Amelia Earhart Disappearance: What Happened on Her Final Flight?

[00:00:01] Adam Cox: [00:00:00] And so to they eat humans then.

[00:00:02] Kyle Risi: Well, despite obviously their monstrous look and obviously their size.

[00:00:07] Kyle Risi: Coconut crabs primarily eat organic material consisting mainly of plants, and as the name suggests, coconuts. Coconuts,

[00:00:15] Adam Cox: Right... So that's what they want you to believe. Mm. So you're walking around go, oh, it's fine. I'm, I'm fine. There's just some coconuts around and then you turn your back and they eat you.

[00:00:24] Adam Cox: Oh my God. Can you imagine being ambushed by a bunch of crabs?

[00:00:53] Adam Cox: Welcome to the Compendium and Assembly of High Flying Tales, where the truth is often strange than fiction and [00:01:00] plain logic sometimes goes overboard

[00:01:03] Adam Cox: overboard. Are we talking about Bo this,

[00:01:06] Kyle Risi: this episode? What else do you think is in that clue that a pun ridden clue that we have today?

[00:01:12] Adam Cox: Oh, it's pun riddled.

[00:01:14] Adam Cox: Is it, um, high flying? Well, it's either, I thought about Bo by going overboard. Otherwise, perhaps we're gonna be in the sky

[00:01:22] Kyle Risi: this week. Well, we'll have to wait and see. Okay. Should we go on with introductions? Let's do it. For those of you tuning in for the very first time, I am your host, Kyle Risi. I'm frequently found charting a course through laundry piles, jugging, domestic challenges, all while navigating the realm of the fascinating and obscure God.

[00:01:41] Adam Cox: You're a liar. We have a cleaner, Kyle and uh, well, I'm your co-host Adam Cox, and I'm never missing a chance to join Kyle in unearthing intriguing mysteries. For instance, I'm interested to know who keeps taking your dirty laundry out of the basket and mysteriously placing it on the ground near the laundry.

[00:01:59] Kyle Risi: I think that's a [00:02:00] mystery solved. It's definitely Keith.

[00:02:02] Adam Cox: Keith. Keith. I don't think the viewers know about Keith,

[00:02:05] Kyle Risi: do they? Oh yeah. Keith is our wonderful main coon cat. Maybe we should include a picture in the, uh, in the show

[00:02:12] Adam Cox: notes. Yeah, we tried to do an Instagram page for it, but then we really lost interest very quickly on that.

[00:02:17] Adam Cox: If

[00:02:17] Kyle Risi: you were interested in seeing this magnificent beast. I think it's at, like Keith goes to Hollywood,

[00:02:23] Adam Cox: something like that. He's never been to Hollywood. Wow.

[00:02:26] Kyle Risi: Yes, it's Aspira. It's an aspirational. In surviving out, what have you been up to this week? Have you been keeping a watch fly on your household, ensuring that no TURP and Family esque saga unfolds?

[00:02:38] Adam Cox: I hope not. I'm still slightly traumatized what they did to their kids. I made peanut butter sandwiches on Wednesday and well, it's probably gonna be a slippery slope from there. Definitely

[00:02:48] Kyle Risi: a slippery slope. I mean, I did

[00:02:50] Adam Cox: make them for myself and not

[00:02:51] Kyle Risi: anyone else. Oh, you're putting yourself through the abuse.

[00:02:54] Adam Cox: I. Well, no one makes a peanut butter sandwich like I did, so hang

[00:02:58] Kyle Risi: on a minute. I [00:03:00] make the best peanut butter sandwiches. You just make plain or boring peanut butter on bread, whereas I take it to the next level. I put cane pepper, I put salt, I put sometimes raisins in there to give her that kind of that dey taste.

[00:03:13] Kyle Risi: Sometimes. Put banana in there. All you need

[00:03:16] Adam Cox: is white bread, butter, peanut butter. No the best.

[00:03:19] Kyle Risi: No, no, no, no, no. I make the best peanut butter sandwiches. No contest. We have. Peanut butter sandwich off. Fine.

[00:03:26] Adam Cox: Okay. Well, before we do that, have you got any news for us this week? I

[00:03:30] Kyle Risi: do actually. Yeah. Are you ready for this?

[00:03:32] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So I was, uh, playing around on TikTok the other day, and I came across this little video. This is gonna blow you away. So this woman on TikTok, she is like some kind of doctor or something, right? So she's out at a bar having a nice glass of wine. And, um, she's telling us a bit about her time in residency where she learned about something called human [00:04:00] decanting.

[00:04:00] Kyle Risi: Have you ever heard of human decanting before?

[00:04:04] Adam Cox: It feels like the human centipede. It's not anything like that, is it?

[00:04:08] Kyle Risi: I'm gonna say it's kind of in that realm. Oh no. So she has this patient that's coming into the resident clinic complaining of some kind of bothersome kind of urinary symptoms, and they diagnose him with a U t I.

[00:04:22] Kyle Risi: And they send him out with a prescription for antibiotics, but he keeps coming back. Right. Right. So they're a bit concerned. So he, when he comes back, the B, the bacteria in his urinary tract is kind of really strange. On top of that, it's also pretty rare for a man to have or develop any kind of urinary tracted kind of infection.

[00:04:48] Kyle Risi: Right, right. It's normally a female thing. Okay. So they recommend that he have a, I think it's like a, a cystoscopy or something like that. Basically they [00:05:00] go, they put a camera down into his urethral or something. Ouch. To look inside his bladder to see kind of what's happening. Mm-hmm. And while they're doing this, he starts opening up a bit about himself and they discover that he actually is what they call a human decanter.

[00:05:20] Kyle Risi: I

[00:05:20] Adam Cox: mean, it felt, it feels quite strange that this is the time that he'd feel a good time to open up and share. Yeah, he's just opening up, he's

[00:05:26] Kyle Risi: having a bit of small talk, bit of chit chat. This is what I'm about, these are my hobbies, you know? Okay. So they're like, okay, what's a, what's a human decanter? So he goes to parties and he will empty out his bladder, okay.

[00:05:37] Kyle Risi: Using a catheter, and then he'll backfill it with red wine. In this case it was red wine. Now the Urban Dictionary says that, Decanters usually urinate into glasses and then serve their guests. But this particular decanter was urinating into the mouths of other party ghosts. Oh, what [00:06:00] So he's

[00:06:01] Adam Cox: how he distracted urine through.

[00:06:03] Adam Cox: A

[00:06:04] Kyle Risi: catheter Uhhuh, God knows how they work. Don't ask me. This is, this is just the compendium for,

[00:06:08] Adam Cox: but then he's put wine in that catheter

[00:06:11] Kyle Risi: bag he's doing, he's backfilling it somehow. I don't know how possibly, yeah, he's probably putting the wine back into that kind of bag that he, to cancel it out of and then pouring it back into his bladder and then serving red wine by peeing in people's mouths.

[00:06:26] Kyle Risi: Oh my God. That's, oh, I mean, it has to be a fetish thing, right? Yeah, it has to be. Would you get drunk quicker that way? Why? I guess it's still alcohol in there. Yeah, but

[00:06:36] Adam Cox: I'm just No. In terms of, would he be getting drunk? Cuz he's putting it back into his body, right. And then eating it out. That's a good

[00:06:42] Kyle Risi: question.

[00:06:42] Kyle Risi: Depends if it's being absorbed, right? Yeah.

[00:06:45] Adam Cox: But that is disgusting. He's peeing into people's mouths. Wine. Mm-hmm. Oh, now I get it. He went decanter. Oh,

[00:06:53] Kyle Risi: you never gotta look at a glass of red wine again. Are you? You're gonna be like, who poured this wine? And is [00:07:00] this, and how did this wine get my glass? Is this the

[00:07:02] Adam Cox: reason he has the u uti?

[00:07:04] Adam Cox: Yeah, cuz it's called an infection. Oh, of course. Sorry. I, I kind of got sidetracked with why he was there in the first place. Mm-hmm.

[00:07:10] Kyle Risi: So I'm not sure, did he get the infection because she relayed the detail that rather than peeing into a glass, he would peeing into people's mouths. So that made me question, is that how he caught the infection?

[00:07:23] Kyle Risi: Because he was also getting a bit of, you know, Adult fellatio at the same time? I

[00:07:28] Adam Cox: don't know that. I mean,

[00:07:32] Kyle Risi: it's gotta be from that wine going into his bladder with, and remember that's all like fermenting stuff, right? And then coming

[00:07:40] Adam Cox: out again. And what kind of part? Whoops. It like see a really civilized.

[00:07:45] Adam Cox: The party

[00:07:46] Kyle Risi: what, like, uh, an election party or something for like a bunch of politicians. It would not surprise,

[00:07:52] Adam Cox: and he just like pulls down his pants and like fills up a glass and then just kept,

[00:07:56] Kyle Risi: you know, it has to be some kind of refill. Anyone. Yeah, exactly. It [00:08:00] has to be some kind of fetish thing, but the fact that it's red wine makes me think that it's an upscale, upmarket kind of event.

[00:08:08] Kyle Risi: If it was a fetish club, it would just be vodka Red Bull. Right.

[00:08:11] Adam Cox: I dunno if there's anything up market about this that I'm honest.

[00:08:14] Kyle Risi: Well, it depends. I think it's just the surrounding what, what is he wearing? Where is he? Is he in a nice kind of pens house suite and the floor number 55? I

[00:08:26] Adam Cox: mean, imagine his friends that perhaps didn't know that he did this, and they go around and they do find out and they're like, I've been going around Steve's this whole time and every time he serves red wine, And they never see the ball.

[00:08:38] Adam Cox: That's true.

[00:08:39] Kyle Risi: Yeah. What vintage is this? Well, I was born in, uh, 1985.

[00:08:44] Adam Cox: Um, yeah. That's, that's disgusting. It is pretty gross. I hope I never come across this person. What have you got for me? So this week, um, there is a singer who, I think you pronounce her name, Ricardo Ricard. [00:09:00] Um, sorry. Brohard. Brohard Brohard.

[00:09:03] Adam Cox: She's a songwriter and performer from Oxfordshire. Mm-hmm. And she's made the news headlines this week because she's going through a divorce to a ghost. She's married a ghost, she married a ghost back in October, 2022. Uh, okay. And there's a video or a sort of image of them getting married and by that there's her in an empty space.

