August 9, 2025 • 41 mins
In 2014, a Boeing 777 airliner disappeared. Despite two full years of searching an area of ocean covering more than 120,000 square kilometers, it has never been found. It is the only unexplained missing vessel in modern aviation history. Listen to this classic episode and find out more about what exactly happened.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's me Joshum. For this week's select I've
chosen our two part episode on the disappearance of MH
three P seventy from back in January twenty twenty. It
is the greatest unsolved mystery in aviation history since the
disappearance of Amelia Earhart and poor Fred Noonan, which is
really saying something. It's astounding that with a decade of
(00:22):
exhaustive time and attention, the plane still hasn't been found.
Maybe someday, when we're mapping the entire seafloor of the
Indian Ocean will stumble across it, who knows. But until then,
enjoy this harrowing mystery episode of Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and
as Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there.
And this is Stuff you should Know about one of
the most interesting mysteries in modern times. Yeah, like it's
really tough to get across. What a mystery. The missing
(01:11):
airliner MH three seventy.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Is Malaysian Airlines Flight three seventy. Yeah, and this is
it's gonna be a two parter because it's pretty robust. Yeah,
and boy, hats off to the Grabster. He really put
together a lot of great research for this one.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
He did. I also want to give a huge shout
out to one of my journalistic heroes, William Langwash. He
wrote something he writes in the Atlantic, but he's not
just an Atlantic writer. He wrote what Really Happened to
Malaysia's Missing Airplane? Big old long article on it. And
this guy is an aviation expert to begin with, but
he's also if you ever read a Tom wolfbook or
(01:47):
article or whatever, he has a really great knack for
making you feel like you're there in the action. Yeah,
But then he also has a knack for making you
step back and think, how does Tom Wolf know all this? Was?
He there? William Languish is the same way. And I
will go ahead and recommend that you not, unless you
are a very courageous person, read any of his work,
(02:10):
especially the stuff about airline disasters anytime around when you're flying,
because he puts you in that plane when it's going
down or whatever. He's really really good at it. So
I recommend basically anything Langwich has written go read It's
worth it for sure.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
And I think this coupled with the brief times that
we've touched on this kind of thing in the past,
whether it was dB Cooper or Bermuda triangle, Like, there's
something about aviation disasters and mysteries that are really intriguing
to me. And for airline forensics, it's all Rick just
super super interesting.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
It is. So you talked about airline forensics and that
kind of stuff. This is lousy with it. Yeah, But
the reason I was saying why it's tough to overstate
like what a mystery image three seventy is it's the
only airliner that has considered disappeared. Yehanished they know where
all the other ones are, they know what happened to
all the other ones. It's the only major one that
(03:06):
is just where the official investigation said we don't know.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Yeah, I mean, and you know, in part two we'll
get to a pretty good well, actually, I think the
leading theory comes in this episode, but we kind of
think we know. But it's that thing where you like,
you can't definitively say.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Yeah, I can't say where, and you can't say why.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Right, Yeah, and then the why is yeah, and the
where are both really confounding.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yeah, And the reason why air travel in the twenty
first century is way safer than auto travel is because
anytime an airliner goes down, everyone in the international community
comes together, yeah, investigates it. They do so openly. The airline,
the airplane manufacturer, the everyone involved is expected to like
(03:53):
tell the truth and you get it out there and
you figure out what went wrong, and then you make
things safer, and then that makes air travel safer for everybody.
They couldn't do this for all sorts of reasons with
m Age three seventy and so it's a huge failing
among the international community, not for lack of trying, but
because it's just an asterisk out there. It's the only one.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yeah, And that's why airplanes don't crash as much anymore.
I mean, growing up, it's not like it was every
other week or anything. But used to hear about airline
crashes enough to where it gave you pause, right, and
you just don't hear about it much anymore.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
It's true. I mean, it's still out there for sure.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yeah, but they seem much more rare than they used
to be, kind of like skyjackings.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
So We'll do our best to put you in the
in the plane in the passenger seat. Yeah, can we
at least be in business class? Buckle sure?
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Were you about to say a buckle up?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah? Okay, buckle up, because we're gonna take off on
March eighth, twenty fourteen, in Kuala Lumpur. It's the very
beginning of March eighth. The takeoff schedule for Malaysian Airlines
Flight three seventy from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing was scheduled
for twelve thirty five am.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
We're in a Boeing seven seven seven DASH two hundred
er yep, and there are two hundred and twenty seven
fellow passengers aboard twelve flight crew YEP.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
It's a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Almost about two thirds of the passengers or Chinese nationals.
I believe there's a bunch of other people from other countries,
but for the bulk of the people on the plane
were from China. And it's a late night flight. It's
expected to arrive in Beijing at about six o'clock six
thirty in Beijing time, and it's going to fly over
(05:43):
the South China Sea, over the Gulf of Thailand, through Laos, Vietnam,
and then into China to arrive at Beijing. It didn't
actually take off at twelve thirty five. They took off
at twelve forty two. Not too shabby. Seven minutes. I'm
not like sitting there rocking in my seat like let's
go yet, you know, I might not even even noticed.
(06:07):
And they take off and it flies up to eighteen
thousand feet and the air traffic control center at Kuala
Lumpur says, hey, you guys are cleared for to go
up to thirty five thousand feet, which is cruising altitude
for this flight.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
I think that's right.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
And at this point, at eighteen thousand, they switched from
the airport's air traffic to Kuala Lampor Area Control Center.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
And you know the way, the reason we're mentioning all
these details is because it turns out they're very important.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Very important, yees.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
So these are all key.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Keep rewinding fifteen thirty seconds to get every single detail, okay,
because you're gonna need them for the big finish.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
So four minutes later, like you said, they were cleared
to go to thirty five thousand. Talking about fifteen minutes
and it's here where Captain Zahari and there were two
people on board flying this plane. Captain Sahari and what
was the other gentleman.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Name, First Officer Farik Abdul Hamid, right, and Captain saw
Zahari Ahmad Shah is piloting the plane. First Officer Hamid.
This is his last training flight. After this, he'll be
fully certified to fly Boeing seven to seventy seven's, which
if you're a commercial airline pilot, that's pretty much the
peak right there.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Yeah, and that's important too because one of them is
a very experienced pilot in his fifties. The other one
is a brand new kind of greenhorn, and that's going
to factor in for sure.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
So, like I said, it took.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
About fifteen minutes to get to thirty five thousand feet,
and this is when the lead pilot radios that Kuala
Lampoor Control Center says we're at thirty five thousand feet.
Then seven minutes later he radios again says, by the way,
we're still.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
And this is not me doing him. I don't know
what he sounded like.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
There you go, this is Captain Zahari. Yeah, everybody sounds
like Chuck Yeager.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
So he confirmed to give that they were at thirty
five thousand feet. And this is where Ed points out
that this wasn't some sort of big alarming thing. But
what usually happens is you radio in when you leave
an altitude, not when you arrive. And you also don't
radio in seven minutes later and say, by the way,
we're still at thirty five thousand feet, still here, like
once you hit it, you're just sort of there that
(08:19):
you're cruising altitude.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Right, So it's it wasn't alarming or anything, but it
was weird that he made those two radio transmissions, but
there was nothing compared to the weirdness that was about
to take place. That's right shortly after that, I think
at one twenty nineteen am. Yeah, qual Umpoor Area Control Center.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
It's like eleven minutes later.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Yeap said, hey, mhe three seventy you're about to leave
our jurisdiction and enter Ho Chi Minh's jurisdiction. Go ahead
and contact Ho Chi Minh air Traffic Control and let
them know you are on with them on this frequency.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
I mean, if you remember our air traffic control podcast,
you're handed off like, you don't just stick with one
air traffic control when you fly around the world. No,
you're handed off all along the way whenever you enter
the airspace of that whatever district.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Precisely, and the way that it's set up is there's
not supposed to be any time where you're just flying
alone and then you move into the other one. You're
going right from one to the other.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
You want to hand off.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
So Captain Zahari responded with good night Malaysian three seven zero.
