The Darwin Awards

This week's show is a round-up of stories about bad choices that produced tragically obvious outcomes.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
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Thinking Atheist podcast, hosted by Seth Andrews.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
This week we're going to take a break from talking
about politics and religion. Because we have talked so much
about politics and religion, I guess today would be an
exploration of human psychology. We did a broadcast like this
years and years ago, and I got lots of feedback
on it, and I figured this was fertile ground because

(01:17):
there's always plenty of bad decision making in our uncautious
and often thick skulled species. I mean, you and I
scan the headlines and we're like, I cannot believe somebody
actually tried this. I can't believe someone did this. I
can't believe this was attempted, but the results are no surprise.

(01:39):
And as we read these stories, we find I don't know, fascination,
maybe even amusement. Now I realize that not everybody knows
what a Darwin Award is. So before I get into
my series of stories, let me give you a quick primer. Okay.
Back in nineteen eighty five, a user network called use

(02:01):
net was a very basic message board. This was a
precursor to the Internet forums that we have today. Usnet
was conceived in nineteen seventy nine. It was introduced publicly
in nineteen eighty at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill and at Duke University. Now, this was over

(02:23):
a decade before the World Wide Web went online, but
it operated much like the forums due today. Lots of
shared articles and they would be copied from server to
server to server, and they would make the rounds well.
In nineteen eighty five, a series of usenet articles began

(02:43):
to circulate in newsgroup discussions, and these were tongue in
cheek posts which highlighted real stories about actual people who
had essentially filtered themselves out of the gene pool by
making very, very bad decisions, and the joke was that

(03:03):
this was a net benefit for humanity for the species,
the mean intelligence of Homo sapiens would then increase. Now
some would call this sick humor. It's inappropriate. We're talking
about people losing their lives. I totally understand. I totally
get that, But I myself cannot help see stories about

(03:27):
people doing dumb stuff and paying a price and gleaning
from these examples object lessons about wisdom and temperance, and
in some cases thinking you should have known better. And
I know you felt this way in your own life.
Right The criminal robs a homeowner and the homeowner is

(03:51):
there and he comes out and he's chasing the burglar
and the burglar falls into a man hole. Do I
fall into kind of misty eyed laments over that loss
of life? I will admit that I just don't. If
you make a jaw droppingly stupid choice, as everybody around

(04:13):
you is going, don't do this, you might die, And
then you do it anyway and it results in you
vacating your mortal meat prison, part of me thinks, what
have we lost and what have we gained? Does this
make me a bad person? We've all slowed down to

(04:34):
gawk at the crash scene. We're all human, and we
have to admit that some humans are smarter than others.
The Darwin Awards, which were originally shared on usenets during
the nineteen eighties, became a formal website in nineteen ninety
three and books were written. An author named Wendy Northcutt

(04:55):
wrote a series of Darwin Awards books that started releasing
in the year two thousand, declaring this quote that Darwin
Awards commemorate individuals who protect our gene pool by making
the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives. Darwin Award winners
eliminate themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby improving our

(05:21):
species chants of long term survival. And there are five
rules to qualify for a Darwin Award. The nominee must
be dead or rendered sterile. They must use astoundingly stupid judgment.
They must have been capable of sounded judgment in the

(05:41):
first place. The story must be a vetted and verified case,
and the nominee must be the one responsible. So what
do you think? Is this harmless amusement or bad taste?
If you feel it is the latter, you are probably
a better person than I am, and yet I will

(06:04):
continue with the broadcast here. A lot of Darwin Awards
stories that are popular on the internet are fake. They
are funny, and they are easily shared, but they simply
did not happen. I have done my due diligence. I
have checked and cross referenced the stories you are about
to hear, ladies and gentlemen, the Darwin Awards. As reported

(06:33):
in the Los Angeles Times and other news outlets across
the country, Michael Anderson Godwin of South Carolina had been
convicted of raping and murdering a twenty four year old woman.
He went to court, was found guilty and sentenced to
death in the electric chair. Now, in this country, when

(06:54):
you are convicted and given a death sentence, an automatic
appeals process kicks in. And that's what happened with Michael Godwin.
And on appeal his sentence was reduced from death in
the chair to life in prison without parole. And yet
for this man, life would not be as long as