[00:09:29] Adam Cox: Go on. Um, so she got married and everything was going well, but I think apparently on, on their sort of wedding night, um, the ghost bumped into Marilyn Monroe. Um, so she just turned up at this church in England.

[00:09:45] Kyle Risi: Are you go Hang on. Wait, are you gonna tell me that the ghost. Husband of hers cheated on her with Madeline Monroe.

[00:09:51] Kyle Risi: Is that where this is leading? Well,

[00:09:54] Adam Cox: apparently he became like really fascinated with her. And the funniest thing is, um, [00:10:00] she says that, um, her husband disappeared for days Okay. As a ghost, okay? And came back smelling of Chanel number five, right? But this

[00:10:12] Kyle Risi: woman does not need a divorce. She needs to be sectioned.

[00:10:17] Kyle Risi: Csection

[00:10:17] Adam Cox: now. I just love the fact that he disappeared and she was like, I can't find him anywhere. Um, so anyway, apparently his, his personality changed and, um, after that, um, yes. Was he working late and stuff? Well, I don't know, but she went to the chapel where they got married and she ordered an exorcism from her mind.

[00:10:36] Adam Cox: Um, and so she just announced their split in her song called Just Another Anthem.

[00:10:43] Kyle Risi: Y are.

[00:10:46] Adam Cox: So, um, yeah, that's my news

[00:10:47] Kyle Risi: from this week. Great, great one. I'm really disturbed by that. Where did you get, where did you get the story? Was this one, one of those stories at the very bottom of kind of the article, you know, [00:11:00] well, the clickbait stuff.

[00:11:00] Adam Cox: No, this is, this is, um, reputable news source. Which one? It wasn't the mirror up or the Daily Mail, was it The

[00:11:08] Kyle Risi: Telegraph? Eh, no. Why would it be the Telegraph? Telegraph is a respectable

[00:11:13] Adam Cox: newspaper, right? Yeah. But, um, I don't know, maybe I'll clate some of these and make a nice little roundup of weird news from the week.

[00:11:20] Adam Cox: I think that

[00:11:20] Kyle Risi: would be great. Yeah. Great. So should we get on with, uh, topic of the Week?

[00:11:26] Adam Cox: Yeah, let's go back

[00:11:27] Kyle Risi: to that. So, In today's episode of The Compendium, I'm going to be telling you about an awesome woman who carved her name into the history books by daring to do something that no man at the time believed a woman could do, you know, just in case she got a period and stuff.

[00:11:47] Kyle Risi: Her name is Amelia Earhart. Oh, the famous pilot. What do you know of Amelia?

[00:11:55] Adam Cox: Well, she's a famous pilot. Um, [00:12:00] correct. And I can't remember when she was around, but I know that she was one of the first persons to fly around the world. Right.

[00:12:10] Kyle Risi: Well, actually she wasn't the first person to fly around the world.

[00:12:14] Kyle Risi: Okay. Other people had done it before. She was for sure the first woman to do this. Yep. But also this was gonna be the longest route ever taken. Oh, okay. On a circumnavigation around the globe. She was gonna kind of like hug the equator. Right. So it was gonna be like 29,000 miles or something like that. Oh, I see.

[00:12:32] Adam Cox: So she's going around the middle of the earth or close to the middle of the earth where As close as she could. Yeah. For it was perhaps more towards the North Pole. Yeah. Right with you. What

[00:12:40] Kyle Risi: else do you know of that?

[00:12:41] Adam Cox: Um, well I dunno if this is gonna go to spoil the territory, I'll say, anyway, go on. No, um, well, she goes missing.

[00:12:47] Adam Cox: Well, that's what

[00:12:48] Kyle Risi: this whole thing is about. That's the title of the show. Oh, I know you had, you don't see the titles just yet until we go live, but, yeah. Well, I

[00:12:55] Adam Cox: didn't know, I dunno how you were gonna like, uh, tell the

[00:12:58] Kyle Risi: story. Well, [00:13:00] she's gone missing. Mm-hmm. And famously no one knows where she's gone. No, but that's what this story is all about.

[00:13:08] Kyle Risi: So today's episode is a dive into the disappearance of this incredible aviator who became lost during her attempt to circum navigate the globe. Now, Amelia Earhart's name is not only synonymous with her achievements, but also one of the most captivating mysteries of the 21st century. Today, I'll be telling you about what happened on that fateful day in 1937 when she and her navigator Fred Noonan.

[00:13:36] Kyle Risi: Nan Nunan. Nunan simply vanished near Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean. We will explore the extensive search operation that was undertaken as a result and why no conclusive trace of the duo was ever found. We will also touch upon the numerous communication issues they encountered along their journey and how these could have been avoided, as well as the [00:14:00] speculation around this seemingly spontaneous change in their flight path.

[00:14:05] Kyle Risi: Okay. We will also discuss the potential artifacts connected to Amelia that were found over the years, their authenticity and the ongoing debate surrounding this incredible mystery. So, Adam, let me tell you the story of Media Earhart. Okay, let's go. Let's do it. So I think, of course we need to first start with who immediately Earhart is.

[00:14:31] Kyle Risi: Okay. And I'm going to, this is gonna be like a bit of a fly by. Kind of journey through her life up until the really interesting bit, right? So we won't go through too much detail. I'll tell you about all the Bain kind of milestones in her life. And then we will just get straight to the juicy bit. The juicy bit,

[00:14:50] Adam Cox: okay?

[00:14:51] Adam Cox: So we're not gonna learn about what grade she got at school. Well,

[00:14:53] Kyle Risi: we might learn a little bit about what she did at school, but we'll see. Okay. So she was born on [00:15:00] July 24th, 1897 in a modest town of Ings in Kansas. Not sure where that is, but her parents were Edwin and Amelia Erhardt For most of Amelia's life, her father, Edwin, struggled professionally and also battled as an alcoholic.

[00:15:18] Kyle Risi: Although their relationship at times was challenging, they did relatively remain close throughout her life. Mm-hmm. So as a child, AMI was known for her tomboyish behavior, which was not discouraged by her mother, along with her younger sister, grace. The two were constantly out on adventures, spending long hours playing, climbing trees, hunting rats with a rifle and like what they call belly slamming a sled, kind of like downhill.

[00:15:47] Kyle Risi: So the pair were like really encouraged to be fiercely independent. Okay. Now, in 1904, inspired by a rollercoaster that she saw at a fair in St. Louis, immediately cobbled [00:16:00] together with the help of her uncle, a homemade kind of version of this rollercoaster. Now she secured the ramp to the roof of the family tool shed and slid down the ramp in like this weird wooden box, which she had kind of like fashioned using kind of roller skates and things like that.

[00:16:16] Kyle Risi: Which then smashed into the ground with her on board. Luckily, she escaped with only like a little bruised lip, a torn dress, but a sensation of exhilaration.

[00:16:28] Adam Cox: This was the moment, this was her calling. She sounds very much like a, a, I don't mean this in a negative way, but more like maybe like a tomboy or someone That was a bit more, I dunno.

[00:16:39] Kyle Risi: Yes. So she, from the day that she was born, she broke those kind of gender boundaries that were kind of like, Typically expected of a young little girl. Yeah. So she definitely was a tomboy and that's a really fair assessment. Okay. So when she and crashed her little rollercoaster, what she exclaimed was, oh, it's just [00:17:00] like flying.

[00:17:01] Kyle Risi: And now historians would obviously later joke that this was the moment that Amelia took a first documented flight. Dunno if it's

[00:17:10] Adam Cox: an actual flight, but No, I see how this kind of, it's flying through the air. Yeah. Okay. So in

[00:17:16] Kyle Risi: 1907 at the age of 10, Amelia would see her first ever aircraft at the Iowa State Fair.

[00:17:24] Kyle Risi: Now, her father tried to persuade her to kind of hop into the pilot seat, but at the time, just one, look at this, what she described as this rickety flyover was enough Amelia to be just like, no. So I hadn't quite caught on just yet. Mm-hmm. Still got a bit more time to go. But in 1914, sadly, Amelia's grandmother suddenly died leaving her huge, substantial estate in a trust for the girls.

[00:17:50] Kyle Risi: Now, the death for grandmother was a massive blow to Amelia at this time, since they were extremely close. Now, Amelia describes this stage of her life [00:18:00] as essentially the end of her childhood, so it's a bit sad. So in 1915, Amelia developed an interest in science and was inspired by females in the field keeping.

[00:18:10] Kyle Risi: Like a little scrapbook with various newspaper clippings about successful women, not just in science, but also predominantly in other male orientated fields. Mm-hmm. So even from the very get-go, like in her teenage years, she was always thinking about how she can kind of break those kind of gender barriers.

[00:18:26] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Um, And achieve what other men were also achieving at the time. Those, her gender wasn't something that was kind of gonna be holding her back at all. No. It doesn't

[00:18:36] Adam Cox: sound like she wanted to settle what was expected of her. She wants to do what she wanted to do.

[00:18:40] Kyle Risi: Exactly. Now, after graduating from high school at the start of World War I, she decided to visit her sister in Toronto.

[00:18:48] Kyle Risi: And this is where Amelia saw many wound soldiers returning back from the battlefields. And of course, determined to help. At this time, she decided that she was gonna train as a nurse's aide for the Red Cross, [00:19:00] and at the time her duties were rudimentary at best. They included repairing food in the kitchen and handing out prescribed medications.

[00:19:09] Kyle Risi: It's here that I, media became captivated by stories from military pilots and subsequently sparked that true kind of interest in flying. Mm-hmm. Now, When the outbreak of Spanish flu raged through 1918, Amelia sadly got sick and was hospitalized for two months. Two months. Wow. Yeah. Her symptoms were so bad though, that it took her a full year before she fully recovered, and as a result of catching the flu, she developed kind of this chronic sitis, which would significantly affect her kind of flying activities throughout the rest of her life.

[00:19:45] Kyle Risi: Um, often having to kind of undergo like major surgeries, which were really, really painful. So she really suffered from. Kind of the sym, the long life symptoms of the flu that she caught in 1918. Wow. Just a bit like long covid and that kind of thing. [00:20:00] Exactly. That's the first thing that came to mind as well.

