or maybe he, well, we know he encountered some financial difficulties. So maybe he just assumed a new identity and kind of skipped down. Right. There's also one that's like the saddest, but also probably the most realistic, that he died in a place

where they didn't know who he was. Oh, wow. And they weren't inclined to properly bury him. So he just led a regular life and died unknown. Yeah, or like he got run over by a horse or something on the book tour, and no one knew who he was. They just thought he was like some African-American. Yeah.

You know? Or maybe even a slave, and they just buried him in an unmarked grave. Like a pauper's grave. Yeah. Very sad. It is. All right.

Well, that is the first one. I think Jimmy Hoffa is a great way to follow that up. Who? Jimmy Hoffa, famous teamster, teamster boss. I was reading a little bit about his huge beef with Bobby Kennedy. Oh, yeah? They hated each other.

Yeah, they didn't like each other. I mean, hated each other. Like, apparently, Jimmy Hoffa shoved Bobby Kennedy at a restaurant once. Right, Jeff? Yeah, because he felt like he had snubbed him. Wow. Yeah, Jimmy Hoffa didn't like that kind of thing.

Bobby Kennedy sent a, he wrote a book called The Enemy Within, and it was about like the mob. And I'm not sure if Hoffa was named in it or not, but it was basically like all of his friends. Bobby Kennedy wrote a book about it. And he sent a book, a copy of it, to Jimmy Hoffa. And he wrote a little inscription that said, to Jimmy, I wanted to make sure you got a copy of this

from me so you wouldn't have to use pension funds to buy one. Zing. Zing, indeed. And he said, have him killed. And he finally, Bobby Kennedy finally got his mitts on Jimmy Hoffa and sent him to prison for a little while. But Hoffa was a huge contributor to Nixon's campaigns against the Kennedy.

Yeah. And so when Nixon became president, he pardoned Hoffa. That's right. In 1971, he was pardoned. And then on July 30th, 1975, just four years later, he went for a meeting at the MacCus Red Fox restaurant. It's a great name. In Bloomfield, Michigan, outside of Detroit, suburban Detroit.

And he was never seen again. Never seen again. Disappeared. No bones, nobody, no nothing. And there's been tons of theories and suppositions and rumors about what became of it, right? Yeah, supposedly he was there to meet a couple of mafia bosses, Anthony Giacalone and Anthony

Provisano, which was big Tony and fat Tony. No, Tony Jack and Tony Pro. Those were their nicknames. And they denied later that they had a meeting scheduled. And they ended up actually having an alibi. Because I read that and I was like, well, duh. Right. He goes to meet with two mafia guys and disappears.

Right. But supposedly they had an alibi. Their mothers. And they, yeah, exactly. And they were not there. So they were at church with their mothers. There was a truck, like a semi-truck pulling into the parking lot and almost hit or got hit

by this car pulling out a mercury. And he said he looked in and he saw Hoffa in the backseat with another guy with what looked like a rifle under like a blanket in between them. Oh, yeah. I mean, the mafia killed Jimmy Hoffa. Yeah. There's virtually no dispute over that.

It's just what happened to his body. Exactly. So some people said that he was buried under the old giant stadium in New Jersey. Yeah. Is it the Meadowlands or is the new one at the Meadowlands? No, the old, well, the new one may be there too. But the old one was definitely there.

OK. Didn't happen. Did they ever dig up the field and look? No. I think the mythbusters actually went there with some equipment to that could detect whether or not. Is there anything those guys couldn't do? Get along off the air.

Yeah, I guess so. We can also verify that a couple of weeks before he disappeared, hundreds of millions of dollars were missing from the pension fund. Again, no secret that the mafia probably hadn't done in. Right. So where's the body? Right.

So in, I think, 2014, a guy named Tony Zarelli. Another Tony. He wrote a book. Is that what his book was called Hoffa Found. And in it, he detailed how Hoffa's body was buried under some concrete slabs in a barn in upstate Michigan. I thought you were going to say it was a pop-up book. And at the end, he just pops up.

Right. Here's Hoffa, you got me with that one, Chuck. Good. And apparently, the FBI read this book, and they went and dug up the field and didn't find anything. Yeah, they've looked. There are quite a few locations in suburban Detroit that they've done some digging over the years, all yielding

nothing, and there are other rumors he was fed to alligators in Florida. Quite possible. That'd be a good way to get rid of a body. Run through a wood chipper was another one. Yeah. I'll Fargo. Yeah, I think they will never find him.

I think I also read that one supposedly reputable mafia source said, yeah, we killed them, and we buried them in a shallow grave nearby. And we were supposed to move it, but we never did. So he's just not too far from the restaurant. They're like dumb. Like dumb. We never thought about that place.

