October 8, 2025 • 47 mins
Some spooky topics are geographically creepy. Arguably, the most famous scary geography is lovingly called The Bermuda Triangle. This portion of the world is credited with a supernatural ability to vanish airplanes and ships... out of the thousands that use this as a shipping route. We dig into the history that inspired the mythical lore attribute to this portion of ocean. Despite its infamy, insurance happily covers shipping vessels that traverse the curious Bermuda Triangle.
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Links and References:
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Recommendations:
- Abraham: “Psych 3: This is Gus” (https://www.peacocktv.com/watch-online/movies/psych-3-this-is-gus/4695aa38-6632-3b3f-aa14-9edf3b70d24a)
- Shane: Atomic Rule - With Skull Crushing Force EP (https://open.spotify.com/album/6ybCbYsqHt3PT974rC6Mt4?si=QkBxu8MRRtOBMad1v6i3Og)
- American Touch Tag Day
- Bring your Teddy Bear to Work Day
- Bullying Prevention Day
- Dyslexia Day
- Emergency Nurses Day
- International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction
- International Lesbian Day
- International Top Spinning Day
- Latina Women’s Equal Pay Day
- National Children’s Day
- National Fluffernutter Day
- National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day
- National Curves Day
- National Pet Obesity Awareness Day
- National Pierogi Day
- Stem Cell Awareness Day
- World Octopus Day
- Active Aging Week
- Animal Welfare Week
- Cephalopod Awareness Week
- Death Penalty Focus Week
- Great Books Week
- Mystery Series Week
- Truffle Days in Croatia
- World Space Week
Links and References:
- https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/i-survived-a-trip-to-the-bermuda-triangle/
- https://www.history.com/articles/bermuda-triangle
- https://travel.earth/what-is-the-bermuda-triangle-all-you-must-know/
- https://www.marinalife.com/articles/the-mystery-of-the-bermuda-triangle
- https://www.gotobermuda.com/inspiration/article/legends-lore-bermuda-triangle
- https://centerforinquiry.org/news/solving-the-mystery-of-the-bermuda-triangle-in-skeptical-inquirer/
- https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/bermuda-triangle-mystery-solved-latest-theories-dr-karl-kruszelnicki-debunked-unexplained-disappearances-ships-planes-aeroplanes-vanish-conspiracy-lost-flight-19-alien-abduction-atlantis-methane-gas-vincent-gaddis-a7861731.html
- https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/unexplained-phenomena/10-unsolved-mysteries-that-have-been-solved.htm?s1sid=wqdp2epa7vz7u29d8v03h2hg&srch_tag=jqpeigono5nhpzyajtpkqf5577cv72bq#pt2
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Welcome to Why We Do what We Do. I am
your Pythagorean host, Abraham.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
And I'm your Parallel dimension host Shane.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
We are a psychology podcast. We talk about the things
that humans and non human animals do, and in the
month of October we take on more sinister, creepy topics
in honor of Halloween and spooky themed things. And it's
just a great time of year for that sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
It's the best. And so here we are covering the
Bermuda Triangle, one of those scary things from when we
were kids. It was not so scary once you got older.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Yeah, And so this is maybe maybe we'll find out today.
This is our second in our line of Halloween episodes
for this month. Hope that you enjoy what you hear today.
If you're joining us for the first time, then welcome,
and if you're a returning person, then welcome back. Either way,
we're happy to have you here. I hope that you
enjoy this one. And if you do, and you would
(01:15):
like to support us, you can leave us a rating
and a review like subscribe, share us with a friend,
shout it from the mountaintops. You can also join us
on Patreon and if you do that, then you'll get
some benefits. And I'll talk about that more at the
end of this discussion. But this episode comes out on
October eighth, which is evidently just absolutely riddled with holidays,
(01:37):
so so many to the brim like an overflowing cauldron.
So let's go ahead and jump in and wish everyone
a happy American Touch Tag Day.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yes, it's also bring your Teddy Bear to Work Day.
It is Bullying Prevention Day, which may be hard if
you're bringing your teddy bear to work. I mean, I'm
not saying don't bring your teddy better work. I'm just
saying some people are just jerks about those types of things. Yeah,
it is Dyslexia Day. It is Emergency Nurses Day. It
is International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction m M.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
It is International Lesbian Day.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
It is. It's also International Top Spinning.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Day, Latina Women's Equal Pay Day. I mean everybody equal pay, right,
I mean we should focus on the places where it
needs to happen, but they want to acknowledge like equal
pay for all.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yes, exactly. It is National Children's Day.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
It is National flutter hold On. I said that wrong.
It is National fluff for Nutter Day. I skipped the
first part a flutter nuffer, which is kind yeah, fluff nutter.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
It's marshmallow peanut butter. Y'all just eat that. It sounds good.
It is National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Okay, there could be something to a back there interesting
technology though for now. It is Natural Curves Day.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
It is also National Pet Obesity Awareness Day.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
It goes in in hand with National Curves Day. It
does in the National Pirogi Day.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Ooh, I like parogis. It is stem Cell Awareness Day.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
It is World Octopus Day.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
It certainly is, which makes sense because it's the eighth
of October. Oh, I don't think I realized that until
just this moment.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
I actually did not either. That does make a lot
of sense.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Look at us man, squids are kicked out of this one.
It's an Active Aging Week. It is Animal Welfare Week
and is also Cephalopod Awareness Week and Death Penalty Focus Week.
Wow mm hmm hmm. Yeah, it's well it's death penalty
being you know, state sanction murdered. But you know, whatever
we'll do. We'll talk about that one day. It is
(03:42):
a Great.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Books Week, and relatedly, I suppose it is Mystery series week.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Spooky, it is Truffle Days in Croatia, and it is
World Space Week. It certainly is.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
That's so many holidays and we left out several.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
That's probably like maybe a quarter.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah, So go check out the October holidays, maybe October
eighth specifically, if you're interested in learning more. But if
you really came to this podcast looking for a comprehensive
list of all holidays and an explanation of them, you
came to the wrong place. We do a cursory list
with very little explanation. Yes, but we just want to
(04:21):
acknowledge all of you who we know are celebrating in
one way or another out there. So yeah, those holidays, celebrate,
celebrate good October holidays, all right? Now moving on to
our topic then, or is there any more preamble that
I missed that we need to go over before we
get into this.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
No, let's get into this bookiness all right.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
On the list of locations with a nefarious reputation, the
Bermuda Triangle might be at the tippity top of that pyramid.
And so it's very likely that most of you heard
of this, But if you haven't, then we will explain
what we're talking about here with the this idea of
the Bermuda Triangle.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Yeah, so we're going to explore the history, some myths,
the lore of the Bermuda Triangle and then dilute it
into nothingness with science, because that's that's what we like.
We like to, you know, unpack some low and kind
of explain what it actually is, what's actually happening.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
And I suppose we should just mention in case you're
here for the first time with these Halloween themed episodes,
as we said, we basically just take spooky topics and
do that for the month. This is our fifth year,
I believe, doing Halloween themed type episodes, which is really fun.
So you can go back if you'd like to check
out some historical ones we've done in the past. I've
always had a lot of fun with this month. I
(05:39):
enjoy digging into these sorts of topics, and it just
occurred to us that one of those ideas shrouded in
mystery and spookiness is the Bermuda Triangle. So we decided
that was close enough to fit into the realm of
Halloween things.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
I mean, it does change our behavior like it does,
it has altered our behavior. It's entered our verbal behavior
at lets con like it's like done some things where
it's like fluence human behavior. So we got to talk
about it, I.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Think absolutely, So let's go ahead and get into it.
The Bermuda Triangle this is roughly a two hundred and
seventy thousand to five hundred thousand square mile patch of
the Atlantic Ocean between Miami, Florida, San Juan, Puerto Rico
and the northernmost point of the island of Bermuda. And
I did see other estimate ranges that went up to
(06:23):
and including over a million square miles, so it is
a fairly large chunk of the sea, although relative to
the rest of the ocean it's pretty small. Yeah, if
you really think about it. But that's about the space
that it takes up. Anchoring the geographical region to these
three points of land makes a triangle shape on the map.
(06:44):
Hence the word triangle in the name Bermuda triangle, right
because Bermuda is also in there. But yeah, so if
you have those three points, you connect them via lines,
you have what is in the shape of a triangle
more or less.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Yeah. Now, the senator reputation of the Bermuda triangle ste
from reports of many planes and ships mysteriously vanishing without
a trace or even a distress signal in some cases,
and other mysterious supernatural sightings within this part of the
ocean and never seen again. So people are flying, they're
traveling through the space and they're seeing these unexplainable things,
or they're just disappearing entirely, and you know, from the outside,
(07:20):
we're going, uh, that's not good.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
And it is the fact that it is these unexplained
it is the fact that it's like it seems to
be of particular prevalence in this part of the world,
in this part of the ocean. These seem to lend
to the intrigue. And there's more to it than that.
Arguably less to it than that, as we'll get into
the history and ideas behind this, but that's sort of
(07:45):
the lore there. And so yeah, over the past several centuries,
thousands of planes and ships have seemingly vanished while they
are in the range of are traveling through the Bermuda Triangle.
Totally kidding, it's actually estimate it to be around fifty
ships and twenty planes. But I wanted to like, if
people thought it was that scary of a place with
(08:09):
that reliable of an outcome, then I figured they would
believe the thousands of planes and ships things. Sure, and
then understands that fifty and twenty are relatively small numbers
compared to how many planes and ships have traveled the
oceans over time.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yeah, so I think that's a fascinating thing that it's
really only about fifty ships and twenty planes. Like that's
that's just kind of because it's so conflated. But well,
we'll talk about that, we'll unpack that a little bit.
So the Brimuda Triangle has also received other monikers like
the who Doo see the Devil's Triangle and Limbo of
the Lost, which sounds, you know, like it's fun until
(08:48):
it's not. Yeah, well it sounds like a party where
like somebody like is too drunk and they end up
like in the parking lot, not knowing where how to
get back to the party.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
All right, So we have this sinister, terrifying piece of
geography that mysteriously swallows people whole without a trace and
then never heard from again. And amazingly, people still live
within the triangle, mostly in Bermuda itself. Depending on where
you draw the triangle then Bermuda is home to over
sixty four thousand people. But if you extend the triangle further,
(09:20):
then you'll encompass more islands, which means you can add
to that list quite a bit. And obviously San Juan
Puerto Rico has a lot of people, although it's like
where the tip of the triangle touches, so I don't
know if people consider that to be inside the triangle,
but yeah, lots of people around this area, despite its
mysterious nature.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Right right, right, So I think it's probably worth talking
about the legends and the mythology and the lore that
goes around this. So let's unpack maybe a little bit
of history of the Breviuni Triangle and kind of start there,
you know, and we are going to start with on
explorer of sorts so impressively. The legends of this part
of the world were first observed by none other than
(10:01):
Christopher Columbus in fourteen hundred ninety two when he crossed
the I remember there's a song that I learned. It
was like, in fourteen hundred ninety two Columbus crossed the sea.
