513 - Best of the Year (Part II) - My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hello, and welcome to my favorite murder. Today, we're starting
the new year with a look back on two of
our favorite stories from twenty twenty five.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
That's right, we're taking two of our listener favorite stories
and combining them into a best of the Year quilt episode.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
So Karen's going to kick things off with the story
of Violet Jessup, the Queen of Sinking Ships.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
And Georgia is going to take us through the unforgettable
tale of Australia's Great Emu War. That's right right here
on this true crime podcast. You're gonna love it, that's right.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
So enjoy this best of the Year quilt episode and
happy New Year.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, let's make twenty twenty six a real one. Oh God, goodbye.
We're going to go to a place we've been to
before that I've actually forced you to come to twice before.
But I need to go back and you'll see why. Okay.
So it's two am on April fifteenth, nineteen twelve. Okay,

(01:10):
get a sense of what we're about to do. Nope,
we're in the middle of the North Atlantic where the
Titanic is sinking. Motherfucker. Yeah, Titanic. We're going back to
the Titanic. I love that guy. I love the titan
You love that vessel. A lot of stuff happen on
that vessel that I want to tell you about.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
It's funny that you say twenty twelve and I'm in
the middle of the night, and.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
I'm like, eh, I don't know nineteen twelve. But did
I say twenty twelve. That was a bad year too,
So twenty twelve was rough. I fully agree. I love
your Titanic stories. It's just so funny. Yeah, here's the
thing about me and the Titanic. I love to talk
about the people that made it off of the Titanic. Yeah,

(01:50):
it's pretty an amazing topic. I have no interest to
go down and look at the Titanic. No, a lot
of people want to. I think photos are cool, but
they never Ah, they never get it what you want.
You know, they don't put you there. They don't put
you there.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Maybe like a dish is so exciting, but like that's
about it.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, and it's got all the weird algae on it
that dish. So much algae in a couple snails. Yeah, okay,
here we're going to nineteen twelve. Everything is snail free.
That Titanic is sinking, and when it finally disappears under
the water, it will take the lives of more than
fifteen hundred people with it. There will be around seven

(02:28):
hundred survivors. The survivors we've talked about on this show,
episode four to eleven, which was entitled eight Years one episode,
that's when I talked about the Unsinkable Molly Brown. They
actually called her Margaret Brown, but everyone knows her as
the Unsinkable Molly Brown. She makes it onto lifeboat six,
and she spends her time on that lifeboat rallying the

(02:49):
terrified passengers and urging them to keep rowing. When the
officer in charge starts to spiral in the midst of
all the terror of what's going on around them, Molly
threatens to throw them overboard. It's great for morale. Everybody
keeps going. They survive, got it girl. At this same
moment that she's doing that over on lifeboat six, the
Titanic's baker Charles Jockin. You might remember he was the

(03:12):
drunk one. Oh yes, we.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Learned about that drunk one. Everyone was shit faced.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
I need that you know that band was barely able
to like keep the bow to the strings. Oh my God,
so much good champagne. If you want to hear me
talk about Charles Jockin, it's episode three forty eight. It's
called Old Biscuit, and we learn on that one that
basically the thing that saved Charles Jawkins's life. They think
is that he got super shit faced as the ship sank,

(03:40):
he jumped up onto the railing and rowed it down
as the ship was going into the water. Then he
tread water in twenty eight degree waves for several hours
and lived. And it's like defy science. And they think
it's because the liquor that was in assist just kept

(04:00):
his body warm, almost like tricked him into being warm.
That's why I drinks just to stay warm. Same, don't
tell anybody. We gotta stay warm guys on this fucking
Titanic that we're on. Yeah. So, when Charles Jackin is
finally rescued, and we talked about this on that episode,
but I still love this. He has two swollen feet

(04:20):
and that's it. That's the only thing wrong with that
man who treadwater in twenty eight degree ocean for hours
until he got resk. I mean, I wake up in
my bed and were shape too swollen feet. I wish
that's why. Okay, so see what character is that? So
some of our favorites, But today I'm going to tell
you about your new favorite Titanic survivor. She's a third

(04:43):
Titanic survivor whose story is more unbelievable than the first
two put together. Throughout this woman's life, she'll be involved
in not one, not two, but three historic maritime disasters.
The sinking of the Titanic arguably is not even the
worst one. For some people call her the Queen of
the Sinking Ships. This is the story of Stewardess Violet Jessup.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
So main sources that Maren used for the story are
Violet's memoir entitled Titanic Survivor The Memoirs of Violet Jessop
Comma Stewardess she fucking worked on the Titanic Incredible, and
also a National geographic article by journalist David Kindy entitled
she Survived the Titanic But it wasn't the only time

(05:28):
she faced death at sea. And the rest of the
sources are in our show notes. Okay, we start the
story twenty five years before the Titanic sinks with an
Irish Catholic couple from Dublin named William and Kelly Jessop.
They have immigrated to South America and now they have
a sheep farm in Argentina. And in eighteen eighty seven

(05:49):
they welcome their first child, Violet. They will have eight
more children in the coming years, only six will survive childhood.
So this was the horror infant mortality situation of the
turn of the nineteenth twentieth century. So Violet herself nearly
dies of tuberculosis when she's little, she is six four weeks,

(06:12):
and later she'll describe this time as quote a dim
awareness of being plunged into a very hot bath, then
wrapped in cold, wet sheets, followed by long periods of nothingness. Yikes.
So scary and sad for a child, and speaking of
her coughing fits are so intense at this time that quote,
blood seem to be on everything, and her eventual recovery

(06:36):
from this is said to be miraculous. So normally Violet's
day to day involves helping her family. She's the oldest
sister in a big family, which means she's doing cooking, cleaning,
taking care of her younger siblings. The whole nine Then
in nineteen oh three, when Violet is sixteen years old,
her father William dies while undergoing some kind of a surgery.