Those are the last words anyone heard from Captain Zahari
as far as we know, And that in and of
itself was kind of an odd transmission because typically any
airline captain would have replied with the frequency, said the
(09:45):
frequency back to confirm that that was the right one.
But instead all I said was good night Malaysian three
seven zero. And very shortly after that, two minutes later,
MHE three seventy disappeared from the radar the moment it
showed up on ho Chi Minh air Traffic Controls radar screens.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
It just vanished right without ever having made contact with
them right via radio frequency.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
This should have like set off alarms with ho Chi
Minh City and apparently they did notice. Kuala Lumpur didn't notice.
The guy was they had all this other air traffic to.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Deal Yeah, and they were out of their zone at
this point, yep.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
And he'd said good night, and you know everybody knows
good night. You can't go back on that. You have
to wait until tomorrow to make contact again. So the
kual Umpur's I don't know about blameless in this, but
certainly less blameful than Tochim Ho Chi Minh and Ho
Chi Minh noticed that they just disappeared from the screen,
(10:44):
but it took them a full eighteen minutes before they
called Kuala Lumpur and said, hey, do you know anything
about where MH three seventy is because they kind of
vanished from our radar.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Yeah, Like, I don't know the exact process, and they're defense.
They were trying to get in touch. It's not like
they just said, well, we'll see what happens. They got
in touch with another pilot who was nearby in that
airspace to contact them, and this pilot reported there was
interference and static. I heard mumbling on the other end,
but that's the last we heard and we lost connection.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Right, We're not even sure that he was talking to
the right people.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah, so, I mean they were trying to get in touch,
but you're right, I think like sooner than eighteen minutes,
they should have said, by the way, this plane that
just left your airspace has disappeared, Like, do you know
what's going on?
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Right?
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Protocol, international protocol is five minutes, okay, So they waited
thirteen minutes longer than protocol dictated, and it was so
much beyond when they should have called that. The controller
in Kuala Impour actually said on the record, like, why
didn't you call me sooner? How are you just calling
me about this?
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Like that may still have been yesterday, right.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
It's missing for eighteen minutes, which, as we'll get to
later on stuff that came up in the investigation, that
was just the first step in a series of missteps, right,
that led to the reason why MH three seventy may
never be found.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Yeah, so should we take a little break and talk
about radar radar O'Reilly.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
We'll be back right after this.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Radar O'Reilly not.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Radar O'Reilly, radar used by air traffic control, so different.
It is different than radar o'reiley. This is called secondary
radar and it sends out a little beam that it's
very narrow and it sweeps the area, and on board
the aircraft they have a transponder that the Texas beam
and their own signal back that says this how fast
(13:02):
we're going?
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Is where we're headed? And a code that says and
this is who I am?
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Yeah, maybe even MH three seventy, as simple as that,
something like that. That's right, that's what's supposed to show
up on air traffic controls radar screen. That's so they
can see, oh, here's MH three seventy coming toward DL
seventeen twenty two or whatever.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
At this speed.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Right, Yeah, they have all this information, and that's called
secondary radar. Primary radar is what you think where it's like,
you know, it's a blip on a screen that this big,
this big radar ray is bouncing off of and receiving
information back from. But it's just you see, it's physically there.
This has far more information, and that's what air traffic
(13:44):
control around the world uses.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Right, And this is very key because just a few
seconds after it made that switch or into ho Chi
Men's airspace, the transponder stops sending information that transponder that's
supposed to say who you are, where you are, and
how going just stopped. It vanished, and this is when
the ball was dropped by a little bit by Kuala
(14:08):
Lamport not noticing, and definitely by ho Chi men not
doing anything immediately in response to Kuala lamp or.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Right.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
So, primary radar, the radar that you typically think of
when you think of radar, there are very few places
in the world where you can't be tracked by someone
on radar. It's fairly old technology. It's been around for
a while. But the places where you can't be tracked
can be vast over the ocean, in the desert, over
(14:39):
extremely mountainous or wooded areas. There are places where you
can't really put a radar tower and you can disappear
from radar. Right there's I think what I'm trying to
say here is if you take your plane out of
radar range and you turn off your transponder, you can
make a modern airliner as big as a seven seventy
(15:01):
seven Vanish where people don't know where it is. And
that's a really I think hallmark point or trait to
this mystery that kind of like gets people a little
unnerved is wait a minute, like this is the twenty
first century, This happened in twenty fourteen. What do you mean?
There's times and situations where an airliner can disappear and
people don't know where it is. And that was the situation,
(15:24):
and as Ho Chi Minh City and Kualaumpur are starting
to scramble to try to figure out, you know, where
this is. Apparently they called Malaysian Airlines and said, hey,
do you know anything about MH three seventy. Malaysian Airlines said, oh, yeah,
they're flying over Cambodia right now, and they're like where,
what do you how are you seeing this? After an hour,
finally Malaysian Airlines is like, no, we're just referring to
(15:47):
the flight plan. They should be over Cambodia right now.
What do you mean you can't find them? What's going on?
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Yeah? But because of that primary radar.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
The secondary radar wasn't functioning like we said, because the
transponder was off, but the primary radar did track them
for about an hour after those communications dropped. Because of
the Malaysian military was able to track it with the
primary radar.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Yeah, apparently it flew through the primary radar of five
different countries and the only one that bothered to track
it was Malaysia's Air Force. Yeah, but they didn't do
anything about it. They didn't follow up to see who
it was, They didn't scramble any jets to go see
if everybody was okay, or they just knew that there
(16:28):
was an unidentified plane flying through Malaysian airspace and the
Air Force didn't do anything about it. This is embarrassing
enough that the Air Force didn't reveal this to anybody
for a while, which was a really important point because
during this time, about an hour, about an hour and
a half after the takeoff and an hour after the
(16:49):
thing disappeared from transponders, the Malaysian Air Force was tracking
MH three seventy and it saw that it seemed to
have taken a turn.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Yeah, I mean they know what happened at this point.
For a little while, it made a sharp turn.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
That was not part of the planned flight plan.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
No, not at all.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
This is where things definitely took a metaphorical and literal turn.
It headed southwest at that point, crossed over the Malay Peninsula,
over Malaysia again, and then parts of Thailand. Then it
made a right turn. This is very key near the
island of Penang, just put a pin in that then
headed west by northwest towards the Andaman c and then
(17:30):
at two twenty two am vanished from radar, from that
primary radar as well.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Right, So the Malaysian Air Force saw this happen on
this radar, it didn't tell anybody for a while. The
flight plan had it leaving Malaysia, crossing over the Strait
of Malacca into the peninsula where Thailand is located, into
China right just away from Malaysia. And from what the
(17:58):
Malaysian Air Force saw, this thing doubled back on itself
and then went in some totally different directions, almost the
opposite direction it was supposed to be going in. And
like you said, it dropped off of the radar, and
that was the last time anyone saw it on radar.
But that's not the last time we were able to
track MGE three seventy And that's thanks to a satellite
(18:22):
network that's run by an outfit called in Marsat.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Yeah, so in Marsat.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
If you've ever been on a plane and you've enjoyed
the benefits of watching movies, streaming or connected to your
computer via Wi Fi. That is because of satellite communication.
These airplanes are equipped with a system and it transfers
data and all their voice communications via satellite. And some
(18:48):
of this data from the plane is automatically shared with
these ground tracking stations, which is a really big deal.
So not only are they letting you watch movies and
doing all that, but it's sending this automatic data on
a regular on the rag basically from that satellite to
these ground stations.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Right, so they think by this time, actually I believe
they know by this time m H three seventies, navigational systems,
entertainment systems, a bunch of its systems have been turned off.