But I don't think they'll ever get anything. It must be one of those enduring mysteries. That is lazy. Or too lazy to move a body to a better location. Right. Just leave them in the shallow grave. All right, should we take a break? Yeah, why not?

All right, we'll come back and talk about more disappearing acts. I love this. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends,

and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you.

Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. One of these, Chuck, we should at least give a shout out

to is the three guys who escaped Alcatraz. Oh, yeah? And if you guys are interested in that, go listen to our entire episode on Alcatraz, where I believe we talked about this in depth. I hope so. I'm pretty sure we did. Because if not, people are going to be like, ah.

Or just go watch the Great Clint Eastwood movie, Escape from Alcatraz. Yeah. Because it's pretty darn accurate to the real story. Sure. So we're going to breeze by that one? I mean, we can talk about it if you want. I'm endlessly fascinated by it.

When we were in San Francisco for our most recent tour for SketchFest, actually, did you go? No, I ran down to the bay and looked out across it. I was like, I could swim that. No problem. I wanted to go, but you've got to get reservations far in advance. Sure.

I've never been to Alcatraz. I want to go. Yeah, I was like, oh, let me call and get tickets. And they were like, we've been sold out for weeks. I'd also like to go take a tour of Eastern State Penitentiary, one of those old crazy asylums. I would love to do that. That'd be pretty cool.

All right, well, yeah, let's talk about it. Why not? Alcatraz? Yeah, 1962, Frank Morris and the Anglin Brothers, John and Clarence, they were bank robbers. Frank Morris is sort of a lifelong crook. That was Clint Eastwood. Yeah, very, very super intelligent guy who

had escaped from several prisons. And finally, they said, you know what? We're going to put you in Alcatraz because it's inescapable. It's like the Titanic of prisons. You saw what happened with that. So they devised a brilliant plan over the course of several months, along with a guy named Alan West, who, sadly,

was left behind, to. He wouldn't wake up. No, he couldn't fit through. He couldn't get his little vent open. What they did was they carved out a vent over the course of months with these little homemade chisels. He ate too much bread pudding in the meantime? Maybe.

Geez. I mean, the guys tried. They were trying to kick it out from the other side, and eventually they were like, we've got to go, dude. So the plan was, over the course of months, to carve out this space to get out, work their way through the guts of the prison to the roof, slide down some drain pipes, and then swim away with homemade

life vests made out of raincoats that they'd collected and glued together. But didn't they run into some construction or something like that that just totally threw their plan off? And they had to improvise and go around, and it just was exponentially harder than they thought it was going to be getting out? I believe it, but I didn't know that.

But they made life rafts out of raincoats that they sewed together to inflate. Well, they glued them together, yeah. That's awesome. It is awesome, and they also made bodies. Well, heads, at least, right? Yeah, paper mache heads to lay in their bunks. That they look like paper mache heads in the light,

but when you're walking the rounds at night, and it's just tucked into a pillow under some blankies with real human hair from the barber shop, it fooled the guards. Real human hair. Yeah, real human hair. Don't they have those on display in Alcatraz, still? Oh, I'm sure they do.

And here's a neat little fact that I didn't know until my friend Stacey told me. They didn't have cold water in Alcatraz, because they didn't want you to be able to acclimate yourself to the frigid Baywaters over time. So all the water was warm at the time. Wow, luxurious. The Baywaters about 50 degrees.

That's like an omni. It is. And they don't know. I mean, the FBI and everyone says now they died for sure. The FBI says though about everybody they can't catch. Yeah, basically. No, they're dead. There's no way.

Just don't bring it up again. Right, just shut up. They don't think they could have survived the swim. The original plan was to go to Angel Island, go to the opposite side of the island, and then swim to Marin. Or Marin. I guess open a coffee shop.

I guess so. Immediately, right when they crossed into Marin County, they were imbued with wealth. I don't know if they made it or not. Apparently a couple of weeks later, there was a freighter ship that saw a body floating. They didn't report it until October, though. They went from July to October and then said, oh, by the way,

we saw a body floating that looked like he was wearing prison denims. They finally got to that on their to-do list. They're like, oh, yeah, report dead body. Well, it's a freighter ship. They didn't care. Their laws, their allegiance is to the sea, not to man on land. And they also found a few pieces of other evidence.

They found a life vest with teeth marks near the valve. And human teeth marks. Yeah. Human teeth marks. Yeah, not barracuda. Teeth marks is in someone who was probably holding it in their teeth trying to blow it up while they were swimming. Where would they have gotten a life vest?

Oh, I don't know. I think it was one of the homemade ones. Oh, oh, gotcha. Well, so, I mean, that doesn't mean anything they could have ditched. Well, that's what I say. The fact that the body was unidentifiable. Yeah, and they never resurfaced. The plan was to rob a store on Angel Island and get clothing.

