Stuff You Should Know - What's the deal with the Bermuda Triangle?

Episode Date: January 12, 2012

There's roughly 500,000 squares miles encompassed in a triangle with points in Miami, Bermuda and San Juan. There shouldn't be anything different about this area, but some people believe it's a hotbed of supernatural activity. Tune in to learn why. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and that makes this Stuff You Should Know. The podcast, the ripoff of stuff they don't want you to know in this particular episode. That's right. But that's not the case at all. I was just singing

Barry Manilow to Josh right before we recorded. Yeah, what song is it? He had a song called Bermuda Triangle and I think I remember the gist of it was that the Bermuda Triangle not only makes ships and planes disappear but people from your love life will disappear as well. They sail through the Bermuda Triangle? I don't know. I don't remember. But I was, as I told you, I was big into Barry Manilow as a kid. For some reason when I was eight I just thought he was the B's knees. He's very cool. If you ask me, Yumi has every single one of his records at home so I'll have to go home and root that song out. I still have. Get to the bottom of this. I still have mine in the attic. Do you? Oh yeah. Sweet. Do you have a nice record collection hidden up in the attic?

I've got about two crates. Oh wow. Not a ton. But I'll bet their choice. Yeah, they're pretty good. Okay, well there you have it. The Bermuda Triangle. Thank you everybody. The records range from Barry Manilow to like Molly Hatchett. So that tells you what happened between ages nine and fifteen for me. Chuck. Josh. You want to get to this? Yeah. Yeah. I mean you were a kid. You just admitted to being a kid once. I was once. So of course the Bermuda Triangle must have struck your fancy at some point. Well in the 70s it was a big deal. Like I remember it being a big deal in the 70s and I was kind of thinking, you know, you never hear about it anymore. But I think it was due to the book. Charles Berlitz's book came out in 1974. What was it called? The Bermuda Triangle.

Oh. Oh. It's the Bermuda Triangle. Oh no, that's a different one. No, no, no. This was just the Bermuda Triangle but his sold 20 million copies and like I remember this being a big deal at the time. It was like on the Mike Douglas show and yeah. So that I think that's why it was so big in the 70s. People were dumber back then. Plus Barry Manlow, that was in the 70s. It was. I'll bet he wrote that song after the book. Probably so. Well, if you want to just talk about this, my intro wasn't that good anyway. So you want to just get into the Bermuda Triangle? The intro disappeared like so many ships at sea. That was very good, Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Thank you. Thank you. So we think of the Bermuda Triangle as this old, possibly ancient, possibly lost mystery

that forms a triangle. It's a geographical, made up, fictitious geographical area, bounded or with its points between San Juan, Puerto Rico, Bermuda, I think greatly enough, and Miami. It's real but it's not recognized by any official geographic bodies. But if you look at a map, you could also make a Bermuda Quadrahedron with like eight other places too. So yeah, it's as real as the Bermuda Quadrahedron. It's not real if you are a member of the US Board of Geographic Names because they don't recognize it formally. Most people don't, not officially at least. That's right. But I was saying that it seems like it's been around a long time. It wasn't until 1964 that it got its name. Did you know that? I did because we actually researched this

a long time ago and didn't do it for some reason. So I knew it from then, but only from then. And if you are into this kind of thing, you are well aware that there have been hundreds and hundreds of ships that have gone missing over, say, the past century, planes, ships, cars somehow, people just gone. Depends on who you ask. Right. Well, it depends on, you know, how, like I say, if you're into it or not. And basically the key to the Bermuda Triangle is statistics. How you take statistics, how you either manipulate them yourselves, or how you accept statistics at face value is probably a pretty good indicator about how you feel about the Bermuda Triangle. And life. There's been all sorts of explanations from basically natural phenomenon to the idea that