The only thing that was still operating was this satellite
link I guess beacon.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Yeah, it's called a satellite data unit.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Okay, so the satellite data unit which was capable of
contacting and receiving contact from the m MAR satellites. Now,
at the time, no one knows that this is happening, right, Like,
there's no sound being made, there's nobody tracking this. This
all came out much later when in Marsat realized they
were sitting on a bunch of data. But during different
(19:53):
points over the next six seven hours, the satellite and
the satellite data unit talk to each other under a
few different circumstances. And because of this, this company in Marsat,
which is located a headquartered in Great Britain, but literally
covers the globe not just with airline stuff but maritime
(20:14):
thing which I think where they were originally they were
originally founded to do, is to enable maritime communications. Like
you know, satellite phone you're calling through in Marsat. Yeah, right,
So they've got this whole constellation of satellites and when
(20:34):
in Marsett heard about MH three seventy, they were like,
we're all bet our satellites were tracking this thing in
some way, shape or form. And it turns out that
they were right.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Yeah, And there's four and this is important here. There's
four different ways or circumstances where that satellite data unit
on the plane is communicating with the satellite in space.
Whenever you're making a data transmission or a voice transmission,
whenever or someone on the ground tries to contact the plane.
There's something that happens every hour. If no one has
(21:06):
made either one of these contacts for an hour, you
get a check in called a handshake. It's just like
you're still here, shake hands, buddy, Yeah, just.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Want to make sure you're logged on. It's kind of
like when you watch too much Netflix, and Netflix enter
the message, yeah, have you finished all the tub of
cookie dough yet?
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (21:25):
And then it as the thing that says go outside, right,
or actually it doesn't. It says, watch another one.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Watch some more, why not have some more cookie dough?
It's the same thing. It's it's sending a message to
the plane's satellite data unit saying like, just are you
still logged on?
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Right?
Speaker 2 (21:38):
And then the final thing, and this is super key,
is whenever the whenever you first log onto the satellite system,
that thing on the plane, whenever it kind of checks
in and links up. That is very key because what
can also happen if that thing goes down and then reboots.
It treats that as a new log in, so it'll
make another ping basically that it's logged done to the system.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Right. So in Marsett goes back and looks at their
data and says, okay, so here's a couple of things
right now. This is I think within the first few
days everybody is looking in the south China Sea for
MH three seventy because that was what was along its
flight plan. The Malaysian Air Force hasn't revealed yet that
it tracked MH three seventy turn around and go the
(22:25):
opposite direction of what its flight plan was where it
was scheduled to carry it. Yeah, and in Marsette is
now saying, wait a minute, this thing didn't crash like
an hour and a half after takeoff. This thing turned
around and flew into the Indian Ocean for six or
seven more hours because our satellite was talking to the
(22:45):
to the plane at various points during this time.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Yeah, and we should point out too, after Air France
flight four four seven, which crashed in two thousand and nine,
this is when in Marsette really kind of beefed up
their system. They added more ground station and they added
a lot more capability to add storage for this data
because they know that this can really help out in
situations like this.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
That was a big one too. Do you remember that one?
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Yeah, So that one was the first one that really
opened people's eyes where it was like, wait a minute,
when we're flying over the ocean, like no one knows
where we are, and they were like, no, actually not really,
and they I think that's why m MARSAT was like,
we've got to build more ground stations, we got to
bulk up our data storage all that stuff. We've got
to add more satellite capabilities, and in doing so, they
(23:33):
made it so that you could be tracked when you're
over the ocean, even if you didn't want to be,
as seems to have been the case with MH three seventy.
So it was a huge difference between two thousand and four,
was it two thousand and four and nine, two thousand
and nine and twenty fourteen, just five years the thing
proved itself. These upgrades they made were substantial. But Air
(23:54):
France flight four four seven in and of itself another
langwash gem that just puts you in the seed of
this terrifying plane crash. That one, in particular, they knew
where the plane was and it still took two years
to recover the black boxes and figure out what went wrong,
which is terrifying in it if you know what happened
to that one. Basically the controlsers got ripped away but
(24:17):
from the pilot and it just went right into the
ocean and they're still down there apparently there was a
big debate over what to do with these people. When
they started raising them, they were perfectly preserved because they're
so deep in the pressure and the anaerobic situation, and yeah,
the temperature just kept them perfectly preserved. But as they
were raised up into warmer waters, the decomposition over two
(24:40):
years just happened immediately. Man, so they I think the
French government said they have to stay there. It's now
a memorial, do not try to raise anybody. And they're
still down there, strapped to their seats, which when you
just do not think about that the next time you
get on a plane. It's a terrible thing to think about.
I can tell you first hand.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah, you've gotten so much better over the years.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
But I'm sure this is going to be a setback.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
No, I'm hanging in there, all right. Yeah, if it happens,
it happens like that's the way I kind.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Of Well, there's certainly nothing you can do about it.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
This isn't something that they are that you guys are
going to play my memorial at my funeral, my last words.
But if you're if if I go down in a
plane crash, my number was up.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Right, and everyone else will be like, that's so weird.
He always talked about it.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Yeah, right, this was worse here, such a freak there was.
Actually I had a tweet once it said, if I
ever go down on a plane crash, I'm going to
shout I wish I would have spend more time at work.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
I'm not sure I get that.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Well, you know it's like no one ever says in
their deathbed they wish they'd spend more time at work.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Well, I got it. An ironic funny on the way.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Yeah, I'll make people laugh. Good for you give them
their last laugh.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
So, uh, this uh, where they're getting all this information
was from a ground station in Perth, Australia, a place
we have been to.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
M it was quite lovely, lovely town.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
That's right, it was great.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Anyone ever tells you don't go to Western Australia. You
tell them that's BS. Josh and Chuck said, it's great.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Yep, right, very stupid. So BS stands for So.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
They had a lot of data, like we said, because
they had beefed up their storage capabilities over the past
five or six years, and they have a couple of
types of data, something called burst timing offset and burst
frequency offset bto is it measures how long that a
signal takes to reach a satellite. You know the speed
(26:39):
of the signal, so you know exactly how far that
plane is from the satellite at that exact moment. It's
very easy to kind of understand.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Right, and first taken into account, Mr sat has Oh,
here here was a ping. Here's a ping. Here's a ping.
Here's a ping. Right now, they're digging in to analyze
these pings and just the quality of them, the timing
of them, all this stuff, because they are like, I'm
pretty sure we can figure out where this plane was
and maybe where it went if we really drill in
(27:09):
and do some incredible math and figure out just kind
of the nature of these pings.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Yeah, and what they're trying to do here is to
narrow it down into an arc instead of a circle.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Well, I think that's just naturally what happened. Oh yeah,
you're right, you're right.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
I'm sorry because Ed explained it in a very easy way.
If you tell someone, hey, I'm one hundred miles from Atlanta,
then you draw a circle around Atlanta. That's one hundred
miles and you could be at any point along that circle.
But if that phone call was from Athens, which is
not one hundred miles from Atlanta, but it's not too
(27:46):
far sixty five or so. But if you said you're
from some other city in Georgia, then you would know
where you were, and if you knew how fast they
were going, then you could. Really it doesn't become a circle,
then it becomes an arc.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Right, the number of points on that circle where that
person could possibly be smaller, yeah, much more, maybe by half,
maybe by two thirds. And yet so the circle becomes
an arc. And because of that burst timing offset, they
could establish those those arcs, and there were seven of them,
I believe, Yes, No, they could establish the circles and
(28:21):
then the circle because of the other one, the the BFO,
the burst frequency offset. Those are more complicated. They involved
the Doppler effect and basically tell the the satellite or
the satellite data tells MMR set we're going in this
direction because the you know, the Doppler effectiveness. An ambulance
(28:45):
sirens coming two years and then it passes right, changes
in pitch because of the relative distance and the direction
that it's traveling. They could tell from this ping, the
satellite ping, not even a data transmission, just a ping
which direction the thing was headed and roughly how fast
(29:06):
it was going, and so they were able to create
seven arcs. And after the seven arcs, the seventh arc
was created by a ping that took place at eight
nineteen am, and after that there was another There was
a log on request, a handshake request that the SDU
failed to respond to. And they think that in between
(29:27):
eight nineteen am and that last log on request at
nine to fifteen am, the plane finally crashed, probably from
running out of fuel.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Yeah, and they think that eight nineteen was from one
of those reboots that I was talking about when that
system comes back on, which.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Will come under power failure, right, which we'll come into
play pretty soon.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
All right, So let's take another break here, Okay, all right,
we'll be back with the leading theory right after this.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
All right, So the leading theory and this is.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Uh, the more I read this, the more it was
Occam's razor kind of staring you in the face. Because
we'll get into some of the kind of Kakammi theories
and there are many of them, but this one is
the simplest, and uh, it's probably what happened. It is
that Uh, someone on board and should we should we
(30:51):
tease this out? Yeah, okay, someone on board, Uh, took
control of the plane, disabled that transponder, and then started
flying in the other direction back across Malaysia. Then put
it on autopilot until it ran out of gas and
it crashed into the ocean.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Yeah, about the Southern Indian Ocean, which is where the
southern seventh arc was.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
One of the reasons this makes a lot of sense
is because that transponder going off at the exact moment
when the plane transitioned from Kuala Lampur's airspace into Ho
Chi Min's, it would be an incredible coincidence. If that
was just an incredible coincidence.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
That in and of itself says some that there was
a human factor.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
Involved, like someone knew what that meant.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Right exactly, so as somebody who knew how to do that,
when to do it, and the timing of it was
just too spectacular for it to have been an accident.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Yeah, because what they probably counted on is exactly what happened.