And there were never any robberies planned. That's kind of, that's a little telling. Although they could have been like, I'm too cold to rob anything. Let's just go to Marin. And hug. Yeah. So who knows? Pretty neat.

Pretty neat indeed. When was that? 1962? Yeah. Cool. I think we'll never know, just like the rest of these. Unexplained mysterious disappearances. Should we move on to the candy, Eris?

Yeah, Helen Brock. I can't remember where I saw something. I saw, I guess, a documentary on this case. It's amazing. Oh, yeah? It's an amazing, true crime, cold case. Helen Brock's mysterious disappearance. And this, our own article, gets a little bit wrong.

Yeah. But let's talk about it. OK, so Helen Brock was the heiress to the Brock candy fortune because her husband, Frank Brock, was a co-founder of the company. And when he died, he left his wife, Helen, I think basically everything. And she was a very, very wealthy woman. And she liked to do things like go to the Mayo Clinic to get her annual physical, like Mr. Burns.

Although she was nothing like Mr. Burns. From what I understand, she was a very lovable, conscientious, cool person. Oh, OK. But she was very, very wealthy. So why not go to the Mayo Clinic? That's what I'd do. Back in 1977, she went to the Mayo Clinic and got a workout. And the last reliable person to see her alive

was a woman who was working at the Mayo Clinic gift shop, where Mrs. Brock stopped to get a gift for her niece. Yeah, a Mayo Clinic snow globe. Exactly, right. In shot glass. Right. I can admit your license plate. Yeah, what else?

Anything else? Spoon? Spoon, Mayo Clinic spoon. People collect those? Yeah, a male Mayo Clinic sock puppet. Yeah. Big seller. Yeah.

So she said to the lady, I'm in a hurry. My house man is waiting. House man was one Jack Matlick. And she was never seen again. Matlick had dropped her off, obviously, for the outbound flight to Minneapolis. And then he said, no man, she came back. I picked her up.

And then she spent four days, didn't call anyone, but she was here. At home. At home, even though there's no evidence to corroborate this. Right. And then he said he dropped her off again at the airport. Yeah, to go to Florida. Right, where she had a condo.

Correct. And it was when she didn't show up in Florida as planned that people started noticing she was missing. And they called her house and Matlick answered. And two different people gave varying stories about where she was. Did he say Matlick residence? Right, I mean Brock's residence.

So here's a couple of hinky details. Matlick, I think, was the guy. I disagree. Oh, really? Yeah. He, well, the people on the original flight, like the flight crew said, now she was never on this plane to begin with.

Oh, from the Mayo Clinic back to Chicago? Yeah. OK. So that stands out as super hinky. Well, he wasn't there then. He was going to pick her up in Chicago. He wouldn't have been in Minneapolis. So if she wasn't on the flight from Minneapolis to Chicago,

he wouldn't have had anything to do with that. Seemingly. But why would he say that he picked her up if she didn't arrive? I'm not saying he didn't know what happened, but I don't think he was the one that killed her. Sorry. Just go, go.

Well, he was found out later to have cashed $13,000 in checks with the Ford's signature from her. It wasn't his handwriting. And it wasn't hers. That's right. But he's clearly working with someone. Sure. That's where I'm going here.

OK. And her brother, Charles Voorhees and Matlik, actually burned her diaries after she died. And there's a super weird. Well, her brother's explanation was that she was into automatic writing, which is basically where you get a piece of paper and a pen. And some peyote.

Super Victorian, right? Yeah. And you say, oh, spirits, speak through me. Oh, excellent airbag. Let's see what you got, right? And you just start the spirits, move your hand. And her brother said she would not have wanted people to see this stuff.

So we just burned it. That's like the Ouija writing. Right. It's exactly like that, except with a pen. Interesting. So they were just embarrassed and didn't want that to get out? That's what he said. Well, I mean, it's not a crime to destroy your papers.

A lot of people made the case that Mark Twain should have destroyed his papers rather than allowing them to be published posthumously. I thought you were going to say Mark Twain got rid of her. So that's impossible, because it is in 1977. It is impossible. You imagine Twain in the 70s? I think it would have been much the same.

Yeah. Yeah. Whimsical musings with a seersucker suit. It's a sharp, sharp wit, you know? Yeah, with the seers. Yeah, he would have been Tom Wolf. So there's another guy named Richard Bailey, who was a vacuum salesman.

Apparently, he was sort of like dirty rotten scoundrels. He would swindle old ladies out of their dough. I think it was more like American jiggalo. Well, no, I don't think he was jiggalo-ing. I think he was. Yeah. Oh, he was? Oh, yeah.