Atlantis is down there somewhere, which we'll get into. To the idea that it's really no different than anywhere else and it's just a bunch of sensationalism. Yes, but no matter how you look at the Bermuda Triangle, it encompasses about 500,000 square miles. Yeah, it's huge and extremely well traveled area. It's not off the beaten path at all. No. A lot of people want to go to Bermuda. Bahamas is in there. I mean, come on. Yeah, plus it's just a heavily traveled route and area. Right. As far as shipping goes, I imagine too, right? Yes. So supposedly there's been as many as 100 ships and a thousand lives lost in the Bermuda Triangle in the last century. Right? That's what some say. Some say. Yeah. Part of the problem is that Coast Guard supposedly

says that it doesn't, that there's not an unusual amount of incidents there that, okay, a thousand people have died and 100 ships have been lost in the last 100 years. Big whoop. Yeah, that's nothing. Yeah. Other people say, no, that's not the case. Lloyds of London, which by the way, Chuck, if you listen to the coffee podcast, the tie that binds coffee to Bermuda Triangle is Lloyds of London. That's right. In 1975, the editor of Fate Magazine, Mary Margaret Fuller, she contacted Lloyds of London and said, hey, can you give me a list of payoffs for the Bermuda Triangle? And Lloyds said, sure, we can. Of course, we do this thing all the time. And 428 vessels were reported missing throughout the world between 1955 and 1975. Yeah. And the Bermuda Triangle

didn't have any significantly higher incidents than any other area supposedly. Right. Which is why the insurance premiums at the Bermuda Triangle are no different than anywhere else as well. Yes. We should point out. Yeah. If you ask a guy, I love this guy's name, named Gian, that's with a G, I-A-N-J, Kassar. Let's just come on and say it. Kassar. Gian Quasar. Gian J. Quasar. Is that supposed to mean something? That's what I'm calling. All right. Have you been to his page? No. Actually, that's not true. He's the administrator of Bermuda-triangle.org. Yeah. And I believe I have been to that page before. And he's the author of Into the Bermuda Triangle, Colin, Pursuing the Truth Behind the World's Greatest Mystery. Yes. I went to his

site because I felt like I owed it to him to check this out. Yeah. And it is another one of those sites that looks like my space page from like 2002. Yeah. And it doesn't draw you in as far as looking valid. Right. Not saying it's not, but it doesn't look super professional. There's like text that's overlapping the images and some pages don't load. Like user, a good user experience adds tremendous veracity to one's fantastic claims. It really does. Mr. Quasar, we mean it. If you update your user experience, people will listen more. Yeah. I would have honestly stayed on the site a lot longer and been like, oh, let me look at this. But as soon as I saw it, I went, oh, come on. But despite his lack of web design skill, yes. Yeah. He has like put a lot of time and effort

and energy into researching the Bermuda Triangle. He's one of the ones that says, hey, Lloyds of London, why would you go to Lloyds of London? That's what he says. Well, he says that Lloyds of London doesn't even keep track of smaller craft. And a lot of these smaller craft are missing. And they don't even ensure yachts, which is not true. I looked that up. I thought that was odd. I'm glad you looked at it. I don't know if maybe he means yachts of a certain size, but they definitely ensure yachts. In fact, they were ironically, if I'm not mistaken, the originators of maritime insurance way back when. Wow. I might be wrong, but I thought I remember reading. I don't think you're wrong. Okay. So, well, Mr. Quasar went to the Coast Guard

instead. The Coast Guard has definitive records on missing vessels, but they call them delayed. Overdue. Overdue vessels. Like a three hour tour that hasn't come back. Yes. So it's overdue. It's supposed to be there after three hours, 180,000 hours ago. So it's a very long overdue. So, Mr. Quasar found that he says that he was given data on overdue vessels after asking for 12 years and found that in the previous two years, the Coast Guard had records of 300 missing or overdue vessels. Now, does that mean that they were still overdue or they were overdue by a couple hours and they were just at one point listed as overdue? That is an excellent question. I didn't get that. That is a very good question. Well, I hope this guy listens to the

podcast. Maybe he can tell us. I'll bet we could contact him through his website too. I bet it's not that hard. He also went to the National Transportation Safety Board and looked at their database and said, hey, okay, let's just take a random place then if the Bermuda Triangle is no different than any other area. Sure. How about off the coast of New England? And we'll say for the last 10 years, there's only been a few disappearances of vessels in the Bermuda Triangle over that same time period 30. I would ask Mr. Quasar, just give me more stats. Did he compare the amount of travel? Was it all equalized? Did he take everything into consideration? Maybe the coast of New England has a disproportionately low amount