(06:58):
It's sudden, it's shocking. The loss hits Violet especially hard.
She was her father's favorite child, and she will later
write quote in my grief, I was tongue tied and stunned.
Whenever I tried to speak, I discovered I had lost
my voice completely. So sad, But of course the family
has no time to mourn because now Violet's mother, Kelly,

(07:20):
is a widow with six kids who has to find
a way to support the family, so she moves the
family back to Europe, where they settle in England, and
Kelly gets to work on ocean liners sailing between the
UK and America. She's hired as a stewardess, and that
means she's doing things like cleaning cabins, serving meals, and
even some light nursing duties. And while she's at sea,

(07:43):
Violet is left to raise her siblings by herself. Wait,
her mom left to do that yep, okay, And she's
home with the five other kids and the youngest is
an infant. Oh no, so they were just making do
for the next several years, Violet's basically a stay at
home mom, dreaming about the day her mother will come

(08:04):
home for good, and when she does, violent plans that
she will join the convent, but that dream never pans out,
because instead, in nineteen oh eight, when Violet is around
twenty one years old, her mother gets very sick and
it's serious enough that she has to stop working so
to keep food on the family table. Violet again steps

(08:25):
up for the family, and even though she does not
like the ocean, she does not know how to swim,
and she's kind of freaked out by the vast openness
of the sea, she starts looking for stewardess work. She
knows it's a good job if she can get paid well,
her mom can tell her how to do it, and
she not only has years of caregiving experience raising her

(08:45):
brothers and sisters, she's fluent in Spanish from having been
raised in Argentina. But at the time she struggles to
get work as a stewardess, partly because she's so young,
much younger than most of the stewardesses who are working
at the time, but also Violet is very beautiful, which
works against her because in a job like that, you're
supposed to blend in and just be part of the

(09:08):
wallpaper rate, and whether she wants to or not, Violet
does not blend in. I get it nice, I've been
through it. I fail that. I've never been a stewardus
for that very reason on the Titanic. So after she
gets interviewed a couple times and gets rejected, she starts
dressing down for the interviews. She stops wearing makeup all together,

(09:30):
and it works. She ends up landing one job after another,
and by nineteen eleven, twenty four year old Violet is
hired by the White Star Line to work aboard the
RMS Olympic. So at the time, the RMS Olympic is
the largest passenger ship in the world. It's completely state
of the art. It has electric elevators, turkish baths, a

(09:51):
swimming pool, and ornate features like crystal chandeliers and marble
statues and plush velvet furniture. Amazing. They really went all out.
It's like the Empire State Building on the sea. Not
that tall. But anyhow, Violet isn't all that impressed. She's
just there for the money and that's what keeps her going.

(10:11):
When she has the experience that she really doesn't like,
which is the passengers treating her like their servant, which
happens often. And rich male passengers leer at her, they
proposition her, some even propose like the second they meet her,
while the women passengers can be extremely cutting, very condescending.

(10:32):
Later on, Violet will write quote, I often reflected that
there must be some quality in a sea trip that
affects character, or maybe it's enforced. Propinquity emphasizes how awful
normal vote can become mean, paltry, and selfish to a
degree when they are in the position of indiscriminate power.
It's like what happens on the Titanic stays on the Titanic. Yeah.

(10:55):
And also it's like, just because we're stuck on this
boat together doesn't mean I got to do everything you say.
Maren made a note to me propinquity means physical closeness
or nearness, and then she was like, I've never heard
this word before. Thank you again. Pro pinquityquity. It's your
continual propinquity that causes the problem. Say, if you have

(11:17):
a tendency to or propinquity tapping your nails on stuff
and its misused. Okay, So now it's September nineteen eleven.
Violet's been working as a crew member on the Olympic
for months, and then one night the boat she's on
the Olympic collides with a British warship called the Hawk

(11:37):
off the coast of the Isle of Wight. So the
Hawk is this little it's like a sixth of the
size of the Olympic, and it's actually specifically built to
ram and sink enemy vessels, so it's very strong. The
two boats collide and the Hawk nearly capsizes, but it
still manages to leave a forty foot gash along the

(11:59):
side of the Olympic. Water rushes into the bottom of
the ship, and it actually downs a propeller, and of course,
from her room, Violet hears and feels this horrible impact.
Although no one's injured or killed from this crash, and
the ships aren't very far from land, and even with
that propeller down, the Olympic is able to just hobble

(12:21):
back to port, so no one has to evacuate on lifeboats.
So comparatively, this is probably the tamest of all the
horrible ship accidents the Violet is involved in she gets
reassigned to another White Star Line ship, and it is
the company's brand new luxury ocean liner that's gearing up
for its maiden voyage. It is the Titanic. So we're

(12:44):
back on the North Atlantic just before midnight on April fourteenth.
Violet is in her quarter. She is getting ready for
bed after being a stewardess all day on the Titanic.
The feet, the feet pain, just the feet, the work
the over here. Can you get me a roll? Yeah? Snap, snap,

(13:04):
So Violet's back in her quarters. She's holding a piece
of paper that has a handwritten prayer on it, and
it's one that's supposed to protect her from fire and water,
which is very Catholic. We have saints. They do very
specific things for very specific people. I guess there's a
fire and water saying I'll look up who it is later.

(13:26):
And as all of that is going on, Violet here
is a huge crash followed by a quote low rending, crunching,
ripping sound. So of course it's a scary thing for
her to experience. But like everyone else on board, they've
been told time and again that the Titanic is unsinkable,
so no one's panicking. She certainly is not, but eventually,

(13:49):
a shell shocked Violet is called up to the deck.
This will be her very last assignment on the Titanic.
She's told to translate evacuation instructions for the Spanish speaking
power messengers and then to assist women and children getting
on the lifeboats. So that's what she does until she
herself is loaded onto lifeboats. Sixteen moments before her group

(14:11):
is lowered into the ocean, an officer rushes over and
says to Violet, quote here, miss jessup, look after this,
and then basically hands her a baby girl. The baby
had been left alone on deck, and so the officer
just basically made the hasty decision to grab this baby
and throw it to Violet for safe keeping. So as

(14:33):
their boat is lowered some sixty feet in the dark
to the freezing cold ocean below, with icy wind whipping
at their faces like quote a knife in its penetrating coldness,
Violet is trying to soothe this baby girl. But the
lifeboat hits the water hard. You don't think about that
part of it, where it's like, yes, you're being saved

(14:55):
in a way, but off of a sinking ship right
into her the North Sea. Yeah that we've all seen
tiktoks about is the North Seat? Yeah, well the North Atlantic? Yeah.
So the baby starts crying when the lifeboat hits the water. Again,
just quick reminder, Violet does not know how to swim,

(15:15):
and she's of course terrified herself, but she focuses on
the baby. She pulls the baby to her chest, hoping
to keep her warm, and she just watches us the
Titanic sinks into blackness. And here's how Violet will later
describe this moment. She says, quote, I watched the Titanic
give a lurch forward. One of the huge funnels toppled off,

(15:35):
like a cardboard model, falling into the sea with a
fearful roar. A few cries came to us across the water,
then silence, as the ship seemed to right itself, like
a hurt animal with a broken back. She settled for
a few minutes, but one more deck of lighted ports disappeared.
Then she went down by the head and a thundering

(15:57):
roar of underwater explosions. Our proud ship, our beautiful Titanic,
gone to her doom. God, what a sight. And you're like, however,
many feet away, you could get away totally looking at that.
I don't like it. It's too big and it's too vast.
I'm on violet side. I don't like it. That's why

(16:18):
I need to keep talking about Okay, I get it.
So for the next several hours, as traumatized Titanic survivors
wait to be rescued, Violet clings to this baby as
you would. At one point, she worries that both she
and the infant are going to freeze to death in
life boat sixteen. And then the rescue ship, the SS Carpathia,
shows up around four am, so it's like about two hours.