[00:20:01] Kyle Risi: So, and the fact that it took her a whole year to recover was crazy. Mm-hmm. And that wasn't that unusual and what we went through as well. No. So it was about this time that Amelia visited an airfield with her friend. One of the highlights of the day was a flying expedition put on by a World War I veteran pilot.

[00:20:21] Kyle Risi: Now during the show overhead, the pilot spotted Amelia with a friend spectating from this kind of isolated clearing, and he decided that he was gonna dive at them, right? Just to impress the crowds. Right? Okay. So Amelia says she refused to back down. She says, I'm sure he said to himself, let me, let me make them scamper.

[00:20:44] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. So, immediately just stood her ground. And as the aircraft came close, she says, I didn't understand it at the time, but I believe that little red airplane said something to me that day as it switched by, and so this [00:21:00] is the moment that starts her love affair with flying. It said something. What did it say to her?

[00:21:05] Kyle Risi: I don't know. Come fly with me. Come fly with me. Hey, come fly with me. Maybe sang a little song, serenade her. I don't know, but yeah, I think it's maybe more the exhilaration of it. Right? Right. Something's coming crashing towards her. She's. Staring into his face, into the face of danger. There's something quite attractive about that.

[00:21:23] Adam Cox: I guess it shows the daredevil in her, um, and that she's up for some

[00:21:28] Kyle Risi: adventure. Yeah. I think you can draw a parallel between what happened here at the air show versus what happened when she kind of crashed her little weird little mini rollercoaster. Mm-hmm. Exhilarating. She found it. Yeah. So there could be something in there.

[00:21:41] Kyle Risi: Or maybe it's just a nice little story to tell when people say, Hey, how did you get into flying? And she goes, well, I was at an air show. Well, all might be true, but maybe she kind of attached more significance to it. Yeah. Than there actually was. You know, just a bit like what Thai Warner did when he asked him [00:22:00] like, what made you go into blush?

[00:22:01] Kyle Risi: And he was like, This big old plushy bear arrived in a dream to me and told me I needed to go into blush and that it's a

[00:22:10] Adam Cox: story. Right, right. And Oh yeah, that, that's right. And that's how we created the Beanie Babies. Yeah.

[00:22:15] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So maybe it's something like that. Everyone needs an origin story. Yeah. What's your origin story?

[00:22:21] Kyle Risi: Um, LA and Daddy, they met, they liked each other. They held hands. Nine months later I was born. No, I'm still working out my origin story. Okay. We'll see. Hopefully it's good. Yeah, it'll be a good one. You'll have a good origin story. So in 1920, Amelia and her father attended an aerial meet in Long Beach, California.

[00:22:42] Kyle Risi: Now at this aerial meet, there's kind of like this amusement passenger flight kind of riot thing that's taking place, but it's an actual real. Airplane itself and you pay like $10 for 10 minutes. And this has been offered to kind of visitors that are visiting this aerial meet. And [00:23:00] Amelia says that by the time she had got two to 300 feet off the ground, she knew that she was gonna be destined to fly for the rest of her life.

[00:23:07] Kyle Risi: $10

[00:23:08] Adam Cox: for 10 minutes. That seems quite a lot.

[00:23:10] Kyle Risi: But back then, I think so. Yeah. I think it is quite a significant amount. Yeah. That's like

[00:23:15] Adam Cox: spending, I don't know. Like a hundred pounds to go up in a

[00:23:19] Kyle Risi: on a ride possibly. I don't think that's that unreasonable, do you? No,

[00:23:23] Adam Cox: maybe not. I just felt that for the time that seemed quite expensive.

[00:23:27] Kyle Risi: So the next month, in January of 1921, Amelia recruited a woman called Netta Snook. To be her flying instructor paying $500 for 12 hours worth of training, which she pays off by working a variety of different jobs, including photography, gigs, truck driving, and being kind of, I think it's called a, a stenographer at like a local telephone company.

[00:23:53] Kyle Risi: What's a stenographer? I think it's where you like pulling out one plug wire and putting into [00:24:00] the next one and connecting people to different kind of oh, connection things, I think. What are those

[00:24:05] Adam Cox: fancy. Lady exchange people that would, I felt like that came a lot later

[00:24:10] Kyle Risi: than then. I don't know. I could be wrong.

[00:24:13] Kyle Risi: I'm not quite sure. Remember, this is just the compendium. It may or may not be true. It may or may not be true. So yeah, it's something like that. Okay. Stenographer. Wonderful word. So when her lessons start, she is literally amazing straightaway. So much so that six months later, Amelia buys a secondhand bright chromium yellow plane, which she nicknames the canary.

[00:24:38] Kyle Risi: At the time, she was super keen to look apart, so she decides at this point to cut all of her hair real short. She buys herself a new leather flying coat. Because she's getting teased for being like the new kid. She decides that she is going to sleep in this leather coat to wear it in, and then she will deliberately kind of like drizzle aircraft oil all [00:25:00] over it to get it really stained and warned in

[00:25:02] Adam Cox: things like that.

[00:25:03] Adam Cox: Oh, is it just, it looks too new. You like when you sometimes get a pair of white trainers and they're just too bright and sometimes you just need, Ooh, whoa, whoa,

[00:25:11] Kyle Risi: whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. If you get a pair of white trainers, keep them white. Actually, I have a great story to tell you. Okay. So I went into JD J, it's IT JD Sports, right?

[00:25:24] Kyle Risi: To buy that pair of Reeb box that I bought a few weeks ago. And I went in and I looked through the sale rack and I was like, great pair of Reeb Box 35 quid reduced from 65. Great, great deal. So I asked guy if I could have those in whatever my size and not selling my size, my shoe size online. It's cuz they're really small.

[00:25:43] Kyle Risi: And I was like, I really like these. I'll take these. No problem. And he said, would you like any, what did he ask me? He said, I can't remember what he called them. He asked me if I wanted like these little plastic things to go in the inside of the shoe. Right. And I was like, well what is that for? And he was like, it means [00:26:00] that when you are walking, you won't develop that crease along the front of the foot.

[00:26:03] Kyle Risi: They do that now. Yeah. And I was like, no, I don't. I don't need that. Then he was like, okay, would you like any kind of hydrophobic kind of spray for sealant or the shoes? So like dirt will just rob off. I'm like, who is buying this stuff? Guess

[00:26:18] Adam Cox: this. This is what's important to our kids

[00:26:20] Kyle Risi: these days. Yeah. They are all into shoes and trainers, man.

[00:26:23] Kyle Risi: They're calling them kicks. Kicks, kicks. Oh. But yeah, so I was like, no, I'll just take the 35 pound trainers please. Yeah,

[00:26:31] Adam Cox: you did say that was gonna be an interesting story though.

[00:26:34] Kyle Risi: Fuck you. So. Later that year in 1922, she is smashing all kinds of records and she's even smashing some of her own records that she had previously set.

[00:26:48] Kyle Risi: The most notable one was flying the canary to an altitude of 14,000 feet, which set the world record for a female pilot, and on the 16th of May, 1923, just a year later, I Media [00:27:00] becomes the 16th woman in the United States to be issued with a pilot's license. She's totally amazing at this point. Oh, wow. But one thing that I did find fascinating is that she's not really the pioneer in this area in terms of, on the female side of things, there's loads of female pilots.

[00:27:18] Kyle Risi: Yeah. It

[00:27:18] Adam Cox: sounds like there's, there's certainly more than, um, maybe I would've thought, but she's not like

[00:27:23] Kyle Risi: unique in that sense. That's right. She just becomes possibly the most famous. Mm-hmm. Just by happenstance, just by pure luck. A, it could be her nasty, her, her kind of nerve, her talent, her jacket, her jacket, all these different things.

[00:27:39] Kyle Risi: But she just ends up becoming one of the most famous and one of the most celebrated, and also possibly because of this story as well. But sadly, throughout the early 1920s following what is considered a disastrous investment in a failed gypsum mine. Emelia's inheritance from her grandmother was [00:28:00] almost completely gone.

[00:28:01] Kyle Risi: Now she's completely broke at this point, and she's forced to sell the canary, as well as several other obviously assets, and sadly flying for her at this point had to be put on hold. So in 1924, following her parents' divorce, she relocates to Boston, Massachusetts from California, where she starts to work as a teacher and a social worker.

[00:28:25] Kyle Risi: As a social worker, Amelia really feels like she's truly giving back to the community and she's genuinely gaining this fulfillment from the job and decides that maybe she's gonna give this a go as a career. Right. So flying is kind of like a done dream for her now. Mm-hmm. She does, however, maintain an interest in aviation, but for her as a career or as something that she's gonna pursue, she just doesn't have the time or the money.

[00:28:53] Kyle Risi: But in her spare time, she becomes a member of the American Aeronautical Society's Boston Chapter. A [00:29:00] big, long ass name or whatever that is. It's

[00:29:02] Adam Cox: not that catchy,

[00:29:02] Kyle Risi: I'll be honest. But Hayden, no. Eventually she gets elected to vice president. Now with the very little money that she does have, she decides to invest this into a brand new airport that's been built in the area.

[00:29:14] Kyle Risi: Once it's built, she becomes the first person to take off from this airport in 1927. That's kind of cool. Yeah, I think it's cool. Now I media wrote for a local newspaper column as well, promoting kind of flying, which resulted in her becoming a bit of a minor celebrity. So I think kind of these were the building blocks that really catapulted her into fame as well.

[00:29:36] Kyle Risi: The fact that she was already kind of a little bit well known now around this time. A guy called Charles Lindbergh. Do you recognize that name?

[00:29:45] Adam Cox: Lindbergh? It sounds a little German. Is that

[00:29:48] Kyle Risi: right? Lindbergh? No. I guess it, it sounds like a, a Germanic name. Yeah, I, I was thinking of the

[00:29:54] Adam Cox: hot air. Not the hot air balloon.

[00:29:55] Adam Cox: No.

[00:29:56] Kyle Risi: Ah, right. That's the Hindenberg. Oh, the Hindenberg. Which is German. And I think, [00:30:00] I wouldn't be surprised if his name was German as well, but this guy was famously the father of the Lindbergh baby. Oh. I went

[00:30:07] Adam Cox: missing. No, what's that? I mean, a baby that we're missing. It's a baby that we're missing.

