Citation Needed - Amelia Earhart

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

Amelia Mary Earhart (/ˈɛərhɑːrt/ AIR-hart; born July 24, 1897; declared dead January 5, 1939) was an American aviation pioneer. On July 2, 1937, Earhart disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world. During her life, she embraced celebrity culture and women's rights, and since her disappearance has become a cultural icon.[2] Earhart was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean and she set many other records.[3] She was one of the first aviators to promote commercial air travel, wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences, and was instrumental in the formation of The Ninety-Nines, an organization for female pilots.[4]

Hello and welcome. Citation needed. Podcasts where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts. Because this is the internet, and that's how it works now. I'm Heath, and I'll be piloting this journey into aviation herstory. But I'm not flying solo. I'm joined by... We're dudes.

Tom, so you still know any of that. Shotgun. No fair. You got shotgun on the last episode. I keep telling you guys sitting this way is bad for the microphones. You guys are using microphones? Pfft. All right.

Tom, you'll figure it out in a second. So why don't you also tell us what person, place, thing, concept, phenomenon or event we're going to be talking about today. We're talking about Amelia Earhart. My great grandma's love. So where and when was Amelia Earhart? Well, in Atchison, Kansas in 1897, six years before the Wright brothers first flight, Amelia

Earhart, the most famous female aviator of all time, was born. I feel like that's Wonder Woman, but okay, second most famous. Thank you. Stolen Valor, second most famous. Thank you. Stolen valor, Tom. Wow. Wow. Most of the prior knowledge I had about Eir Harp before researching for this story related to her disappearance, and we will certainly discuss that, but her disappearance is only

really noteworthy because Amelia herself was so incredibly influential and groundbreaking. And one of those people who seem to have lived more of life than seems possible for any one person, much less for someone whose life ended so young. Amelia Earhart, life vampire. Interesting angle, very edgy, Tom. I like it. I mean, to be fair, his last essay was a king murdering exotic dancer.

I think he might have a tie to what I'm saying. Now, you should skip over the biographical details of the parents of my subjects, but the wiki here is really gossipy and judgy. And I feel like I have to include at least some of that tea here. So Amelia Earhart was born to Amy Otis and Edwin Earhart, and Grandpa Otis was none too happy about it.

Amy's father, a former federal judge and president of a local bank and overall big fish in the small pond of Atchison, Kansas, thought his daughter could and should do much better than Edwin. And to be fair, it would turn out that he was right, but Grandpa Otis's initial disapproval stemmed from Edwin not being a successful enough lawyer. And so Grandpa tried to dissuade Amy from the match. Thankfully for aviation history, he was not successful. I'm telling you, pop, there's a pilot in them balls. Amy Earhart had a sister, Grace Muriel Earhart, who was born in 1899 and survived until 1998, which just seems like an absolutely preposterous 100 years of history for anyone to personally have witnessed.

The Earhart sisters were not raised to be good little girls and Amelia frequently suffered scrutiny in the neighborhood for her choice of wearing bloomers. With her sister in tow, Amelia spent her early childhood like most of us did, climbing trees, collecting worms and other childhood, like most of us did, climbing trees, collecting worms and other bugs, some light sledding in the winter, and of course, hunting rats with a rifle. Oh, can you just confirm we're talking about the animal here?

It's just that that timeframe can have a lot of interpretations of that word, and I don't want to get canceled. Okay. Or tell us she was purging scabs at the union. As a little girl. I enjoy that too. Stop trying to build up gamgams lover. Okay.

We get it. She was a woman of fine tastes. She was a union lady. Amelia's fearlessness was first noted in 1904 when with the help of her uncle, Earhart built a homemade ramp modeled after a roller coaster and attached it to the roof of the tool shed. Earhart's first flight off the roof of the tool shed ended with a smashed wooden box that was being used as a sled, a bruised lip, a torn dress, and a quote,

sensation of exhilaration with Earhart exclaiming that quote, it's just like flying. Okay. So now I get why seven year old Amelia wanted to do that. I it's the uncle I have follow up questions for. I mean, while in 1907, Amelia's dad got transferred to Des Moines and the family followed, albeit briefly, and it was there at the Iowa state fair that Amelia saw her first airplane, that plane, a relatively early and crude biplane, did absolutely

nothing to impress Amelia. Edwin, her father, tried to convince his daughters to take a flight as they were on offer for a small fee, but Amelia declared the plane, quote, a thing of rusty wire and wood and not at all interesting, end quote, and instead asked to go back to the merry-go-round. It was definitely not love at first sight. This sucks, I wanna go play Box and Ramp. That thing looks horrible.