of missing vessels, whereas the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific Ocean has higher than the Bermuda Triangle. So it also depends on what you're comparing it to. Or did they have a lot of boat sink that they found because the water wasn't as deep or was easily accessible because he's talking about disappearances, like where you never find wreckage. So I guess Jean Quasar, Jean J. Quasar, is a torch bearer of a very long line of people who have really sunk their teeth and time and energy into solving this mystery. Or possibly even promoting something that isn't a mystery as a mystery because they genuinely believe it. And probably what kicked the whole thing off, at least in the public's imagination, was the missing squadron, the lost

flight, Flight 19, which Chuck actually disappeared 66 years ago last week. Oh yeah? Yeah. They had a little ceremony down at Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood International Airport to honor the 14 servicemen who were lost on that flight. Flight 19. Very sad. But that made huge headlines. Yeah, I mean you want to go ahead and tell the story? Yeah, let's talk about Flight 19. And I want to point out that this is one of the leading stories. And in fact, when you go back and look at all the research, a lot of this is based on a handful of stories that have been retold over and over and over by all these different people. So it seems like there's more than there are? No, it's just the whole mystery of the Bermuda

Triangle is based on a handful of disappearances that are noteworthy and not like 100. So US Navy Avengers Flight 19, 1945. Five missing Navy pilot Avengers, I guess is that the kind of plane? Yeah, they're Navy Grumman TBF Avengers. They were propeller planes, fighter jets, or fighter prop planes from the end of the war. Okay, so they set out on a routine patrol, sunny day, five highly experienced student pilots, which is a little bit of a contradiction in terms. Yeah, but I mean these were Navy pilots. So I mean, I'm sure if you put them side by side to any other student pilots, they would do, they would dogfight them into humiliation. Into oblivion. Lieutenant Charles C. Taylor led the

mission and the mission included a few course changes, departed at 115. Scheduled course changes. Yeah. Basically, Taylor knew what he was doing and this was a routine flight. That's what some say. There's also speculation that's Taylor wasn't super experienced. Really? Well, actually, the other pilots weren't super experienced and that he had a consistent record of navigation troubles, including ditching airplanes twice into the Pacific Ocean. Well, that's just routine Navy hazing. Back then. But we'll get into that. So Taylor led the missions. They took off, were flying over Fort Lauderdale, Florida when they heard a signal that they thought was from a boat or a plane in distress. No, that was Cox that heard that signal. But he was part of the

crew, right? It was he at the base. He was another guy who was flying over a different part of Florida. Oh, okay. Yeah. He kind of tried to help them. He got the distress signal and he tried to figure out where they were and was giving them instructions. Okay, that makes more sense. So Cox told Taylor, fly with the sun at your left wing and up the coast until you see Miami and you'll know Miami when you see it. Well, sure. Taylor said, no, no, no, we're over a small island and there's no other land anywhere. If it was the Florida Keys, which he thought it was, he would have seen a bunch of islands, obviously, and Florida, sticking down there. And they only had a couple of hours left of fuel. And then Taylor described a large island that they assumed was Andros Island,

which is the largest island in the Bahamas. And so they sent him back further instructions to get him to Fort Lauderdale. Is that right? Yeah, but there's a big part that you left out here. And this is important. Taylor reported that everything looked wrong, quote. Yeah. And that his compasses were going haywire. Well, yeah, true. And those are two, those are big. Yeah, those are big. When he started on this heading, his voice started coming through clear and louder, which they took to mean, all right, you're headed in the right direction. Right, because the base he was talking to was in Fort Lauderdale. Yeah. So like you're getting closer, you're on the right path. Right. But Taylor said, no, no, no, I don't think you're right. I don't think we went far enough east.

So we're going to turn around and go east again. At that point, the voice got less clear and further away, indicating that he was probably going in the wrong direction. And then that was it. They never heard from him again. Or anybody else, they never found any wreckage as far as I understand. They were just lost all five Navy Avengers. And there were two sea planes that were sent out. And one of them exploded right after takeoff and the other one never found any trace of Flight 19. Yeah. So that's in 1945. Right. So in 1952, an author, George Sand wrote an article for FATE magazine called Sea Mystery at Our Back Door and first described a, quote, watery triangle bounded roughly by Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. And then in 1964, Argosi magazine finally

gave the triangle its name in an article by Vincent Gaddis called The Deadly Bermuda Triangle, which is a pulp magazine that writes fiction, but somehow people missed that and took it to be a real thing. Right. It even says that the magazine's tagline is a magazine of master fiction. And when you look at it, like I looked it up, it's, it doesn't look like a valid, I mean, not valid, but it doesn't look like a news week. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I know what you're saying. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy, number one, is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana.

Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. They can do that. Any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil answer. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

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. 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. Part of the other I think thing that captured the public's imagination and that was kind of lost on people was originally the Navy said they said that Flight 19 was lost due to pilot error. And Lieutenant Taylor's family was like, no, he was way too experienced for that. There's no way he would do this or something else. So the Navy was pressured to change it because this is back when

the Navy was like, all right, all right, we don't want your feelings to be hurt. Right. And they changed it to something. Cause unknown. Yes. Which sounds very mysterious. Exactly. Yeah. So and if the Navy is saying we lost five fighter planes to causes unknown. Yeah. In this area that people are calling the Bermuda Triangle, that's what really gave the Bermuda Triangle its initial boost into the capturing the public imagination. Yeah. And like I said, I looked up more on Taylor and apparently the truth is the only other four or the other four pilots didn't have significant experience. Taylor had a history of getting lost. And by the time of his final transmission, they were low on fuel. They weren't near land. Bad weather came in.

And they probably crashed and landed on the bottom of the ocean. Right. Not very mysterious. But the fact that they were never heard from again, I mean, that does again capture the public's imagination. It does. That's what happened. They're just gone. Things aren't supposed to go, especially not airplanes. You're not supposed to not find a trace of something. There have been plenty of other things that have gone missing. Like you said, a lot of them are very famous. One, the Mary Celeste is commonly listed as a disappearance of the Bermuda Triangle. Not so. No, no. The Mary Celeste, which was a brig from the late 19th century, I think the 1870s, set sail from New York to Spain and shouldn't have come anywhere

near the Bermuda Triangle. When it was found around the Strait of Gibraltar, floating adrift with nary a soleboard, yet being still on the grill, a pipe still smoking, I think, when they found it. No explanation whatsoever. Just gone. But it had nothing to do with the Bermuda Triangle. I wonder how it got mixed up in that just public people just claim it. Yeah. That's the problem. It's like, okay, if there is something going on here, you're not, you're not helping your case in getting it across to incredulous skeptics, right? Yeah. By saying, plus the Mary Celeste, right? And that's something. And that was a ghost ship. Exactly. Yeah. But there was there was one that is legitimately chalked up to the Bermuda Triangle,

the Milwaukee's 440th Airlift Wing, plane 680. Yeah, let's hear about this. So in 1965, on a clear night, a ship, I'm sorry, a flying boxcar, the Fairchild C119, huge, huge old plane. It's like the Spruce Goose. Oh, yeah. Huge. Yeah. It began, it lifted off from Milwaukee on its way to Grand Turk in the Bahamas, which is that's that's like it. That's nice duty. I'm sure. And it landed at Homestead Air Force Base at 504 p.m., hung around for almost three hours and then lifted off at 747 p.m. on its way to the Bahamas and was never heard from again. After about halfway there, I think, never heard from again. No one ever found a trace of it. But one of the things that really captures the imagination about this one is it had a full crew

of really experienced flight mechanics and flight engineers who knew what they were doing. So if there is anything that was wrong with this plane, there are plenty of people on board to fix it, right? Seemingly. But nothing. The plane's gone forever. No trace. No one ever heard of it. Well, it said they found a few scraps of debris. Yes, but they think that that could have been scuttled. Oh, okay. It didn't appear to have undergone any damage or anything like that. Just in case of a good scuttling. Like there were, right, there was a sulfur queen, which was a ship that had like 150,000 tons of molten sulfur aboard. Yeah. And they found scraps of ore and stuff like that. Right. That would indicate an explosion. Sure. There was nothing

that indicated that with the, with plane 680. It just sank. Or maybe it was lifted to a distant planet. Well, that is, that is one explanation that people use. So let's talk about, we're going to divvy up the explanations into far fetch theories. Yes. Which is what the article, I think, very fairly calls them. Sure. And at least using Occam's razor and then to more scientific explanations. So let's start with the intensely more fun and entertaining far fetch theories. Yes. I mentioned UFOs and alien abduction. And that is a pretty hot bed of UFO sightings down there. And some people have theorized that that's what's going on. They're, they're porting these ships and planes abducting them to their universe, their planet. Yeah.