(16:41):
Did we ever have the discussion about, like the magnets,
how do they work? How do they work? How do
they maybe affect the Titanic's scouting system? Yeah? Do we
talk about that in any of these I don't think so. Okay,
do you want to throw some theories out, I'll do
it another. Have you been listening to rfk's podcast What's Happening?
It's all magnets, It's all magnet You think something interfered

(17:05):
and that's how it it dove into the ice, But.

Speaker 1 (17:07):
A natural phenomenon interfered, and that Yeah, that's why some
like Bermuda triangles exactly. So if you know what I'm
talking about, send me the article that I read about, please,
because I don't remember.

Speaker 2 (17:18):
If you know what we're talking about, and you're in
the North Atlantic right now, tell me, tell me what
I'm talking Tell me.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
Was this just an episode of Below Deck and I'm
totally fucking wrong.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
It could be I slept with him because of the magnets.
They drew me toward his cabin. His dick is the
Permuta triangle. It's not my fault that the draw is
so strong. It's like two cartoon magnets pulling coyote off.
That was the lifeboat. Okay, stop it, stop it serious podcast.
I was just talking about a baby. Ok you're playing

(17:50):
this for your mom, and now she's horrified. Okay, we're
going to do a quote from Violet about the moment
that she and the baby are saved. Okay, ready. Quote.
I was still clutching the baby against my hardcorek life
belt when a woman leaped at me and grabbed the
baby and rushed off with it. Hey, it appeared that
she put it down on the deck of the Titanic

(18:11):
while she went off to fetch something, and when she
came back, the baby had gone. I was too frozen
and numb to think it's strange that this woman had
not stopped to say thank you end quotes. Oh, so
the mom came. The mom was like, you have my baby.
That's my baby. Well everyone's panicking, so and nobody would blame.
She thought she lost the baby totally entirely. And there's

(18:33):
a lady that has the baby.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
But also, like babies, they'll look the same to me, Like,
how do you not get her baby?

Speaker 2 (18:38):
Same like such babies the attitudes. Years later, Violet will
receive a very short phone call from a woman claiming
to be that baby. Oh the baby a baby collar. Fuck, hell,
it's a baby call. It's the baby, that that baby baby,
your favorite bait. I can from the North Atlantic. Some

(19:02):
people say that that call was either a hoax or
wasn't really. Violet seemed to believe she really was the caller. Sure,
why not? So The Carpathia spends four hours pulling Titanic
survivors from their lifeboats. Ultimately, they deliver around seven hundred
people to safety in the New York Harbor. I thought
they went to Canada. I think they took the dead

(19:24):
bodies to Canada. Oh that's where the big mark was. Okay,
but sorry, that's just what it said here, so you
could be right. That's probably below deck. Okay, it's more
below deck Newfoundland. From there, Violet catches a ship back
to England, and not two weeks later, she signs back
up to go out to See to work as the
stewardess once again, because like, what are the chances, right,

(19:46):
I'm sure, and she's kind of like, this is a
real skill. She probably can make good money comparatively, and
she needs the money. She has to take time off
now she can't go find herself and do a year abroad.
I think there was a Titanic survivor fund or something. No,
they didn't do that, then, I mean you would think something.

(20:07):
But anyway, she's kind of like all business, which sorry,
I do love that. We're just like, hey, looks Irish man.
It really it's Irish Catholic, because it's like, I'll get
my reward later. I'll go back on to the thing
that tried to kill me last two times. Okay, she
will say, quote, I knew that if I meant to
continue my sea life, I would have to return at once,

(20:29):
otherwise I would lose my nerve, for I had no
love for it. But I needed the work yeah intense so.
Violet will later write about how the sinking of the
Titanic changes her entire perspective on life and strengthens her
already very deep faith. What it does not do is
change how much she hates being at the beck and
call of rich travelers. There's no faith strong enough to

(20:52):
get you over rich people snapping their fingers at you.
Absolutely not, Violet writes on that topic, quote, I wanted
the quietness of happy contentment, not the hectic turmoil of riches,
which sapped simplicity and spontaneous kindness out of people. I
wanted desperately to shut out the encroachment of sea life
on my inner self to retain something I feared I

(21:13):
was losing, a kind of action that's performed for the
love of pleasing and not for gain. I had gained
one thing. I learned how to look very deeply into
people and to value them for what I found. Famous
names and possessions no longer moved me. I was more
confident when confronted by some powerful woman whose cold eyes
as I served her breakfast might once have shattered me.

(21:36):
She's literally talking about my career. But each day it
was more. But each day it was more difficult to
be my simple self, to ignore the pettiness, artificiality, and
frothy gaiety that encompassed at Stewardess's life on board a ship.

Speaker 1 (21:52):
I fucking totally hear that. Yeah, as an ex waitress,
I fucking hear it. Come on, like it's titled Motherfuckers
on vacation, being like, you make my vacation totally. So
it's the literal opposite of a vacation.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
You are here to serve Surney and that's your purpose. Snap, snap,
snap fuck you. So now it's nineteen fourteen and World
War One begins. Violet is twenty seven, and as we
all do at age twenty seven, she decides to pivot.
So what she does is become a warner. Definitely, that's
what you did. Yeah, you got to. So she's in

(22:30):
the hospitals both on land and at sea. Oh honey,
she can't stop. In late nineteen sixteen, she's assigned work
on the Britannic, which is the third of the White
Star Line signature luxury vessels. This sister ship to the
Olympic and to the Titanic. I don't they know one
to quit or like change the name of the company.

(22:50):
With this assignment, Violet will have worked on all three
wow of the White Star Line. It's got a natory ships.
There can't be a lot of them. No, I bet
they gave her a nice pocket watch for it. So
during the war, the Britannic is repurposed into a hospital ship,
and on November twenty first, nineteen sixteen, it's moving through
the Age and c on the way to the battlefields

(23:10):
in Turkey to treat wounded soldiers there. So they go
pick up all the wounded soldiers and take them back
away from all the war. So at a little after
nine am, Violet has just left Mass Church and she's
now quietly eating her breakfast I mean temple. Yes, Oh,
do you have to translate it for you? Thank you?