It is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now a bunch of stuff happens next in Amelia's life, and most of it doesn't matter that much to the story, but we're gonna hit some highlights. Amelia to this point was being homeschooled

until about the age of 12 when she was enrolled for the first time in a public school, but things quickly began to fall apart in the Earhart family. Edwin became an alcoholic, lost his job, and Amelia's maternal grandparents died. Fearing that Edwin would blow all the estate money, the bulk of the sizable estate was placed in a trust,

and the family home was auctioned off. The estimated trajectory of this guy's bender sounded fucking epic, man. Let me tell you. Yeah, so I know it's like if you built a sled ramp off the tool shed, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. After some time, the Earhart's moved to Minnesota, but that didn't last too long before Edwin was again forced to look for a different job. The family once more relocated, this time to Chicago, where the family was forced to live with some friends. For her part, Amelia began to zero in on her interests, and she insisted on attending a high school with a solid science program, refusing to attend the closest school after

observing that the chemistry lab looked, quote, like, an ordinary kitchen sink. Eventually enrolling at Hyde Park High School, though the school itself was excellent, Amelia did not fit in, and the yearbook very sensitively captured this by describing her under her photo as quote, A.E. The girl in brown who walks alone, end quote. Despite all the tumult, Amelia dreamed always of pursuing a career, and not just a career, but a career as a woman in a male-dominated field. And remember, this was the 19-teens, so when I say male-dominated, what I really mean is

no girls allowed. But Amelia's aspirations skewed toward pretty much anything her vagina meant she was not going to be qualified to do. Film director, lawyer, advertising, mechanical engineering. What she did wasn't so important to her dreams as her not being allowed to do it. Yeah, including my great grandma. Although, no vagina, actually. I'm going into that.

All right, Heath, that's four with the Patreon shenanigans. If you don't stop, I'm going to report you to Cannes on her behalf. Hahahaha! In 1917, Amelia went to Toronto to visit her sister and to train as a nurse's aid. Wounded soldiers were pouring in from World War I and Amelia wanted to help. She trained with the Red Cross for a time and then began work passing out medicines

and preparing foods, but most importantly, she began to talk to the wounded pilots. This is when, for real, this is when my great grandma met Amelia Earhart. Really? Right when this was happening. Yeah. It was from these conversations that Earhart's interest in flying and evidently he's great grandmother, took wing. Yeah.

Now I'd love to tell you, she now began flying planes around, but remember it was the end of World War I, which also meant that it was the start of the Spanish flu pandemic, which Amelia pretty quickly caught. In November of 1918, she was hospitalized with pneumonia and maxillary sinusitis, which kept

her laid up for two months while she struggled to recover. The damage from the sinus infection necessitated surgery to try to clear up the infection and reduce her pain, but it was 1918, and pretty much all of medicine involved trying stuff with your fingers crossed so it didn't do much but it hurt like hell. And all told she'd be laid up for over a year convalescing from the flu. So get your flu shots, kids. A few years later, Amelia and a friend went to an air circus, and Earhart's interest in flying blossomed into an obsession. Tom, if you're not about to describe an elephant that flies a plane, you are in such big trouble

with me. Just know that. Now at this air circus, a former flying ace, no word on whether he was an elephant or not, was putting on an exhibition and he spotted Amelia and her friend in an isolated clearing beneath the exhibition space and he dived at them. Quote, I am sure he said to himself, watch me make them scamper, end quote. Instead, Amelia just stood and watched the airplane as it dived and careened perilously close to her, quote, I did not understand it at the time, but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it switched by. Okay.

I don't know this for sure, but he was probably fucking great grandma in that isolated clearing exactly in the middle. That's it Heath. Nothing from the prize box this week for you. Whatever, I don't care. I already got the cool eraser. Good to go. She took her first flight when her father purchased for her a passenger flight with

famed air racer Frank Hawks. Frank Hawks is an awesome name by the way for a pilot. That 10 minute flight cemented Earhart's mission. Quote, by the time I got two or 300 feet off the ground, I knew I had to fly, end quote. Or fall, I guess, was her other option, two or 300 feet above the ground. And so Amelia took up three separate jobs,

working as a photographer, truck driver, and stenographer, so she could save up the $500 needed to pay for 12 hours of flight instruction. To get herself to the airfield, Amelia rode a bus across town to the airfield, Amelia rode a bus across town to the end of the line, then walked four miles, probably uphill both ways, to the airfield. And I know that 12 hours doesn't seem like much to learn something as complex as aviation, but you have to keep in mind that's 1920. That's the equivalent of 187.4 hours today.