[00:30:12] Kyle Risi: Right.

[00:30:12] Kyle Risi: Really famous. It's, it's on my list to do. Okay. As an episode. You're gonna love it. So we'll just put the box, put that back in. Say the lender put a pin in that. So Charles had just completed a solo flight across the Atlantic, which made big news across the world. Now following this, a woman called Amy Guess, was primed to be the first female to fly across the Atlantic.

[00:30:41] Kyle Risi: After some deliberation, she decided that the trip was way too dangerous for us. So while at work, one afternoon in April in 1927, Amelia gets a phone call from Captain Hinton h Riley, who asks if she would like to replace Amy and fly across the Atlantic instead. So at this point [00:31:00] she's like not primed to do any of this stuff, right?

[00:31:03] Kyle Risi: She is. I was gonna

[00:31:03] Adam Cox: say, has she been a social worker and all this? I know she's been investing and she did take off, but she. From the airport. It doesn't sound like she's been doing a

[00:31:11] Kyle Risi: lot of this. It's exactly right. She hasn't, and she was looking to pretty much build a career as a social worker, which she was getting all the fulfillment from.

[00:31:20] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. So at the time, like I said, Amelia was building this career, which she absolutely adored, but this opportunity for her was too great to pass on. So in 1928, immediate Earhart becomes the first female passenger. Of a transatlantic flight with a, with a pilot being William like Stolts, who's a really, really famous pilot.

[00:31:46] Kyle Risi: He's kind of next to kind of Charles Lindbergh since she had no training in instrument flying. Her role during the flight would be to mainly keep flight dogs, and so the flight departs from Newfoundland [00:32:00] in an airplane called Friendship. After 20 hours and 40 minutes, they finally land in South Wales, in the uk and they

[00:32:09] Adam Cox: don't have probably, I mean this is, this is worse.

[00:32:11] Adam Cox: An economy, I would imagine, 20 hours in an airplane. Mm-hmm. Can't play for rest back. No one's coming up with like some snacks. No, they're in flight entertainment. Maybe not even a toilet. No. They must have like a bottle or something. Right. Just opinion. Mm-hmm. Yeah. A shewe. Wow. Yeah. I would not wanna do this.

[00:32:28] Adam Cox: No,

[00:32:29] Kyle Risi: no. Hey, these are the pioneers of the time, right? Yeah. Good for them. So when she gets home to the United States on July the sixth, Amelia was a full blown celebrity because Amelia had an uncanny resemblance to Charles Lindbergh. She was dubbed Lady Lindy by the media, and in an interview about this, essentially this huge achievement.

[00:32:53] Kyle Risi: She candidly refers to herself as simply a sack of potatoes because. All she was was just a [00:33:00] passenger really. So this remark is interesting because it's a subtle indication of her desire to make the flight as a pilot in her own right, rather than just the log keeper.

[00:33:11] Adam Cox: Yeah. It sounds like she didn't really take that much.

[00:33:14] Adam Cox: Um, I guess satisfaction or kind of like an accomplishment from that? Yes, she did it. That's great. But that's not hers.

[00:33:22] Kyle Risi: Sure. And, and I guess it's because she knows that she can fly at 14,000 feet. Right. And she's broken all these records, so why wouldn't she feel like that? Yeah. It's just because she's a woman in a way.

[00:33:31] Kyle Risi: That's the only thing that's holding her back.

[00:33:33] Adam Cox: Yeah. Like she can do that. She, she's done similar things before. Mm-hmm.

[00:33:37] Kyle Risi: So with her newfound international fame, Amelia teams up with publicist, George Putman. Who works to book Amelia on an exhaustive lecture tour. She ends up publishing a book and getting multiple endorsement deals for like products like luggage, cigarettes, and clothing.

[00:33:55] Kyle Risi: Now, the entire endorsement of the new luggage line was a huge deal at the [00:34:00] time because Amelia introduced a new inerative form of luggage, specifically targeted at women. And it was the weekend bag.

[00:34:11] Adam Cox: The weekend bag, yeah. Yeah. Weekend bags. Yeah. But I'd realize that was specifically targeted

[00:34:16] Kyle Risi: women. Well, this is why now, this might seem trivial now, but this marks a really profound shift from kind of the conventional large, extremely heavy trunks that women typically used, which were usually heavy and difficult to carry around.

[00:34:30] Kyle Risi: Right. Especially without the assistance of a man. So I, media's weekend bag would establish a new precedent for female kind of autonomy, which on her part was completely deliberate. She really was a pioneer in feminist in all the most unexpected ways. Mm. So her celebrity status brings bags of cash and really big friendships.

[00:34:55] Kyle Risi: One notable friendship was Eleanor Roosevelt, which at the [00:35:00] time was the first lady of the United States. So they meet at a White House event in 1933, and both women are known at this time for, of course, their independence, their courage, and their commitment to women's rights, right? So they hit it off almost immediately.

[00:35:15] Kyle Risi: What's cool is that after dinner, I media suggests that they go for a nighttime flight and Eleanor agrees, and the two women sneak off in their ballgowns and they fly from Washington, DC to Baltimore and then back again. That's

[00:35:30] Adam Cox: really cool. So like, oh, let's ditch this party. Let's go for a, a spin Yeah.

[00:35:34] Adam Cox: Plane. Let's

[00:35:34] Kyle Risi: ditch this joint, man. Yeah, that's, let's got a speakeasy. Yeah. Is that what they do? Let's go. Flappy.

[00:35:41] Adam Cox: Flappy. I don't know if that's Oh, that's what, oh, flapper

[00:35:44] Kyle Risi: girls. Yeah. The little flapper girls. Yeah. Yeah. So if you hadn't already guessed Amelia is flying, but she always looked for different opportunities to shoe horn in different ways to kind of progress kind of female equality.

[00:35:57] Kyle Risi: So, She accepted a [00:36:00] position as associate editor for Cosmopolitan Magazine. Can you believe, have you heard of Cosmopolitan? Yeah, of course. Yeah. My sister reads that. Yeah, I don't believe it's been going that long. I didn't

[00:36:10] Adam Cox: realize there's almost a hundred. Oh no, it is a hundred years.

[00:36:12] Kyle Risi: Well, I dunno how old it was at this point.

[00:36:15] Kyle Risi: Oh, okay. But yeah. Yeah. If, let's assume it started in 1920. Yeah. So yeah, a hundred years. Wow. So she starts writing for the Cosmopolitan Magazine, which she turns into one of those opportunities to kind of really advance kind of female kind of equality and campaigning for greater public acceptance of aviation.

[00:36:34] Kyle Risi: Specifically focusing on roles for women that kind of entering in the field. Now that she was the first person to fly as a passenger across the Atlantic, Amelia really wanted an un tarnished record of her own. So Amelia set out to become the first woman to fly solo across North America and back. Also around this time in 1929, she kind of dabbled in [00:37:00] competitive air racing, which is essentially like a Darby.

[00:37:03] Kyle Risi: Do you know what a Darby is? I guess

[00:37:05] Adam Cox: so. I can't, all my first image is like, uh, drag racing.

[00:37:11] Kyle Risi: Exactly. Yeah. So basically there's a bunch of women, kind of that race from Santa Monica to Cleveland earning the event nickname the Powerpuff Derby girls. Okay. Darby Girls. But essentially it's that, but it's an all female event now, the Powerpuff Bargas, that's a derogatory term.

[00:37:29] Kyle Risi: That's not the official Torah. That's what's Okay. Pointed. So during this period, Amelia becomes involved with the 90 Nines, which is an organization of female pilots from this particular derby, which is aimed to provide moral support and advance the cause of women in aviation. She later in 1930, becomes the organization's first president.

[00:37:53] Kyle Risi: And in 1934, when the Berics Trophy banned a woman from competing, [00:38:00] she openly refused to. Like fly the film actress Mary Pickford, to Cleveland who was gonna be opening up the races. So she even stood in protest against kind of people that were inhibiting kind of progress in the field, specifically for women.

[00:38:15] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. And that's just another example of how she would stand up to various oppressions. So over time, Amelia grew closer to her publisher George p Upton, who proposed to her six times before he finally accepted. They married on the 7th of February in 1931, but on the condition that the marriage be known as a partnership with dual control.

[00:38:39] Adam Cox: Oh, wow. So she was like, um, it reminds me of that family guy sketch with Sean Goty that Will you marry me? No. Will you marry me? No. And then had to ask six times before she said yes. And even then she was like, Ashley, this isn't a marriage, this is a partnership. Yeah. I mean, good for her, but as interest, that's very strong-willed.

[00:38:58] Adam Cox: Very, um, [00:39:00] well, yeah, all the, I guess feminism associated with that. Mm-hmm. She wasn't gonna take any

[00:39:05] Kyle Risi: crap. No, she's not. And here is a letter that she actually wrote to him and delivered to George on the day of the wedding. This is what she wrote. Dear G P P, that's George p Putman. There are some things which should be ripped before we are married.

[00:39:24] Kyle Risi: Things we have talked over before. Most of them. You must know that my reluctance to marry my feeling that I shatter thereby chances in work, which means most to me. I feel the move just now as foolish as anything I could do. I know there may be compensations, but I have no heart to look ahead I on our life together.

[00:39:45] Kyle Risi: I want you to understand I should not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me, nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly. Oh, so she wants to have an affair. She basically wants an open marriage. Oh. Gets better [00:40:00] if we can be honest. I think the difficulties which arise may be best avoided.

[00:40:06] Kyle Risi: Should you or I become interested deeply in anyone else?

[00:40:11] Adam Cox: Oh, yes, she, she spelled out

[00:40:12] Kyle Risi: loud. Mm-hmm. Please let us not interfere with the other's. Work or play. Mm-hmm. Play. Or planes. Or planes. I think she meant play. Okay. Or play with planes. Oh, maybe she's attracted to planes. Maybe are we gonna find out, oh, she's a kinky bitch.

[00:40:32] Kyle Risi: But nor let the world see our private joys or disagreements in this condition, I may have to keep someplace where I can be by myself now And then with her other men? With her other men? Mm-hmm. All women.