Or it may actually be a portal to other planets. Yes. They think that possibly if there are portals that a blue hole, yeah, which there are several in the Bermuda Triangle are wormholes through dimensions or time and space. And that this is a highly trafficked portal in the Bermuda Triangle and ships and planes get sucked into it accidentally. Some Josh think again, these are the far fetch theories that we're going over now. Yes. Some think Josh that it is home to the law city of Atlantis, who, which may or may not have been populated by a race of aliens. Correct. They had advanced technologies, some say, including a death ray weapon, some say, that destroyed Atlantis eventually. Edgar Casey said it. Have you heard of him?

I have. The sleeping psychic or sleeping prophet of Virginia Beach. Yeah. He was really hot for Atlantis. He was. And he predicted actually that in the 60s, he didn't predict it in the 60s. He predicted that in the 60s, people would find evidence of Atlantis off the coast of Bimini. And surely enough in 1968, was it? Yeah. They found what's known as the Bimini Road. Now, this is pretty interesting. I think it is. It depends on your viewpoint. Sure. Like Bermuda Triangle as a whole. But yes, there's a long, what looks to be a road of shaped blocks of rock. Yeah. In about 15 feet of water off the coast of Bimini. Yeah. And it's cool looking and a lot of people say, no, this is just something that happened naturally. Yes. Like a coral reef

might. And others have studied it and said, you know what, these stones are shaped and they're placed there very purposefully as a wall. So it's also called the Bimini wall. Right. Or road. And this could have been tied to Atlantis somehow. Could have been. A lot of people say also, look, there's tool marks on there. And then critics say, yes. Underwater tourists like you have used tools to take chips off of it as souvenirs. Oh, is that? So studying it. Yeah. Interesting. But if you look at the Bimini wall, it is very suggestive of being shaped by man and being put in place. But these are like enormous rocks. So it would have taken a marvel of engineering to get those there. You know what, Jerry just interrupted the podcast, which he rarely does and says,

I dope the Bimini road. So she's seen firsthand. I thought she said, I drove it at first. Jerry is an alien underwater doom buggy. We should have just had her say it. But that would do you want to say it? No, she won't say it. Okay. Because that would mean she exists. Did she beep first? She did. Wow, Jerry. So let's get back to Atlantis. They supposedly relied on the power of special energy crystals, one of which has been recovered by a man named Dr. Ray Brown. Allegedly. Dr. Ray Brown was a diver. And in 1970, he said that he was diving down there and discovered an underwater pyramid made of mirrored stone, mirrored stone. And it would be just weird to see underwater. Man, is it seeing a mirror pyramid? Doesn't seem like the 70s,

like 1970. Yeah, sure. He said he entered the pyramid and saw a brassy metallic rod with a multifaceted red gem hanging from the apex of the room and directly below this rod was a stand of bronze, I'm sorry, with bronze hands holding a crystal sphere four inches in diameter. It sounds like, you know what, I'm just going to take that. It sounds like something he found at Kirkland's. You know, it sounds like a candle holder from Kirkland's, doesn't it? Yeah. So he thought it was a good idea to take this. He removed it. He said I'm not only going to take it, but I'm not going to tell anyone for five years until the great psychic seminar of Phoenix, Arizona in 1975 when he revealed the crystal and what did they see when they gazed upon

it? Not one, not twice, but thrice pyramids inside of smaller sizes, the smaller in front of the other. And some people have been said to have seen a fourth one in a deep meditative state. That's right. So basically Dr. Brown says, hey man, these pyramids are evidence that there's some sort of electrical properties going on in this crystal. And there's probably more of these crystals down there. And that's probably what's causing all of these problems in the Bermuda Triangle. But scoff as you might, there's apparently evidence of an underwater urban complex off the coast of Cuba that was recently discovered in the last 10 years or so. Yeah, I think it was like racquetball courts and other stuff. No, that was definitely 75. I looked this up, but that didn't

get a whole lot out of it. What did you see? Yeah, I saw that they're still looking. They're still looking. God, I've become tated in my old age. Was that making my scoff face when you said that? Scoff as you may? Yeah. Okay. Magnetic abnormalities. This one I think is sort of interesting. There's a guy, a pilot named Bruce Gernon, and he co-wrote a book called The Fog Colon, A Never Before Published Theory of the Bermuda Triangle Phenomenon. He says that in December of 1970, he was flying to Bimini, clear skies when he saw this weird cloud, almost perfectly round, and hovering over the Miami shoreline. Right, so he goes to go around it. Goes to go around it. And the cloud moves. Cloud moves, couldn't go around it. So he said, you