The engine was also essentially a lawnmower at that point. There wasn't that much to learn. So now completely taken by flying, Amelia cut her hair short in the style of the few female aviators she had seen and saved enough to purchase her first plane, a secondhand yellow Kinner Airstir biplane, which she called the Canary, and which I Googled and which looks like a Canary in the sense that it also looks like something a cat could easily knock out of the sky. Guys, seriously, this thing looks like a wooden box with double wooden wings and a propeller quite improbably attached somehow to the blunt ugly nose of a very graceless machine. Wow, dude, judging a woman's plane based on its appearance Tom, really?

Now Amelia promptly took the plane up to an altitude of 14,000 feet, thus setting a world altitude record for female pilots. This was a full eight months before earning her pilot's license, which she did as only one of 16 licensed women pilots at the time. Still, things would not go smoothly for Amelia. Her mother lost all the money in the family trust after a bad investment, and so Amelia had to sell her beloved canary. She also began to again suffer from her sinus injury, was again hospitalized, and suffered another unsuccessful operation. And while she was recovering from that painful failed surgery,

her parents finally divorced. Amelia took the money from the sale of her airplane and bought a small two-seater car took her mother on a transcontinental road trip leaving from California when they reached Boston they must have heard about a really good nose guy because she stopped the road trip to have yet another nose operation which worked much better than the others but that is not saying too much. Okay, I know a person's accent shouldn't matter, but if I'm about to have any surgery and fucking Marky Mark is like fucking scalpel, no, absolutely not. She tried then to go back to school, enrolling in college at Columbia University with the intention of going on to MIT, but

then she remembered that they had no money and Amelia was forced to drop out. Amelia bounced around in jobs for a while taking turns as a teacher and as a social worker, but she always retained her interest in flying. Cobbling together what little money she had, she continued to fly, even becoming the vice president of the American Aeronautical Association's Boston chapter and becoming a sales rep for Kinner Aircraft. I get it. All the teachers I know want to be high all the time too. Well, maybe 18,000 feet in the air is the only place where guys didn't tell her to smile

more. Amelia's passion for flight eventually created a kind of local celebrity for her in the Boston area. She wrote newspaper columns promoting flying and soon Amelia Earhart had become rather well known within the aviation world. At the same time, Charles Lindbergh garnered international fame for his solo transatlantic flight and there began a rather peculiar buzz about whether it would be possible for a woman to make the same journey.

Yeah. And a bunch of people were like, all right, now we've got to make up a new word for lady flyer. Come on. This is ridiculous. They landed on aviatrix, which kind of sounds cool to me, but it does not bode well for the ongoing misogyny. That's going to keep happening. I'm assuming, but we'll see how, into my office, ladies.

Thank you, doctor. Yes, thank you. No problem at all. Now what seems to be the problem, Mrs. Earhart? Well, Doctor, she's got this dang fool idea in her head about being a pilot. There's nothing foolish about it, Mother. I want to fly.

Please, Doctor, you must speak to her. I understand, Mrs. Earhart. This can be very disturbing. Amelia, you know an aeroplane goes very, very fast. Indeed I do, Doctor. Well, have you considered that all that air moving at that speed might, um, inflate you down there? Sorry, what? Oh, Lord.

Yes, I'm afraid nobody knows how flexible the so-called Labia majora might be Amelia. They might get caught in an updraft You could find yourself gently floating to the ground like a parachute Ranger Doctor I have a vagina. That's not how they work Nobody knows Amelia. What's important is we must be careful. You hear that, Amelia? Careful. Okay, well this is ridiculous. You obviously know nothing about vaginas. Hello, everybody. I'm Heath's great grandma, if you're curious. And I know a lot, if you're interested about this. It's my grandma. Get out of the sketch. You get out of the sketch.

Damn it, Heath. Get out of my office. You're all gonna start cycling together. My blade erasure. Okay. And we're back. When we left off the aviation science world was trying to decide if the short hair would make up for the uterine drag or some bullshit like that. What's next?