Was there was a period of time. They might have
figured five minutes, which is what you said the standard was,
but what they got was eighteen minutes of confusion. Yeah,
I mean they it tripled what they were counting on
exactly best case scenario.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yep. The other thing was that the turn that the
MH three seventy made was so abrupt that an autopilot
wouldn't have done that. Now if you put it, if
you put a plane on autopilot and have it and
it turns, it would make a much wider turn. This
(32:25):
is a hard kind of backtracking turn that it made
to its left to the southwest from the north. Traveling
the northeast, the turn was to the southwest. So just
the turn alone, which came after the transponder was turned off,
shows that it was under human control. It was a
(32:46):
person piloting the plane making it turn.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Like right, and that rules out things like mechanical failure
or fire.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Everything from meteor strike ye know, a squall line to
any kind of weather it was. All that was is
ruled out by the fact that this turn took place
clearly under human control.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
Right. That also rules out hypoxia.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
If you remember the very eerie crash for with golfer
plane Paine Stewart on that private jet.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
I don't really remember that, can you kind of refresh
my memory.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
That was in nineteen ninety nine, and I think the
post mortem on that one was that this private plane
essentially everyone on board died of hypoxia, including the pilots,
and it flew for a number of hours.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Oh really on autopilot. It was a ghost plane essentially.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Wow. Yeah, So they don't think that hypoxia affected whoever
was in control of.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
The plane because it made that turn.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Yeah, it was a very deliberate turn, and then it
followed an even more deliberate flight pattern after that. This
was not random movements of a plane where somebody who
was suffering from hypoxia but still alive would make. These
weren't confused decisions. They were difficult to understand decisions, but
they weren't random and confused behavior. They were deliberate.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
So one of the pilots or both of the pilots
suffering from hypoxia is ruled out, And the fact that
they were deliberate turns also rules out the idea that
both of the pilots were dead. Right that again, it
was just the plane flying itself.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Right, These log on requests by that STU unit on
the plane. There was another big clue there because there
was a log on request made at one forty three am,
and that basically says that the power on the plane's
electrical system was shut off for a period of time
in between that transponder disappearing and that time of that
(34:46):
log on request. Right, So someone like purposely disabled, purposefully
disabled these systems.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Right, So one forty three am would have been about
an hour after take off, just over an hour after takeoff,
after the transponder was turned off with perfect timing between
Kuala Lumpur and Ho Chi Minh, but also before the
(35:12):
turn that the Malaysian Air Force track. That's right, or
at about the same time.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
The other thing that could have happened when these when
the transponder and the SDU were shut off, it could
have depressurized the plane. If that happens, then hypoxya is
the fear those oxygen masks are going to drop down,
but you only get about ten minutes of oxygen as
a passenger. The cockpit is going to have a lot
more oxygen than that. But we do know for a
(35:43):
fact from that log on request that the systems were
off for an hour, So even if that were the case,
then the masks run out ten minutes later, and the
people die of hypoxy at the passengers shortly after that.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
The thing is is they believe that not only is
MH three seventy still at cruising altitude, it probably actually
climbed to forty thousand, maybe a little over forty thousand feet.
It's basically the maximum that seventy seven could stay aloft at.
So the drop down masks would have been totally useless
(36:17):
to begin with. There's not enough oxygen coming through them
to offset that kind of height in the pressurized cabin
that's meant for a much lower altitude, and the reason
why I found it very disconcerting to learn that there's
only like ten or fifteen minutes worth of oxygen coming
out of those masks.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
I mean, there's the idea there that a plane crash
doesn't take longer than that.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
The idea is that it's used for an emergency transitioned
down to a much lower altitude where you could breathe
without a pressurized cabin, and that that takes less than
ten or fifteen minutes. You can do that much more
quickly a few minutes.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
So basically you're gonna start flying with your own oxygen tank.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Basically, I'll be like, try to take it away from
the tip. You can't do it.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Here's another thing is that that sdu log on re
quest at the end. It suggests that it was turned
back on. And the thinking here is that whoever did this,
it probably didn't care at that point because it was
too late because everyone on board was dead, right.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
So the idea behind all this is that the power
was shut off, and they know that the power was
turned off because the log on request came at a
certain point, right, So that means that the power had
been shut off and it was coming back on. And
they think that it was to depressurize the cabin. And
be a very easy way to depressurize the cabin just
(37:37):
turn off all of the power.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
And then maybe whoever did this, and we'll get to that,
it was like, I want to get back down to
normal cruising altitude here, so I can fly this plane
without wearing a mask maybe, or just in a less
stressful environment, right.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Exactly, Maybe go get a bite to eat or something
like that. There's a lot that can be done in
a pressurized cabin.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
And then there was that final arc, the seventh one
that log on request was probably the plane running out
of fuel. And this I thought was super interesting. So
the plane runs out of fuel, those engines shut down,
but there's still air pumping through those turbines, and that's
going to spin the turbine and that's certainly not going
to be enough to fly your plane, but it could
(38:22):
be enough to act as a generator and power up
the auxiliary power system.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
That's right, super super interesting.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Yeah, So in the running out of fuel, electrical goes down,
those air ramjets come on, and the auxiliary power system
comes on. The thing logs back on.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
Just enough to get that going again.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Right exactly. So let's just before we stop for this episode, Chuck,
let's just kind of recamp what m mar said has
been able to figure out from seven pings between its
satellite and the satellite data unit seven pings. They dove
into these things so deeply that they were able to
figure out that the flight did not crash, that there
(39:03):
was probably a hypoxia event among the cabin, that it
was deliberate, and that the plane kept flying, not that
it did not crush, but that it kept flying for
at least six more hours and finally did probably crash.
In the southern Indian Ocean, all from seven little pings
between the plane and the satellite.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
And then the final little clue here from the satellite
is the ELT emergency transmitter failed, its emergency location transmitter,
and that's linked to a different satellite system. And one person,
if your conspiracy minded, might say, well, you know what
this means. It didn't actually crash into the ocean. But
these ELTs apparently have a pretty low success rate, and
(39:48):
when you dive into the ocean with no power, it's
at tremendous speed and that would have been enough probably
to destroy the plane instantly.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
And this ELT, there's another. So there's four I think
on the plane. Did you say that.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
I didn't say four, So I believe.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
There's four on the plane. One of them like they
can be disabled.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
It's not a black box, by the way.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
No, no, no, this is just a beacon that's pings
a satellite, but isn't even a different satellite from MMR SAT.