know what, this thing's like a tunnel now. I'm just going to fly into this tunnel, big whoop, fly out the other side, and get to my destination. It's not much of a Freudian. No. He got inside the tunnel. He said he saw lines on the walls that spun counterclockwise. And my, my, I'm the sky all of a sudden. And his, you're channeling Bruce Gernon. Gernon, his navigational instruments were going nuts. His compass was spinning counterclockwise. He said, you know, there should be blue sky at the end of the tunnel, but there's really nothing. There's no sky. There's no ocean. There's no horizon. There's no nothing, but gray haze as he's flying. Yes, which is right, which is why I said, Lieutenant Taylor saying everything looks weird. Yeah. My compass is

their haywire. Yeah. That's why it counts. Okay. He contacted Miami air traffic control to get some identification. They said, uh, we don't see any planes over on our radar over, and then a few minutes later, they went scratch that we see a plane now over. No, they didn't. They said that somebody spotted a plane over Miami over. Oh, they didn't, they didn't spot it on the radar. No, they never popped up on the radar while it was in the electronic fog. Somebody reported a plane flying over Miami over, over. So, uh, he said to himself, that's not possible because it takes a good hour, 15 minutes to get to Miami. I've only been up here for 47 minutes at that moment. The clouds on all peels away and the instruments go back to normal and he looks down

and he sees Miami Beach Dwayne Wade on the beach of Miami at South Beach. Yep. Playing basketball. So, uh, Gernon said that, um, this happened to him not just once, but another time with his wife and, um, he wrote a book on it the fog and never before published theory of the Bermuda Triangle phenomenon. He basically says that there is some sort of, um, the, the force of gravity is weaker there. And so, electromagnetism is allowed to escape more easily from the Earth's core. And when it does, you've got an electromagnetic storm that dissipates very quickly, but leaves this electronic fog that can just screw you up, send you off course, uh, make you lose time. And then the next thing you know, you're a hundred miles off course with your compasses showing

that you're dead. Well, he claims that it's a time travel tunnel. So, that's what he says. And he had another dude that said, Hey, this same thing happened to me 10 years ago. I went through this time storm and my watch confirmed it. Yeah. So there you have it. I'm sorry. He's saying that the magnetism is weaker in that area. Oh, is that, is that what he's saying? Yeah. Okay. Um, so that's the electric, electronic fog. I think he had a band called Bruce Gernon and the electronic fog. Yeah. They played at that same psychic seminar that Ray Brown debuted his pyramid crystal. That's a hopping party. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going

to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute a 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid.

Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. 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. So Chuck, there's also basically they're saying, okay, all right, okay, okay, okay. So no aliens, no Atlantis. Okay, let's get scientific. Sure. How about that the Bermuda Triangle is the only place where the compass, the magnetic north, true north, and geographic north

line up one of two places, right? Yes. The other one get this is named the Devil's Sea. It's off the coast of Japan. But that doesn't necessarily hold water either. But they're saying, okay, so how about this? And that makes compasses go crazy, makes a malfunction. And therefore, even a seasoned pilot could be let off course to die. So here's the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle laid bare scientifically. So what's magnetic declination? Go ahead and explain that. So magnetic declination is the distance. So you have your geographic north pole, which is constant, constantly located in the same place. We're saying about right, about 1200 miles north of the magnetic north pole. Yes. Okay, magnetic declination is the difference in compass degrees

between the two north poles. Yes. Norths. Yes. And you have to compensate for it when you're charting a course. Yeah, it moves as you travel. Well, yes. And it's not it's not constant. Like it's not always separated by the same number of degrees depending on where you are. Right. There's a line supposedly it's an imaginary line where true north and magnetic north are in perfect alignment. Well, it's not supposed. Okay, I'm sorry. The agonic line is real, but it's an imaginary line. Yes. Right. So Sir Edmund Haley, the guy who discovered Haley's comment said, you know what this agonic line? Yeah, this agonic line is it moves. It's moving westward at about 0.2 degrees per year. Right. At one point, yes, the agonic line was in the

Bermuda Triangle, but it hasn't been that way for a while. It's now about in the Gulf of Mexico. Do you know when it was? I don't. But if it's moving 0.2 degrees per year, yeah, it probably wouldn't account for all of the stuff that's gone on the Bermuda Triangle if a lot of stuff has gone on the Bermuda Triangle. Right. And the other I don't want to say debunk, but the other thing to consider is that they're they're assuming that these pilots aren't accounting for the magnetic declination, which if you're an experienced pilot, then you're accounting for that to get your proper course. Exactly. Like these aren't spring chickens who are sailing through the Bermuda Triangle. No. Not all of them at least. We talked about blue holes already.