All right, so remember it is still the 1920s. So when I asked if a woman can make the journey, the conversation was not about whether a woman could pilot an aircraft across the Atlantic, but was about whether it was even possible to physically transport a real-life actual honest-to-God no-foolin'-woman across the ocean in an airplane. Who knows what would happen if somewhere over the vast expanse of the unforgiving sea, Poseidon discovered an airplane

puttering its way through the sky with one penis less than all the penises. So you can understand their concern. Well, although what women listening might not understand is that if you float your penis in some water, it points north. So now you understand their concerns. Okay. Look, guys, I'm all for jumping on the misogyny of the times on our podcast, but like, she does die. I'm just saying this isn't a win for us.

We're calling our shot pretty hard. And we know it doesn't die yet. All right. In 1928, one man was brave enough to consider taking a woman across the ocean. He called Amelia asking her, would you like to fly the Atlantic? She agreed and signed on for the adventure. There would be a dude pilot and of course a dude co-pilot slash mechanic. And then there would be Amelia who was allowed to hold the map.

I am not even kidding here. The central question again was not about whether a woman could fly the Atlantic, but whether it was even possible to fly a woman across the goddamn thing. Guys, she's going to hold the map the whole time. I don't know, did she even graduate from MIT? I don't think she did. But, so the only possible legitimate concern is that the presence of a woman

could make men do risk taking dumb bullshit to impress her, which, legitimate though it might be, is an argument against letting men fly across the ocean. Right? Well, it was possible because physics continues though it might be, is an argument against letting men fly across the ocean. Well, it was possible because physics continues to operate pretty much right on target, regardless of the general disposition of those affected. And in June of 1928, after flying for 20 hours and 40 minutes, the team touched down in South Wales. When interviewed after landing, Amelia said, quote, Stultz did all the flying.

Had to. I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes. Maybe someday I'll try it alone. It's like going to your friend's house to watch him play a single player Nintendo game all day. God, how boring. I mean, in the pilot's defense, what were they going to do, Emilia? Stop at a red light and do a seat swap?

Not so fun fact for our younger listeners. The slang for a seat swap when we were growing up was Chinese fire drill. And so when I went to write that joke, I was like, okay, I need a different word. So I found that word seat swap. And then I looked up its origins and it's actually worse than you'd imagine. According to mental floss in the early 20th century, militaries just called things that went badly Chinese. Oh god. Bad pilots were called Chinese aces and crashes were called Chinese landings. Just in case you need a reminder of how far we've come, everybody.

Wow. Now sure, she was a sack of potatoes, but she was a girl sack of potatoes. So everyone kind of went apeshit about the whole thing. When the trio returned to the United States they were greeted with a ticker tape parade down the Canyon of Heroes in Manhattan and President Coolidge invited them to a reception at the White House. All because everyone was so fucking amazed the plane didn't crash from like estrogen overload or some shit. There's a flaps joke somewhere in there that I'm not gonna make.

estrogen overload or some shit. There's a flaps joke somewhere in there that I'm not going to make. Now Amelia Earhart was now a legit celebrity. She bore a passing resemblance to Lindbergh and the media is not terribly clever so she was thus dubbed Lady Lindy in the States and Queen of the Air across the pond. Earhart took advantage of the newfound celebrity and began an exhaustive lecture tour and a book deal. She had endorsements with lucky strike cigarettes. She also got a shoe deal for real, along with other women's clothing and sportswear.

And Amelia was really good at all the promotion and endorsing. And she had now pretty much solved all of her financial problems. Okay. No shade for getting paid. That's what I always say, but the sportswear, the women's clothing thing, it was wrinkle free dresses for, you know, lady pyres. Sorry. I'm sorry. She wrote a book about fucking holding the map. I mean, without a penis. She held it without a penis.

Right. There. She took up a position as an associate editor for Cosmopolitan magazine and true to her character, wrote mostly just a bunch of stuff about how flying is awesome and even women folk can be transported to and fro through the sky so long as they aren't on their periods or whatever. In 1929, Transcontinental Air, later TWA, hired her to help promote air travel for women and she helped them set up a shuttle service between New York and DC. Yeah, so what you're gonna want to do is fly a plane from here to there. I'm done. I helped.

