Podcast Episode 19 – Mysteries Abound! (Annotated)

Hi, I’m Craig The Intern, and they make me transcribe these every week. Everything’s going great so far! It’s no mystery why, because this place is awesome. But there are lots of other mysteries in the world…

The Lowdown:
Mack is drinking champagne with ice to kick off a show all about mysteries. As usual, no preparation or research was done, because why? I guess maybe I was supposed to do that for them. Oops.

First up: Amelia Earhart. “The female Lindbergh…without the baby.” Matt thinks maybe she wasn’t that great a pilot and just crashed her plane. Mack says maybe she got shot down by the Japanese in practice war maneuvers. They’re going to rate every mystery: on a scale of 1-10, how badly do we want it solved? Mack gives Earhart a 2, figuring there was probably a plane involved.

Next, the Bermuda Triangle. Mack knows it connects Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and Miami, and that a bunch of planes and boats disappeared there. Compasses also get thrown off, but Matt agrees that magnetic fields are a fact and probably natural. It gets a 4.

Anastasia Romanov inspired a cartoon, but how legit is the conspiracy? The guys get sidetracked discussing talking animal sidekicks in cartoons, but eventually conclude that the last Russian Duchess was probably murdered with the rest of her family, which makes her a really weird subject for a kid-friendly animated feature. It’s also more of a political coup than a mystery.

What is the story of Harold Holt? Matt saw a documentary about this once: an Australian Prime Minister who went swimming one day and never came back. Did he drown? Was he killed by the CIA? Did he fake his own death? Or did a submarine take him to China? It ranks around 7 or 8, even though Australia is full of killer things. Meanwhile, in British Columbia, severed feet keep washing up on the beach. If there’s ever a comic book about that story, Rob Liefeld has to be part of it. This one gets the full 10 out of 10.

Mack says everyone needs to Google the Dyatlov Pass. A group of hikers set out to climb a mountain, and were later found buried, having switched clothes, in some cases become literally radioactive, and one having had a tongue ripped out. It reminds Matt of a French mass-poisoning at Point Saint-Espris in 1951, which may have been a CIA LSD experiment, or ergot poisoning from bad bread. But the Russian thing is theorized to possibly be a weird sex game.

Jack the Ripper – who could it have been? Not Mack. He’s too young. But Jack had some surgical training, either as a doctor or a butcher. Since many butchers were Jewish, was anti-semitism involved? Was it a visiting American artist named Walter Sickert? One of Queen Victoria’s syphilis-crazed sons? Did the crown have all the women murdered so they couldn’t tell, or is that too much like a modern-day Dark Web theory? Nobody has conclusive proof, which makes him a very good serial killer. Matt’s just praying he wasn’t Jewish.

D.B. Cooper – random dude who got an a plane, said he had a bomb in his briefcase and gave instructions where to land. They landed, he received money, they took off again, and he parachuted out with the money, never to be seen again. Some of his money apparently made it into circulation again, but not much of it. Mack and Matt hope that he lived somehow.

They talk a little bit about mysterious objects that are kept so secret only a select few are allowed to see, and how that’s like having cool apps and not telling anyone else where you got them. But more like hidden chambers in pyramids and in Japanese ruins and such. Matt wants to be Indiana Jones or Lara Croft. And then it’s time to talk about the lost colony of Roanoake, and why Native Americans are better than Vikings, who jumped the shark when they turned Christian.

There’s a lightning round about crop circles, Stonehenge, the pyramids, and other mysterious ancient works of…art? Alien signals? Maybe the ancients were just bored. Talk turns to the Black Dahlia murder: an aspiring actress cut in half and mutilated, in what was called a “sex-fiend slaying.” Shout-out to Josh Hartnett for making a movie about it. And finally, there’s “the bloop” – a sound recorded underwater in Antarctica. It’s probably the sound of icebergs breaking, though. Unless it’s a sea monster.

The Highlights:

2:34-3:19 Adventures in scary AirBnBs.

7:59-9:19 About the Gilligan’s Island theme song variants, and the people they neglect to name or give a title to.

26:05-26:49 The guys imagine a comical backstory behind the severed fete which keep washing up on a Canadian beach.

43:59-45:12 Matt plans to heist the Ark of the Covenant, and some Japanese treasures after that.

47:28-48:11 Matt and Mack ask Stew’s permission to become tomb raiders.

The Links:

-Harold Holt, who is widely presumed to have drowned, is commemorated in Australia with a swimming center named after him.

-Anastasia Romanov – cute Don Bluth character versus the reality of probable murder:

-Here’s Snopes’ take on the Dyatlov Pass incident, which also ropes in UFOs and Yetis.

-Check out some of the art of Walter Sickert, the maybe-Jack-the-Ripper artist.

-Let William Shatner tell you the complete story of “The Bloop”:

Contact The Guys!

Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @bunnyearspod
Instagram: @bunnyearspodcast
Telephone: 845-EZE-HOAX

Mack
Twitter @IncredibleCulk
Instagram: Culkamania

Stew
Twitter: @SuaveAdventurer
Instagram: @SuaveAdventurer

Matt Cohen
Twitter: @Cameltoad
Instagram: @Cameltoad

Image: Lionsgate