Da da da da da d d da da da
dad Like it was one of those things. I don't
remember all it was, but because it didn't talk about
smallpox or like disease, or like murder or genocide or anything,
so I don't really remember it or enslavement or labman
(10:21):
or any of those terrible things that they did. So reportedly,
as he approached the Bahamas, he saw mysterious lights on
the horizon that seemed to pulse on and off, a
large light crashing into the sea, strange compass readings, and
sections of the ocean seemingly filled with seaweed, which made
the trip difficult to traverse. That's the spookiest part of
the seaweed, so.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Much seaweed in there. The rhyme I had heard was
like a way to remember the year, and it was.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
I think I know it is. It's something like in
fourteen hundred and ninety two, Columbus was so bad he
showed up on the shores of America just to play
an ad.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
All right, Well, that was a bit more meandering than
I hoped it would be. But we're talking about Christopher Columbus,
Well we were talking about it. That's pretty much the story.
He saw all these things. Most of the sources I
found credited the first attributions of mystery of this geographical
location to his reports. Of course, people had been living
there and traversing that space for some time before he
(11:29):
got there, but as someone who was apparently primed for superstition,
that was where it at least sort of started to begin. Sure,
many scholars believe that Shakespeare's play The Tempest was inspired
by a real life Bermuda shipwreck, and with that that
further enhanced intrigues surrounding the Bermuda Triangle.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Right, but the real lore of the Bermudia Triangle developed
from some tragic disasters that occurred there. So first, in
nineteen eighteen, the Navy supply ship called the USS Cyclops.
What a name for a ship, that's that's kind of fun.
The USS Cyclops departed Brazil headed towards Baltimore, Maryland. So
I think they probably just didn't want to go to Baltimore,
(12:13):
if we're being honest. It was carrying three hundred and
six crew members and ten thousand tons of manganese destined
to be manufactured for the war effort. Even after a
resupply stop in Barbados, the captain reported weather fair and
all well, that was the direct one. Now, However, the
ship disappeared inside of the bringing a triangle. No distress
signal was sent, although it was equipped to do so,
(12:34):
no expectation was given, no wreckage was found.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yep. So this large ship carrying over three hundred people
just gone. Nobody knows where it is. And the last message,
the last communication they'd had was everything's good here.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Yeah, more like the USS by Clops.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
And it reminds me a bit of Event Horizon again. Yeah,
and we'll just keep coming back to that movie. Maybe
we need to do like a Halloween episode that's just
a movie review of Event Horizon.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yeah. I think, by the way, everybody, this is now
an Event Horizon podcast.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
That in Dune yeap between these all right, So, yeah,
so the ship disappears. President Woodrow Wilson later commented that
quote only God and the sea know what happens to
that great ship end quote. Further again just making the
disappearance more mysterious feeling right now.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
In nineteen forty one, two of the cyclops of sister
ships also vanished. That was Biclops and Tricops also vanished
without a trace while traversing the similar route. Once again,
no distress signal no wreckage found and no evidence that
a German U boat could have been responsible.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Yeah, at that time, that was like a very real
possibility that it was some of these German subs that
were going around seeking ships, but there was no evidence.
There was no reports of German U boats there, So
they're just not clear what could have happened. But you know,
the Cyclops disappears and then two more sister ships disappear
on a similar route. So those are some of the stories.
(14:08):
The next one is one of the most sighted events
related to the Bermuda activity and like mysterious happenings there,
And this is a nineteen forty five There was a
group of five torpedo bombers with fourteen crew aboard, and
this was called Flight nineteen, and it departed from Fort Lauderdale, Florida,
around two pm and they were just going on a
(14:30):
routine training to practice bombing runs over some shoals north
of Bimini and the Bahamas, and apparently when they left
it was ideal flying conditions.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
However, an hour into the mission, in the range of
the Bermuda triangle, the radio tower began to receive transmissions
from the captain about compasses going crazy, low fuel, white
haze and seventy five mile per hour winds. Then the
planes just disappeared.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Yep, they just were no longer responding, not being picked
up on radar, they were just gone. So this was
immediately concerning. They were supposed to be in contact. It
was just a routine training mission that was only supposed
to last two hours, and so they immediately organized a
rescue effort. Rescue planes left to search for the downs planes,
and then, interestingly, shortly into the search, one of the
(15:19):
rescue planes with thirteen crew also vanished from the radar
and was never heard from again. And they never found
the wreckage, never learned what could have gone wrong, and.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
No distress signals except for like a little bit of like, hey,
something's weird, right like, but nothing like may day, may day,
may day, like you might hear in the event of
a crash.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Now, the next day, a massive search and rescue crew
operation embarked to track the planes, including many submarines, ghost
guard coast Guard vessels not ghost guard ghost guard would
be very scary. Coast Guard vessels, Navy destroyers, and hundreds
of government planes and hundreds of private jet planes as well.
They searched for weeks over three hundred and eighty thousand
square miles of ocean and never found any of the planes. Now,
(16:00):
an official Navy report healthfully editorialized that that it was
quote as if they had flown to Mars, which of
all places, Mars.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Right, Yeah, Yeah, I just I remember when I saw that,
and I just thought it was both funny that this
was like an official report and that that was how
they decided to describe it. And I understand like being
frustrated with the mystery of like we have really really
really searched and not found anything, But I don't know,
it just still feels like an odd comments to make.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah, it's it's a little bit strange, Okay.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Now important to know though, at this point, no one
had actually really glombed on to anything particularly important about
this geographical region. No one was calling at the Bermuda
Triangle at this point. No. This term actually would not
come to be until another twenty years later in nineteen
sixty four, and Vincent and Gaddis was a writer who
(16:56):
wrote My magazine article in which he coined the term
Bermuda Tryan, officially creating a solid foundation upon which the
lore could congeal and develop sort of a more mythical
status and relevance.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
I actually think that's really important. As we're talking about
this is like the mysteries happening in these things that
are kind of strange and unexplainable. But the term Bermuda
Triangle is a fairly new thing. Yeah, like in the
grand scheme of history, right, Like that is a rather
new thing. Like my dad is older than the Bermuda
Triangle in terms of black labeling. So Charles Berlitz further
(17:33):
capitalized on the quote unquote mystery of the Bermuda Triangle
when he published a best selling book Sensationalizing Stories about
this region.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah, it's just called the Bermuda Triangle, but it was
like a best seller, It was extremely popular. It really
heightened the myth and lore status of this particular idea
in place, and okay, people attempting to understand what's going
on in the Bermuda Trian. Proposed hypotheses to account for
(18:02):
the events and the Bermuda Triangle range from the mundane
to the fantastical, where you have on the more mundane side,
things like rogue waves, intense weather, water spouts, and methane
eruptions as possible contributing variables that resulted in downing some
of these transportation vehicles.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Sure, but the more fantastic are fantasy pro and magical
thinking people like and this is I love this stuff
because I'm like, this is just fun to explore. I
don't buy it. Sure it's fun to explore, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
The folks that are like kind of more fantasy thinking
among us have imagined reverse gravitational anomalies, time warps, sea monsters,
parallel universes, UFOs, and aliens because of course, and crystal
energy technology specifically developed in the Lost City of Atlantis.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Yeah. Yeah, quite a few. I mean, I don't know
why we don't throw zombies, wear wolves, witches, and doctor
Strange in the mix as possible culpre but yeah, they
all seem equally plausible and reasonable explanations.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Right right, Yeah, I mean yeah, there are they all
hold the same water haunted water evil.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Maybe this is where Cthulhu hangs out, or even Godzilla.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Godzilla's on vacation in the Caribbean. He's like, He's like
the you know, the Japanese beaches are beautiful, and but
the Pacific Ocean is too cold. I need warmer climbs.
I'm a reptile, dammit.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Exactly. See, it all makes sense.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
I mean, scientifically speaking, it would make more sense for
Godzilla to be in the Atlantic Ocean than the Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
I'm just saying, I definitely at least closer to the equator. Yeah, yeah,
Godzilla is going to be you would think checking out
where the where the warmer climates are.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
He ain't attack in Seattle, is all We're saying. He's
coming for San Diego, Miami, Austin, Texas, all the places
they have warm water.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
And plus I'm not sure if they ever depict him
as being a particularly like a lizard that plans, But
if it was a lizard that plans, then like there's
hardly a better place it could be than the Bermuda Triangle,
right where like people kind of expect these disappearances to happen,
and people aren't necessarily looking for a monster to blame.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, So, oh god Zilla.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Maybe it's also the Kraken.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
It could be the Kraken, It could be any number
of things. At this point. Yeah, at this point in
time in the episode, we have no idea what it.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Is we are about to get into that. Actually, so
I wanted to just sort of list these events without
count like providing the more reasonable explanation of those events
right off the bat, Like, let's just get through them
at first.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yeah, because some people have really dug into this and
they wanted to bring some science to it and start
to understand what's happening. And so, of course, being the
podcast that we are people who love debunking things and
love espousing the scientific position on things, we were gonna
basically plan to go there and that's pretty much the
whole point of this discussion. So yeah, let's go ahead
(21:01):
and start digging into debunking right after we dig into
some ads.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Yeah, that's fine, all right, we're back.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Let's get into some of the I guess I would
call it skepticism. I mean it's really like the actual
analysis and scientific pulling a part of things, which is skepticism.
That is what that is. But yeah, let's get into it.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah, So let's start with Christopher Columbus, and I think
that we can start talking about some of the things
he saw. So, remember those flickering lights on the horizon
that we talked about, These were likely just large bonfires
set and tended to by the indigenous peoples of the islands.
As he was traveling through those areas, they seemed to
turn on and off because the boat was going up
and down on the ocean waves, So the fires appeared
(21:48):
to disappeared from view simply by the fact that the
horizon that they were viewing was changing.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Yeah, exactly, Like it was far enough away that you
couldn't necessarily make out exactly what it is. But if
you're bobbing up and down, then like is it's right
on the horizon, it will go and it'll be in
view and then out of you. And if it's really dark,
you might have trouble understanding why that's the case, because
all you see is like often the distance lights and
then no lights. But that is a very reasonable explanation. Yeah,
(22:14):
there was that bright light they reported crashing into the sea.