Oh, I thought it just had to do with horses and horse racing. That was his entree. Like, invest in this thoroughbred, give me your dough. But also. Come and lie down with me. This is in the sock in my jeans, you know? That's a jiggalo thing to say. OK.

So he was eventually pinched for fraud and racketeering, sentenced to prison, and people thought that he had a role in her disappearance. But he said, no, I didn't. And a judge said, you know what? I think you did. And he said, who cares what you think, judge? Well, the judge said, well, I'll tell you why you should care,

because I'm giving you a 30-year sentence, because I suspect that you had something to do with Mrs. Brock's disappearance and likely death. So who do you think it was him? I do. I do, although he wrote a book that said he loved her. Yes, he was a jiggalo, just a jiggalo, but he fell in love with her.

And his love was sincere and real. And he said that he was going to give the proceeds from his book to her favorite charity, which was an animal welfare charity. And she had her own foundation that she endowed upon her death. And she was declared dead seven years later in 1984, just because that's what they do when you don't turn up for seven years and people think you're dead. And her endowment basically went toward almost exclusively

animal welfare. Well, he had already stolen all of her money when he killed her, right? Well, that was the thing. So he sold her some bum race horses for $300,000. And they later sold for $1. That's how bad off these race horses were. He said, by Limpy Joe, he's a great investment.

And they think that he had her whacked because she was going to blow the whistle on him. Interesting. Yeah, that's the theory. And I mean, he's in prison for it right now. He's not in prison for her murder, although the judge just said, yeah, I gave you a stiff sentence because I think you killed her.

Kind of like when O.J. was sent to prison for armed robbery. Yeah, and kidnapping and all these other things. I think it's the exact same thing. Are you watching that O.J. show right now? No, I'm waiting until it's done. And then I'll start. Is it good? Oh, it's terrible.

Oh, really? Well, terribly awesome. Oh, OK, cool. Yeah, I like that. However, I think I'm bailing on it because after a few episodes, the novelty of it being terribly awesome kind of wore off. Gotcha.

And I'm like, I just don't know if I have time to watch something that's good, bad, or bad, good. I think you don't. Like, it's too short, you know? You might like it, though. You never know. I'll try it for sure. It's just bad casting, Cuba Gooding, Jr.

Is he not a good O.J.? Well, he's just too nice. He's just small. Like, he doesn't look like a football player. Gotcha. Even though he played when Jerry McGuire, now that I think of it. Yeah, he did. He played a wide receiver, though.

O.J. was at point. What was he? He's a running back. Was he? Yeah, you got to be a little stockier than that. Bigger, and boy, Malcolm Jamal Warner is AC, and he is way over the top. Is he really?

Yeah, but it's worth it for just to watch Travolta. It's something else. He plays Robert Shapiro, right? Oh, does he? I can't wait to see this now, man. Yeah, you should definitely check out. I'm psyched, the first one, at least. Well, since we're so psyched, we should take another break.

What do you think? Let's do it. OK. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound

like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS,

because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one.

Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Stuff you shouldn't know. How about a quick one? George Washington's Teeth? Yeah. Here today, gone tomorrow. Yeah, so they were in a storage room at the Smithsonian. They were on loan since 1965 from the University of Maryland dental school, right?

Yeah, Washington had terrible teeth, like me. That's his, like, that was his cross to bear in his life. Right, yeah. By the time he was inaugurated, he only had one tooth remaining. So he very famously had full dentures in his mouth. Right. And the provenance of those dentures is up for debate. They're clearly not, they're not wooden teeth.

No, that's an old wives' tale. But there's things like ivory, gold. Yeah, real human teeth. Real human teeth, and that's where, like, the debate comes up, because some people are like he, these were forcibly taken from his slaves, and other people are like, they might be slave teeth, but he probably bought them. If you really look at, like, his character over the course

of his lifetime, he most likely wouldn't have had his teeth, his slave's teeth forcibly extracted. He probably would have compensated for it. And if you look at contemporary ads at the time, that was a common practice to buy teeth from people who were willing to give them up. Although, I'm quite sure that somewhere in the U.S., dentures were made out of forcibly extracted slaves,

which is like one of the most horrific things I've ever heard of. So in the end, Washington ended up having four, there, well, probably more than four, but there are four existing sets left on display, and one of which was at the Smithsonian, until they disappeared from a storage room where only employees had access, so it-

Double lock storage. Yeah, it very much is, seems like an inside job, almost invariably, but it gets a little more interesting because half of them showed back up. Yeah, the lower half, I think? I believe it was the lower half, yeah. Like a year later, they just suddenly reappeared out of nowhere, and they think that rather than sell these

on the market to somebody like Steven Spielberg or something, they melted them down for their gold, which is terrible. Sure. You know? Yeah, that's- I'd rather have some rich jerk have the full set and just know that they're out there still.