So it's like an extra fail safe. And this means
that they all four of them failed, which again some
people think that's evidence right there that this thing didn't
actually crash. We'll talk about that in the next episode
about that.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
All right, I think we don't do listener mails on
a part one no, so just strap in and I
hope you can hold off from researching for a couple
of days on this.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Way, maybe you have a bloody Mary while you're waiting. Agreed, Well, anyway,
in the meantime, if you want to get in touch
with us, you can go on to stuff you Should
Know dot com and check out our social links, and
you can also send us an email to stuff podcast
diheartradio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, it's me Joshum. For this week's select I've
chosen our two part episode on the disappearance of MH
three P seventy from back in January twenty twenty. It
is the greatest unsolved mystery in aviation history since the
disappearance of Amelia Earhart and poor Fred Noonan, which is
really saying something. It's astounding that with a decade of
(00:22):
exhaustive time and attention, the plane still hasn't been found.
Maybe someday, when we're mapping the entire seafloor of the
Indian Ocean will stumble across it, who knows. But until then,
enjoy this harrowing mystery episode of Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and
as Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there.
And this is Stuff you should Know about one of
the most interesting mysteries in modern times. Yeah, like it's
really tough to get across. What a mystery. The missing
(01:11):
airliner MH three seventy.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Is Malaysian Airlines Flight three seventy. Yeah, and this is
it's gonna be a two parter because it's pretty robust. Yeah,
and boy, hats off to the Grabster. He really put
together a lot of great research for this one.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
He did. I also want to give a huge shout
out to one of my journalistic heroes, William Langwash. He
wrote something he writes in the Atlantic, but he's not
just an Atlantic writer. He wrote what Really Happened to
Malaysia's Missing Airplane? Big old long article on it. And
this guy is an aviation expert to begin with, but
he's also if you ever read a Tom wolfbook or
(01:47):
article or whatever, he has a really great knack for
making you feel like you're there in the action. Yeah,
But then he also has a knack for making you
step back and think, how does Tom Wolf know all this? Was?
He there? William Languish is the same way. And I
will go ahead and recommend that you not, unless you
are a very courageous person, read any of his work,
(02:10):
especially the stuff about airline disasters anytime around when you're flying,
because he puts you in that plane when it's going
down or whatever. He's really really good at it. So
I recommend basically anything Langwich has written go read It's
worth it for sure.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
And I think this coupled with the brief times that
we've touched on this kind of thing in the past,
whether it was dB Cooper or Bermuda triangle, Like, there's
something about aviation disasters and mysteries that are really intriguing
to me. And for airline forensics, it's all Rick just
super super interesting.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
It is. So you talked about airline forensics and that
kind of stuff. This is lousy with it. Yeah, But
the reason I was saying why it's tough to overstate
like what a mystery image three seventy is it's the
only airliner that has considered disappeared. Yehanished they know where
all the other ones are, they know what happened to
all the other ones. It's the only major one that
(03:06):
is just where the official investigation said we don't know.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Yeah, I mean, and you know, in part two we'll
get to a pretty good well, actually, I think the
leading theory comes in this episode, but we kind of
think we know. But it's that thing where you like,
you can't definitively say.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Yeah, I can't say where, and you can't say why.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Right, Yeah, and then the why is yeah, and the
where are both really confounding.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yeah, And the reason why air travel in the twenty
first century is way safer than auto travel is because
anytime an airliner goes down, everyone in the international community
comes together, yeah, investigates it. They do so openly. The airline,
the airplane manufacturer, the everyone involved is expected to like
(03:53):
tell the truth and you get it out there and
you figure out what went wrong, and then you make
things safer, and then that makes air travel safer for everybody.
They couldn't do this for all sorts of reasons with
m Age three seventy and so it's a huge failing
among the international community, not for lack of trying, but
because it's just an asterisk out there. It's the only one.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yeah, And that's why airplanes don't crash as much anymore.
I mean, growing up, it's not like it was every
other week or anything. But used to hear about airline
crashes enough to where it gave you pause, right, and
you just don't hear about it much anymore.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
It's true. I mean, it's still out there for sure.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yeah, but they seem much more rare than they used
to be, kind of like skyjackings.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
So We'll do our best to put you in the
in the plane in the passenger seat. Yeah, can we
at least be in business class? Buckle sure?
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Were you about to say a buckle up?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah? Okay, buckle up, because we're gonna take off on
March eighth, twenty fourteen, in Kuala Lumpur. It's the very
beginning of March eighth. The takeoff schedule for Malaysian Airlines
Flight three seventy from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing was scheduled
for twelve thirty five am.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
We're in a Boeing seven seven seven DASH two hundred
er yep, and there are two hundred and twenty seven
fellow passengers aboard twelve flight crew YEP.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
It's a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Almost about two thirds of the passengers or Chinese nationals.
I believe there's a bunch of other people from other countries,
but for the bulk of the people on the plane
were from China. And it's a late night flight. It's
expected to arrive in Beijing at about six o'clock six
thirty in Beijing time, and it's going to fly over
(05:43):
the South China Sea, over the Gulf of Thailand, through Laos, Vietnam,
and then into China to arrive at Beijing. It didn't
actually take off at twelve thirty five. They took off
at twelve forty two. Not too shabby. Seven minutes. I'm
not like sitting there rocking in my seat like let's
go yet, you know, I might not even even noticed.
(06:07):
And they take off and it flies up to eighteen
thousand feet and the air traffic control center at Kuala
Lumpur says, hey, you guys are cleared for to go
up to thirty five thousand feet, which is cruising altitude
for this flight.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
I think that's right.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
And at this point, at eighteen thousand, they switched from
the airport's air traffic to Kuala Lampor Area Control Center.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
And you know the way, the reason we're mentioning all
these details is because it turns out they're very important.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Very important, yees.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
So these are all key.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Keep rewinding fifteen thirty seconds to get every single detail, okay,
because you're gonna need them for the big finish.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
So four minutes later, like you said, they were cleared
to go to thirty five thousand. Talking about fifteen minutes
and it's here where Captain Zahari and there were two
people on board flying this plane. Captain Sahari and what
was the other gentleman.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Name, First Officer Farik Abdul Hamid, right, and Captain saw
Zahari Ahmad Shah is piloting the plane. First Officer Hamid.
This is his last training flight. After this, he'll be
fully certified to fly Boeing seven to seventy seven's, which
if you're a commercial airline pilot, that's pretty much the
peak right there.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Yeah, and that's important too because one of them is
a very experienced pilot in his fifties. The other one
is a brand new kind of greenhorn, and that's going
to factor in for sure.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
So, like I said, it took.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
About fifteen minutes to get to thirty five thousand feet,
and this is when the lead pilot radios that Kuala
Lampoor Control Center says we're at thirty five thousand feet.
Then seven minutes later he radios again says, by the way,
we're still.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
And this is not me doing him. I don't know
what he sounded like.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
There you go, this is Captain Zahari. Yeah, everybody sounds
like Chuck Yeager.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
So he confirmed to give that they were at thirty
five thousand feet. And this is where Ed points out
that this wasn't some sort of big alarming thing. But
what usually happens is you radio in when you leave
an altitude, not when you arrive. And you also don't
radio in seven minutes later and say, by the way,
we're still at thirty five thousand feet, still here, like
once you hit it, you're just sort of there that
(08:19):
you're cruising altitude.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Right, So it's it wasn't alarming or anything, but it
was weird that he made those two radio transmissions, but
there was nothing compared to the weirdness that was about
to take place. That's right shortly after that, I think
at one twenty nineteen am. Yeah, qual Umpoor Area Control Center.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
It's like eleven minutes later.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Yeap said, hey, mhe three seventy you're about to leave
our jurisdiction and enter Ho Chi Minh's jurisdiction. Go ahead
and contact Ho Chi Minh air Traffic Control and let
them know you are on with them on this frequency.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
I mean, if you remember our air traffic control podcast,
you're handed off like, you don't just stick with one
air traffic control when you fly around the world. No,
you're handed off all along the way whenever you enter
the airspace of that whatever district.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Precisely, and the way that it's set up is there's
not supposed to be any time where you're just flying
alone and then you move into the other one. You're
going right from one to the other.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
You want to hand off.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
So Captain Zahari responded with good night Malaysian three seven zero.
Those are the last words anyone heard from Captain Zahari
as far as we know, And that in and of
itself was kind of an odd transmission because typically any
airline captain would have replied with the frequency, said the
(09:45):
frequency back to confirm that that was the right one.