[00:40:48] Adam Cox: Oh, yep. Sorry. I assumed, shouldn't

[00:40:50] Kyle Risi: assume. I don't think there's any evidence that she was a lesbian.

[00:40:53] Kyle Risi: It'd be great if she was, other than the short hair. That's the only thing that she's got going. Yeah. Any clue [00:41:00] for? I cannot guarantee to endure all the times and confinement of even an attractive cage. I must exact a cruel promise, and that is that you'll let me go in a year if we find no happiness together.

[00:41:17] Adam Cox: Oh, so she's got like a, A breakout clause.

[00:41:20] Kyle Risi: This is probably one of the first prenups. Yeah, this is a contract isn, actually, she's badass. Final line is I will try to do my best in every way and give you that part of me, you know, and seem to want

[00:41:35] Adam Cox: a e Oh, that's kind of a very strange, I mean, he's just getting that on the wedding day.

[00:41:42] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:41:42] Kyle Risi: On the wedding day,

[00:41:43] Adam Cox: so I was, I'm hoping that she might have like dropped a few hints along the way to say she's not that interested. She'll give it a shot. She likes other people, but if he's just getting that on the wedding day, I'd be like, oh, I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with Amelia.

[00:41:57] Adam Cox: Oh, and he gets that. I'd be [00:42:00] like, oh.

[00:42:01] Kyle Risi: Oh. But the thing is though, I don't think that, if you look at the opening line of the letter, she said that these are things that we've talked about in the past anyway. Fine. Okay. So I think that he knows and he completely agrees with all the conditions, and they get Partnership up.

[00:42:15] Kyle Risi: Partnership up, happy Partnership on the 20th of May, 1932, with the age of 34, Amelia sets off on a solo flight across the Atlantic. At this time, not as a passenger, but as the pilot claiming the accolade to be the first woman to make the flight. Now the media sets off from Newfoundland with the aim of landing in France, and the flight takes 40 14 hours and 56 minutes, but it touches down in a field near Derry, in Northern Ireland, in like a farm, a really super remote farm.

[00:42:53] Kyle Risi: So not quite France basically. The landing was witnessed by a farm hand. And when asked, have you flown [00:43:00] very far? Immediately, just replied from America and this guy was like, not from

[00:43:05] Adam Cox: around here. He's probably with a Irish accent and a farm accent.

[00:43:09] Kyle Risi: I guess that's, yeah, I guess why is a farmer Irish accent?

[00:43:14] Kyle Risi: I, I, I'm not even gonna try say it. No, I don't think I can do it. I think all I can think of is potato, potato,

[00:43:22] Adam Cox: potato, whatever, the farmer, I dunno. It feels like the two things clash. I can't quite work it out. I'm gonna practice.

[00:43:29] Kyle Risi: We'll see. I'll, I'll test you next week. Okay. And I guess also, like if you are like a remote farmer and someone's just landed, touched down in probably an airplane that you've probably not really seen too much of.

[00:43:40] Kyle Risi: And someone says, I'm from America. Like, would a part of you think, is it alien? Is it aliens? You always love Julian that So now, as the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic, Amelia receives the distinguished flying cross from Congress, the cross of the night [00:44:00] of the Legion of Honor from the French government.

[00:44:03] Kyle Risi: What

[00:44:04] Adam Cox: a name again, and all these catchy titles

[00:44:06] Kyle Risi: they have. I want to try to say again, the Cross of The Knight of the Legion of Honor, and also she also gets the gold medal of the National Geographic Society from President Herbert Hoer. Right. So she got those two accolades for being the first woman to do it, which is great.

[00:44:22] Kyle Risi: So, Now following this achievement, Amelia makes three more solo flights. The first, on January the 11th, 1935, she flies from Honolulu to Oakland, California. Then in April of that same year from Los Angeles to Mexico City, and then on May the eighth, she flies nonstop from Mexico City to New York, and she's just completed an international sensation.

[00:44:49] Kyle Risi: So she's super famous at this point. Between 1930 and 1935, Amelia also set several women's speed and distance aviation [00:45:00] records in a variety of aircraft. And by 1935, Amelia had set her sights on a prize to circumnavigate the earth along this equator. Oh, okay. This is where this all starts. So Amelia contacts Hollywood stunt kind of airplane guy called Paul Manz who.

[00:45:21] Kyle Risi: Helps train her basically. And together they end up establishing a business partnership together. Not one of those partnerships, just pure business partnership where they set up a flying school together. Now in early 1936, Amedia starts planning, uh, uh, around the world flight, although others have flown around the world already.

[00:45:43] Kyle Risi: Her flight would be the longest at 29th thousand miles. Following closely to the equator as humanly possible. Mm-hmm.

[00:45:52] Kyle Risi: She secures funding and a Lockheed Electra 10 E. This is an aircraft that is built to her specific [00:46:00] specifications, which includes extensive modifications to kind of the fuselage, um, to incorporate additional fuel tanks and is basically dub the flying laboratory, although publicized as a flying laboratory, very little signs will actually happen onboard.

[00:46:17] Kyle Risi: It's pretty much just the intention of flying around the world so she can gain enough material to write her next book. And then I think the idea is for her to retire. Sure. So she's looking for an end game.

[00:46:29] Adam Cox: Yeah. Well, and that, I dunno how you could beat that other than flying like vertically around the

[00:46:34] Kyle Risi: world.

[00:46:34] Kyle Risi: Yeah. To space and above. Yeah. Yeah. That wouldn't happen until Stinky yield. Elon Musk came along all these years later. What? Actually, no, that would've be 69, wouldn't it? Yeah, I was gonna say, cut that out. So Amelia starts pulling together her team that would join her on her trip, and Amelia chooses a guy called Captain Harry Manning as her navigator.

[00:46:58] Kyle Risi: He knows Morse code, [00:47:00] which at the time was still the standard way of communicating in the Pacific region where the flies is due to kind of travel through. So he's really important to this flight. Right. Okay. The original plan was a two person crew, so immediately would fly and Manning would navigate. But during a test flight with Manning, he conducted like a navigation fix, which puts them off course by 20 miles, which is completely acceptable.

[00:47:25] Kyle Risi: But. Sometime later, George decides that he wants to do another test of manning's kind of navigation skills under poor navigational conditions. And again, Manning's position is off once again, but again, within that kind of acceptable kind of range. But to George, obviously that's his wife, and he wants to make sure like we have someone who is the best, right?

[00:47:49] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. You're just gonna get within a really kind of small margin of error. So concerned, George thought that it would be best to kind of extend the crew to have two navigators, and so a [00:48:00] guy called Fred Newman is subsequently chosen as the second navigator due to his experience with celestial navigation of various aircrafts, which would be essential during our off the fly.

[00:48:13] Kyle Risi: Now, Newman was also experienced in both Marine and also flight navigation. Having established some of kind of pan and kind of seaplane roots across the Pacific, he was perfect for the job, right, because he had that detailed experience. Now, Noonan had also been responsible for training Pan-American kind of navigators for across route between San San Francisco and Mana.

[00:48:36] Kyle Risi: So he also had experience kind of through long haul flights as well. So the original plans were for Nonan to navigate from Hawaii to Howland Island, which is a particularly difficult portion of the flight where Manning would then continue with Earhart or Amelia Earhart to Australia, where she would then proceed on her own for the remainder of the project.

[00:48:59] Adam Cox: [00:49:00] So would they swap or would they like tag team? How did that

[00:49:03] Kyle Risi: work? I think they would just tag team. So the navigators are just gonna be both in the back end, both flying on the plane itself. Okay, so they don't

[00:49:10] Adam Cox: land. They're still constantly,

[00:49:12] Kyle Risi: oh, actually that's a really good question. Yeah. Do you think like Manning would then meet them somewhere like near Australia or something and then he would jump on board?

[00:49:19] Kyle Risi: That's possible. And

[00:49:21] Adam Cox: would they have to land or would they have to like swap midair, like almost like another plane comes

[00:49:26] Kyle Risi: along? No. Well, the navigator is just telling you where to go. Right. He's telling her, oh, like be a left kind of five degrees or whatever. Mm-hmm. So it's not like he has to be in the hot seat.

[00:49:36] Kyle Risi: Or anything like that. Okay. You can just come command from, I don't know, the passenger seat, I guess. Yeah. Doesn't have to take the wheel. No, they like that, but yeah. Okay. So on March the 17th, 1937, Amelia Anna, her two navigators, flew the first leg of their journey from California to Hawaii. And in Hawaii, an issue with repellent meant that the [00:50:00] aircraft needed servicing.

[00:50:01] Kyle Risi: So after three day repair, the flight was ready to kind of resume towards Len Island, but they're going anti-clockwise around the earth.

[00:50:08] Adam Cox: So they do land obviously to refuel and stop and rest. Oh yeah,

[00:50:12] Kyle Risi: of course. Yeah. Yes. They're stopping, they're making loads of different legs across the across and not, that's not one single

[00:50:18] Adam Cox: journey.

[00:50:18] Adam Cox: That was a bit, I was like, wow, that's impressive.

[00:50:20] Kyle Risi: But I think so. I guess if they weren't stopping, they'll be super impressive. But yeah, they're stopping for like days at a time sometimes. Oh, okay. Fine. They have the repair and they're ready to kind of resume their flight to Howland Island in the Pacific.

[00:50:32] Kyle Risi: But due to other issues with something called kind of, uh, uncontrolled ground loop, remember the compendium don't need to know about it. The forward kind of landing gear ends up collapsing in kind of a nutshell. Um, and this happens on takeoff, which means that both propellers hit the ground and the plane skids on his belly with the aircraft getting like severely damaged.

[00:50:57] Kyle Risi: Now the flight was then essentially [00:51:00] called off and the aircraft was then shipped by sea to Lockheed in Burbank for further repairs. So the out of action for a while and the journey's not even started now, Manning having taken time off work due to the flight, meant that problems with the delay forced him to have to kind of pull out the trip altogether.

[00:51:18] Kyle Risi: This is the guy that knows Morse code and the only one of them who knows Morse code. Okay, detail. Now basically this means that it just leaves Amelia and Nunan, and neither of them were very skilled radio operators. So while the elector was being repaired, Amelia and George secured more money and prepared for a second attempt.