Right. Than have them melted down for gold. Right. They're like- You can get that anywhere. Yeah. That would be very sad, indeed. And to this day, they still don't know where those,

the top set, I'm sorry, the top set remains missing. Yeah. It might be someone's wedding ring right now. Wouldn't that be weird? That would be really weird. You know? Yeah.

Flight 19, are we moving on? Yeah, I love this one. We covered this one a little bit in their Bermuda Triangle episode. Yeah, I remember not liking that episode for some reason. I don't know. It was basically like, look at all this hokum. Yeah?

Yeah, we spent the whole time explaining why it's not a real thing. Okay, well, maybe I did like it then. Oh, yeah? Yeah, because it's not a real thing. No, it's not. There's not some mysterious vortex. But there has been a lot of weird disappearances

in that area. That's indisputed, indisputable. Flight 19. Don't even try. Flight 19 in December 1945, there were five planes, TBM Avengers, which were torpedo bombers. They took off from Fort Lauderdale on a training mission. Supposed to be a couple of hours.

Don't go more than 150 miles, guys. And just come on back and we'll have some hot soup waiting on you. Right. Or maybe it's Fort Lauderdale, some Gespacho. Yeah. Or Cuban black bean soup, maybe. Ooh, yum.

Yeah. But they never came back. No, they didn't. Back in Fort Lauderdale, I think of the Fort Lauderdale Hollywood Airport, which is what it is now. Back then, it was like Fort Lauderdale, right? Yeah. They were waiting anxiously for them

and they never came back. Although they did get a radio transmission from the guy who was the trainer. Yeah, the flight leader. He said, both my compasses are out for some reason and we are in big trouble. We have no idea where we are. And they went back and forth with the tower for a while,

trying to figure out where they were. And they changed courses a few times and then that was the last anybody heard of them. Yeah, so they sent a plane after them, a Mariner aircraft with 13 men aboard. So they already lost 14, I believe, from these other flights. Okay, five planes.

And then they sent another plane, right? Sent another plane. That one didn't come back. You mean a triangle? Well, that one's no big mystery. They attributed that to an explosion. So they think it actually exploded. Well, what made it explode?

Well, aliens. But it didn't mysteriously disappear. Okay. The other ones definitely did mysteriously disappear. And most people thought that they just went further and further out into the Atlantic, that at one point they were over the Bahamas or Bermuda, which they mistook for the Florida Keys,

which is not the same thing. No, it's not. And if you use that mistakenly as your bearings, you're gonna be in big trouble. And they ended up just running out of fuel and crashing the Atlantic. But in the last year or two, a couple of independent searchers

who had this same theory independently came together and said, you know what? There was, in 1989, a Broward County Sheriff's Department helicopter spotted the wreckage of one of these planes, the TBM Avenger in the Everglades, next to Jimmy Hoffa's body, right? Interesting. And they said it was so far off

from where they thought Flight 19 had been that it couldn't have been one of them. Then they went back and looked at the records and they were like, well, the only missing Avenger planes are from Flight 19. So it has to be one of them, basically. And they found an aircraft carrier off of Daytona, had tracked six unidentified planes that night,

turning into the Florida mainland. So they think rather than going out to sea, they turned inland and didn't realize they were inland because the weather was so bad. They were whale, of course. Right, and at least one of them crashed in the Everglades. Wow. Yeah. The only thing I knew about this previous to this research

was the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Oh, really, they showed up in that? Yeah, remember, there was... I never saw the whole thing. Oh, man. It still holds up. Really? Yeah. Like a really, really good movie.

Steven Spielberg knows what he's doing. Yeah, and the special effects even still look pretty decent considering, you know, what were, how long ago it was. Yeah. They found the planes in the desert. And the idea was that the aliens had gotten ahold of the guys because at the end of the movie,

the big mothership lands, and they lower the thing and all this... George Clinton comes out. Not George Clinton, but all these people come out and people that had been abducted over the years. Right. And the crews of Flight 19 came out. Nice.

Still the same age as when they disappeared in their flight uniforms. Nice. And they were like, wow, that was weird. They were like, what a night. And then they went, oh my God, it's Richard Dreyfuss. I love Jaws. Yeah.

They didn't say that. Did you see Madoff? I watched a little bit of it. Was that any good? Did you watch it? I didn't catch my attention. Yeah, I did watch Jaws again the other night for like the 80th time.

Sure, that's in all time. That'll be great a hundred years from now. And I can watch it every single time I get right back into it. Yeah. Amazing. Mary Celeste, I thought we had covered this, but we haven't.