But instead all I said was good night Malaysian three
seven zero. And very shortly after that, two minutes later,
MHE three seventy disappeared from the radar the moment it
showed up on ho Chi Minh air Traffic Controls radar screens.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
It just vanished right without ever having made contact with
them right via radio frequency.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
This should have like set off alarms with ho Chi
Minh City and apparently they did notice. Kuala Lumpur didn't notice.
The guy was they had all this other air traffic to.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Deal Yeah, and they were out of their zone at
this point, yep.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
And he'd said good night, and you know everybody knows
good night. You can't go back on that. You have
to wait until tomorrow to make contact again. So the
kual Umpur's I don't know about blameless in this, but
certainly less blameful than Tochim Ho Chi Minh and Ho
Chi Minh noticed that they just disappeared from the screen,
(10:44):
but it took them a full eighteen minutes before they
called Kuala Lumpur and said, hey, do you know anything
about where MH three seventy is because they kind of
vanished from our radar.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Yeah, Like, I don't know the exact process, and they're defense.
They were trying to get in touch. It's not like
they just said, well, we'll see what happens. They got
in touch with another pilot who was nearby in that
airspace to contact them, and this pilot reported there was
interference and static. I heard mumbling on the other end,
but that's the last we heard and we lost connection.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Right, We're not even sure that he was talking to
the right people.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah, so, I mean they were trying to get in touch,
but you're right, I think like sooner than eighteen minutes,
they should have said, by the way, this plane that
just left your airspace has disappeared, Like, do you know
what's going on?
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Right?
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Protocol, international protocol is five minutes, okay, So they waited
thirteen minutes longer than protocol dictated, and it was so
much beyond when they should have called that. The controller
in Kuala Impour actually said on the record, like, why
didn't you call me sooner? How are you just calling
me about this?
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Like that may still have been yesterday, right.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
It's missing for eighteen minutes, which, as we'll get to
later on stuff that came up in the investigation, that
was just the first step in a series of missteps, right,
that led to the reason why MH three seventy may
never be found.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Yeah, so should we take a little break and talk
about radar radar O'Reilly.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
We'll be back right after this.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Radar O'Reilly not.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Radar O'Reilly, radar used by air traffic control, so different.
It is different than radar o'reiley. This is called secondary
radar and it sends out a little beam that it's
very narrow and it sweeps the area, and on board
the aircraft they have a transponder that the Texas beam
and their own signal back that says this how fast
(13:02):
we're going?
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Is where we're headed? And a code that says and
this is who I am?
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Yeah, maybe even MH three seventy, as simple as that,
something like that. That's right, that's what's supposed to show
up on air traffic controls radar screen. That's so they
can see, oh, here's MH three seventy coming toward DL
seventeen twenty two or whatever.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
At this speed.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Right, Yeah, they have all this information, and that's called
secondary radar. Primary radar is what you think where it's like,
you know, it's a blip on a screen that this big,
this big radar ray is bouncing off of and receiving
information back from. But it's just you see, it's physically there.
This has far more information, and that's what air traffic
(13:44):
control around the world uses.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Right, And this is very key because just a few
seconds after it made that switch or into ho Chi
Men's airspace, the transponder stops sending information that transponder that's
supposed to say who you are, where you are, and
how going just stopped. It vanished, and this is when
the ball was dropped by a little bit by Kuala
(14:08):
Lamport not noticing, and definitely by ho Chi men not
doing anything immediately in response to Kuala lamp or.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Right.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
So, primary radar, the radar that you typically think of
when you think of radar, there are very few places
in the world where you can't be tracked by someone
on radar. It's fairly old technology. It's been around for
a while. But the places where you can't be tracked
can be vast over the ocean, in the desert, over
(14:39):
extremely mountainous or wooded areas. There are places where you
can't really put a radar tower and you can disappear
from radar. Right there's I think what I'm trying to
say here is if you take your plane out of
radar range and you turn off your transponder, you can
make a modern airliner as big as a seven seventy
(15:01):
seven Vanish where people don't know where it is. And
that's a really I think hallmark point or trait to
this mystery that kind of like gets people a little
unnerved is wait a minute, like this is the twenty
first century, This happened in twenty fourteen. What do you mean?
There's times and situations where an airliner can disappear and
people don't know where it is. And that was the situation,
(15:24):
and as Ho Chi Minh City and Kualaumpur are starting
to scramble to try to figure out, you know, where
this is. Apparently they called Malaysian Airlines and said, hey,
do you know anything about MH three seventy. Malaysian Airlines said, oh, yeah,
they're flying over Cambodia right now, and they're like where,
what do you how are you seeing this? After an hour,
finally Malaysian Airlines is like, no, we're just referring to
(15:47):
the flight plan. They should be over Cambodia right now.
What do you mean you can't find them? What's going on?
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Yeah? But because of that primary radar.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
The secondary radar wasn't functioning like we said, because the
transponder was off, but the primary radar did track them
for about an hour after those communications dropped. Because of
the Malaysian military was able to track it with the
primary radar.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Yeah, apparently it flew through the primary radar of five
different countries and the only one that bothered to track
it was Malaysia's Air Force. Yeah, but they didn't do
anything about it. They didn't follow up to see who
it was, They didn't scramble any jets to go see
if everybody was okay, or they just knew that there
(16:28):
was an unidentified plane flying through Malaysian airspace and the
Air Force didn't do anything about it. This is embarrassing
enough that the Air Force didn't reveal this to anybody
for a while, which was a really important point because
during this time, about an hour, about an hour and
a half after the takeoff and an hour after the
(16:49):
thing disappeared from transponders, the Malaysian Air Force was tracking
MH three seventy and it saw that it seemed to
have taken a turn.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Yeah, I mean they know what happened at this point.
For a little while, it made a sharp turn.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
That was not part of the planned flight plan.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
No, not at all.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
This is where things definitely took a metaphorical and literal turn.
It headed southwest at that point, crossed over the Malay Peninsula,
over Malaysia again, and then parts of Thailand. Then it
made a right turn. This is very key near the
island of Penang, just put a pin in that then
headed west by northwest towards the Andaman c and then
(17:30):
at two twenty two am vanished from radar, from that
primary radar as well.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Right, So the Malaysian Air Force saw this happen on
this radar, it didn't tell anybody for a while. The
flight plan had it leaving Malaysia, crossing over the Strait
of Malacca into the peninsula where Thailand is located, into
China right just away from Malaysia. And from what the
(17:58):
Malaysian Air Force saw, this thing doubled back on itself
and then went in some totally different directions, almost the
opposite direction it was supposed to be going in. And
like you said, it dropped off of the radar, and
that was the last time anyone saw it on radar.
But that's not the last time we were able to
track MGE three seventy And that's thanks to a satellite
(18:22):
network that's run by an outfit called in Marsat.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Yeah, so in Marsat.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
If you've ever been on a plane and you've enjoyed
the benefits of watching movies, streaming or connected to your
computer via Wi Fi. That is because of satellite communication.
These airplanes are equipped with a system and it transfers
data and all their voice communications via satellite. And some
(18:48):
of this data from the plane is automatically shared with
these ground tracking stations, which is a really big deal.
So not only are they letting you watch movies and
doing all that, but it's sending this automatic data on
a regular on the rag basically from that satellite to
these ground stations.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Right, so they think by this time, actually I believe
they know by this time m H three seventies, navigational systems,
entertainment systems, a bunch of its systems have been turned off.