This was most likely a meteor. If he actually did
see something matching that description, it was unclear from some
of the sources I found, but they're they're like, well,
there are lots of meteors out there, and this is
a place where you could see them, so makes sense.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Yeah, yeah, there you go, And especially like keeping in
mind at the time that you know, we're talking about this,
there's really no light pollution. So there's there's like you know,
I mean, not that there's a lot in the ocean anyway,
but like it is important to kind of keep that
in mind, is like what is occurring as likely a
phenomenon that's happening on Earth rather than like you know,
(22:51):
some light that's like kind of diluting whatever they're seeing
or their vision. So now regarding the strange compass readings,
this one comes up a lot. This particular geographical space
does have a unique distinction of being one of the
few places on Earth in which true north and magnetic
north aligne and compasses may try to point to true
north rather than the magnetic north or toggle between the two,
(23:12):
and that happens to be right around Bermuda. So you
might see a little bit of like wobbling on the compass.
It's not like it's not like what you might imagine
where it's like it's just spinning the dial of spinning
over and over and over and they're like, whoa up
and down and left is right? What do we do?
It's more like just kind of wavering between two points.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Yeah, So but it does make sense that, like it
just happens to be the case that like those magnetic
fields align there, and so you might get a compass
that's doing some wonky things and have people be like,
over the vast majority of the Earth, I've been very
reliably able to expect that my compass will always point
north and I can use that to guide where I'm going,
And all of a sudden, it's not doing that. Yeah,
(23:50):
And it seems like one of those immutable laws that
couldn't possibly be shifted. And so it's very confusing why
it would be different, right, And like, so I can
understand to that point, but I don't know why you
need to jump to anything super mysterious about it. But
that is something that they obviously wouldn't have understood back then,
as like the trail versus magnetic north right exactly. There's
also the seaweed they encountered. There's a special type of
(24:12):
seaweed called sargassum in the Sargasso Sea that's a huge
chunk of the Atlantic Ocean. It is a brown seaweed
that forms gigantic clusters in the ocean, and if you're
in the middle of one of those clusters, it almost
kind of looks like land that you're surrounded by out
in the water. And they can be very very large,
like you can have quite a bit of them, and
they can be a little cumbersome and like you can
(24:34):
boats can get slowed down a little tangled up in them.
These will wash up on shore. Have you seen sargassum
wash up in Florida?
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Yeah, sure, it can like absolutely overload beaches, and so
there's like people who there are crews that go through
removing sargassum that washes up ashore. But anyway, the point
being that, like if they were floating through this at
various points, that could have been distressing in such a
way that had them be like, what is going on?
We see these lights disappearing off in the distance. We've
(25:06):
got this this compass is being weird. There's all these
crazy plants around us in the ocean, and so anyway
that that could have been part of their experience there.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Yeah, there are times where when the clumbs get really
bad here, like the entire beach is covered and this
like it's almost like it's shaped like a brillowpad almost.
It's like big and spongy a little bit, and it like,
it's really interesting. It always you have to be careful
around it because like you might find crabs in it,
like waiting to like and like kind of hunting through
some of the stuff too. So there's some cool it's
it's very interesting from a marine biology standpoint.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so gassim is a pretty interesting organism,
I guess, as it were, and it does create these
very unique ecosystems that like float on the top of
the ocean. Yeah, we'll get all these small marine life
that will basically cluster and live in these spaces and
they kind of hunt each other. But it's also used
for protection.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Yeah. Sea turtles use it for protection.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Yeah exactly, And there could be just so so much
of it. It's crazy. But it's like held a loft
in the ocean. It seems to have these they almost
look like berries that allow it to float right on
the top of the ocean. Yeah, so, Sara, it's pretty
interesting stuff. It's not really the point of what we're
talking about in this discussion.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
It's just weird. It's weird. It's a weird thing that
happens in this place that's already weird.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Yeah, exactly. It is a weird thing in a weird place.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Yeah, So okay, So we talked about Christopher Columbus kind
of maybe gave some ideas on what was going on
with him. Let's talk a little bit about flight nineteen
and what this looks like. So this was one of
the flights that disappeared. So one investigator who spent more
time looking into this and then most found that the
flight leader, Charles Taylor, had a documented history of poor
navigation and had even crashed planes into the ocean before.
(26:45):
I also think it's really important, like what like what
we understand to be plane crashes now like is pretty
rare compared to like how often it was happening when
planes were first developed. There were way more plane crashes
as a general rule, and there were more like hijacke too,
Like it just happened all the time on planes, way
more than people think. But this guy, Charles Taylor, had
(27:05):
poor navigation histories and had crash planes before historically. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
So he and he was the leader of this little
squad of bombers out here, and as an example of
some of the mistakes that he made, the person who
this investigator I had found pulled up as he reportedly
misidentified islands that they were flying over. He didn't trust
the plane's navigation equipment and instruments, and so he would
(27:31):
just make these decisions to fly off course and he's like, well,
the equipment's wrong, so I'm just gonna do this other
thing here because I think this is where we're supposed
to go. And that was likely a very important contributing
factor in understanding what happened here.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Unbelievable, Like I just I couldn't imagine talking to the
captain and there he's like, Yeah, we're gonna eye it,
We're gonna wing it. And I'm like, no, we're not. No,
what do you what are we doing? What are you're
talking about? We're just gonna We're just gonna wing it,
literally and figuratively. Now, the crew pushed back, obviously and
argued that they were going the wrong way, but Taylor persisted,
and they likely flew around aimlessly, so they ran out
(28:06):
of fuel and crashed into the ocean.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Yeah, exactly. There is a fairly large trench that runs
through part of this area too, where I don't know
if they were over that trench, but like it does
make sense that some things if they if the wreck
happened nearer around the trench, that might be really difficult
to recover because it'd just be so deep and so dark,
it wouldn't you wouldn't be able to easily pick it
up in any meaningful way, yea, if it was down
far enough. But yeah, so that happened. It's also likely
(28:32):
that they did encounter some high winds. They reported that
in their radio transmission. And this is a part of
the ocean that does tend to experience tropical storms and
hurricanes with some frequency. Because it's so close to the equator,
it gets really warm there. You do tend to get
really high winds and sort of sudden storms. That seemed
to sort of come out of nowhere, and there wasn't
a hurricane then, but again they did report those high winds.
(28:54):
So the fact that they're flying around aimlessly, they're low
on fuel, the compass is confusing them with true north,
and the captain's just stubborn refusal to listen to the crew.
That's likely what happened that resulted in the crash here.
And I mean, it's just like there are vessels that
go down in the ocean that we just never find
them again. It's just a really big space that's very deep,
(29:16):
and we can't always find stuff out there. We've mapped
so little of the ocean, like it's just a huge,
huge area and it gets very difficult to see and
probe into the depths of the ocean.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Yeah, I mean, so, says you say. I say they
were pulled into a time warp, and so Charles Taylor
and his crew are going to show up at a
random time. They're going to land it in an airport
with a flight itinerary that doesn't match what the airport is,
and it's going to be very confusing for everybody, and
then they'll disappear again. There's some ghost stories that tell
that exact thing, which is like very spooky.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Maybe they went back in history and they landed at
the time of the dinosaurs and lived.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Maybe it is. Maybe it is. It's good for them, hopefully.
I don't think the I think they'd have a hard
time breathing because that at the time it was so
oxygen rich. I think they'd be like because it's just
it would be it would be too much for them.
I don't think they could handle it. And then Charles
Taylor would lead them into the jungle and he'd be like,
we're going this way, and they would be like, clearly
there's a tyrannosaurus that way, and he would go not
(30:18):
not no, no, no, no, no, I don't trust what
you're saying. We're gonna go this way anyway, and then
he probably got eaten.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Probably all right, we've accepted they the time more eypothesis,
I guess.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Yeah, at least it's you know, when it comes to parsimony.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Right, yeah, sure, Okay, let's go ahead and get into
just a more general, overall explanation of what's likely happening
in this space. There's a couple of pieces of information
that once you have them, I think it will start
to demystify the Bermuda Triangle fairly rapidly. One of the
most significant pieces of information that scientists and skeptics have
pointed to is pretty damning. The issue here is that
(30:58):
the number of incidents, the randomness appearances without explanation with
no wreckage found that actually happens a lot all over
the ocean, quite a lot, so much so that they
say there's actually nothing special about this here.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Right, Incidents in the Bermuda Triangle are no higher than
anywhere else in the world. I mean, like, it's so
interesting that we do we do have these conversations about
this because like the Bermuda Triangle is a thing, but
Amelia Earhart is probably one of the most famous disappearances
and it didn't even happen on the side of the.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Planet, right, So yeah, that's I think a thing worth
considering is that, like if we were to look at
look at all these these things are going to the
Bermuda Triangle and they disappear, I'm like, actually, if you
look at the numbers, it happens all over the place.
Like traveling over the ocean is challenging, it is a
little bit dangerous, and people have disappeared doing this thing
(31:49):
and sometimes the wreckage is not found. And the actual
amount that it happens in Bermuda is not unique to
anywhere else in the world. And this happens to be
a very high traffic area. It's one of the busy
at shipping lanes in the world has been for some time,
so there's gonna be more opportunities for rex and crashes,
but they continue to occur at a proportional rate relative
(32:09):
to all of the maritime traffic. So the amount of
rex and crashes are not outside of the realm of
what you'd find anywhere you're traversing the ocean.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Right right, It's really no, it's really no different. I mean,
it's just it's quantifiably maybe you could possibly report a
high number, but comparatively, like from a percentage standpoint, ratio standpoint,
it's not any different.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
And you might be thinking, like if you're hearing the
stories about the Bermuda Triangle, you might be wondering, like,
why are people still going into this place? Why is
it the case that like you'd feel like if there
was something to worry about, people would just stop going
there all together.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Right, sure, yeah, you would think so, But here we are. Okay,
So consider this for a second. Flights in maritime vessels
travel US route by the hundreds every week, and the
overwhelming majority of them make it safely to their destination,
so much so that no one has found it necessary
to detour this route. And you would think they would
if they had the remotest concern, but they're not. And
(33:08):
as a matter of fact, like I think you brought
it up before we even gotten the show, like talk
about insurance companies. Insurance companies still cover people going through
this place, right.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Yeah, So that's actually the next part here is that
one of the most sensitive I would argue that one
of the most sensitive metrics for the reality of incidents
such as these is insurance. And it's because insurance companies
either will not ensure a high risk thing such as
this if it was high risk, or they would charge
exceptionally high premiums if they thought there was that much risk.