No. This isn't super mysterious to me. What do you think happened? Well, here's the backstory in case there's anyone on Earth that doesn't know about the ghost ship. It was in 1872 in December. It was a British vessel about 400 miles east of the Azores Islands,

1,000 miles west of Portugal. And they saw this ship, the Mary Celeste, and they went, oh my God, look at that ship. We know that ship. Let's go over to it and say hello. But there was nobody on board. No. And they knew that it shouldn't be where it was

and that there's something up because the crew that spotted it, the, what is it, the day, would you pronounce the E and the I? I'd pronounce that the Degrazia. Oh, nice, okay. But it's a British vessel, so that's probably wrong. So, okay.

But still, they could have it named like that, you know? So the Degrazia said, well, this Mary Celeste left eight days ahead of us. It should be like all the way to Genoa basically by now, and it shouldn't be there. And when they looked, there was no one on board, but there wasn't any obvious reason for there to be no one on board.

It was a ghost ship, which is awesome in and of itself. I mean, it is fairly mysterious because, well, here's some of the facts. There were 1,701 barrels of industrial alcohol on board. Only nine were empty, because there was one theory that the crew got drunk and they- On industrial alcohol. On industrial alcohol and had a mutiny.

Right. Apparently that doesn't hold up. It's not a likely story. No, they think the nine barrels, they were made of a different kind of oak than all the others, and it's a leaky oak. So they say it probably just leaked out. Sure.

What else? Food and water, they had plenty of it still on board. Six months worth left on board. Yeah. And I think a woman named Mary Thurgood created a documentary about this and really like investigated it. And these are mostly her findings,

and they're pretty recent. But one of the big weird mysteries is that the lifeboat was gone, right? Kind of weird. I think that's because they got on it and left. There was a pump disassembled, and there was a little bit of water, but upon inspection, the degratia found,

like no, this thing's totally seaworthy. She can make it all the way to Genoa, and we'll even tow her. And they towed her to Portugal, I believe, right? Yeah, but here's the thing. Apparently the hull where the flooding was was so crowded that the captain, Benjamin Spooner Briggs, couldn't get down there.

So he didn't know how much water. So one of the theories is that he thought they'd taken on way more water than they had, and his family was on board, including his little two-year-old daughter, and he said, no, let's just get the heck out of here. I'm not taking any chances. Which was a big chance that didn't pay off in and of itself.

Yeah, but the abandon ship is a less resort. Like you don't just say, oh, I think we might be in trouble. Let's get on out of here. On the one lifeboat for all of us. And yeah, in the middle of the Atlantic, that's not, yeah, you're not gonna do that. What do you think happened?

I think that that's what happened. I think that he thought they had taken on way more water. He had his family aboard, saw they had just been through a bad storm, and he saw the mainland with his own eyeballs and said, this is our chance. Let's not screw around here. I don't wanna sink with mainland in sight.

But the thing is the mainland wasn't in sight. The Azores are like in the middle of nowhere. They're like halfway between Europe and North America. Well, that's where they found it eventually. But supposedly he saw the mainland. Oh yeah. And I think so. And that's why I think that he just said,

all right, it's time to go. So there's long been a suspicion that the crew of the DeGrazia were the ones who did away with the crew of the Merida Celeste. Yeah, like when they go ship when we found it. Right, so the reason they would have done this is because under maritime law, if you find a ship that's insured,

the insurer has to pay you a salvage fee. It's insured amount. Which they did. They did, but they only got one sixth of the insured amount which suggests that the British Maritime Admiralty Court believed that they were crooked, that they'd done something to the Merida Celeste people. We shall never know.

No, unsolved mystery. Yeah, in fact, I was gonna say we should do an episode on that in full, but I think maybe we should just refer to people this stuff you missed in history class. Yeah. Because they did a great episode on that. Yes. The Merida Celeste.

So we got one more, Chuck. Alrighty. This might be my favorite one of all. I had never heard of this pro basketball player who disappeared without a trace. I hadn't either. His name was John Brisker, right? That's right.

He was from Detroit, and he went to the University of Toledo, actually. Oh, go Rockets. Rockets. And the thing is, while he was at UT, apparently he'd had a racially harmonious upbringing in Detroit and got to Toledo and experienced racism firsthand.

Interesting. And grew fairly bitter from it. He was, he had a reputation of having a short fuse after that point, which he didn't have before growing up. Yeah, he went on to play pro ball with the ABA, the Pittsburgh Condors, and then eventually made his way to Seattle with the Super Sonics. And he was good too.

With the Condors over three years, he averaged 26 points a game. Yeah. And this year, it was 21. The second and third years, it was about 30 points a game for the year. Yeah. That's amazing.

Even for the ABA. Sure. I'm not knocking the ABA. They were great, actually. Was there an Atlanta team in the ABA? No. It was always NBA. Where did Atlanta get its team from?