The only thing that was still operating was this satellite
link I guess beacon.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Yeah, it's called a satellite data unit.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Okay, so the satellite data unit which was capable of
contacting and receiving contact from the m MAR satellites. Now,
at the time, no one knows that this is happening, right, Like,
there's no sound being made, there's nobody tracking this. This
all came out much later when in Marsat realized they
were sitting on a bunch of data. But during different
(19:53):
points over the next six seven hours, the satellite and
the satellite data unit talk to each other under a
few different circumstances. And because of this, this company in Marsat,
which is located a headquartered in Great Britain, but literally
covers the globe not just with airline stuff but maritime
(20:14):
thing which I think where they were originally they were
originally founded to do, is to enable maritime communications. Like
you know, satellite phone you're calling through in Marsat. Yeah, right,
So they've got this whole constellation of satellites and when
(20:34):
in Marsett heard about MH three seventy, they were like,
we're all bet our satellites were tracking this thing in
some way, shape or form. And it turns out that
they were right.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Yeah, And there's four and this is important here. There's
four different ways or circumstances where that satellite data unit
on the plane is communicating with the satellite in space.
Whenever you're making a data transmission or a voice transmission,
whenever or someone on the ground tries to contact the plane.
There's something that happens every hour. If no one has
(21:06):
made either one of these contacts for an hour, you
get a check in called a handshake. It's just like
you're still here, shake hands, buddy, Yeah, just.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Want to make sure you're logged on. It's kind of
like when you watch too much Netflix, and Netflix enter
the message, yeah, have you finished all the tub of
cookie dough yet?
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (21:25):
And then it as the thing that says go outside, right,
or actually it doesn't. It says, watch another one.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Watch some more, why not have some more cookie dough?
It's the same thing. It's it's sending a message to
the plane's satellite data unit saying like, just are you
still logged on?
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Right?
Speaker 2 (21:38):
And then the final thing, and this is super key,
is whenever the whenever you first log onto the satellite system,
that thing on the plane, whenever it kind of checks
in and links up. That is very key because what
can also happen if that thing goes down and then reboots.
It treats that as a new log in, so it'll
make another ping basically that it's logged done to the system.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Right. So in Marsett goes back and looks at their
data and says, okay, so here's a couple of things
right now. This is I think within the first few
days everybody is looking in the south China Sea for
MH three seventy because that was what was along its
flight plan. The Malaysian Air Force hasn't revealed yet that
it tracked MH three seventy turn around and go the
(22:25):
opposite direction of what its flight plan was where it
was scheduled to carry it. Yeah, and in Marsette is
now saying, wait a minute, this thing didn't crash like
an hour and a half after takeoff. This thing turned
around and flew into the Indian Ocean for six or
seven more hours because our satellite was talking to the
(22:45):
to the plane at various points during this time.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Yeah, and we should point out too, after Air France
flight four four seven, which crashed in two thousand and nine,
this is when in Marsette really kind of beefed up
their system. They added more ground station and they added
a lot more capability to add storage for this data
because they know that this can really help out in
situations like this.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
That was a big one too. Do you remember that one?
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Yeah, So that one was the first one that really
opened people's eyes where it was like, wait a minute,
when we're flying over the ocean, like no one knows
where we are, and they were like, no, actually not really,
and they I think that's why m MARSAT was like,
we've got to build more ground stations, we got to
bulk up our data storage all that stuff. We've got
to add more satellite capabilities, and in doing so, they
(23:33):
made it so that you could be tracked when you're
over the ocean, even if you didn't want to be,
as seems to have been the case with MH three seventy.
So it was a huge difference between two thousand and four,
was it two thousand and four and nine, two thousand
and nine and twenty fourteen, just five years the thing
proved itself. These upgrades they made were substantial. But Air
(23:54):
France flight four four seven in and of itself another
langwash gem that just puts you in the seed of
this terrifying plane crash. That one, in particular, they knew
where the plane was and it still took two years
to recover the black boxes and figure out what went wrong,
which is terrifying in it if you know what happened
to that one. Basically the controlsers got ripped away but
(24:17):
from the pilot and it just went right into the
ocean and they're still down there apparently there was a
big debate over what to do with these people. When
they started raising them, they were perfectly preserved because they're
so deep in the pressure and the anaerobic situation, and yeah,
the temperature just kept them perfectly preserved. But as they
were raised up into warmer waters, the decomposition over two
(24:40):
years just happened immediately. Man, so they I think the
French government said they have to stay there. It's now
a memorial, do not try to raise anybody. And they're
still down there, strapped to their seats, which when you
just do not think about that the next time you
get on a plane. It's a terrible thing to think about.
I can tell you first hand.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah, you've gotten so much better over the years.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
But I'm sure this is going to be a setback.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
No, I'm hanging in there, all right. Yeah, if it happens,
it happens like that's the way I kind.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Of Well, there's certainly nothing you can do about it.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
This isn't something that they are that you guys are
going to play my memorial at my funeral, my last words.
But if you're if if I go down in a
plane crash, my number was up.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Right, and everyone else will be like, that's so weird.
He always talked about it.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Yeah, right, this was worse here, such a freak there was.
Actually I had a tweet once it said, if I
ever go down on a plane crash, I'm going to
shout I wish I would have spend more time at work.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
I'm not sure I get that.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Well, you know it's like no one ever says in
their deathbed they wish they'd spend more time at work.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Well, I got it. An ironic funny on the way.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Yeah, I'll make people laugh. Good for you give them
their last laugh.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
So, uh, this uh, where they're getting all this information
was from a ground station in Perth, Australia, a place
we have been to.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
M it was quite lovely, lovely town.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
That's right, it was great.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Anyone ever tells you don't go to Western Australia. You
tell them that's BS. Josh and Chuck said, it's great.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Yep, right, very stupid. So BS stands for So.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
They had a lot of data, like we said, because
they had beefed up their storage capabilities over the past
five or six years, and they have a couple of
types of data, something called burst timing offset and burst
frequency offset bto is it measures how long that a
signal takes to reach a satellite. You know the speed
(26:39):
of the signal, so you know exactly how far that
plane is from the satellite at that exact moment. It's
very easy to kind of understand.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Right, and first taken into account, Mr sat has Oh,
here here was a ping. Here's a ping. Here's a ping.
Here's a ping. Right now, they're digging in to analyze
these pings and just the quality of them, the timing
of them, all this stuff, because they are like, I'm
pretty sure we can figure out where this plane was
and maybe where it went if we really drill in
(27:09):
and do some incredible math and figure out just kind
of the nature of these pings.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Yeah, and what they're trying to do here is to
narrow it down into an arc instead of a circle.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Well, I think that's just naturally what happened. Oh yeah,
you're right, you're right.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
I'm sorry because Ed explained it in a very easy way.
If you tell someone, hey, I'm one hundred miles from Atlanta,
then you draw a circle around Atlanta. That's one hundred
miles and you could be at any point along that circle.
But if that phone call was from Athens, which is
not one hundred miles from Atlanta, but it's not too
(27:46):
far sixty five or so. But if you said you're
from some other city in Georgia, then you would know
where you were, and if you knew how fast they
were going, then you could. Really it doesn't become a circle,
then it becomes an arc.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Right, the number of points on that circle where that
person could possibly be smaller, yeah, much more, maybe by half,
maybe by two thirds. And yet so the circle becomes
an arc. And because of that burst timing offset, they
could establish those those arcs, and there were seven of them,
I believe, Yes, No, they could establish the circles and
(28:21):
then the circle because of the other one, the the BFO,
the burst frequency offset. Those are more complicated. They involved
the Doppler effect and basically tell the the satellite or
the satellite data tells MMR set we're going in this
direction because the you know, the Doppler effectiveness. An ambulance
(28:45):
sirens coming two years and then it passes right, changes
in pitch because of the relative distance and the direction
that it's traveling. They could tell from this ping, the
satellite ping, not even a data transmission, just a ping
which direction the thing was headed and roughly how fast
(29:06):
it was going, and so they were able to create
seven arcs. And after the seven arcs, the seventh arc
was created by a ping that took place at eight
nineteen am, and after that there was another There was
a log on request, a handshake request that the SDU
failed to respond to. And they think that in between
(29:27):
eight nineteen am and that last log on request at
nine to fifteen am, the plane finally crashed, probably from
running out of fuel.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Yeah, and they think that eight nineteen was from one
of those reboots that I was talking about when that
system comes back on, which.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Will come under power failure, right, which we'll come into
play pretty soon.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
All right, So let's take another break here, Okay, all right,
we'll be back with the leading theory right after this.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
All right, So the leading theory and this is.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Uh, the more I read this, the more it was
Occam's razor kind of staring you in the face. Because
we'll get into some of the kind of Kakammi theories
and there are many of them, but this one is
the simplest, and uh, it's probably what happened. It is
that Uh, someone on board and should we should we
(30:51):
tease this out? Yeah, okay, someone on board, Uh, took
control of the plane, disabled that transponder, and then started
flying in the other direction back across Malaysia. Then put
it on autopilot until it ran out of gas and
it crashed into the ocean.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Yeah, about the Southern Indian Ocean, which is where the
southern seventh arc was.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
One of the reasons this makes a lot of sense
is because that transponder going off at the exact moment
when the plane transitioned from Kuala Lampur's airspace into Ho
Chi Min's, it would be an incredible coincidence. If that
was just an incredible coincidence.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
That in and of itself says some that there was
a human factor.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
Involved, like someone knew what that meant.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Right exactly, so as somebody who knew how to do that,
when to do it, and the timing of it was
just too spectacular for it to have been an accident.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Yeah, because what they probably counted on is exactly what happened.