(33:40):
And they just collect oodles and oodles of data to
make decisions about where they're going to cover things and
where they won't. And the leader and maritime insurance, a
company called Lloyd's of London, reports that they charge normal
insurance rates for vessels traveling this portion of the Bermuda
Triangle as it's called, because, as they say specifically, it
(34:02):
is no more hazardous than anywhere else in the ocean,
and they would lose money if it were the case
that like they were wrong and there were higher incidents
of things going down in the Bermuda Triangle. So like
they're very much incentivized to be overly cautious about this, right,
and they are not. And I think that kind of
tells you everything is like insurance company is not going
to mess around with numbers or money, Like if they
(34:24):
had any concern, they wouldn't insure it, or they would
charge alarming amounts. But they do insure it, and they're like, eh,
They're like, it's no concern to us. It's no more
higher risk than anyone on the ocean.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Right. I think that's a really important note, Like, yeah,
we can make the argument that like, insurance companies have
their own problems and stuff like this, but I do
think that understanding the motivation of an insurance company tells
you everything you need to know, like which is to
save money to prevent losses. And here they are willing
to take a risk on boats going through places that
are supposed to be quote unquote more dangerous. And I
(34:55):
think the other side too, that we're going to talk
about is like the evidence, right, like the permanent problem,
like the leftover of these wrecks, right. And while people
have had a difficult time recovering some of the wrecks
of the lost vessels, many contend that there have been
no incidents that could not be explained at all, at
least using basic logical deduction. We talked about things like
the magnetic polls. We talked about navigation systems. We talked
(35:17):
about human error as possible reasons for why those disappearances occurring,
and more likely human error.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Yeah, and so if not all recks, most of the
recks have happened, could be like we know what happened
to some of them, but for the ones where we're
not sure it was likely human error. There are dangerous reefs,
There are such things as rogue waves, are those sudden
storms of the instances where they had low fuel. And again,
wreckage is sometimes recovered, just like in other parts of
(35:46):
the ocean. So it's not that everything that has disappeared
was never found again. There are things that were disappeared
that they did find. Yeah, and then they understood what happened.
So like one of the things that they've said is
sciences solved the mystery of the Bermuda trie and the
mystery was there was no mystery, Like right, yeah, there's
like there's nothing to see here. It's just like you
(36:07):
could pick any you could draw a triangle anywhere any
part of the ocean, and you would where there is
any amount of like shipping going on or like people
traveling that space, and you would see about the exact
same rates you do as you do in the Bermuda triangle.
Anywhere you draw a triangle, you're gonna find pretty much
the same thing if it overlaps with where a lot
of human activity is taking place. If you draw in
a place where there's very little human activity, then it
(36:28):
will look kind of different. But generally speaking, if you
pick a shipping lane somewhere, you will find the same thing.
So that I think is I don't know if it's
the nail in the coffin, like the final nail in
the coffin, as they say, but it's I find it
very convincing to just look at the basic math, look
at the insurance, and look at the fact that like
people are I think look hearing stories about the Bermuda
(36:49):
Triangle and thinking like these twenty times that people dared
to enter the space and all of them they disappeared,
And it's actually like, no, there's just thousands and thousands
and thousands and thousands of people who use this all
the time, and some of them, unfortunately, tragically do crash
and people and lives are lost, and that's always a
terrible thing thing that happens, and it is a thing
(37:10):
that happens unfortunately so you know, humans have gotten increasingly
good at creating ways to die. They are also very
good at like inventing safety systems to try and prevent
them from dying. And most of the time those systems work,
like the overwhelming majority of the time, but sometimes they don't.
And when we engage in those high risk behaviors, tragedies
can happen. And it's never a good thing that it happens,
(37:32):
of course, but we also look at and acknowledge that
it's a thing that happens, and so we don't need
to necessarily demonize anyone part of the world has belong
is as having mysterious forces that compel them to happen.
If that's not what's happening, which isn't here?
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Sure? Sure? I mean there are so many stories of
in specific going to a human error part. There are
so many stories of people making choices because either their
crew has turned on them, because of greed, because of
time and deadlines. Like there's a there's a really great story,
I say, a great story, but there's a really good
(38:09):
example of this where I forget what the actual ship
was called. I just listened to podcast on it, but
the ship was they were sailing from Europe around Africa
to get to Jakarta and Indonesia where they were trying
to get nutmeg because nutmeg was really valuable, and it
was a shipping company that did this. It was not Magellan,
but it was a really good example of capitalism, which
(38:30):
was kind of like, So the ship leaves and they
are past their deadline, so the ship captain decides to
take a short cut, and when he does this guy's
also had a history of sinking other ships due to errors,
takes a shortcut, hit some really dangerous reefs and ends
up killing most of the crew as a result of it,
and so it's one of those things. They know what
(38:50):
happened though, because the company came to find them to
salvage all of the goods that were still sealed in
the barrels, vinegar and nutmeg being two of the things
they really had to save. Didn't really care about the
but they made sure that that stuff was and the
gold there was like treasure and stuff on it too.
So the point is like that was a decision made
by human. Shipwreck happened, and you could see how easily
(39:10):
it is to do that in a world where the
ocean is an incredibly dangerous place.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Indeed, but people do go on in the ocean so
that they can at least avoid ads.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
That's sure.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
All right, Well, we've kind of i think said what
we have to say about the Bermuda Triangle. Interestingly, this
is one of the shortest episodes we've had in some time.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
I think this is one of the shortest episodes we've
ever done.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Yeah, I think it is. It's probably in the ten,
like top ten percent of the shortest episodes we've done.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Because there's really nothing. I mean, if we're talking about
science and parsimoni and skepticism, it's just likely that things happen,
but they're not supernatural things.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yeah. So anyway, that's the Bermuda Triangle. There's a little
bit understanding why people got worked up about this, how
it came to be a cultural phenomenon, which is largely
that people decided it was going to be a cultural phenomenon. Like, Yeah,
I think a couple of these tragic events took place
at particularly unique points in time. Like World War One
(40:13):
was when that cyclops, that USS cyclops disappeared. World War
two is when the planes disappeared. Yeah, both of them
were like in similar regions and under conditions under which
people were I think particularly devastated by what happened, which
is like these things just they're just gone all of
a sudden. Yeah, and just high profile events. But yeah,
(40:35):
otherwise it's not really different from anything else.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
All right, Well, I think that's what we have to say,
even about the Bermuda Triangle. If you would like to
tell us your experiences or thoughts about the Bermuda Triangle,
you can certainly do that. One way you can reach
out to us is by emailing us directly info atwwdwwdpodcast
dot com or reaching out to us on the social
media platforms, and we do look forward to hearing from you.
(40:59):
Before we wrap the up, we are actually going to
give some recommendations. This is a thing that we do
every week and we think that it's fun. It's not
related to the Bermuda Triangle, but it's a thing, but
stuff that we're just going to recommend anyway, And if
you would like to support us, you can pick up
some merge, leave us a rating and review, like subscribe,
tell a friend, or you can head over to You
can do all those things, and you can head over
(41:19):
to Patreon and if you go over there you'll get'll
get access to our Cool Kids Club and there is
early episodes, ad free content, bonus content, and every week
I am going to read the names of the people
who so generously help us be a podcast. So giant,
thank you too, Mike m Megan, Mike T, Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Ashley, Kiara,
(41:40):
and Charlie. Thank you for helping us do this podcast.
We really appreciate you all.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
Yeah, yeah, You're just incredible.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
Also, thank you so much to my team of people
without whom I could not make this episode writing and
fact checking from Shane and myself. Thank you for recording
with me today, Shane, Hey, thank you for having me.
Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson and the person
who makes audio things who particularly would have struggled with
this episode because there were a lot of places where
we sort of meandered. So if you heard a cohesive episode,
(42:08):
then a giant thanks to Justin for all the amazing
work that he does.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
And if the episode is not cohesive, blame him.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Definitely not. We're the ones who recorded it.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
It's our fault.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
Yeah, it's our fault. Anyway, cool. I think that's what
we have to say before we transition to our recommendations.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
That feels good. I like that.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
Let's recommend some things. Yay, recommendations. I'm recommending a movie.
This is the third installment in movies that were created
following the ending of the syndicated television show psych So
(42:53):
this show started, I want to say in the mid
to early two thousand years, but it's about someone who
was trained from a young age by their father to
be very observant and is sort of a fun loving,
happy go lucky, not really want to work very hard
kind of guy, and gets himself into some hot water
and gets out of it by pretending to be a
psychic and then uses that to work with the police
(43:16):
for the rest of the seasons, pretending to be a psychic.
Always there's like a non supernatural explanation for things, but
it's a sort of just fun show for the comedy
and shenanigans that these characters get themselves into and all
the characters in it. And after the show ended, they
have done three movies that kind of just feel like
(43:37):
continuations of the story. There's sort of like really long
episodes where you have just like a big mystery that
gets solved, or a couple of mysteries. And so the
Psychic three called This Is Gus, which one of the
characters name is Gus, and that's obviously supposed to be
a pun on This is Us the TV show, Sure,
although it really doesn't have anything to do with any
of the plots. And This is Us but just a
(43:57):
fun comedic movie. It's a through peacock if people have
that service. But I thought it was very enjoyable, very fun.
I've liked pretty much everything that has been done in
this series, and I enjoyed that movie as well. So
that's my recommendation psych three, This is Gus.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
You know, I've never watched that show, but I've always
heard it's really good.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
It's very funny. I really enjoy it. I mean it's
really just great jokes, great gags, great running gags that
they have.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Yeah, I love that. I love that. So I figure
out if I have to watch show to catch up
on that, but I will start watching that, I think. Okay,
I'm gonna recommend a music and it is scary loud
metal music to go along with my Halloween things. And
that's a band called Atomic Rule. So if you are
fans of I've talked about the band every Time I
Die on here. I know we both have before. When
(44:45):
they split up, the multiple members of the bands went
to go do different things, so you had better lovers,
which is a really great example of a band. From them,
You've got Many Eyes, which is the singer, which is
also very good. Atomic Rule is Andy from Every Time
I Die. He's the big guitar player with the big
old mustache. He's a really big guy. Nice and Atomic
Rule just put out their first EP called with Skull
(45:07):
Crushing Force Love and it is a brutal, heavy, bring
your head and bang it type of record, so super fun,
super good, really catchy stuff and I really dig it.