From, why do I want to say Milwaukee? That was the Braves. Yeah. Geez, I can't remember. And the Thrasher's were the Flames, right? Well, no, we had the Flames, and they just went away. Then we created the Thrasher's. The Flames went out.

They went out. No, the Thrasher's went to Canada or something. Yeah, they went to a different city. Gotcha. Don't have hockey in Atlanta. I think we've learned our lesson. There's a lot of transplains, but apparently not enough. Yeah.

So, back to Brisker. He eventually played for the Sonics. And after that, he said, I'm going to open a restaurant. That failed. And then in 1978, he said, you know what? I'm going to Africa, and I'm going to open an import-export business. Yeah, but he wasn't just going to Africa.

He went to Africa under the invitation of the Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin. Who loved basketball. Loved basketball, and I guess I'd heard of John Brisker. And John Brisker said, sure, man, let's hang out. Kind of like Rodman with Kim Jong-un. Yeah. And he went and hung out with Idi Amin.

Definitely. And I guess about six weeks after he made it to Uganda, he placed a call to his girlfriend and the mother of one of his children, Melvys Diane Williamson, right? Yeah. And he said, hey, baby, we are going to get back together. I'm going to have you guys come over here soon. I'm just laying the foundation.

It's all good. I'll see you guys. I'll call you in a little bit. And that was the last anybody ever heard from him. Yeah, and there are many theories on this one. One is, well, Amin figures it in a couple of ways. One is that maybe he ran a foul of Amin and was killed by he and his soldiers.

The other is that he was killed by anti-Amin revolutionaries because he was pals with Amin. And he was there when the Amin regime was toppled in 1978. Like that's when he was there. And another one that I don't think is true at all is that he eventually made his way to Jonestown and was part of the Jonestown Jim Jones suicide massacre. Of 900 people.

That one actually has more legs than it appears at first. He had a great aunt who was there, who tried to get him and other family members to come join her in Jonestown. All right, so we'll give that a possible. So it's not just totally random, but it probably didn't happen. I think they can't find any real evidence that that happened. His brother Ralph said up until he was declared dead

in, I think, 1985, his brother Ralph held the idea that his brother had just assumed another identity to get away from debt. Because he owed like 20 grand in taxes just from that restaurant alone. Yeah. That used to be a viable option in life. So you could just take out another identity.

Yeah, in fact, did we ever do a show on that? Yeah. OK, that was a long time ago. Someone might need a dusting off. I think the answer now is no, you can't. Yeah, exactly. Is that it, sir? I think that's it, man.

Unsolved mysteries that may stay unsolved forever. We're Robert Stack. Thank you for joining us. Or wait, I'll be Dennis Farina. You be Robert Stack. Got breast to soul. Both their souls. Dennis Farina's dead now?

Yeah. That stinks. He's one of my faves. Yeah, who's good? Remember Crime Story? 80s? Was it a TV show? Machia Vegas show, yeah.

I don't think I ever saw that. Good one. But he's Midnight Run, one of my all-time favorite comedies. He figures heavily into that. Does he? And out of sight, the great movie from Stephen Soderbergh. George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. Fantastic movie.

He's in that, too. I like him as a law and order man myself. Right. He's a former real cop, I think. I could totally see that. Well, if you want to know more about Dennis Farina, type that name into the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail.

Oh, no, my friend. It is time for administrative details. I can hear the drum and bass kicking in right about now. That's right. So this is when we thank people for their lovely gestures of kindness by sending us neat things. Oftentimes handmade things. Yeah, for sure, man.

So you ready to get started? Yeah. I'll go ahead and start with our pals Liz and Jen a little bit sweets. They consistently send us candy every year from their homemade, their shop in Brooklyn, New York. Yeah. It's all delicious.

We've talked about them for years. And they are genuine pals now and just great ladies and support little bit sweets is all I got to say. Yep, L-I-D-D-A-B-I-T sweets. Correct. You will love it. Let's see, I want to thank Addie Prey Livingston, who gave me, at our Atlanta show, as we were leaving the stage,

she handed me a book. And the book was a copy of Paper Moon. Oh, that's right. Actually, Addie Prey, the movie that Paper Moon is based on. If you'll notice she has the same name as the title character, that's because her grandfather, Joe David Brown, wrote the book. It's pretty amazing.

Yeah. So thank you very much for that. I can't wait to read it. Because it is famously one of, if not, your favorite movies, right? It is Tide with the Shining. Oh, wow. Yeah, I know.

Talk about two different movies. Love that movie. Burning Hand Leather Goods sent us these awesome leather notebook cases. Yeah. Very cool. They hold like many mole skins. Yeah, they have all kinds of cool products.

Yeah. I would highly advise you check that out. Douglas Gibson sent us a copy of Tales of the Fifth Grade Night, the kid's book that he wrote, which is awesome. Thank you. Uncle John's Bathroom Reader, as always. They have sent us stuff over the years when they found out that Josh was a big fan.