(23:31):
She's eating breakfast post mass, post mass and not Massachusetts.
And her breakfast is interrupted by a loud boom. We're
doing it again. For years the cause of the blast
will be unclear, But today, in twenty twenty five, it's
believed that the Britannic hit a mine. No way ye.
So the ship shakes violently begins to sink. Violet yawns,

(23:56):
checks her watch, looks around. Is their baby? Does eyone
give me a baby's crying? It's not that big of
a deal. I've seen worse. It's anybody of a baby,
and and the babies over here, please, She's finishing her
English muffin. Okay. Officers immediately start moving people onto lifeboats,

(24:16):
but Violet runs back to her room to get a
prayer book and a toothbrush, which is something she sorely
missed after surviving the Titanic sinking. A friend had jokingly
told Violet to quote, never undertake another disaster without first
making sure of your toothbrush. That's how much she complained
about not being able to brush her teeth after surviving

(24:38):
the sinking of how much for toothbrushes back then? And
then money? What what did the toothbrush cost? I think
she was just like, it was no one's priority to
get me a toothbrush after we got back to land,
and so she's like, never again.

Speaker 1 (24:51):
Okay, all right, girl, seems like you could use your
finger like we all did when we crashed at the
dude's house in our twenties.

Speaker 2 (24:59):
So there, now Violet's loaded onto a crowded lifeboat. This
is if you are the kind of person that doesn't
understand why you listen to true crime podcasts because they
are upsetting, this part might upset you. Oh okay, got it.
This is a very upsetting part, especially if you have
ocean issues, okay, or you're on a boat right now,
or if you're on a boat right now. So they're

(25:20):
slowly being lowered into the water, which is not a
smooth journey. The ship starts tilting. The lifeboat gets snagged
on an open porthole. It almost flips upside down, but
the people on the lifeboat manage to get it uncaught.
Now it's scraping down the side of the Britannic as
it's lowered. At one point, the ship takes another hard

(25:42):
tilt and the lifeboat goes out and swings into the
ship's green hospital band, which is made of glass, so
it's a hospital ship. The green band around it is
actually made of glass, which I didn't know that. So
there's like a red cross up here, red cross back there.
That's so you know, hey, don't bomb this ship. Canvas. Yeah,

(26:02):
a shortage of canvas. I don't know who pland that,
but they smash into it and glass shatters, and Violet
and the other people on the lifeboat are sprayed with
shards of glass. All the while Violet is looking down
at the water. She can see two lifeboats are already
down there, and the people who are on those lifeboats

(26:23):
are doing everything they can to row away from the
ship itself. But the captain is still trying to move
the Britannic towards shallower waters, and he has not turned
off the ship's propeller. Oh no, yes, no, the propeller
is now sucking the evacuees in their lifeboats toward the ship.

(26:45):
Violet watches as the worst case scenario plays out in
front of her. One of the lifeboats gets sucked into
the ship's blades, and the boat and all of the
people on it are hacked to pieces, and the water
then turns red with blood as she as they are
dangling over the side water they're supposed to go down into.
Oh no, Violet will later say, quote, I gave that foolish,

(27:09):
nervous laugh, as people sometimes do when faced with an
unpleasant discovery and a doubtful alternative. That's a beautiful way
of putting. Oh fuck a fuck houck fuck, holy fuck,
just sitting there looking down. Oh my god, Violet's lifeboat
is finally dropped into the same water. Almost on cue,

(27:29):
Everyone except for Violet and one other man jump out
of the boat and into the sea. Violet will later
write about this quote. Not a word, not a shout
was heard, just hundreds of men fleeing into the sea,
as if from an enemy in pursuit. It was extraordinary
to find myself, in the space of a few minutes,
almost the only occupant of the boat. I turned around

(27:52):
to see the reason for this exodus, and to my horror,
saw the Britannic's huge propellers churning and mincing up everything
near them. Men, boats, and everything were just one ghastly whirl.
Oh shut it off. So she turns around to see
why everyone's jumping off the boat, and then when she
turns back, the one guy that was left also jumps

(28:14):
off the boat. So horrible. She can't SWI right, not
an option, And yet she knows if she stays on
this boat, she's going into that propeller. So she flings
herself into the water, kicking and paddling for her life,
and it is the very first time her whole body
and her head are underwater like that. I mean, I'm

(28:35):
sure she took baths before, but like never, she has never.
She's immediately jerked around by the power of these propellers.
They just suck you right in. Yes, you're gonna go
where that water it takes you. Her head is hit
onto the ship's keel, which is the bottom spine, twice.
She's pulled down and her head is knocked into the
keel twice. She will later write, quote, my brain shook

(28:57):
like a solid body in a bottle of liquid. Oh
my god. At the same time, the keel is also
blocking Violet from being able to come back up and surface,
so she is under there, about to drown. She says,
quote Suddenly some twist of fancy made me see, even
then underwater, the humor of my situation, Oh my god,

(29:18):
And I chuckled. That was very nearly my undoing, for
I swallowed what seemed like gallons of water and everything
that was in it. I love her.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
I love her like how much fun was she to
have a drink with?

Speaker 2 (29:29):
Because she was like, you gotta be fasking block someone
hand me a baby down. Can you believe it? Miraculously?
This is when the captain finally cuts the ship's engines.
Thanks guy. The propellers stop, and now Violet's adrenaline kicks in. Yes,
she's injured, it is a head injury. But somehow she
forces her way to the surface and finds a life

(29:51):
vest floating nearby. She holds onto that life vest. She
keeps her head above water, and she swims past dismembered
corpses and dangerous debris from the chopped up lifeboats. Dude,
horror show, Yeah, this is the worst one. While the
Britannic continues sinking behind her. Violet is far enough away.

(30:13):
She gets far enough away, and when she does, she
turns around and she watches it go down. Quote. She says,
all the deck machinery fell into the sea like child's toys.
Then she took a fearful plunge, her stern, rearing hundreds
of feet into the air, until with a final roar,
she disappeared into the depths, the noise of her going
resounding through the water with an undreamt of violence. Wow,

(30:37):
you just don't want to be that close to these
gigantic ships. When they sing, truly like, really, you want
to be at home, far far away, at home with
your eight brothers and sisters. So violets out there are
bobbing in the water, clinging to the life vest until
a motor boat approaches and pulls her up to safety.
She then realizes for the first time that her leg

(30:57):
has been slashed and her head is quote battered almost
to a pulp. Doctors are amazed by how mobile and
alert Violet is. When she sees a Britannic doctor that
she'd sat beside it mass earlier that morning. He tells her, quote,
I know what saved you today, young lady English muffin.