Yeah. Aka wormholes through other dimensions in parts of the universe. Now, Chuck, let's go on to the scientific or plausible theories. I like these more. Okay. Okay. Weather patterns. It is a very turbulent area. You can have violent unexpected storms that pop up seemingly out of nowhere and that dissipate really, really quick as quick as they came that are undetected by satellites. So they can't point and say, well, there was a big storm there. You know, they'll just pop up, leave. You can have a water spout, which is a tornado over the ocean. They're really cool looking, but it can whip water up to about 1000 feet into the air. Sure. And if you're a small plane or even a large plane, you could get taken out by one of those.

Or if you're a boat or a ship parked over a water spout or traveling over a water spout, you're gone. You're gone. So that's one plausible explanation, which is just bad weather. Yeah. Underwater earthquakes. Apparently, there is a lot of seismic activity in the Bermuda Triangle and that can cause what are called freak waves, which that's just sad for those waves, but they can get up to 100 feet high. And if you are a little boat, even if you're a big boat, a 100 foot wave is you're gone. Yeah. And one of the reasons you're gone, Chuck, is because of the underwater topography. Yeah. In the Bermuda Triangle, there's a gentle slope away from the North American continent. Yes. And then it drops off. And some of the deepest trenches on planet Earth are in that

area. Right. So if you're a planar boat and a water spout sinks you, takes you out of the air, or a freak wave gets you. Yeah. And you sink off of that shelf, the continental shelf, into the trench, you're never, ever, ever going to be found, except for maybe a civilization a couple thousand years into the future. Maybe 500. It sounds way more exciting on a TV show to say something like, and it was never spotted again. Especially if Robert Stack is saying it. But it's not as exciting to say it was never spotted again because it sank so deep, we cannot get down there to see it. And isn't that weird in itself? It is not weird. It is weird. That's pretty creepy. That creeps me out more than the idea of like a wormhole. Oh, like how

what's down there in the deep? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or like just the thought of a plane that's not, that's supposed to be up in the air is down there. That part of the ocean is home to three water currents, the jet stream, the Easterlies and the Gulf Stream. And the Gulf Stream moves really fast, which is why Dexter dumps his bodies in it. Yeah. Because it's going to get washed out to sea at about five miles an hour, which doesn't sound like much. Trust us that it's fast for a current. That's fast when you're moving in the water. And if you are an inexperienced sailor, and apparently this area has a lot more inexperienced pilots and sailors because it's, I guess, the vacation hot touristy. Yeah. It's going to throw you off course, hundreds of miles,

if you're not compensating for it correctly. And if they're not looking in the right place, you're 100 miles over there, you might as well be on another planet, especially if you don't know where you are. Because if you're 100 miles off course, you don't realize you're 100 miles off course, you're gone. What about this methane gas, sort of like the exploding lake? I think this is my, this is my favorite explanation. So there is a, there are significant deposits of things called methane hydrates, which is basically super dense methane gas in the form of ice crystals. Yeah. On the sea floor. And when these crystals, which keep the gas in place, rupture, a huge gas bubble can make its way to the surface without any warning whatsoever,

in just a few seconds. And in the area of this gas bubble, though the gas mixes with the water, making the water significantly less dense, making a ship that happens to be in this area sunk, like immediately. Yeah. It also kicks up a bunch of sediment. So conceivably, a ship that is pulled down, sucked down to the bottom of the ocean. And then it's covered with sediment, is by all intents and purposes, missing forever. Right? Yeah. It makes sense. I like the, the methane gas one. Also, if you're a plane, conceivably, this gas explosion, this rupture, yeah, would be flammable. Sure. And if you have electrical equipment, you could conceivably catch fire. Who knows? I like it more for a ship, because it makes sense, like just the water