Yeah. They were delighted. And now we have a kinship. Yeah, a kinship with one another. Yes, we do. And remember, Gordon, one of the founders of Uncle John's, the Bathroom Readers Institute, was on our Barbie episode. That's right.

Well, we got into a shouting match at some point, if I remember correctly. Let's see, Kurt Schroeder from the Origami Brain Injury Rehab Center in Mason, Michigan sent us some cool puzzles and books that are awesome and mind-bending. Thank you for those. Jeff, thank you for the tick combs, the patent-pending tick combs.

Well, by now, this is so long ago, the patent's probably been granted. Yeah, so if you have a dog, you can go to tickcom.com and they are pretty awesome and they are 3D printed even. Yeah. Alex Bologna sent us the Joy of Christmas CDs, his CD of him singing Christmas standards. Thank you very much for that, Alex.

I love Christmas music. Sarah at the Beijing Normal University, not the Abnormal University in Beijing, the much more highly reputable normal one, she sent us these beautiful stuff you should know paper cuts and the charms, right? Yes. Very nice. Tyler Murphy for not just the North Dakota wine, but tons of

other things, great gifts over the years, and also steady, unflagging support for us through emails, and thoughts, and tweets, all that stuff. Thanks a lot, Murr. Tyler's a great guy, fighting the good fight by being a public school teacher. Yeah, that's right. Daniel from Checkniflo for the Sound Still series

necklaces. Yeah, because they're awesome. Yeah, they're really cool. You can find those at checkniflo.com, that is T-E-C-H-N-I, flowdesign.com, or just go to Etsy, where you can find all the stuff usually. Yeah, Talia sent us a postcard from Canada. Lisa Hirsch sent us some banana candies.

Thanks, guys. We got another postcard, an invitation, actually, from Emily Crawford to Stan Hewitt Hall in Akron, Ohio. And Stan Hewitt is a very famous place in Akron. It's sort of like their Biltmore house. Oh, yeah. And it's gorgeous. And sadly, Emily's parents moved down here, so I'm not

going to Akron much anymore. Well, we could still go for Stan Hewitt Hall. Reed Wilson of ReedWilsonDesign, which you can find at ReedWilsonDesign.com, sent us some really awesome doormats and coasters, the good stuff, man. Go check it out. ReedWilsonDesign.com, he's got a lot of really cool ideas. Abby sent us a letter and a drawing, and she wrote in to

let us know how to pronounce basalt correctly. Am I saying it right? I don't remember. I think we said basalt. Basalt. And I think it's basalt. And happy birthday, Abby. Good luck in high school from both of us.

Alan Barrington Hughes sent us Reaper Sauce from Pucker Butt, based on our chili pepper episode. I have not gone anywhere near it. I tasted it and burned a hole clean through my tongue. So if you're into the really hot stuff and you think you have what it takes, I dare you to give it a shot. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Whitley, thank you for the pencil-colored art. It's really cool. And we're guessing that it's Darwin and McCarthy that's our best guess. And I think we're right. Dawson's Hot Sauce from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada sent us some really great hot sauces. My favorite was the garlic and jalapeno.

That was good stuff. Carol Chan, thank you for the rat race millionaire, I guess, written by your husband, Michael Hung, and also the three knitted rats. Who doesn't love a knitted rat? No one. That's why she included them. Agreed.

And then Robin and Aaron sent us the St. Louis Arch postcard. Thanks for that, guys. Allison McDougal, thank you for the CDs of your husband's one-man band who also doesn't love a one-man band. You can listen to that at McDougalmusic.com with two Ls. And just MC, not M-A-C. Yeah, of course. The traditional spelling.

I think that's it, man. I think we're essentially caught up on administrative details. So guys, we need more stuff. Thanks as always to everyone who's kind enough to take the time to say, oh, hey, thanks to Nate today at H&F Burger downstairs for comping my lunch. That's very nice.

I went down there to eat a meal, and he comes by and goes Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And I went, I know what that means. Here's another subpoena. But he's the GM at Holman Fentch, their restaurant group. And I went to leave, and they were like, no, it's on us. Nice. Did he send you a burger for me?

No, but I would advise you going down there and just like kind of straining your neck around. Stand under the TV with me on it, right? Yeah, so thanks, Nate. He didn't even know we were in this building. Oh, yeah, you should listen more closely, Nate. Yeah, that's what I said. We talk about it basically all the time.

He won't even hear this. If you want to get in touch with us, you can just send us high. You don't have to send us anything. You can say hi, but don't have to say hi because it's been done. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuffyoushouldknow.

You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. And in the meantime, you can hang out with us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot

sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.