She helped them set up a shuttle service. But Amelia didn't want to just be an ambassador for the air. She wanted to be in that air. So she set about breaking records, becoming the first woman to make the solo flight across the North American continent and back. And she was widely regarded by all who flew with her as having tremendous skill in professionalism. With General Lee Wade remarking, quote, she was a born flyer with a delicate touch on the stick.

Yeah, delicate, but mostly out of disinterest. That's right. In 1929, she mostly out of disinterest. In 1929, she was fucking my great grandma. In 1921, she preferred a vagina. In 1929, lesbian. In 1929, Earhart began competitive air racing. Her first race from Santa Monica to Cleveland, she was flying in fourth position when her friend had an accident after hitting a tractor on the runway at the fuel stop, allowing Erhard to finish in third place. And then she did this, which is so full of

great old timey words that I'm just going to crib it straight from Wikipedia. Quote, on April 8th, 1931, she set a world altitude record of 18,415 feet flying up pit Karen PCA to auto gyro Borrowed from beach not chewing gum. Oh man. I love their jingle beach nut chewing gum It's just beach nuts cuz we don't have come. Yeah If airplane races and old-timey airplanes sound spectacularly dangerous to you, I want to remind everyone that three years after this, a Parisian department store owner would start a contest to see if a pilot could land a plane on the roof of his store. He's a real thing that happened.

Yeah, somebody did. Now in 1932, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to cross the Atlantic not as vaginal ballast, but as an actual pilot She set off on May the 20th from Newfoundland with a copy of a newspaper to confirm the flight date for photos and Intending to fly to Paris She did bring a penis along in the form of aviator burnt Balkan as her co-pilot and after 14 hours and 56 minutes Enduring icy conditions, brutal winds, and mechanical problems, the pair touched down, though they missed Paris by a jot. They landed instead in Derry, Northern Ireland, in front of a pair of farmers, and when one of them approached

after landing, he asked, have you flown far? From? Replied Earhart. Amelia won the Distinguished Flying Cross from Congress, the Cross of the Knight of the Legion of Honor from the French, and the Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society from President Hoover for the feat. She later became friends with Eleanor Roosevelt and even flew the First Lady around a bit, impressing her so much that Eleanor got her student's permit, but did not ultimately pursue aviation herself. But she did pursue lesbianism, so it wasn't a wasted lesson, is what we're saying. My great grandma had a grudge with them. For fuck's sake, really?

They leg wrestled for Amelia. Yeah, that's the whole thing. For the last time, that's not what that is, Cecil. Earhart then went to set records without the qualifier female in front of them. She was the first person to solo from Hawaii to California, a flight that had been attempted several times, but always unsuccessfully until Earhart. She also flew solo that same year from Mexico City to New York, a flight whose only real difficulty came in not taxiing into the throngs of onlookers that rushed to

greet her plane when it put down. Well, I want to be closest to the spinning metal blades at the front. What Earhart really wanted next was to attempt something truly daring, to circumnavigate the globe. But to do this this she was going to need a different plane. Her trusty Lockheed Vega would not be sufficient to the task since her intention was not just to circumnavigate the globe, but to do so as close to the equator as possible, putting

her at attempt at a staggering 29,000 miles point to point. The attempt required a purpose-built machine, this being a Lockheed Electra 10E, kitted out to Amelia's own specifications, which was mostly just a shit ton of extra fuel tanks since the earth is pretty fucking enormous. Now the plan was for the flight to be a two person crew, with Earhart doing the flying and Captain Harry Manning as the navigator. Manning was a pilot and a skilled radio operator who also knew Morse code. What he didn't seem to know all that well was, well, navigation. On a test flight,

Manning flew to the wrong state. That sounds bad, but they were traveling close to the state line, but still this did not inspire great confidence. On another test flight, this time at night, Manning missed the mark he was aiming for by 20 miles. The margin of error that was acceptable to time was 30 miles, but still, this was not looking good. Hey, what the fuck, Harry? It's like I'm flying with a woman over here. Growing ovary.

So Fred Noonan was hired as the second navigator. Noonan was an experienced Marine and flight navigator, which meant he was experienced using the stars to navigate. A skill which could be essential crossing, you know, the entire fucking Earth and flying all day and night. Noonan would be responsible for getting them from Hawaii to Howland Island, which was the hardest navigational portion of their journey. Manning would then spell Noonan from Howland to Australia and Earhart would finish the project on her own. At least that was the original plan.