It doesn't sound like every Time I Die, like if
that's what you're expecting. It just is a good technical
heavy metal record band or like record release. So I
(45:27):
think you'll join it.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
Oh, I'm very excited. I'm very excited to check that out.
That sounds really good.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
Yeah, yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
All right, So Psych three this is Gus and Atomic
Rule with Skull Crushing Force EP for some movies and
music entertainment things perfect. Well, I think that's what we
have to say this. So that'll wrap up this installment
of our Halloween spooky themed episodes month. We'll be back
next week with another one of those. Well, we also
(45:54):
do minis. These are short episodes that we do. They're
like fifteen minutes long or less. And in October we
also do spooky theme topics for our minis for the
whole month, so we'll be those come out on Mondays.
Our full length such as this come out on Wednesdays.
But we're only halfway through this, not even halfway through this.
We got so much more spooky content.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
We got so much more.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Yeah, all right, very good. Well, we look forward to
seeing everyone next time. Is there anything you'd like to
add or anything that I missed before? We sayah, goodbyes.
Uh nope, not today. Perfect then, thank you all for listening.
This is Abraham and this is Shane. We're out.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
See yup, you've been listening to Why we do what
we do. You can learn more about this and other
episodes by going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening,
and we hope you have an awesome day.
Welcome to Why We Do what We Do. I am
your Pythagorean host, Abraham.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
And I'm your Parallel dimension host Shane.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
We are a psychology podcast. We talk about the things
that humans and non human animals do, and in the
month of October we take on more sinister, creepy topics
in honor of Halloween and spooky themed things. And it's
just a great time of year for that sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
It's the best. And so here we are covering the
Bermuda Triangle, one of those scary things from when we
were kids. It was not so scary once you got older.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Yeah, And so this is maybe maybe we'll find out today.
This is our second in our line of Halloween episodes
for this month. Hope that you enjoy what you hear today.
If you're joining us for the first time, then welcome,
and if you're a returning person, then welcome back. Either way,
we're happy to have you here. I hope that you
enjoy this one. And if you do, and you would
(01:15):
like to support us, you can leave us a rating
and a review like subscribe, share us with a friend,
shout it from the mountaintops. You can also join us
on Patreon and if you do that, then you'll get
some benefits. And I'll talk about that more at the
end of this discussion. But this episode comes out on
October eighth, which is evidently just absolutely riddled with holidays,
(01:37):
so so many to the brim like an overflowing cauldron.
So let's go ahead and jump in and wish everyone
a happy American Touch Tag Day.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yes, it's also bring your Teddy Bear to Work Day.
It is Bullying Prevention Day, which may be hard if
you're bringing your teddy bear to work. I mean, I'm
not saying don't bring your teddy better work. I'm just
saying some people are just jerks about those types of things. Yeah,
it is Dyslexia Day. It is Emergency Nurses Day. It
is International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction m M.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
It is International Lesbian Day.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
It is. It's also International Top Spinning.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Day, Latina Women's Equal Pay Day. I mean everybody equal pay, right,
I mean we should focus on the places where it
needs to happen, but they want to acknowledge like equal
pay for all.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yes, exactly. It is National Children's Day.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
It is National flutter hold On. I said that wrong.
It is National fluff for Nutter Day. I skipped the
first part a flutter nuffer, which is kind yeah, fluff nutter.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
It's marshmallow peanut butter. Y'all just eat that. It sounds good.
It is National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Okay, there could be something to a back there interesting
technology though for now. It is Natural Curves Day.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
It is also National Pet Obesity Awareness Day.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
It goes in in hand with National Curves Day. It
does in the National Pirogi Day.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Ooh, I like parogis. It is stem Cell Awareness Day.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
It is World Octopus Day.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
It certainly is, which makes sense because it's the eighth
of October. Oh, I don't think I realized that until
just this moment.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
I actually did not either. That does make a lot
of sense.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Look at us man, squids are kicked out of this one.
It's an Active Aging Week. It is Animal Welfare Week
and is also Cephalopod Awareness Week and Death Penalty Focus Week.
Wow mm hmm hmm. Yeah, it's well it's death penalty
being you know, state sanction murdered. But you know, whatever
we'll do. We'll talk about that one day. It is
(03:42):
a Great.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Books Week, and relatedly, I suppose it is Mystery series week.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Spooky, it is Truffle Days in Croatia, and it is
World Space Week. It certainly is.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
That's so many holidays and we left out several.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
That's probably like maybe a quarter.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah, So go check out the October holidays, maybe October
eighth specifically, if you're interested in learning more. But if
you really came to this podcast looking for a comprehensive
list of all holidays and an explanation of them, you
came to the wrong place. We do a cursory list
with very little explanation. Yes, but we just want to
(04:21):
acknowledge all of you who we know are celebrating in
one way or another out there. So yeah, those holidays, celebrate,
celebrate good October holidays, all right? Now moving on to
our topic then, or is there any more preamble that
I missed that we need to go over before we
get into this.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
No, let's get into this bookiness all right.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
On the list of locations with a nefarious reputation, the
Bermuda Triangle might be at the tippity top of that pyramid.
And so it's very likely that most of you heard
of this, But if you haven't, then we will explain
what we're talking about here with the this idea of
the Bermuda Triangle.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Yeah, so we're going to explore the history, some myths,
the lore of the Bermuda Triangle and then dilute it
into nothingness with science, because that's that's what we like.
We like to, you know, unpack some low and kind
of explain what it actually is, what's actually happening.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
And I suppose we should just mention in case you're
here for the first time with these Halloween themed episodes,
as we said, we basically just take spooky topics and
do that for the month. This is our fifth year,
I believe, doing Halloween themed type episodes, which is really fun.
So you can go back if you'd like to check
out some historical ones we've done in the past. I've
always had a lot of fun with this month. I
(05:39):
enjoy digging into these sorts of topics, and it just
occurred to us that one of those ideas shrouded in
mystery and spookiness is the Bermuda Triangle. So we decided
that was close enough to fit into the realm of
Halloween things.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
I mean, it does change our behavior like it does,
it has altered our behavior. It's entered our verbal behavior
at lets con like it's like done some things where
it's like fluence human behavior. So we got to talk
about it, I.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Think absolutely, So let's go ahead and get into it.
The Bermuda Triangle this is roughly a two hundred and
seventy thousand to five hundred thousand square mile patch of
the Atlantic Ocean between Miami, Florida, San Juan, Puerto Rico
and the northernmost point of the island of Bermuda. And
I did see other estimate ranges that went up to
(06:23):
and including over a million square miles, so it is
a fairly large chunk of the sea, although relative to
the rest of the ocean it's pretty small. Yeah, if
you really think about it. But that's about the space
that it takes up. Anchoring the geographical region to these
three points of land makes a triangle shape on the map.
(06:44):
Hence the word triangle in the name Bermuda triangle, right
because Bermuda is also in there. But yeah, so if
you have those three points, you connect them via lines,
you have what is in the shape of a triangle
more or less.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Yeah. Now, the senator reputation of the Bermuda triangle ste
from reports of many planes and ships mysteriously vanishing without
a trace or even a distress signal in some cases,
and other mysterious supernatural sightings within this part of the
ocean and never seen again. So people are flying, they're
traveling through the space and they're seeing these unexplainable things,
or they're just disappearing entirely, and you know, from the outside,
(07:20):
we're going, uh, that's not good.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
And it is the fact that it is these unexplained
it is the fact that it's like it seems to
be of particular prevalence in this part of the world,
in this part of the ocean. These seem to lend
to the intrigue. And there's more to it than that.
Arguably less to it than that, as we'll get into
the history and ideas behind this, but that's sort of
(07:45):
the lore there. And so yeah, over the past several centuries,
thousands of planes and ships have seemingly vanished while they
are in the range of are traveling through the Bermuda Triangle.
Totally kidding, it's actually estimate it to be around fifty
ships and twenty planes. But I wanted to like, if
people thought it was that scary of a place with
(08:09):
that reliable of an outcome, then I figured they would
believe the thousands of planes and ships things. Sure, and
then understands that fifty and twenty are relatively small numbers
compared to how many planes and ships have traveled the
oceans over time.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yeah, so I think that's a fascinating thing that it's
really only about fifty ships and twenty planes. Like that's
that's just kind of because it's so conflated. But well,
we'll talk about that, we'll unpack that a little bit.
So the Brimuda Triangle has also received other monikers like
the who Doo see the Devil's Triangle and Limbo of
the Lost, which sounds, you know, like it's fun until
(08:48):
it's not. Yeah, well it sounds like a party where
like somebody like is too drunk and they end up
like in the parking lot, not knowing where how to
get back to the party.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
All right, So we have this sinister, terrifying piece of
geography that mysteriously swallows people whole without a trace and
then never heard from again. And amazingly, people still live
within the triangle, mostly in Bermuda itself. Depending on where
you draw the triangle then Bermuda is home to over
sixty four thousand people. But if you extend the triangle further,
(09:20):
then you'll encompass more islands, which means you can add
to that list quite a bit. And obviously San Juan
Puerto Rico has a lot of people, although it's like
where the tip of the triangle touches, so I don't
know if people consider that to be inside the triangle,
but yeah, lots of people around this area, despite its
mysterious nature.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Right right, right, So I think it's probably worth talking
about the legends and the mythology and the lore that
goes around this. So let's unpack maybe a little bit
of history of the Breviuni Triangle and kind of start there,
you know, and we are going to start with on
explorer of sorts so impressively. The legends of this part
of the world were first observed by none other than
(10:01):
Christopher Columbus in fourteen hundred ninety two when he crossed
the I remember there's a song that I learned. It
was like, in fourteen hundred ninety two Columbus crossed the sea.
Da da da da da d d da da da
dad Like it was one of those things. I don't
remember all it was, but because it didn't talk about
smallpox or like disease, or like murder or genocide or anything,
so I don't really remember it or enslavement or labman
(10:21):
or any of those terrible things that they did. So reportedly,
as he approached the Bahamas, he saw mysterious lights on
the horizon that seemed to pulse on and off, a
large light crashing into the sea, strange compass readings, and
sections of the ocean seemingly filled with seaweed, which made
the trip difficult to traverse. That's the spookiest part of
the seaweed, so.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Much seaweed in there. The rhyme I had heard was
like a way to remember the year, and it was.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
I think I know it is. It's something like in
fourteen hundred and ninety two, Columbus was so bad he
showed up on the shores of America just to play
an ad.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
All right, Well, that was a bit more meandering than
I hoped it would be. But we're talking about Christopher Columbus,
Well we were talking about it. That's pretty much the story.