[00:51:39] Kyle Risi: This time they'll be flying west to east, and the change in direction was partly due to obviously changes in global wind and weather kind of patterns along the planned route. It's been a few months now, right? So on the second flight, Fred Noonan and Amelia. Were gonna be the only crew, and they would depart from Miami on June the first, and after [00:52:00] several stops through South America, Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, they arrive on the 29th of June in Lei, and that is in New Guinea.

[00:52:14] Kyle Risi: Now, up to this point, they had already completed 22,000 miles of the journey and had just 7,000 miles left across the Pacific. Now on July the second, 1937 at 10:00 AM in the morning, Amelia and Newnan take off from Lei and head to Howland Island, which is essentially a flat slither of land, which is two kilometers long and about half a kilometer wide.

[00:52:43] Kyle Risi: So this leg of the journey would also be. 2,556 miles in length. It's not the longest leg of the journey, but it's, it's, it's a long leg, right. Maybe the second or third longest and the fly time would be around 20 hours, so that is quite a long up [00:53:00] in the air. It's a huge amount of time up in the air, so you're gonna be really knackered off 20 hours, right?

[00:53:04] Kyle Risi: Yeah. There's no, also, I don't think, no.

[00:53:07] Adam Cox: In like sleeping and just Mm. How do they manage

[00:53:10] Kyle Risi: that? I guess they just do. Okay. Right. I guess they take a few days break in between and then they set off. Yeah, so they will be crossing the dateline as well. So accounting for the two hour time zone difference and the Dateline crossing, they were due to arrive the morning of the next day, but still on the 2nd of July.

[00:53:32] Kyle Risi: Right, because they're crossing over that weird from Wednesday to Thursday kind of thing in Australia. Do you guys understand what I mean? Yeah, yeah. You get it. Now around about 3:00 PM late time immediately reported her altitude as 10,000 feet, but they would reduce altitude due to thick clouds in the air and around about 5:00 PM immediately report her altitude around about 7,000 feet and the speed of about 150 knots.

[00:53:58] Kyle Risi: Their last known position [00:54:00] report was near the kind of what they call the Nka Nu Island, about 800 miles into the flight now. No. May have been able to do some kind of celestial navigation to determine his exact position. But when crossing the international dateline, if this is not taken into account, this could set you off course by up to 60 miles, which is a huge problem when you are looking for an island that's just 500 meters wide.

[00:54:31] Kyle Risi: Oh, okay.

[00:54:32] Adam Cox: So this is, uh, So how does it throw them off? Like just because of like, they're looking at where the sun and everything at is, and so therefore if you don't know that you're crossing into another day, essentially that's gonna skew the angle that you're

[00:54:46] Kyle Risi: turning. I'm. Do you know what? That sounds like a great assessment, I'm assuming That's exactly what it is.

[00:54:52] Kyle Risi: Let's go with that. Let's go with my assumption. Yeah. So like by one, being off by one degree can set you off like by 60 miles. Mm-hmm. [00:55:00] And obviously that continues to grow the earth go out. Yes. That makes sense. Now in preparation for them, arriving in Holland Island, the US Coast Guard send a patrol ship called the Itasca.

[00:55:12] Kyle Risi: To the island. That's Howland Island Now. The ship was used to ferry news reporters to the island. Remember, she's super famous. People are following her all around the world. Mm-hmm. So when she's arriving all these locations, there's news crew there, right? Yeah. Right. So she's a big deal. So like I said, the ship was used to ferry news reporters to the island, but it also had communication and navigation functions on board.

[00:55:33] Kyle Risi: And the plan was for the Itasca to communicate with Amelia's aircraft via radio, and then, Transmit a radio homing signal, and then the shipper then uses boilers to create large columns of smoke that would then be seen over the horizon. So then Amelia could see that and then follow the Hoy beacon, and then they'll be able to kind of find their way to the island.

[00:55:56] Kyle Risi: Right. Okay. All right. So it was there as a safeguard. [00:56:00] Now Electra did have radio equipment for both communication and navigation, but I media failed to establish two-way radio communication. Or radio locate with the eye tasker. Now, experts think. After their accident, during the first attempt, the communication and antenna may have been removed when it was being repaired, or may have been damaged, but it's likely there would've been removed because it was, it was like specifically fitted for them.

[00:56:29] Kyle Risi: Okay. So they might not have necessarily known the significance of it or why it was important, et cetera.

[00:56:34] Adam Cox: Why I'm just accidentally

[00:56:35] Kyle Risi: taking it off or whatever. That's what they think. Yeah, there could be a number of other explanations, but they think that it, it might have been removed by mistake. Now the Itasca could pick up a clear voice transmission from Amelia's plane, but she could not hear them.

[00:56:52] Kyle Risi: Okay? One way find exactly imp find that the aircraft's directional finder theory was not functional. Now the Itasca picked up [00:57:00] Amelia's weather report stating that it was cloudy and overcast at just before 5:00 AM on July 2nd at 6:14 AM another call was received stating that the aircraft was within 200 miles.

[00:57:12] Kyle Risi: Requested that the ship uses direction finder to provide bearing to the aircraft, right? They're now like, where's the homing signal? Which, which bit do we need to get to? Like, we're, we're ready, we're here now. I media began whistling into the microphone to provide kind of like a continual signal for Itasca to kind of hone in on.

[00:57:34] Kyle Risi: It was at this point that the radio operator on Itasca realized that the system could not tune into kind of their aircraft's frequency. And when Amelia was around a hundred miles away at 6:45 AM another call requesting bearing was received by the Itasca and they, again, they could hear her.

[00:57:54] Kyle Risi: Communications could not be received by Amelia. Right? So she's just out there and she's like, shit, where [00:58:00] are these people? Yeah. Aren't we in the right place? I imagine like Noonan's freaking out. It's like, shit, have I got a soft course? Or where are we? I was just about to

[00:58:07] Adam Cox: say, I guess she's panicking around this point or least, so being quite

concerned.

[00:58:11] Kyle Risi: Yeah. That's it. I, I would be, I'd be petrified now, a tasker radio log between seven 30 and seven 40 states. Emilio was northwest and running out of fuel with only about half an hour left. They can't hear us but we can hear them and are sending on the frequency 3 1 0 5. That's me extrapolating that message out cause it's all written in shorthand.

[00:58:35] Kyle Risi: But essentially that's what that log said. Another Itca radio log at 7 42 States, Itasca, we must be on you now, but can't see you, but gas is running low. Unable to reach her by radio. We are flying at a thousand feet. Right. So she's low down again at 7 58. Another transmission from Amelia is received, and this is the [00:59:00] loudest yet indicating that they were like in the immediate area.

[00:59:03] Kyle Risi: So they send people out on board and they're looking around, they can't see anything. You would

[00:59:06] Adam Cox: think they'd be able to hit here. I don't know of some kind of pain in the

[00:59:10] Kyle Risi: distance. Yeah, but they couldn't, she was, she just wasn't in the vicinity. Right. Still unable to communicate that I Tasker sends Morse code signals instead, which Amelia acknowledged receiving.

[00:59:24] Kyle Risi: But she said that she was unable to determine what they were saying. Mm-hmm. Because remember, she's not proficient in Morse code and neither is Noonan. Right. The last transmission at 8 43 seems to indicate that Noonan believed that they had reached Howland Island. Itasca used her boilers to generate smoke, but Amelia apparently didn't see this, so they weren't at, they must have been somewhere else.

[00:59:46] Kyle Risi: Right. Okay. Now sporadic signals were aborted for up to four to five days after their disappearance, but none of these could be translated. What was frustrating was that after they went missing, many different other [01:00:00] stations were kind of calling and sending out frequencies on the same frequency that she was in, because of course this is now international news already.

[01:00:07] Kyle Risi: The message just caused more confusion though, right? That's exactly it. It did. So some were by voice, some were by other signals, which meant that it was just difficult to know whose signal was who, right? Mm-hmm. So which signal was Amelia's? Yeah.

[01:00:21] Adam Cox: But are they sure she was sending out a signal then, or they don't know that for sure?

[01:00:26] Kyle Risi: Well, they can make some kind of assessments based on the direction that some of the signals were coming from. They suspect that some of them were coming from the direction, the where she would've been at, but they can't verify whether or not it was definitely her signal. Okay. Now, in our following, Amelia Earhart's final known message, a search was undertaken by the Itasca searching towards the north and west of Howland Island.

[01:00:49] Kyle Risi: Unfortunately, nothing was ever found. Soon after the US Navy joined the search and they focused their search in an area around Highland Island as well. And the search [01:01:00] areas encompassed pretty much various lines of positions that were adjusted according to the alleged radio transmissions from Amelia.

[01:01:08] Kyle Risi: So they could kind of sense that she was coming one direction. So they just kind of went down this way and thought maybe get ahead of it, and that should be in that area. But again, later efforts focus their search over a wider area. As far as kind of the deserted garden island, which we'll talk about in a minute, but again, nothing explicitly concrete was ever found.

[01:01:29] Kyle Risi: Right. And the official search ended on the 19th of July, 1937 at a cost a whopping $4 million in 1920s. Money. Making it at the time, literally the most expensive and extensive search in US history at that time. So how many days were they searching for? It doesn't sound like a huge amount. Like maybe like 15 days.

[01:01:52] Kyle Risi: 15 days and 4 million. Wow. Yeah. In total, the search covered a total of like, I think like [01:02:00] 150,000 square miles. But the search is also heavily criticized for kind of their rudimentary kind of search techniques and odd assumptions that they had made, but, Yeah, that's it. She's gone. That's

[01:02:13] Adam Cox: really sad. So it sounds like she potentially was at another island then or somewhere.

[01:02:17] Adam Cox: Completely different. But if they've searched 150,000 square miles or whatever. Mm-hmm. Then that's

[01:02:25] Kyle Risi: quite a big area. It's a huge area. Now, George Putman, obviously that's her husband, he took it upon himself to kind of fund private searches after kind of the official one had ended. Which involved kind of combing the Gilbert Islands and other nearby locations, but again, with no success, Amelia was just eventually and legally declared dead in absentia.