(31:18):
Did you hear the way I choked on the finishing
that sentence where I'm like, oh wait, he means God
on a second, hold on a second. What does she
think about this? I don't know. I wasn't really thinking.
I was like, this is a highly Catholic church sponsored episode.
It truly is. The Britannic will sink in just under
fifty five minutes. It took the Titanic two hours and

(31:40):
forty minutes to sink. This thing went down fast. Twenty
eight people are killed when the Britannic sinks it could
have been much worse if the ship had picked up
wounded soldiers, but it was on the way. Oh thank god. Yeah.
Violet is patched up and she's sent home to England,
where she lives with her mom, Kelly. She ends up

(32:01):
getting a job at a bank and for that sounds
way better, I mean, but she's having problems with her
basically with her cognition because of the head injury. Years
after the sinking, a doctor will be doing a routine
exam on her when he tells Violet that she'd actually
fractured her skull when her head hit the Britanni's keel,

(32:23):
and she somehow not only survived, but was never treated
for it and basically got through it. So a few
years after that, in nineteen twenty, when Violet is around
thirty three years old, she gets a niche to go
back to see. Violet will go back to the White
Star Line on the restored Olympic, which is the ocean

(32:44):
liner she worked on that collided with the Hawk Number
one Yes okay. Violet immediately notices how different the Olympic's
passengers are from the last time she was on it.
Instead of the stuffy, ultra rich, bossy assholes that she
had worked for before the war, richie riches. Now she's
dealing with Americans, many middle class. They're just there to

(33:07):
have fun. Great because on land it's prohibition, right, So
that's a new responsibility as a steward and stewardess is
on this ship, it's part of your job to basically
help these VIPs to booze it up while they are
on this ship. Sounds great, And basically part of the
job is you have to hide the booze from customs agents.

(33:29):
Got it? Violet will write about that quote. It was
all so fantastic. There were pillars of Wall Street senators, lawyers, debutantes,
all with their minds on the same problem. As we
approach the shores of the United States, how do we
keep drinking? So from here Violet bounces around to other ships.
She even completes two cruises around the world on the

(33:49):
Red Star Line, and that experience means a lot to Violet.
She's surrounded by diverse people, She's exposed to different world cultures,
and this is when she really begins in bracing her
life as a stewardess, which she then comes to appreciate
for its excitement and its unpredictability and the ways it's
tested her spirit and resolve. Fair enough. I mean, that's

(34:12):
quite a line, Maren, having written that, of like testing
her spirit and resolve, It's like you almost died on
a three. The ocean wants to kill you so bad violently.
This is fucking final destination, Victorian. She's like, guess what, Yeah,
I was at church this morning. It's not happening right today.
That's right, Mass will keep you from dying. Violet spends

(34:33):
the next several years at sea. She marries and quickly
divorces a fellow steward. In nineteen fifty, she retires at
the age of sixty three and moves into a cottage
in Suffolk, England, in a village called Great Ashfield, where
she raises chickens, makes an adjacent field available for her neighbors,
horses who she loves like her own, and she even

(34:55):
grows flowers that remind her of the ones that she
loved as a little girl in Argentina. Violet Jessip dies
of congestive heart failure in nineteen seventy one, when she
is eighty three years old. What a fucking life. What
a life, And despite her long career at sea, she
ends her life very grounded, close with her family, doting

(35:17):
on her neighbour's horses, tending to her garden, and every
so often delighting and telling one of her unbelievable stories
of survival. And that is the story and the legend
of the so called Queen of the Sinking Ships, Violet Jessup. Wow, yeah,
I'd take that. I'll take that life, you know, Okay,

(35:39):
I'll take it all the way up until ring over
Red Water while people okay, yeah, ye, I know what
that one.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
I don't what that one. That's fucking wild.

Speaker 2 (35:50):
It is not cool. How great job, Thank you did
it again. Great job. My researcher Maaron McGlashan, who took
that basically, was like, I think I found and one that's
crazier than all of the Titanic stories combined. I'm like,
how is that possible? A good one? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (36:06):
So did I believe you guys. We believe in you, guys,
We believe you. Good job to everyone listening. Don't forget
hashtag my favorite hot dog.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
Hashtag. It up proved to us that you like hot
dogs the most. We'll show you hours of your show.
It's yours, right, that's right. Okay, Now it's your turn.
Now it's my turn, and we're gonna take a turn. Okay, great,
not right away. This is about.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
A not well known war that took place in Western
Australia in the nineteen thirties. Oh that, I mean, it's
so not well known that we got one email from
a listener about it in the Gmail.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
That's it. Okay. But I think it's going to be
your new favorite war. Okay, I think I have so many.
I mean, yeah, it's gonna be tough. It's gonna be tough.
I'd say my first favorite wars is mash Okay. So
I'm gonna I'm gonna start cold, and I'll tell you
what it's called. Okay in a moment. Okay, I'll wait,

(37:11):
please wait, okay, please hold.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
So we're in the aftermath of World War One. Thousands
of veterans who are nicknamed soldier settlers, moved to Western
Australia and it's a vast area with a huge array
of climates. There's tropical coast up north, desert in the interior,
a Mediterranean climate similar to parts of California on the
southwestern coasts. It's a fucking beautiful place. We should all

(37:34):
move to.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
We should, don't you think. Remember we did like a
tour which was kind of southeastern. Yeah, we didn't go
to Perth. We didn't go to Perth next time.

Speaker 1 (37:45):
So the Australian government has bought thousands of tracts of
land to sell to the soldiers at discounted prices in
an effort to reward the men for their service with
farmland to develop and profit from.

Speaker 2 (37:57):
So they're trying to you know, expand back. Yeah, there are.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
More than five thousand soldiers who buy land under the scheme,
and the problem is that the amount of land with
good soil for farming in Western Australia is kind of low,
so many of these soldiers are stuck out on tracks
with low quality soil and a host of other issues
that haven't really been thought through. In the end, most
of these soldiers wind up raising sheep and planting wheat,

(38:22):
which is what's most suited to the climate. And in
the nineteen twenties there's actually a string of really good years.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
The wheat grows well.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
The farmers are insulated a bit from bad years by
selling wool from the sheep and everyone is making money.
Everything's fine. Then in nineteen twenty nine, your favorite great
Depression happens, The Great Depression.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
The Great, the Greatest, the Greatest Depression.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
I was falling asleep last night to the World according
to Kunk by filming The Kunk, of course.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
So it's truly one of the best books ever in period. Oh,
I thought you're talking about the TV show. You're listening
to the book. Yeah, the audiobook I'm listening to. Yeah, Okay.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
At first, when the Great DEPRESSI and starts, the price
of wheat stays pretty stable. Other prices for goods tank
in Australia, so the government pushes a big initiative to
get farmers to produce more wheat because it's selling.