He saw all these things. Most of the sources I
found credited the first attributions of mystery of this geographical
location to his reports. Of course, people had been living
there and traversing that space for some time before he
(11:29):
got there, but as someone who was apparently primed for superstition,
that was where it at least sort of started to begin. Sure,
many scholars believe that Shakespeare's play The Tempest was inspired
by a real life Bermuda shipwreck, and with that that
further enhanced intrigues surrounding the Bermuda Triangle.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Right, but the real lore of the Bermudia Triangle developed
from some tragic disasters that occurred there. So first, in
nineteen eighteen, the Navy supply ship called the USS Cyclops.
What a name for a ship, that's that's kind of fun.
The USS Cyclops departed Brazil headed towards Baltimore, Maryland. So
I think they probably just didn't want to go to Baltimore,
(12:13):
if we're being honest. It was carrying three hundred and
six crew members and ten thousand tons of manganese destined
to be manufactured for the war effort. Even after a
resupply stop in Barbados, the captain reported weather fair and
all well, that was the direct one. Now, However, the
ship disappeared inside of the bringing a triangle. No distress
signal was sent, although it was equipped to do so,
(12:34):
no expectation was given, no wreckage was found.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yep. So this large ship carrying over three hundred people
just gone. Nobody knows where it is. And the last message,
the last communication they'd had was everything's good here.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Yeah, more like the USS by Clops.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
And it reminds me a bit of Event Horizon again. Yeah,
and we'll just keep coming back to that movie. Maybe
we need to do like a Halloween episode that's just
a movie review of Event Horizon.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yeah. I think, by the way, everybody, this is now
an Event Horizon podcast.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
That in Dune yeap between these all right, So, yeah,
so the ship disappears. President Woodrow Wilson later commented that
quote only God and the sea know what happens to
that great ship end quote. Further again just making the
disappearance more mysterious feeling right now.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
In nineteen forty one, two of the cyclops of sister
ships also vanished. That was Biclops and Tricops also vanished
without a trace while traversing the similar route. Once again,
no distress signal no wreckage found and no evidence that
a German U boat could have been responsible.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Yeah, at that time, that was like a very real
possibility that it was some of these German subs that
were going around seeking ships, but there was no evidence.
There was no reports of German U boats there, So
they're just not clear what could have happened. But you know,
the Cyclops disappears and then two more sister ships disappear
on a similar route. So those are some of the stories.
(14:08):
The next one is one of the most sighted events
related to the Bermuda activity and like mysterious happenings there,
And this is a nineteen forty five There was a
group of five torpedo bombers with fourteen crew aboard, and
this was called Flight nineteen, and it departed from Fort Lauderdale, Florida,
around two pm and they were just going on a
(14:30):
routine training to practice bombing runs over some shoals north
of Bimini and the Bahamas, and apparently when they left
it was ideal flying conditions.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
However, an hour into the mission, in the range of
the Bermuda triangle, the radio tower began to receive transmissions
from the captain about compasses going crazy, low fuel, white
haze and seventy five mile per hour winds. Then the
planes just disappeared.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Yep, they just were no longer responding, not being picked
up on radar, they were just gone. So this was
immediately concerning. They were supposed to be in contact. It
was just a routine training mission that was only supposed
to last two hours, and so they immediately organized a
rescue effort. Rescue planes left to search for the downs planes,
and then, interestingly, shortly into the search, one of the
(15:19):
rescue planes with thirteen crew also vanished from the radar
and was never heard from again. And they never found
the wreckage, never learned what could have gone wrong, and.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
No distress signals except for like a little bit of like, hey,
something's weird, right like, but nothing like may day, may day,
may day, like you might hear in the event of
a crash.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Now, the next day, a massive search and rescue crew
operation embarked to track the planes, including many submarines, ghost
guard coast Guard vessels not ghost guard ghost guard would
be very scary. Coast Guard vessels, Navy destroyers, and hundreds
of government planes and hundreds of private jet planes as well.
They searched for weeks over three hundred and eighty thousand
square miles of ocean and never found any of the planes. Now,
(16:00):
an official Navy report healthfully editorialized that that it was
quote as if they had flown to Mars, which of
all places, Mars.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Right, Yeah, Yeah, I just I remember when I saw that,
and I just thought it was both funny that this
was like an official report and that that was how
they decided to describe it. And I understand like being
frustrated with the mystery of like we have really really
really searched and not found anything, But I don't know,
it just still feels like an odd comments to make.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah, it's it's a little bit strange, Okay.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Now important to know though, at this point, no one
had actually really glombed on to anything particularly important about
this geographical region. No one was calling at the Bermuda
Triangle at this point. No. This term actually would not
come to be until another twenty years later in nineteen
sixty four, and Vincent and Gaddis was a writer who
(16:56):
wrote My magazine article in which he coined the term
Bermuda Tryan, officially creating a solid foundation upon which the
lore could congeal and develop sort of a more mythical
status and relevance.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
I actually think that's really important. As we're talking about
this is like the mysteries happening in these things that
are kind of strange and unexplainable. But the term Bermuda
Triangle is a fairly new thing. Yeah, like in the
grand scheme of history, right, Like that is a rather
new thing. Like my dad is older than the Bermuda
Triangle in terms of black labeling. So Charles Berlitz further
(17:33):
capitalized on the quote unquote mystery of the Bermuda Triangle
when he published a best selling book Sensationalizing Stories about
this region.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah, it's just called the Bermuda Triangle, but it was
like a best seller, It was extremely popular. It really
heightened the myth and lore status of this particular idea
in place, and okay, people attempting to understand what's going
on in the Bermuda Trian. Proposed hypotheses to account for
(18:02):
the events and the Bermuda Triangle range from the mundane
to the fantastical, where you have on the more mundane side,
things like rogue waves, intense weather, water spouts, and methane
eruptions as possible contributing variables that resulted in downing some
of these transportation vehicles.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Sure, but the more fantastic are fantasy pro and magical
thinking people like and this is I love this stuff
because I'm like, this is just fun to explore. I
don't buy it. Sure it's fun to explore, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
The folks that are like kind of more fantasy thinking
among us have imagined reverse gravitational anomalies, time warps, sea monsters,
parallel universes, UFOs, and aliens because of course, and crystal
energy technology specifically developed in the Lost City of Atlantis.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Yeah. Yeah, quite a few. I mean, I don't know
why we don't throw zombies, wear wolves, witches, and doctor
Strange in the mix as possible culpre but yeah, they
all seem equally plausible and reasonable explanations.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Right right, Yeah, I mean yeah, there are they all
hold the same water haunted water evil.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Maybe this is where Cthulhu hangs out, or even Godzilla.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Godzilla's on vacation in the Caribbean. He's like, He's like
the you know, the Japanese beaches are beautiful, and but
the Pacific Ocean is too cold. I need warmer climbs.
I'm a reptile, dammit.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Exactly. See, it all makes sense.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
I mean, scientifically speaking, it would make more sense for
Godzilla to be in the Atlantic Ocean than the Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
I'm just saying, I definitely at least closer to the equator. Yeah, yeah,
Godzilla is going to be you would think checking out
where the where the warmer climates are.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
He ain't attack in Seattle, is all We're saying. He's
coming for San Diego, Miami, Austin, Texas, all the places
they have warm water.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
And plus I'm not sure if they ever depict him
as being a particularly like a lizard that plans, But
if it was a lizard that plans, then like there's
hardly a better place it could be than the Bermuda Triangle,
right where like people kind of expect these disappearances to happen,
and people aren't necessarily looking for a monster to blame.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, So, oh god Zilla.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Maybe it's also the Kraken.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
It could be the Kraken, It could be any number
of things. At this point. Yeah, at this point in
time in the episode, we have no idea what it.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Is we are about to get into that. Actually, so
I wanted to just sort of list these events without
count like providing the more reasonable explanation of those events
right off the bat, Like, let's just get through them
at first.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yeah, because some people have really dug into this and
they wanted to bring some science to it and start
to understand what's happening. And so, of course, being the
podcast that we are people who love debunking things and
love espousing the scientific position on things, we were gonna
basically plan to go there and that's pretty much the
whole point of this discussion. So yeah, let's go ahead
(21:01):
and start digging into debunking right after we dig into
some ads.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Yeah, that's fine, all right, we're back.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Let's get into some of the I guess I would
call it skepticism. I mean it's really like the actual
analysis and scientific pulling a part of things, which is skepticism.
That is what that is. But yeah, let's get into it.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah, So let's start with Christopher Columbus, and I think
that we can start talking about some of the things
he saw. So, remember those flickering lights on the horizon
that we talked about, These were likely just large bonfires
set and tended to by the indigenous peoples of the islands.
As he was traveling through those areas, they seemed to
turn on and off because the boat was going up
and down on the ocean waves, So the fires appeared
(21:48):
to disappeared from view simply by the fact that the
horizon that they were viewing was changing.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Yeah, exactly, Like it was far enough away that you
couldn't necessarily make out exactly what it is. But if
you're bobbing up and down, then like is it's right
on the horizon, it will go and it'll be in
view and then out of you. And if it's really dark,
you might have trouble understanding why that's the case, because
all you see is like often the distance lights and
then no lights. But that is a very reasonable explanation. Yeah,
(22:14):
there was that bright light they reported crashing into the sea.
This was most likely a meteor. If he actually did
see something matching that description, it was unclear from some
of the sources I found, but they're they're like, well,
there are lots of meteors out there, and this is
a place where you could see them, so makes sense.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Yeah, yeah, there you go, And especially like keeping in
mind at the time that you know, we're talking about this,
there's really no light pollution. So there's there's like you know,
I mean, not that there's a lot in the ocean anyway,
but like it is important to kind of keep that
in mind, is like what is occurring as likely a
phenomenon that's happening on Earth rather than like you know,
(22:51):
some light that's like kind of diluting whatever they're seeing
or their vision. So now regarding the strange compass readings,
this one comes up a lot. This particular geographical space
does have a unique distinction of being one of the
few places on Earth in which true north and magnetic
north aligne and compasses may try to point to true
north rather than the magnetic north or toggle between the two,
(23:12):
and that happens to be right around Bermuda. So you
might see a little bit of like wobbling on the compass.
It's not like it's not like what you might imagine
where it's like it's just spinning the dial of spinning
over and over and over and they're like, whoa up
and down and left is right? What do we do?