[01:02:51] Kyle Risi: I think they called it on kind of the 5th of January, 1939. So just a few years later. Mm. Because normally it's like seven years that you have to wait. But for some reason there were [01:03:00] special circumstances that meant that she could be declared dead earlier and. The thing is though, George needed that to happen, even though he didn't believe that she was dead, he knew that he could get her declared dead legally so he could get her money.

[01:03:13] Kyle Risi: Oh, right. So that he could not for nefarious reasons, so he could use that money to then to continue searching for her. Right. Yeah. With you. Which is horrible, right? Like I have to accept legally that my wife's dead in the hope that I can continue to search for her. Yeah. I mean, that's

[01:03:27] Adam Cox: quite morbid. So if I went missing you, you'd have to wait seven years before legally declaring I was

[01:03:33] Kyle Risi: dead.

[01:03:33] Kyle Risi: I think so. I dunno if that's the same in the uk, but there was certainly in this case, and I have heard that being said in the past. Yeah. Huh. Okay, good to that. So Adam, what are some of the theories? She never

[01:03:47] Adam Cox: flew the lane in the first place, do you think? Yeah, there's a whole hoax. Women pilots, that's not a thing.

[01:03:55] Kyle Risi: Hey. She got her period. You do [01:04:00] that. Oh, okay. No, not a woman allowed to do that. So of course there'd be loads of theories that be presented on what may have happened to Amelia and Fred. Most historians prescribed to the crash and sink theory, but there are a number of other possibilities that have been proposed, including several conspiracy theories.

[01:04:19] Kyle Risi: So let's go through some of them now. Okay. So the crash and sink theory, the main theory here is that, and also the one that's widely accepted is that they simply just ran out of fuel, crashed into the sea, and they died. Well, that feels

[01:04:35] Adam Cox: like the most logical, considering there's so much sea at the end of they crashed into the sea or they crashed into land.

[01:04:41] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm. And so if they can't find a plane probably in the sea,

[01:04:44] Kyle Risi: that's it. And again, the reason why this is the most likely theory, Because the plane was equipped with just enough fuel for the journey with a little to spare to account for contingencies and other headwinds, and actually just finding the island spent a little bit of time [01:05:00] finding the island.

[01:05:00] Kyle Risi: But the lack of radio contact with the I Tasker meant they, they were unable to determine the correct direction of the island, ultimately leaving them on their own and running out of fuel.

[01:05:14] Adam Cox: Do you know, that still makes me nervous when we fly today, when. These airlines have just enough fuel, a little extra to maybe do like a half an hour lap in the sky if they need to.

[01:05:24] Adam Cox: And that's it. Yeah. That just freaks me out to go like, oh, and I appreciate there's loads of airports around, I say loads. Yeah. The scattered throughout the

[01:05:32] Kyle Risi: world. Yeah. No, I get it. I feel, I, I, I don't really think about it much, but I probably will now. Don't they sometimes

[01:05:39] Adam Cox: like, oh, we need to get kind of let out some fuel over the sea.

[01:05:43] Adam Cox: Because of, I don't know. They need to, they do that sometimes.

[01:05:46] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, it could be, could be possible, but it seems very wasteful. Mm-hmm. Why not just kind of make sure you have enough? Cuz we know how long it's gonna take to get somewhere.

[01:05:55] Adam Cox: Yeah. I mean, I'm sure they do that, but they're still freaks me out knowing that Hmm.

[01:05:59] Kyle Risi: [01:06:00] They could run out. Right. So the next theory that we have is the Gardner Island hypothesis. Now. This theory states that Amelia and Fred crashed landed onto Garden Island, which is now known as Niku Maro. Oh, nice. Yeah, I've I've been there. Yeah. Beautiful island. Here's why, here's why I think that, so when Amelia and Fred failed to locate Howland Island, they decided to travel South, south, Southeast, which would've brought them near the Phoenix Island, including Gardner Island, about 350 miles.

[01:06:37] Kyle Risi: Away from Howland Island. And the reason why they think this is where they would've gone is because one of the media's last radio transmissions was received from 150 degrees in the direction from Itasca, which basically somehow indicates that they were heading towards Gardner Island. Remember also Nunan thought that [01:07:00] he'd come across the island as well.

[01:07:02] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. It's like we're we're here. Yeah. So maybe they arrived at that. It is thought that they had landed on a flat strip of coral reef. Again, they think this because the distress signals received after they'd been classed as officially disappeared were very sporadic and tended to occur when the tide was low, which would indicate that the planes, radio equipment was only able to be used or accessed when it was not submerged by high tides.

[01:07:32] Kyle Risi: Oh, Intering. Inter lessing. Inter interesing. The signals eventually stopped, possibly when high tides finally washed the plane off of the reef.

[01:07:45] Adam Cox: Right? So they're stuck on this island. The plane's gone and well, yeah, they're stuck on the island.

[01:07:50] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So this is kind of comes under the the Gardener Island slash costway theory, and did they ever search the island?

[01:07:58] Kyle Risi: Yes, the Navy planes [01:08:00] did carry out kind of an assessment of the island, and they did see some signs of recent habitation on Gardner Island. Shortly after Amelia's disappearance, three years later in 1940, excavators on the island found a human skull and bones, along with a shoe, a sextant box, sex sextant box, um, a bottle.

[01:08:27] Kyle Risi: Which they say was Fre lightning cream, which may have been something that I media would've used. Okay. However, initial analysis of the bones found that they likely belonged to a male, but later reanalysis disputes this pointing to the potential then be female of European descent, so, or could it have been noon Nonan.

[01:08:49] Kyle Risi: Could be. I did think that, but I dunno why no one connected those dots. Yeah, cuz Noonan is a man and they're just, cuz they

[01:08:56] Adam Cox: saw freckle lightning. Mm-hmm. Lighting creep. [01:09:00] Um, is that, so she took that, did she take that with her

[01:09:04] Kyle Risi: on plane? They say potentially, potentially. I'd try and look at pictures of her and like was she freckly?

[01:09:12] Kyle Risi: She kind of looked freckly, but there was no evidence that she was freckly. Right. But it's possible. Okay. Also, when you think during the year, 20 hours at a time. Right. Could it be sun cream? Yeah. Helps record cream

[01:09:25] Adam Cox: is, it just seems like a weird thing to take with you if you're going on a trip around the world.

[01:09:30] Adam Cox: And it's very, it's not like it, like we talked about, it's not a mm-hmm. Comfortable journey. It's a kind of necessity. It's the, uh,

[01:09:38] Kyle Risi: an adventure. Yeah. You take a toothbrush and that is it. Yeah. So lead expeditions to Garden Island have discovered other artifacts which have included various improvised tools indicating that someone was living on this supposedly uninhabited island.

[01:09:54] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. They found an aluminum panel and a [01:10:00] piece of plexiglass as well as a woman's size line shoe heel. Okay. Now photos show Emelia wearing the same type of shoe just days before she disappeared. Right. What is interesting is that the aluminum panel found does align with the dimensions and the rivet pattern, which is visible on some of the photos of Amelia standing next to her plane.

[01:10:25] Kyle Risi: Okay. Which these were taken shortly after her departure. The next theory that we have is the Japanese capture theory. Interesting one. This theory is based several factors. First, in 1966, a book claimed that Emelia and Fred were captured and executed on the island of Cyan or the Marshall Islands. Now, although Cyan is over 2,700 miles away from Howden Island, it's unlikely that Emelia's plane would've made this far, like after running so low on fuel because they only had like [01:11:00] exactly the right amount.

[01:11:01] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Now, with that said, though, Even though it seems implausible, a Sese woman says that she saw Amelia get executed by Japanese soldiers on the island, and another guy called Henry Keer. Andre proposed an alternative version to the Japanese capture theory, which suggests that the Japanese shot down Amelia's mate.

[01:11:21] Kyle Risi: But when they investigated into the supposed site where this happened, right, nothing of significance was found. Right. Okay. Now, in 2017, a history channel documentary called Amelia Earhart. The loss evidence presented a photograph from the National Archives as potential proof of Fred's capture. And this is that picture here.

[01:11:43] Kyle Risi: So what you can see in this picture is sitting on the deck with a back towards us. You can see a woman kind of looking off to the right hand side looking towards that ship. See? Oh yeah. Yep. So people suspect that maybe that is Amelia Earhart on this island, [01:12:00] and then right where the pole is just here.

[01:12:03] Kyle Risi: Right. There is a man that could be seen and people speculate that maybe that there is Fred Newman. Okay. Yeah. I can't quite work out. Yeah, you can't really tell who they are. Yeah. The only thing that could be plausible here is that woman sitting on that deck where, assume it's a woman. I don't even know, cuz that could be some wearing a white blouse.

[01:12:24] Kyle Risi: Or it could be a man with no shirt on. True. I mean, it

[01:12:27] Adam Cox: looks like a white person. Mm-hmm. That's the only thing that I could probably With short hair. With short hair, yeah. Dark,

[01:12:34] Kyle Risi: short hair. Now this photo has since been discredited because the photo has been traced back to a Japanese travel guide from 1935, which is two years before Amelia disappeared.

[01:12:46] Kyle Risi: Right, okay. But this picture is super famous and it's been making the rounds for years. It's finally now been discredited. Oh, right.

[01:12:54] Adam Cox: So that was a rumor, but recently been discredited.

[01:12:58] Kyle Risi: Okay. That's right. [01:13:00] Alright. Now overall, of course, I don't buy this theory. Neither do many people nowadays anyway, only because of the huge distance between the Japanese controlled Marshall Islands and Harlen Island, which is over a thousand miles away.

[01:13:12] Kyle Risi: That's the Marshall Islands, and then Saipan is over 2000 miles away. Also, if the Japanese had discovered a crash plane, then rescuing Amelia and many people say would've brought them considerable acclaim. So executing her and Fred just doesn't make sense to many people. You'd think they'd have got money or something.

[01:13:31] Kyle Risi: Yeah, yeah. Now, here's some more conspiratorial theories around immediate earhart's disappearance, which naturally, as the name suggests, they aren't widely accepted, but they are interesting in their own right. First up, we have Spies or Franklin d Roosevelt. This series suggests that Amelia Earhart was a spy for Franklin d Roosevelt's administration gathering intelligence on Japanese in the Pacific.