basically bottoming out beneath the ship. Maybe. But that's basically the same concept as the death ray crystal, except like we've seen these things. Right. And they're there. That's true. I read this, this one guy's article this morning, and he talked about a guy named Larry Cush, or Cush. And this guy, he was at the 1975 Conference at Phoenix too. He wasn't. Was he? I don't think so. If he was there, he was throwing tomatoes at him. Okay. Because he's one of these guys that's like, you know what, I'm going to really investigate everyone who's investigating. And he researched dozens and dozens of articles and books and TV shows. And he said, you know what, not many of these people did any real investigation. They're

all telling the same stories over and over and over to sell papers or advertising on TV. And he says, you know what, they're just passing on speculation as its truth. And what we've got here is communal reinforcement over the years of people that really got into this whole thing. And that's really all it is. It's boats sink, planes crash. Sometimes they don't get found. End of story. That's what he says. And here end if your childhood. Pirates too, they say. Yeah, modern day pirates or could be missing ships. Especially before the DEA shut down the Caribbean for smuggling. And basically threw Mexico into a pit of living hell.

So some plausible, some far-fetched. There's the Bermuda Triangle. I think this is a good lesson. And it's like what we do when we're doing research, if you've come across the same story, and it's told in almost the exact same way, using the same wording across site after site after site, just like you said, communally reinforced. And it's not necessarily true. But if you, while away your hours and spend watching the Bermuda Triangle, getting into it, and it tickles your fancy, more power to you. Yeah, I'm not going to poo poo it. It's fun. He's just spent like 40 minutes poo pooing. And now I just, I believe it's just boats sinking and planes crashing.

Well, it also, you know, raises the question, is there even a significant amount of loss compared to other places? Doesn't seem like it. Well, anyway, that's the Bermuda Triangle. If you want to learn more about it, you can read the article on the site called Bermuda Triangle. Just type that into the search bar at HouseToWorks.com and it will bring it up. And I said, search bar, so it's time for listener mail. That's right, Josh. I'm going to call this, uh, Nass, Thomas Nass email. Oh, okay. From Nass himself?

No, no. He's not live anymore. Uh, this is from Evan B. And Evan says, I was just listening to the podcast on political animals. It was the one on the Republican elephant and Democrat donkey. I have an interesting story involving Thomas Nass. I have an elderly neighbor. About a year ago, my mom started working for him as an aide. He was going through his, I'm sorry, he's going through financial troubles, mentioned selling a painting he had bought years ago when he lived in Pittsburgh. It was a painting of the head of Christ. And it turns out it was a Thomas Nass original. This is very interesting to learn because Nass is known for his political works and not

necessarily religious ones. My mom took the painting to be a praise and it was valued at about $200,000. Holy cow. It turned out to be somewhat of a generous estimate, but the painting was still very valuable nonetheless. Uh, the painting was placed in Skinner's auction house, set to auction in the fall, but did not sell unfortunately. However, it is going to be backed up for auction again at the next, uh, Skinner's auction. And I'm happy that I finally have a relevant story to email you guys about. I love it when people say that. Like I've always wanted to email in, but I've never had anything to say until now.

But, but usually when they say that, it's something significant. You can email in to say hi. That's fine. Yeah, but you're not going to get read on the year unless it's significant. Oh, is that what it's all about? That's what I said. That has nothing to do with telling it's high, huh? So that's Evan B and his mom. That's a great story.

Yeah. I love ones like that. Like, have you ever heard the one about the lady who found like $150,000 in cash and like a fire extinguisher? That never happened to me. Yeah. That's cool. I love this. Yeah. Well, that is it for Unsolved Mysteries. We appreciate you joining us. And if you want to get in touch with us, if you want to tell us hi, you can just tell us hi.

It's fine. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. Or you can send us a plain old fashioned email to stuffpodcastathowstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our home page. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?

The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1967, Joseph Stalin's only daughter flees Russia for her new home, America.

Hello to everybody. I am very happy to be here. That story alone is worthy of a podcast, but Svetlana Svetlana is about what comes next. And it's the craziest story I've ever heard. It has KGB agents, a Frank Lloyd Wright commune, weird sex stuff, three Olgas, two Svetlanas, and one neurotic gay playwright. That's me. Listen to Svetlana Svetlana, January 30th on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.