It's more like just kind of wavering between two points.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Yeah, So but it does make sense that, like it
just happens to be the case that like those magnetic
fields align there, and so you might get a compass
that's doing some wonky things and have people be like,
over the vast majority of the Earth, I've been very
reliably able to expect that my compass will always point
north and I can use that to guide where I'm going,
And all of a sudden, it's not doing that. Yeah,
(23:50):
And it seems like one of those immutable laws that
couldn't possibly be shifted. And so it's very confusing why
it would be different, right, And like, so I can
understand to that point, but I don't know why you
need to jump to anything super mysterious about it. But
that is something that they obviously wouldn't have understood back then,
as like the trail versus magnetic north right exactly. There's
also the seaweed they encountered. There's a special type of
(24:12):
seaweed called sargassum in the Sargasso Sea that's a huge
chunk of the Atlantic Ocean. It is a brown seaweed
that forms gigantic clusters in the ocean, and if you're
in the middle of one of those clusters, it almost
kind of looks like land that you're surrounded by out
in the water. And they can be very very large,
like you can have quite a bit of them, and
they can be a little cumbersome and like you can
(24:34):
boats can get slowed down a little tangled up in them.
These will wash up on shore. Have you seen sargassum
wash up in Florida?
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Yeah, sure, it can like absolutely overload beaches, and so
there's like people who there are crews that go through
removing sargassum that washes up ashore. But anyway, the point
being that, like if they were floating through this at
various points, that could have been distressing in such a
way that had them be like, what is going on?
We see these lights disappearing off in the distance. We've
(25:06):
got this this compass is being weird. There's all these
crazy plants around us in the ocean, and so anyway
that that could have been part of their experience there.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Yeah, there are times where when the clumbs get really
bad here, like the entire beach is covered and this
like it's almost like it's shaped like a brillowpad almost.
It's like big and spongy a little bit, and it like,
it's really interesting. It always you have to be careful
around it because like you might find crabs in it,
like waiting to like and like kind of hunting through
some of the stuff too. So there's some cool it's
it's very interesting from a marine biology standpoint.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so gassim is a pretty interesting organism,
I guess, as it were, and it does create these
very unique ecosystems that like float on the top of
the ocean. Yeah, we'll get all these small marine life
that will basically cluster and live in these spaces and
they kind of hunt each other. But it's also used
for protection.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Yeah. Sea turtles use it for protection.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Yeah exactly, And there could be just so so much
of it. It's crazy. But it's like held a loft
in the ocean. It seems to have these they almost
look like berries that allow it to float right on
the top of the ocean. Yeah, so, Sara, it's pretty
interesting stuff. It's not really the point of what we're
talking about in this discussion.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
It's just weird. It's weird. It's a weird thing that
happens in this place that's already weird.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Yeah, exactly. It is a weird thing in a weird place.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Yeah, So okay, So we talked about Christopher Columbus kind
of maybe gave some ideas on what was going on
with him. Let's talk a little bit about flight nineteen
and what this looks like. So this was one of
the flights that disappeared. So one investigator who spent more
time looking into this and then most found that the
flight leader, Charles Taylor, had a documented history of poor
navigation and had even crashed planes into the ocean before.
(26:45):
I also think it's really important, like what like what
we understand to be plane crashes now like is pretty
rare compared to like how often it was happening when
planes were first developed. There were way more plane crashes
as a general rule, and there were more like hijacke too,
Like it just happened all the time on planes, way
more than people think. But this guy, Charles Taylor, had
(27:05):
poor navigation histories and had crash planes before historically. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
So he and he was the leader of this little
squad of bombers out here, and as an example of
some of the mistakes that he made, the person who
this investigator I had found pulled up as he reportedly
misidentified islands that they were flying over. He didn't trust
the plane's navigation equipment and instruments, and so he would
(27:31):
just make these decisions to fly off course and he's like, well,
the equipment's wrong, so I'm just gonna do this other
thing here because I think this is where we're supposed
to go. And that was likely a very important contributing
factor in understanding what happened here.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Unbelievable, Like I just I couldn't imagine talking to the
captain and there he's like, Yeah, we're gonna eye it,
We're gonna wing it. And I'm like, no, we're not. No,
what do you what are we doing? What are you're
talking about? We're just gonna We're just gonna wing it,
literally and figuratively. Now, the crew pushed back, obviously and
argued that they were going the wrong way, but Taylor persisted,
and they likely flew around aimlessly, so they ran out
(28:06):
of fuel and crashed into the ocean.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Yeah, exactly. There is a fairly large trench that runs
through part of this area too, where I don't know
if they were over that trench, but like it does
make sense that some things if they if the wreck
happened nearer around the trench, that might be really difficult
to recover because it'd just be so deep and so dark,
it wouldn't you wouldn't be able to easily pick it
up in any meaningful way, yea, if it was down
far enough. But yeah, so that happened. It's also likely
(28:32):
that they did encounter some high winds. They reported that
in their radio transmission. And this is a part of
the ocean that does tend to experience tropical storms and
hurricanes with some frequency. Because it's so close to the equator,
it gets really warm there. You do tend to get
really high winds and sort of sudden storms. That seemed
to sort of come out of nowhere, and there wasn't
a hurricane then, but again they did report those high winds.
(28:54):
So the fact that they're flying around aimlessly, they're low
on fuel, the compass is confusing them with true north,
and the captain's just stubborn refusal to listen to the crew.
That's likely what happened that resulted in the crash here.
And I mean, it's just like there are vessels that
go down in the ocean that we just never find
them again. It's just a really big space that's very deep,
(29:16):
and we can't always find stuff out there. We've mapped
so little of the ocean, like it's just a huge,
huge area and it gets very difficult to see and
probe into the depths of the ocean.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Yeah, I mean, so, says you say. I say they
were pulled into a time warp, and so Charles Taylor
and his crew are going to show up at a
random time. They're going to land it in an airport
with a flight itinerary that doesn't match what the airport is,
and it's going to be very confusing for everybody, and
then they'll disappear again. There's some ghost stories that tell
that exact thing, which is like very spooky.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Maybe they went back in history and they landed at
the time of the dinosaurs and lived.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Maybe it is. Maybe it is. It's good for them, hopefully.
I don't think the I think they'd have a hard
time breathing because that at the time it was so
oxygen rich. I think they'd be like because it's just
it would be it would be too much for them.
I don't think they could handle it. And then Charles
Taylor would lead them into the jungle and he'd be like,
we're going this way, and they would be like, clearly
there's a tyrannosaurus that way, and he would go not
(30:18):
not no, no, no, no, no, I don't trust what
you're saying. We're gonna go this way anyway, and then
he probably got eaten.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Probably all right, we've accepted they the time more eypothesis,
I guess.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Yeah, at least it's you know, when it comes to parsimony.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Right, yeah, sure, Okay, let's go ahead and get into
just a more general, overall explanation of what's likely happening
in this space. There's a couple of pieces of information
that once you have them, I think it will start
to demystify the Bermuda Triangle fairly rapidly. One of the
most significant pieces of information that scientists and skeptics have
pointed to is pretty damning. The issue here is that
(30:58):
the number of incidents, the randomness appearances without explanation with
no wreckage found that actually happens a lot all over
the ocean, quite a lot, so much so that they
say there's actually nothing special about this here.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Right, Incidents in the Bermuda Triangle are no higher than
anywhere else in the world. I mean, like, it's so
interesting that we do we do have these conversations about
this because like the Bermuda Triangle is a thing, but
Amelia Earhart is probably one of the most famous disappearances
and it didn't even happen on the side of the.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Planet, right, So yeah, that's I think a thing worth
considering is that, like if we were to look at
look at all these these things are going to the
Bermuda Triangle and they disappear, I'm like, actually, if you
look at the numbers, it happens all over the place.
Like traveling over the ocean is challenging, it is a
little bit dangerous, and people have disappeared doing this thing
(31:49):
and sometimes the wreckage is not found. And the actual
amount that it happens in Bermuda is not unique to
anywhere else in the world. And this happens to be
a very high traffic area. It's one of the busy
at shipping lanes in the world has been for some time,
so there's gonna be more opportunities for rex and crashes,
but they continue to occur at a proportional rate relative
(32:09):
to all of the maritime traffic. So the amount of
rex and crashes are not outside of the realm of
what you'd find anywhere you're traversing the ocean.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Right right, It's really no, it's really no different. I mean,
it's just it's quantifiably maybe you could possibly report a
high number, but comparatively, like from a percentage standpoint, ratio standpoint,
it's not any different.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
And you might be thinking, like if you're hearing the
stories about the Bermuda Triangle, you might be wondering, like,
why are people still going into this place? Why is
it the case that like you'd feel like if there
was something to worry about, people would just stop going
there all together.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Right, sure, yeah, you would think so, But here we are. Okay,
So consider this for a second. Flights in maritime vessels
travel US route by the hundreds every week, and the
overwhelming majority of them make it safely to their destination,
so much so that no one has found it necessary
to detour this route. And you would think they would
if they had the remotest concern, but they're not. And
(33:08):
as a matter of fact, like I think you brought
it up before we even gotten the show, like talk
about insurance companies. Insurance companies still cover people going through
this place, right.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Yeah, So that's actually the next part here is that
one of the most sensitive I would argue that one
of the most sensitive metrics for the reality of incidents
such as these is insurance. And it's because insurance companies
either will not ensure a high risk thing such as
this if it was high risk, or they would charge
exceptionally high premiums if they thought there was that much risk.
(33:40):
And they just collect oodles and oodles of data to
make decisions about where they're going to cover things and
where they won't. And the leader and maritime insurance, a
company called Lloyd's of London, reports that they charge normal
insurance rates for vessels traveling this portion of the Bermuda
Triangle as it's called, because, as they say specifically, it
(34:02):
is no more hazardous than anywhere else in the ocean,
and they would lose money if it were the case
that like they were wrong and there were higher incidents
of things going down in the Bermuda Triangle. So like
they're very much incentivized to be overly cautious about this, right,
and they are not. And I think that kind of
tells you everything is like insurance company is not going
to mess around with numbers or money, Like if they
(34:24):
had any concern, they wouldn't insure it, or they would
charge alarming amounts. But they do insure it, and they're like, eh,
They're like, it's no concern to us. It's no more
higher risk than anyone on the ocean.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Right. I think that's a really important note, Like, yeah,
we can make the argument that like, insurance companies have
their own problems and stuff like this, but I do
think that understanding the motivation of an insurance company tells
you everything you need to know, like which is to
save money to prevent losses. And here they are willing
to take a risk on boats going through places that
are supposed to be quote unquote more dangerous. And I
(34:55):
think the other side too, that we're going to talk
about is like the evidence, right, like the permanent problem,
like the leftover of these wrecks, right. And while people
have had a difficult time recovering some of the wrecks
of the lost vessels, many contend that there have been
no incidents that could not be explained at all, at
least using basic logical deduction. We talked about things like
the magnetic polls. We talked about navigation systems. We talked
(35:17):
about human error as possible reasons for why those disappearances occurring,
and more likely human error.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Yeah, and so if not all recks, most of the
recks have happened, could be like we know what happened
to some of them, but for the ones where we're
not sure it was likely human error. There are dangerous reefs,
There are such things as rogue waves, are those sudden
storms of the instances where they had low fuel. And again,
wreckage is sometimes recovered, just like in other parts of
(35:46):
the ocean. So it's not that everything that has disappeared
was never found again. There are things that were disappeared
that they did find. Yeah, and then they understood what happened.