Speaker 2 (39:10):
Hey, great, let's just do it.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
The slogan they come up with for the farmers to
grow more wheat is.

Speaker 2 (39:17):
I guess, Hey, it's wheat time. Guys.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
Nope, it's more complicated. It's just grow more wheat.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
Damn it. I should have had you on their creative team.
Goddamn it.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
The Australian Prime Minister promises the farmers that the government.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
Will buy the wheat at a good price.

Speaker 1 (39:34):
Australian farmers enthusiastically take him up on this offer, vastly
expanding their wheat production. Right, But by the early nineteen
thirties there's a new prime minister.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
That always fucking happens. You never plan for that every time.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
That's Joseph Lyons and the global price of wheat tanks,
tanks for nothing.

Speaker 2 (39:55):
The government you acted, you were reading off the page, Well,
good one.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
The government, which already is facing a massive deficit, actually
goes back on the previous prime minister's promise because they
can do that. So the situation is already fairly bleak
at this point. By October of nineteen thirty two, that's
where we are when that year's.

Speaker 2 (40:18):
Wheat harvest is supposed to start.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
Farmers in the town I'm going to get these wrong Australians.
I'm real sorry. Farmers near the towns of Campion and Wallgulin.
That sounds right, yeah, reporting issue. So this area is
one of the drier parts of the state and it
wasn't as well suited to farming already. Right before the
farmers are meant to start harvesting their wheat on this land,
a plague overtakes the farms and rinks havoc on the

(40:45):
crops they trample, they devour there more than a nuisance,
their downright pestilence of epic proportions. This is the story
of the great Emu war Oh whoa what emu? All
of a sudden, these poor.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
Gentlemen farm. It's like it's not going great. They're just
trying to make the best of it, and suddenly they
talk their wife into coming. It's gonna be great. We're
gonna be farmers. We're gonna own la. It's okay. It's
you're afraid of birds, that's fine. There's hardly any birds
out here. No, it's totally fine. It's Australia. What could
go wrong? I mean, wild animal? Why is not snake?

Speaker 1 (41:26):
Snakes sucks and big Shout out to my researcher Ali
Elkin for even coming up with.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
This story, because so good.

Speaker 1 (41:33):
I saw it and responded in all caps because it
was so exciting, you know. So, let me tell you
a little bit about EMUs, since I don't know how
familiar you are with them.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
I could be thinking of kiwi, which is the small bird.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
You're you're it's not a kiwi. This is the large one.
That looks kind of like a ostrich Yeah, okay, yeah, okay,
So emas are actually native to Australia, and I wrote
like Charlie's Starreon.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
Wait, that's not right, is she? I think she's South African.
You know who I met?

Speaker 1 (42:03):
I met Nicole Kidman. Oh, yes, Barbie. I'm a Barbie
Margo Margaret Robbie's fuck man, I can't even get that.

Speaker 2 (42:11):
Don't believe what.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
Word I is it?

Speaker 2 (42:12):
You had so many choices I did, just.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
Blonde, beautiful actresses, and I picked the wrong fucking one.
They're the world's second or third largest bird. I couldn't
tell based on searching. Right, they're right after ostriches, So
ostrichries are bigger than them. Then there's EMUs. Emas are
considered one of the closest living relatives to dinosaurs. Yes, right,
particularly to raptors.

Speaker 2 (42:34):
Oh man.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
Yeah, they're the only species of bird that has calf muscles.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
That's so crazy creep and little uh like fighting Irish
tattoos on those calf muscles.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
Even worse, and they can jump seven feet high. They
can sprint for short distances of forty miles per hour. No,
that's fast, it is, that's like on the freeway here,
and that's actually about the speed of an average racehorse too.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
So they're fucking fast. A little shit, it's fast, right.

Speaker 1 (43:04):
Emu's have a pouch in their throat that they used
to make deep booming and grunting sounds for communications.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
That are me wow. You know, I was gonna say
that this is YouTube, particularly during breeding season. Hey.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
And then here is where a note to Georgia, Ali
put a video of an EMU running to see how
fast it could go. And then I got into a
fucking rabbit hole of EMU videos.

Speaker 2 (43:30):
How to go?

Speaker 1 (43:31):
I wrote zoomies because emos get zoomies. Emu's playing fetch
with a little girl, dog and baby. There's a one
with a dog and a baby EMU playing. They're fucking adorable.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
Okay, so is this like people now have EMU farms,
like they're raising them like Austin. Yes, okay, so yeah,
so I went down this rabbit hole. I saw them run.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
It totally looked like the beginning of Jurassic Park with
all these long necks, just like they're really fun and.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
I want one now, and you're I was gonna say,
and you're like, events come on, just one morning, save EMUs.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
And actually some EMUs can be gentle and affectionate if
they're raised that way from a young age, but others
can be aggressive and moody, especially if they're not socialized
property dittoh, and they may.

Speaker 2 (44:16):
React angrily to being touched or handled. Hey hey when Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
So they have tiny wings, so they're flightless, but they're
known to migrate very long distances in search of food
and water. In the past, EMUs typically moved through this
area that we're in toward the coast without staying long before.
But there's been a drought in nineteen thirty two, and
the creation of this new farmland has both cleared areas
of vegetation and obstacles and has established new water sources

(44:45):
for livestock and irrigation. It's the perfect place for EMUs.
So in this area in this time period, guess how
many migratory EMUs visit this area at once.

Speaker 2 (45:03):
I'm gonna go ahead and say, you don't have to
guess if you don't want to. I mean, look, I
don't want I don't want to guess, but I have
to guess. No, I really want to. I've done. Emu
standing here. How many do you think fucking showed up
for the Great EMU War five hundred twenty thousand. What
twenty fucking thousand EMUs onto this like smallish area because

(45:29):
also they're eating that wheat. They're eating the wheat. Yep,
they're drinking all the irrigated water.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
They're like stomping, they're trampling, they're like wreaking habit partying.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
They're fucking partying. This is their kind of what do
you call it? Burning man? It's a nineteen thirty two
early burning man.