Manning wouldn't stay off Noonan's side and they got into a slap fight. That's what it sounds like. Turns out the 20 miles off course for most of Hawaii is the ocean. That's pretty close on. In March of 1937, Amelia and company set off for the attempt, but they crashed on takeoff. The forward landing gear collapsed and sent the plane skidding along on its belly. The cause of that crash is not known, but the plane got all fucked up and had to be shipped home to California for repairs. Licking their wounds, the decision was made to change the route for the next attempt.

Okay. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to make a left around that giant pothole in the runway. Then, um, then they changed the plan. This time the plan was to go from Oakland to Miami and then to go basically the same route as the first, but in reverse. They believed that weather conditions would make this a more favorable direction, but now they had a new problem.

Manning, the only one of the three who was really truly skilled in using radio, bailed on the project. They set off nonetheless. Great, now we're gonna miss Gobbit and Crunch in the mornings on 104X, fuck! Fuck! That's us.

That's what we do. The pair made it from Oakland to Miami, and then from Miami to various stops in South America, Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and ultimately to New Guinea. From New Guinea, it would be the last stop with 7,000 miles of ocean between them and the finish line. It's the toughest because the other person always spies the endless bottomless ocean.

Right. Yeah. You're not bullying me by saying Azur instead of blue, Fred. Okay? I get it. There would be no crossing the finish line for the pair. However, this journey was well-supported and the pair were not entirely on their own.

The US Coast Guard had sent a cutter out to the area to aid them in using radio directional navigation and to communicate with them on route. But remember that they didn't have their most experienced radio guy. Now, when I'm talking here about radio, I want you to understand that this was not just to chat. The radio was used as a means of homing in on a location. The US Coast Guard cutter, if in communication with the plane, could send and receive signals

that both the plane and the ship could use to determine each other's locations. But that whole system was very complicated. And if anything went wrong, either side could go blind in a moment. Okay, like I get the logistics are tricky, but just using the radio was difficult. Like you had to be an expert.

I don't understand. Was it like bop it on hard mode? What was the radio? It's just buttons and dials, right? Well, maybe it was like bop it on hard mode because something did in fact go wrong. The ship was able to receive signals from Earhart, but Earhart was not getting signals in return. Helplessly radio operators listened as Earhart broadcast her position over and over estimating her distance to destination. First 200 miles

away, then 100. Earhart begins to whistle into the radio to produce a continuous signal in the hope that the cutter would be able to lock in on their location with a constant signal. And then she was like, Hey Fred, you got to take over the whistle because I can't keep doing it. And he was like, Ooh, I don't know. I feel like you pick a sound with more gravitas personally, right? Do you? You're criticizing?

Yeah, I'm sorry. What sound would you make? Like a, Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Like a... Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhh! Okay. With only 30 minutes of fuel remaining, Earhart calmly indicated that they knew that they were close, but they couldn't locate their destination. They're flying out only a thousand feet up to try to see any place in the endless sea to put down. The last voice transmission indicated that the pair were traveling on a course calculated by Noonan to intersect with Howland Island.

The pair would never be heard from again, probably because her uppity vagina caused them to crash. And here's where we get into the crazy shit. What almost certainly happened to Amelia Earhart was they ran out of fuel somewhere over the Pacific on their way to Howland Island, and they crashed into the ocean and they were swallowed up by it. More like down it. A massive effort to locate the pair was launched but no trace of the plane or its passengers was ever found. And if you had any sense of reason the story would be pretty much over by now but sense and reason have never been the hallmark of this show. So now we need to get into some of the more bizarre alternate theories regarding the disappearance. Oh, we need something more than something flying at a thousand feet ran out of propellant.

We need something more than that. Well, yeah, given the planes of the day, I don't even need it to run out of propellant to be honest. Yeah, hit a bug would bring it down. The international historic air craft recovery group believes that air heart did in fact miss howland island, but that she landed on nearby Gardner Island. Gardner Island is an deserted Island, only a handful of miles long, and it is believed by some that the pair survived, but ultimately perished as castaways. Now,

the trouble with this theory is that there is no fucking evidence of any kind anywhere to suggest that any part of that is true. There's no wreckage, there's no bodies, there's no bones. There's the signs of any kind of human activity that would suggest Earhart or Noonan ever even saw this island. And jet fuel doesn't burn that much. Another theory is that Earhart and Noonan actually landed not on Gardiner Island, but on the Marshall Islands, and that they were subsequently captured by the Japanese.