Was there was a period of time. They might have
figured five minutes, which is what you said the standard was,
but what they got was eighteen minutes of confusion. Yeah,
I mean they it tripled what they were counting on
exactly best case scenario.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yep. The other thing was that the turn that the
MH three seventy made was so abrupt that an autopilot
wouldn't have done that. Now if you put it, if
you put a plane on autopilot and have it and
it turns, it would make a much wider turn. This
(32:25):
is a hard kind of backtracking turn that it made
to its left to the southwest from the north. Traveling
the northeast, the turn was to the southwest. So just
the turn alone, which came after the transponder was turned off,
shows that it was under human control. It was a
(32:46):
person piloting the plane making it turn.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Like right, and that rules out things like mechanical failure
or fire.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Everything from meteor strike ye know, a squall line to
any kind of weather it was. All that was is
ruled out by the fact that this turn took place
clearly under human control.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
Right. That also rules out hypoxia.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
If you remember the very eerie crash for with golfer
plane Paine Stewart on that private jet.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
I don't really remember that, can you kind of refresh
my memory.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
That was in nineteen ninety nine, and I think the
post mortem on that one was that this private plane
essentially everyone on board died of hypoxia, including the pilots,
and it flew for a number of hours.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Oh really on autopilot. It was a ghost plane essentially.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Wow. Yeah, So they don't think that hypoxia affected whoever
was in control of.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
The plane because it made that turn.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Yeah, it was a very deliberate turn, and then it
followed an even more deliberate flight pattern after that. This
was not random movements of a plane where somebody who
was suffering from hypoxia but still alive would make. These
weren't confused decisions. They were difficult to understand decisions, but
they weren't random and confused behavior. They were deliberate.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
So one of the pilots or both of the pilots
suffering from hypoxia is ruled out, And the fact that
they were deliberate turns also rules out the idea that
both of the pilots were dead. Right that again, it
was just the plane flying itself.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Right, These log on requests by that STU unit on
the plane. There was another big clue there because there
was a log on request made at one forty three am,
and that basically says that the power on the plane's
electrical system was shut off for a period of time
in between that transponder disappearing and that time of that
(34:46):
log on request. Right, So someone like purposely disabled, purposefully
disabled these systems.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Right, So one forty three am would have been about
an hour after take off, just over an hour after takeoff,
after the transponder was turned off with perfect timing between
Kuala Lumpur and Ho Chi Minh, but also before the
(35:12):
turn that the Malaysian Air Force track. That's right, or
at about the same time.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
The other thing that could have happened when these when
the transponder and the SDU were shut off, it could
have depressurized the plane. If that happens, then hypoxya is
the fear those oxygen masks are going to drop down,
but you only get about ten minutes of oxygen as
a passenger. The cockpit is going to have a lot
more oxygen than that. But we do know for a
(35:43):
fact from that log on request that the systems were
off for an hour, So even if that were the case,
then the masks run out ten minutes later, and the
people die of hypoxy at the passengers shortly after that.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
The thing is is they believe that not only is
MH three seventy still at cruising altitude, it probably actually
climbed to forty thousand, maybe a little over forty thousand feet.
It's basically the maximum that seventy seven could stay aloft at.
So the drop down masks would have been totally useless
(36:17):
to begin with. There's not enough oxygen coming through them
to offset that kind of height in the pressurized cabin
that's meant for a much lower altitude, and the reason
why I found it very disconcerting to learn that there's
only like ten or fifteen minutes worth of oxygen coming
out of those masks.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
I mean, there's the idea there that a plane crash
doesn't take longer than that.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
The idea is that it's used for an emergency transitioned
down to a much lower altitude where you could breathe
without a pressurized cabin, and that that takes less than
ten or fifteen minutes. You can do that much more
quickly a few minutes.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
So basically you're gonna start flying with your own oxygen tank.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Basically, I'll be like, try to take it away from
the tip. You can't do it.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Here's another thing is that that sdu log on re
quest at the end. It suggests that it was turned
back on. And the thinking here is that whoever did this,
it probably didn't care at that point because it was
too late because everyone on board was dead, right.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
So the idea behind all this is that the power
was shut off, and they know that the power was
turned off because the log on request came at a
certain point, right, So that means that the power had
been shut off and it was coming back on. And
they think that it was to depressurize the cabin. And
be a very easy way to depressurize the cabin just
(37:37):
turn off all of the power.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
And then maybe whoever did this, and we'll get to that,
it was like, I want to get back down to
normal cruising altitude here, so I can fly this plane
without wearing a mask maybe, or just in a less
stressful environment, right.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Exactly, Maybe go get a bite to eat or something
like that. There's a lot that can be done in
a pressurized cabin.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
And then there was that final arc, the seventh one
that log on request was probably the plane running out
of fuel. And this I thought was super interesting. So
the plane runs out of fuel, those engines shut down,
but there's still air pumping through those turbines, and that's
going to spin the turbine and that's certainly not going
to be enough to fly your plane, but it could
(38:22):
be enough to act as a generator and power up
the auxiliary power system.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
That's right, super super interesting.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Yeah, So in the running out of fuel, electrical goes down,
those air ramjets come on, and the auxiliary power system
comes on. The thing logs back on.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
Just enough to get that going again.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Right exactly. So let's just before we stop for this episode, Chuck,
let's just kind of recamp what m mar said has
been able to figure out from seven pings between its
satellite and the satellite data unit seven pings. They dove
into these things so deeply that they were able to
figure out that the flight did not crash, that there
(39:03):
was probably a hypoxia event among the cabin, that it
was deliberate, and that the plane kept flying, not that
it did not crush, but that it kept flying for
at least six more hours and finally did probably crash.
In the southern Indian Ocean, all from seven little pings
between the plane and the satellite.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
And then the final little clue here from the satellite
is the ELT emergency transmitter failed, its emergency location transmitter,
and that's linked to a different satellite system. And one person,
if your conspiracy minded, might say, well, you know what
this means. It didn't actually crash into the ocean. But
these ELTs apparently have a pretty low success rate, and
(39:48):
when you dive into the ocean with no power, it's
at tremendous speed and that would have been enough probably
to destroy the plane instantly.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
And this ELT, there's another. So there's four I think
on the plane. Did you say that.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
I didn't say four, So I believe.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
There's four on the plane. One of them like they
can be disabled.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
It's not a black box, by the way.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
No, no, no, this is just a beacon that's pings
a satellite, but isn't even a different satellite from MMR SAT.
So it's like an extra fail safe. And this means
that they all four of them failed, which again some
people think that's evidence right there that this thing didn't
actually crash. We'll talk about that in the next episode
about that.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
All right, I think we don't do listener mails on
a part one no, so just strap in and I
hope you can hold off from researching for a couple
of days on this.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Way, maybe you have a bloody Mary while you're waiting. Agreed, Well, anyway,
in the meantime, if you want to get in touch
with us, you can go on to stuff you Should
Know dot com and check out our social links, and
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For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!