Speaker 1 (45:47):
Totally meet me on the play a man, be yourself
to put that number in perspective, Ali, let me know
that twenty thousand EMUs would fill your typical arena where
an NBA team would play.

Speaker 2 (45:58):
It's the exact of the crypto dot com arena.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
So you're not even playing basketball. And then you look
up into the crowd and it's fucking just all to
wall EMUs.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
And they're like doing weird shit, like they're gonna come
down right, they're like getting ready to and they're dinosaurs.
They're dinosaurs the same amount of feathers as ostriches, I think, so, yeah, yeah,
they're similar to ostrich They cut You would think it
was an ostrich. Yeah you would, you would. Yeah, you'd
get it wrong, and you wouldn't be stupid right for it. Yeah,
that's what we keep telling ourselves.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
Right. And to make matters worse, high tariffs imposed in
the post war and depression era have made wire netting
prohibitively expensive, so they can't afford to fence out the EMUs.

Speaker 2 (46:40):
That's not a choice, I know. So it's literally a
perfect story. It is.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
So the farmers, who are all vets, remember they're all
veterans to World War One, say to the level headed
thing and they write to the Minister of Defense asking
asking to be supplied with machine guns to kill the
emos as you do.

Speaker 2 (46:59):
Well. The problem is, and I think we've talked about
this a lot of like it's sheer numbers, where it's
like if it was five hundred demos, they would be
a little more reasonable twenty thousand of these.

Speaker 1 (47:11):
Thirty thousand and then So maybe because the government has
jerked these farmers around so many times with the price
of weed already, they kind of know they're in trouble
with these farmers already. They want to appear like they're
helping them. So the Minister says yes to the gun request.
But since the government in Australia has smart brains that
think in a normal way, machine guns are tightly regulated there.

Speaker 2 (47:34):
Yes, can you imagine, I mean, what a world to
live in. But also they just because the farmer soldiers
asked for machine guns, why can't they just have regular guns? Right?

Speaker 1 (47:46):
They wanted machine guns? I know, it sounds more fun.
Probably they're probably poured out of their fucking mindes at
this point and they'rege in this rage. So instead, three
specially trained soldiers are sent from Perth to the region
to operate the machine guns. Okay, oh, okay, everyone doesn't
get a machine gun. Great, these three guys get a
machine gun.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
Will send machine guns to you with people who can
operate them. Good plan.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
And it's not just like a little machine gun that
you can hold and operate and move around with. It's
a huge tube that needs to be propped up. It
has a wheel of bullets. It's like, you know, a
World War One type gun. Yeah, the rest of the
farmers are allowed to help shoot at the EMUs, but
they have to use boring all regular rifles. Okay, So
the farmers also agree to house the three military specialists
and to pay for the ammunition for the guns.

Speaker 2 (48:32):
It's not the greatest deal plan or deal for them. Yeah,
but you do have to do that thing where like
after a while you're like, sure, but you did agree
to do this huge, crazy thing. Yes, that's true, but
under what pretenses? Like what they lies true where it's like, oh,
you can farm this beautiful area, but it's Australia, so

(48:54):
it's like it's all snakes and spiders. Yeah, they can't.
The expectation couldn't have been no EMUs easy. Yeah, there
was no no EMU clause, no EMU clause. We guarantee
no large bird will come at you. Non masks, legit
dinosaur hordes of them. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 (49:11):
So the Army specialists are overseen by a man named
Major Gwynned Purvis when Aubrey Meredith is his name?

Speaker 2 (49:19):
Are his six first names? Yeah? Cool?

Speaker 1 (49:22):
And so he's there overseeing it. And then a cinematographer
also joins the group to film the anti EMU offensive okay,
which is great, presumably because people in the Australian government
believed it would be successful. They're like, let's send a
cameraman out there and this will be great. Propaganda for
like what we do for our farmers. The soldiers arrive
on November Tewod, nineteen thirty two, and the war begins.

(49:44):
On the first day they arrive, a flock of fifty
EMUs is spotted at one of the farms, so they
set up their guns on some nearby high ground. The
guns jam almost immediately and the EMUs scatter oo. The
next day the soldiers have a bit more successful They
set up ambush around water sources, but immediately proves to
be very slow going. Between the rifles and the machine guns,

(50:06):
the soldiers are able to pick off about out of
twenty thousand EMUs in one day.

Speaker 2 (50:12):
They pick off about twelve EMUs max. Before the rest
of the flock has scurried out of range.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
Yeah, so in a day's work, that's twelve EMUs out
of twenty thousand, and that's a good day.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
It turns out, Oh.

Speaker 1 (50:24):
The farmers in the military have woefully underestimated their adversaries.
I told you about how fast they are, and I
told you about how they have calf muscles, so they're like.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
So they're cool, yeah, kind of hot.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
The soldiers that were sent to the farms, they start
getting nervous. They've been instructed by one of their commanding
officers to bring back at least one hundred EMU skins,
because EMU feathers are used to decorate the ceremonial helmets
for a particular military union in Australia. So this commanding
officer was like, hey, this is a great way to
get a bunch of fucking emos.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
But it's becoming.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
Increasingly apparent that killing any EMUs, let alone a hundred
to bring back, is not.

Speaker 2 (51:02):
Going to be easy. Yeah, because the EMUs have now
started to appoint their own officers, oh, who act as
scouts for the rest of the flock. Yes, yes, they're
fucking smart. They went back to headquarters and they said, sorry,
those guys on the hill do not want what's best
for us. No, something's going down, that's right.

Speaker 1 (51:23):
One EMU work correspondent wrote at the time, quote, the
EMUs have proved that they are not so stupid as
they are usually considered to be because they do run
around like fucking idiots. Like they do run around, they
look goofy like turkeys, but doesn't mean they're dumb, No,
he says, each mob has its leader, always an enormous
black plumed bird, standing fully six feet high, who keeps

(51:43):
watch while his fellows busy themselves with the wheat. At
the first suspicious sign, he gives a signal, and dozens
of heads stretch up out of the crop.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
Dinosaurs.

Speaker 1 (51:54):
A few birds will take fright, starting a headlong stampede
into the scrub, the leader always remaining until his followers
have reached safety.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
Wow. End quote. Shit. So fucking Papa Bear is like, hey, guys,
here they are. That was a scatter. We've survived for
hundreds of millions of years, so we got this here.
We're fucking dinosaurs. No one panic. Remember those cavemen from
back then recently they barely made it. It's those guys.