[01:13:57] Kyle Risi: It turns out that its origin is [01:14:00] actually from a World War II era movie called Flight for Freedom set in 1943, which is a story of a fictional female aviator, obviously inspired by Earhart, who engaged in a spy mission within the Pacific. The movie naturally helped further the myth. Slash theory that Emelia was spying on the Japanese in the Pacific.

[01:14:21] Kyle Risi: So this film gets released years after she goes missing. They take inspiration from her story that then becomes known in the zeitgeist, and then all of a sudden that's what happened to her. Okay. There's also another, quite a popular theory for a long time, and even George Putman potentially believe this, but they believe that she was a Tokyo Rose.

[01:14:42] Kyle Risi: Now this rumor. Says that after being captured by Japanese, she was forced into making propaganda radio broadcasts as a Tokyo rose during World War ii. Now, the Tokyo Roses were English speaking female broadcasters who worked for Japanese radio [01:15:00] stations during World War ii. Now, these broadcasters were tasked with delivering propaganda messages and attempting to demoralize ally troops.

[01:15:10] Kyle Risi: In the Pacific and Amelia, after being captured was said to have been forced into being one of these women. However, George Putman spent personally loads and loads of times listening to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these different broadcasters, right? And he never, ever recognized her voice at all.

[01:15:28] Kyle Risi: I can't imagine,

[01:15:29] Adam Cox: just based on what we've learned from her in this episode, that she would ever agree to do that. She's quite. Strong willed. I just imagine she would reject that because she's like, I'm not being

[01:15:41] Kyle Risi: forced to that. I'd rather die. Yeah, I think she would. Yeah. I think I agree with you there.

[01:15:47] Kyle Risi: Yeah. I don't think,

[01:15:48] Adam Cox: no, no man's gonna force her to put out fake propaganda.

[01:15:52] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. So another theory coined the New Britain theory claims that Amelia may have turned back during her flight and [01:16:00] attempted to reach an airfield in kind of a place called Rubal. Which is New Britain, which is not that far away from kind of le, right?

[01:16:08] Kyle Risi: So she went back, this again is 2,300 miles away. And an Australian army veteran who's famous in his own right doing stuff, claimed that he'd witnessed the wreck resembling Earhart's plane. The subsequent searchers failed to kind of find the wreckage at all. But again, considering immediate ear hearts, aircraft only had enough fuel or that single leg of the journey, there's just no way.

[01:16:33] Kyle Risi: She managed to get back to pretty much lay, so scrap that one as well. This one's an interesting one. Now finally, there is a theory that suggests that immediate survived her world flight and assumed a new identity as a woman called Irene Craig Mile Boham. And she ended up relocating to New Jersey where she then ended up getting remarried.

[01:16:58] Kyle Risi: Right? Interesting theory. [01:17:00] And it goes something like this. Immediately explain, went down. She and Fred were captured by the Japanese, and the Japanese decided that they were going to use a pair as an opportunity to negotiate prisoner exchange with the us. Now the US has a very strict non negotiation policy with the enemy or terrorists, right?

[01:17:22] Kyle Risi: But Amelia being so beloved and so famous, conveniently, also, she was friends with Eleanor Roosevelt, who was the president at the time. The government decides that they're going to proceed with negotiations for a prisoner exchange under the condition that immediate, and Fred would assume brand new identities, and in I media's case, she would assume the identity of Irene Craig Mabo.

[01:17:49] Kyle Risi: So the

[01:17:52] Adam Cox: US don't want to publicize that they're going to, you know, they're entertaining this idea and you know, [01:18:00] Um, but what I don't get is why would, why would they need a new

[01:18:04] Kyle Risi: identity? Well, because I think what it does is it sets a precedent, right? If they're seen to be negotiating with the enemy in one instance, what's there now stopping, let's say the Russians from doing something similar, right?

[01:18:17] Kyle Risi: When America wants, kind of set this precedent that they do not negotiate with terrorists, and that is that deterrent in itself. Don't even try it because we won't entertain it. But because she was such close friends with Ele Roosevelt and also she was so beloved and so famous, they decided to make exception.

[01:18:36] Kyle Risi: But on the condition that yes, she can have a life, Eleanor Roosevelt can get her friend back, but she'll have to assume a new identity. But surely the Japanese

[01:18:44] Adam Cox: would then like publicize, oh, we just

[01:18:46] Kyle Risi: released. Yeah, but they can just debunk it, right? Yeah. But it has a, yeah, I don't know. It's a theory. This is a newspaper clipping from um, the evening news.

[01:18:57] Kyle Risi: In Newark, New Jersey on [01:19:00] Tuesday, the November the 10th, 1970, which claims that that woman on the right hand side is the real Amelia Earhart. What do you reckon, do you reckon there is the side-by-side comparison? What do you think? Do you think there's a resemblance? Did shes

[01:19:13] Adam Cox: come forward with this or did um, this is just someone putting two and two

[01:19:18] Kyle Risi: together?

[01:19:19] Kyle Risi: I think. Well, from what I read, from what I remember, this woman was hounded for decades. Right. Okay. Yeah. Um,

[01:19:27] Adam Cox: I mean, there's a similarity, you know, that she's, she's gotten older. It could be her in terms of the look, but

[01:19:34] Kyle Risi: I, I don't, I don't think so. I dunno. I don't really buy it. It's an interesting story, but I don't buy that based on that picture.

[01:19:42] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Documentation of Boland's, personal life history and forensic analysis of the photos basically suggests that this theory is ultimately bullshit. Oh. So, But I, it is a good story. You've

[01:19:57] Adam Cox: given me all these theories that we keep going. No, that doesn't [01:20:00] sound right, is my favorite one.

[01:20:02] Kyle Risi: Okay. The crab theory.

[01:20:03] Kyle Risi: The crab. She was eaten by crabs. Yeah. Oh, so this is related to the Costway theory that says that the pair crash on Gardner Island and survived, but they were overcome by crabs after becoming exhausted from fending off these giant coconut crabs on the island and eventually overpowered and then eaten.

[01:20:23] Kyle Risi: Have a look at these pictures. I want you to describe this for me. I know that you're a bit grossed out by crabs. What do you think? Think. No, it's disgusting

[01:20:30] Adam Cox: of that. It's too big. It's too big to be a crab. Do you wanna

[01:20:33] Kyle Risi: describe what you're looking at there?

[01:20:34] Adam Cox: It looks like a hand, a giant hand on a bin, but that's a crab or a bin.

[01:20:39] Adam Cox: How big is bin it? Uh, maybe like a meter high. And the crab is the length of the bin.

[01:20:45] Kyle Risi: It's a huge crab. Um, Didn't the

[01:20:49] Adam Cox: Game of Thrones episode where

[01:20:51] Kyle Risi: there's some crabs. Oh, the crab man on the, was the, not one of most recent one. The House of the Dragon. Yeah, that's it. That's

[01:20:58] Adam Cox: it. That's kind. So [01:21:00] they were eaten or tried to be eaten?

[01:21:01] Adam Cox: Um, oh man. That's huge. It was the size

[01:21:04] Kyle Risi: of a dog. Yeah. They're massive, aren't they? They look, oh, the man

[01:21:07] Adam Cox: holding it. Why is he holding

[01:21:08] Kyle Risi: it? Look at it. It's disgusting. Massive. Here's a smaller one next to a coconut,

[01:21:13] Kyle Risi: well, actually, That's what the next theory is gonna suggest, right? Get this. Another variation of this theory suggests that Amelia and Fred may have been devoured by millions and millions of tiny red Christmas Island crabs, these crabs.

[01:21:32] Kyle Risi: Literally move in swarms. And you may have even seen a documentary with David Attleborough talking about these craps trying to kind of cross the road and their cars ride over them, but there's millions and millions of them, and they're just all tiny little red craps. One guy. Is on camera saying that when these crabs move, it's very disorientating because it feels like the ground is literally moving [01:22:00] eerily below your feet as these kind of crabs slowly move in unison along the ground, literally eating everything in their path, right?

[01:22:09] Kyle Risi: They did a test using a pig to see how quickly a swarm of these red crabs could pit clean a corpse, and it took 12 days. As soon as they smell food, they start slowly coming towards this smell like a red crabby lava even. Um, like live food. Live food. Oh, so they will clean up the cooler box and then all of a sudden you would just see these crabs though change direction.

[01:22:35] Kyle Risi: Ah, coming at you really slowly in slow motion. Creepy. That is very creepy. Now, while it is true at Christmas Island, May have vast colonies of these crabs. They are not native to Gardner Island or are there any of these crabs on any of the nearby islands? Gardner Island is over 5,300 miles from Christmas Island, which [01:23:00] is in the Indian Ocean.

[01:23:01] Kyle Risi: So again, I'm sorry if you've heard this theory before and you believe it, and it sounds most plausible to you, is complete bullshit. These crabs, they don't live on Gardner Island, so the crab theory. Bogus. Okay.

[01:23:15] Adam Cox: What we got left with then, so

[01:23:19] Kyle Risi: she crashed into the water. That is the story of Amelia Erhart.

[01:23:25] Kyle Risi: Ah.

[01:23:25] Adam Cox: So I didn't realize about the theories of where she could have ended up, but uh, yeah, it's a, I mean it that second theory of her potentially hiding out on the island with the metal foil plane or whatever part. That that one feels like if there was any chance of her surviving something

[01:23:45] Kyle Risi: like that, I would like to think so.

[01:23:47] Kyle Risi: I would like to think that they had at least a good life towards the end, and they had, I guess they probably starved to death, I

[01:23:55] Adam Cox: guess. Yeah. So maybe not good life, but they, I feel like they would've had a chance, [01:24:00] she would've tried to land that plane mm-hmm. On land or whatever. I, I can just get that sense.

[01:24:06] Adam Cox: Yes. And then I feel. Obviously what happened after that was, you know, perhaps they weren't to, to fight whatever land they were on. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Crab or no crab.

[01:24:15] Kyle Risi: Crab or no crab. So yeah. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Compendium and Assembly of fascinating and intriguing things. Remember, you can always find us on Instagram at the Compendium podcast.

[01:24:28] Kyle Risi: You can also send us an email at the compendium pod gmail.com. Remember, we always love hearing from you with your comments and your suggestions. And again, until we meet next week, stay safe and stay curious. See ya. See ya. [01:25:00]