So like one of the things that they've said is
sciences solved the mystery of the Bermuda trie and the
mystery was there was no mystery, Like right, yeah, there's
like there's nothing to see here. It's just like you
(36:07):
could pick any you could draw a triangle anywhere any
part of the ocean, and you would where there is
any amount of like shipping going on or like people
traveling that space, and you would see about the exact
same rates you do as you do in the Bermuda triangle.
Anywhere you draw a triangle, you're gonna find pretty much
the same thing if it overlaps with where a lot
of human activity is taking place. If you draw in
a place where there's very little human activity, then it
(36:28):
will look kind of different. But generally speaking, if you
pick a shipping lane somewhere, you will find the same thing.
So that I think is I don't know if it's
the nail in the coffin, like the final nail in
the coffin, as they say, but it's I find it
very convincing to just look at the basic math, look
at the insurance, and look at the fact that like
people are I think look hearing stories about the Bermuda
(36:49):
Triangle and thinking like these twenty times that people dared
to enter the space and all of them they disappeared,
And it's actually like, no, there's just thousands and thousands
and thousands and thousands of people who use this all
the time, and some of them, unfortunately, tragically do crash
and people and lives are lost, and that's always a
terrible thing thing that happens, and it is a thing
(37:10):
that happens unfortunately so you know, humans have gotten increasingly
good at creating ways to die. They are also very
good at like inventing safety systems to try and prevent
them from dying. And most of the time those systems work,
like the overwhelming majority of the time, but sometimes they don't.
And when we engage in those high risk behaviors, tragedies
can happen. And it's never a good thing that it happens,
(37:32):
of course, but we also look at and acknowledge that
it's a thing that happens, and so we don't need
to necessarily demonize anyone part of the world has belong
is as having mysterious forces that compel them to happen.
If that's not what's happening, which isn't here?
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Sure? Sure? I mean there are so many stories of
in specific going to a human error part. There are
so many stories of people making choices because either their
crew has turned on them, because of greed, because of
time and deadlines. Like there's a there's a really great story,
I say, a great story, but there's a really good
(38:09):
example of this where I forget what the actual ship
was called. I just listened to podcast on it, but
the ship was they were sailing from Europe around Africa
to get to Jakarta and Indonesia where they were trying
to get nutmeg because nutmeg was really valuable, and it
was a shipping company that did this. It was not Magellan,
but it was a really good example of capitalism, which
(38:30):
was kind of like, So the ship leaves and they
are past their deadline, so the ship captain decides to
take a short cut, and when he does this guy's
also had a history of sinking other ships due to errors,
takes a shortcut, hit some really dangerous reefs and ends
up killing most of the crew as a result of it,
and so it's one of those things. They know what
(38:50):
happened though, because the company came to find them to
salvage all of the goods that were still sealed in
the barrels, vinegar and nutmeg being two of the things
they really had to save. Didn't really care about the
but they made sure that that stuff was and the
gold there was like treasure and stuff on it too.
So the point is like that was a decision made
by human. Shipwreck happened, and you could see how easily
(39:10):
it is to do that in a world where the
ocean is an incredibly dangerous place.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Indeed, but people do go on in the ocean so
that they can at least avoid ads.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
That's sure.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
All right, Well, we've kind of i think said what
we have to say about the Bermuda Triangle. Interestingly, this
is one of the shortest episodes we've had in some time.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
I think this is one of the shortest episodes we've
ever done.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Yeah, I think it is. It's probably in the ten,
like top ten percent of the shortest episodes we've done.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Because there's really nothing. I mean, if we're talking about
science and parsimoni and skepticism, it's just likely that things happen,
but they're not supernatural things.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yeah. So anyway, that's the Bermuda Triangle. There's a little
bit understanding why people got worked up about this, how
it came to be a cultural phenomenon, which is largely
that people decided it was going to be a cultural phenomenon. Like, Yeah,
I think a couple of these tragic events took place
at particularly unique points in time. Like World War One
(40:13):
was when that cyclops, that USS cyclops disappeared. World War
two is when the planes disappeared. Yeah, both of them
were like in similar regions and under conditions under which
people were I think particularly devastated by what happened, which
is like these things just they're just gone all of
a sudden. Yeah, and just high profile events. But yeah,
(40:35):
otherwise it's not really different from anything else.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
All right, Well, I think that's what we have to say,
even about the Bermuda Triangle. If you would like to
tell us your experiences or thoughts about the Bermuda Triangle,
you can certainly do that. One way you can reach
out to us is by emailing us directly info atwwdwwdpodcast
dot com or reaching out to us on the social
media platforms, and we do look forward to hearing from you.
(40:59):
Before we wrap the up, we are actually going to
give some recommendations. This is a thing that we do
every week and we think that it's fun. It's not
related to the Bermuda Triangle, but it's a thing, but
stuff that we're just going to recommend anyway, And if
you would like to support us, you can pick up
some merge, leave us a rating and review, like subscribe,
tell a friend, or you can head over to You
can do all those things, and you can head over
(41:19):
to Patreon and if you go over there you'll get'll
get access to our Cool Kids Club and there is
early episodes, ad free content, bonus content, and every week
I am going to read the names of the people
who so generously help us be a podcast. So giant,
thank you too, Mike m Megan, Mike T, Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Ashley, Kiara,
(41:40):
and Charlie. Thank you for helping us do this podcast.
We really appreciate you all.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
Yeah, yeah, You're just incredible.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
Also, thank you so much to my team of people
without whom I could not make this episode writing and
fact checking from Shane and myself. Thank you for recording
with me today, Shane, Hey, thank you for having me.
Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson and the person
who makes audio things who particularly would have struggled with
this episode because there were a lot of places where
we sort of meandered. So if you heard a cohesive episode,
(42:08):
then a giant thanks to Justin for all the amazing
work that he does.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
And if the episode is not cohesive, blame him.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Definitely not. We're the ones who recorded it.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
It's our fault.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
Yeah, it's our fault. Anyway, cool. I think that's what
we have to say before we transition to our recommendations.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
That feels good. I like that.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
Let's recommend some things. Yay, recommendations. I'm recommending a movie.
This is the third installment in movies that were created
following the ending of the syndicated television show psych So
(42:53):
this show started, I want to say in the mid
to early two thousand years, but it's about someone who
was trained from a young age by their father to
be very observant and is sort of a fun loving,
happy go lucky, not really want to work very hard
kind of guy, and gets himself into some hot water
and gets out of it by pretending to be a
psychic and then uses that to work with the police
(43:16):
for the rest of the seasons, pretending to be a psychic.
Always there's like a non supernatural explanation for things, but
it's a sort of just fun show for the comedy
and shenanigans that these characters get themselves into and all
the characters in it. And after the show ended, they
have done three movies that kind of just feel like
(43:37):
continuations of the story. There's sort of like really long
episodes where you have just like a big mystery that
gets solved, or a couple of mysteries. And so the
Psychic three called This Is Gus, which one of the
characters name is Gus, and that's obviously supposed to be
a pun on This is Us the TV show, Sure,
although it really doesn't have anything to do with any
of the plots. And This is Us but just a
(43:57):
fun comedic movie. It's a through peacock if people have
that service. But I thought it was very enjoyable, very fun.
I've liked pretty much everything that has been done in
this series, and I enjoyed that movie as well. So
that's my recommendation psych three, This is Gus.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
You know, I've never watched that show, but I've always
heard it's really good.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
It's very funny. I really enjoy it. I mean it's
really just great jokes, great gags, great running gags that
they have.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Yeah, I love that. I love that. So I figure
out if I have to watch show to catch up
on that, but I will start watching that, I think. Okay,
I'm gonna recommend a music and it is scary loud
metal music to go along with my Halloween things. And
that's a band called Atomic Rule. So if you are
fans of I've talked about the band every Time I
Die on here. I know we both have before. When
(44:45):
they split up, the multiple members of the bands went
to go do different things, so you had better lovers,
which is a really great example of a band. From them,
You've got Many Eyes, which is the singer, which is
also very good. Atomic Rule is Andy from Every Time
I Die. He's the big guitar player with the big
old mustache. He's a really big guy. Nice and Atomic
Rule just put out their first EP called with Skull
(45:07):
Crushing Force Love and it is a brutal, heavy, bring
your head and bang it type of record, so super fun,
super good, really catchy stuff and I really dig it.
It doesn't sound like every Time I Die, like if
that's what you're expecting. It just is a good technical
heavy metal record band or like record release. So I
(45:27):
think you'll join it.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
Oh, I'm very excited. I'm very excited to check that out.
That sounds really good.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
Yeah, yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
All right, So Psych three this is Gus and Atomic
Rule with Skull Crushing Force EP for some movies and
music entertainment things perfect. Well, I think that's what we
have to say this. So that'll wrap up this installment
of our Halloween spooky themed episodes month. We'll be back
next week with another one of those. Well, we also
(45:54):
do minis. These are short episodes that we do. They're
like fifteen minutes long or less. And in October we
also do spooky theme topics for our minis for the
whole month, so we'll be those come out on Mondays.
Our full length such as this come out on Wednesdays.
But we're only halfway through this, not even halfway through this.
We got so much more spooky content.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
We got so much more.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Yeah, all right, very good. Well, we look forward to
seeing everyone next time. Is there anything you'd like to
add or anything that I missed before? We sayah, goodbyes.
Uh nope, not today. Perfect then, thank you all for listening.
This is Abraham and this is Shane. We're out.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
See yup, you've been listening to Why we do what
we do. You can learn more about this and other
episodes by going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening,
and we hope you have an awesome day.
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