(52:24):
These are cousins of those guys, and they think they're
gonna kill us. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:28):
After the first week of the EMU war, it is
reported that the group have used twenty five hundred rounds
of ammunition to kill just three hundred emas.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
Oh my god. And that's a generous estimate. That comes
from one of the military specialists. And you know they
fucking raise those numbers absolutely. So I'm gonna read you
this quote.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
The one person who wrote towards Gmail about like you
guys should cover the story.

Speaker 2 (52:49):
It's really crazy. Is someone named Zach Greedy?

Speaker 1 (52:52):
She her and Zagreedy included a quote from someone named
John p Rafferty that came from the wikiped So here
is that quote that Zegratti included.

Speaker 2 (53:04):
Okay, quote The machine.

Speaker 1 (53:05):
Gunner's dream of point blank fire into serried masses of
EMUs were soon dissipated. The EMU command had evidently ordered
gerrilla tactics, and its unwieldy army soon split up into
innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment uneconomic,
meaning like you're wasting your fucking bullets.

Speaker 2 (53:25):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (53:26):
Meanwhile, in Parliament, Prime Minister Joseph Lyons remember him, is
now facing questions about the expense of the EMA War.
One of the members of Parliament from Sydney asked, sarcastically
if any of the parties involved in the EMA War
should be receiving a medal harsh yeah, and someone says,
if anyone should be getting a medal, it should be
the EMUs. That sounds like a fun parliament.

Speaker 2 (53:46):
It's true.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
After two weeks the EMUs seem to have learned the
range of the machine guns.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
They fucking yeah, you can't. You can't hit me this far.
You can't get me. I'm out of your range. It's
like when you can't leave the part of the couch
you have one, right, so then your sister just walks
just out of range of like, well then I'll go
get myself like a cookie and you can't have one. Exactly.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
They set up shop in the wheat fields just out
of that range and move every time the soldiers reposition themselves,
scatter when the farmers get close with the rifles. All
this scattering and running is also causing the EMUs to
trample more wheat than they would have if you had
never started this fucking Ema war. After the most successful
day of the war, maybe two dozen EMUs are killed.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
Rip.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
One of the military specialists examines one of the dead
EMUs and finds that it has five bullets in its body,
some of which are clearly old wounds from the beginning
of the campaign.

Speaker 2 (54:41):
Oh sh, which means that.

Speaker 1 (54:42):
The EMUs are staying alive and running it close to
full speed even after being shot multiple times, Like they're
fucking terminator.

Speaker 2 (54:49):
Yes, They're like, oh no, we're going to yeah, yeah, yeah,
isn't that.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
Creepy, Like it's extending a message with his body. It's
looking more and more like the EMUs will win the war,
until suddenly, on December second, the war is called off.
I think they're like, let's cut our fucking losses.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
Yes, this is insanity.

Speaker 1 (55:09):
The soldiers claim to have killed between one thousand and
two thousand EMUs out of roughly twenty thousand that were
in the combat zone, and the EMUs seem to become
a part of life for the farmers at this point,
having bested the soldiers.

Speaker 2 (55:22):
Still, in future years.

Speaker 1 (55:23):
The soldiers settlers will continue to request machine guns to
fight off the fucking EMUs because I'm about the reproducing,
but the Australian Ministry of Defense will turn them down
every time. Instead, the soldier settlers are supplied with additional rifles,
and eventually they become more successful at fending off the
EMUs on.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
Their own, picking them off one at a time. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:43):
Between the nineteen forties and nineteen sixties, the farmers kill
more than two hundred thousand of them under a bounty system.

Speaker 2 (55:50):
Oh that's a lot. Peter doesn't like that. No, that's bad.
I mean, they're so cute little babies are They're so cute?
I mean, can't it be like you just get rid
of enough so that your stuff isn't at risk? Right?
It always has to be this like now they've killed
two hundred thousand lay, now they're in danger. Yeah, exactly. Okay.

Speaker 1 (56:09):
So then later, eventually the price of fencing comes down
and this becomes a much more practical way to deal
with EMUs than fucking killing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds
of them. Then in nineteen ninety nine, EMUs become a
protected species in Australia. Yay, and there are about six
hundred thousand of them living in Australia today, which is
considered a strong population.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
So good they're back, baby, good, good good. They're all
riddled with bullets and old wounds. Yeah, oh my god. Yeah,
Grandpa is telling the stories about how you survived the
emu war. They thought they got me with this one.
I just kept running.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
Major Meredith remember him with a really long name. He
goes on to have a story to military career. Having
already served in World War One, he also serves in
World War Two and in the Korean War with distinction.

Speaker 2 (56:55):
But I bet that emu war stuck in his cross.
That's the one that I think. Yeah, he fucking couldn't win. Yeah,
and that is the story of the Great Emu War.
It's totally insane. It's so good.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
Here's a farmer with an emo that eh, it's pretty sad.

Speaker 2 (57:14):
He's all mad. He's a big bird, right, Yeah, that
is a big old bird. You know. He's saying griiky,
He's saying, my calves, please, my calves. Wow.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
All right, that was great, Thank you, Thank you Ali
for finding that in the depths of the internet.

Speaker 2 (57:32):
Nice one, Allie. I really didn't understand what we were
doing at the beginning, no, but it was fun. What
do you think was gonna happen? I don't know, but
I'm really happy to hear like the idea that like,
here's how we're going to use sheer brute force to
solve a problem, and then that problems like you're not
going to that doesn't work that way. That's always I

(57:52):
think a better you know, it's good. It helps people
evolve better ideas. Yeah, you got to learn how to
live in harmony with nature. Yeah, you get your ass
kicked if not, or how about somebody figures out cheap
barbed wire, You fools, You could have saved yourself so
much time.

Speaker 1 (58:11):
Thank you guys for listening. We appreciate you being here.
Stay sexy and don't get murdered. Goodbye, Elvis. Do you
want a cookie?

Speaker 2 (58:27):
This has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 1 (58:29):
Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer
is Tessa Hughes.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
Our editor is Aristotle Ascevedo. This episode was mixed by
Leona Squialacci. Our researchers are Mary McGlashan and Ali Elkin.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot.

Speaker 2 (58:42):
Com and follow the show on Instagram at my Favorite Murder.

Speaker 1 (58:45):
Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your.

Speaker 2 (58:50):
Podcasts, or you can watch us on YouTube. Search for
My Favorite Murder, then like and subscribe. Goodbye,

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513 - Best of the Year (Part II)

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Georgia Hardstark

Karen Kilgariff

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}513 - Best of the Year (Part II)