This theory has at least some tiny shred of credibility because a photo was discovered in the National Archives that shows a woman resembling Earhart sitting on a dock in the Marshall Islands near a guy who looks similar to Noonan. The Japanese, however, vehemently deny this, and if they had captured a celebrity like Amelia, they certainly would have used her for some kind of something rather than just disappearing her and then gaining nothing from all of their efforts. Yeah, maybe she ended up in Japan and lived happily ever after has big I told my kid this story and now they're crying energy.

Now others suggest that Amelia Earhart wasn't just a daring aviator, but that she was actually a spy. As a spy, the Howland Islands thing was just a ruse, and the pair weren't ever headed there at all. Instead, the entire expedition was intended as a way to scope out Japanese military installations. Rather than running out of gas, the pair were presumed to have been shot down. So same result, different cause, still Japanese. Okay.

Just to be clear, according to this theory, we made this extremely publicized flight by a world famous pilot into a secret spy mission. In 1970, Amelia Earhart lives was published, suggesting that Earhart survived the crash, was rescued and held hostage once again by the Japanese, then rescued by US Special Forces, and then, for some reason, secretly assumed a new identity as a woman named Irene Bolam. The trouble being that Irene Bolam is a real person who is not Amelia Earhart as she sued the author of this nonsense. I think that's just classic Amelia.

Quick, kiss Heath's great grandma and tell us you feel nothing. He won me over. That is the test. And finally, I want to offer my favorite excuse for why there are no bodies on the islands Then Amelia Earhart supposedly crashed on and that is giant coconut crabs Now there really are across many Pacific Islands just fucking huge terrifying omnivorous land crabs

Called coconut crabs are called coconut crabs. They're called coconut crabs because they can crack open a coconut with their claws and scoop out the flesh. Awesome. These things are a complete nightmare and they are opportunistically carnivorous. So it actually is sort of kind of technically feasible that these crabs could eat someone who was hurt

and unable to defend themselves or escape. And the crabs ate the airplane? Well, no, they flew it. They carried the airplane and then flew it off. If that is in fact what happened, I can only hope that the crabs dipped them in drawn butter first just to even things up. One crab to the other. You really have to dig the meat out of this helmet, but it's the good stuff, Larry. It's the good stuff. Dude, don't eat the brown stuff, it's poop.

Oh my God. You're eating the poop. All right, if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? That I have already outlived Amelia Earhart by nearly a decade, and also no, I absolutely have not. Fair enough. And are you ready for the quiz?

Absolutely. All right, Tom. Because of you, I googled giant coconut crabs and now I shall never sleep again. So as revenge, what animal am I going to tell you about? A. The hairy frogfish, which looks like if exploding could be an animal the Gareel an alligator that looks specifically designed for biting penises which are super cute as babies but their teeth never stop growing so it gets real faces of math after a while or D the star-nosed mole if

you ever needed proof there isn't a God it is the star-nosed mole I know the star-nosed mole and that is the answer correct all right Tom what was the movie about Amelia Earhart's last flight a A. Remains of the May Day. B. The Incredible Sinking Woman. C. I'll Be Gone in the Dark. Or D. I'll is spelled in S there. Or D. Splash. Oh, god damn it.

Best for last. It's Splash. Correct. Sure. All right. All right. I got one for you Tom. What is the name of the gang of crabs that killed her? A. Death by cancer. B. Devil's crabs.

C. Claws of death. Claws of death. Or D. The Rangoon Squad. The Rangoon Squad is good. The Rangoon Squad is money. That's a good one. It's gotta be the Rangoon Squad. Sorry, it's actually Death by Cancer, which was way funnier than you guys seem to realize. Because cancer is the

symbol it's a crab noah you stumped him you are the one all right well i want a cecil essay next damn it sweet all right well for tom noah cecil and eli i'm heath thank you for hanging out with us today we'll be back next week and cecil will be an expert on something else between now and then you can hear tom and cecil on cognitive disson Dissonance, and you can hear Eli, Noah, and myself on God of Movies, The Skating Atheist, The Skeptocrat, and D&D Minus. And if you'd like to support the fine arts, that's fantastic. You can also make a proposal to me at patreon.com slash citationpod.

That's another thing you could do. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, listen to past episodes, connect with us on social media, or take a look at show notes, check out citationpod.com.