(07:15):
he might have expected. Six years after he began his sentence,
Michael Godwin was there in his cell and he was
trying to fix a pair of headphones that he was
using to hear the sound coming out of his television.
Now this was years ago, so it was a hard line.
It was a hard cable. I don't even know if
they would have allowed wireless in prison anyway, but the

(07:38):
TV was plugged in. Godwin was sitting there with the cable,
the headphone cable, and he was trying to prepare the
wire for splicing. So he put the metal wire in
his mouth. At the moment that he did this, he
was naked, and he was sitting on the prison toilet,

(08:01):
which was made entirely of metal. The electricity came out
of the wall into the TV, down the wire, into
Michael Godwin. And you might call this strange luck, karma,
sweet justice, call it whatever you like. I call it
irony that Michael Anderson Godwin would escape the death penalty

(08:25):
and yet six years later would die on an electric chair.
After all, there was a burglar and he walked into
the Agent J Store in Orlando, Florida. He was going
to rob the place. He stepped through the door, pulled

(08:46):
out his twenty two target pistol, pointed it around, fired
off some warning shots, and shouted at the clerk and
the customers, this is a hold up or something like that. Right,
give me your money, give me your stuff, put them
merchandise in the bag. I am robbing you. But his
plan did not go according to plan, and not just

(09:09):
because there was a uniformed police officer on his coffee
break who happened to be standing right there near the
door at the counter. When this guy walked in with
the intent to commit burglary. He should have expected the
cop by the way, because in order to get inside
the store, he had had to walk around the parked

(09:33):
police car. No, no, he would not be deterred. So
this burglar continued with his plan. He should have been
a bit more reflective about staging a crime at the
H and J. The H and J gun store, the

(09:53):
cop was armed, the clerk was armed, many of the
customers were armed. When it was all over, crimes investigators
counted no fewer than forty seven expended cartridges from seven
different weapons, and there was only one casualty. And you
know who it was, the guy who thought it would

(10:16):
be a good idea to rob a fire arms dealer.
The headlines are loaded with death by gun. All of
these stories are tragic, and yet many are also laced
with straight up stupidity, like the headline about the guy
in Guthrie, Oklahoma, who died from a ricochet after the

(10:40):
firing of a twenty two rifle. This guy pulled out
his rifle, pointed it at a rock, fired the projectile.
The bullet ricocheted off the stone and hit his body
in the head. The reason he fired the gun was
that the shooter was trying to kill a bug. Glendale, California,

(11:03):
there was a guy named Robert. Robert was explaining, or
perhaps mansplaining, gun safety to his wife. He was showing
the little woman how these things worked, where the bullets went,
and how guns were actually nothing to be afraid of
when they aren't loaded. And to prove this, he pointed

(11:24):
his forty five pistol at his head and pulled the trigger,
but the gun was loaded. And how about another California man,
an avid hunter, a guy named Hermit. He got into
a nasty argument with his girlfriend. And this was a
scary dude because in the heat of the argument, he

(11:46):
went in he grabbed a shotgun. He went out to
her car, and he attempted to use the butt of
the shotgun to smash her car windshield. The butt of
the gun pointed toward the glad. Last the dangerous end
pointed where at his own chest, And that was the

(12:08):
end of that argument. Here is a dangerous weapons story
that doesn't involve any guns. As reported by the Associated Press,
it was a late day in September of nineteen ninety
six when a couple, Paul and Bonnie Stiller, were cruising

(12:30):
down the road. Now the report didn't say which of
them was driving, but both had been drinking. They were,
as they say, lit okay, and they had with them
in this moving vehicle a quarterstick of dynamite. Why did
they have dynamite? I have no idea. Police would later

(12:54):
discover that this couple had two more quarter sticks of
dynamite back at the house. But on this faithful September nights,
these two inebriated travelers, weaving around the road, decided it
would be awesome if they were to light the fuse
of the dynamite and throw it out the window at speed. Unfortunately,

(13:19):
neither of them had checked to make sure that someone
had rolled down the window. Oh and somehow both survived.
They were injured. I mean it was serious, but they
both lived, and I think a Darwin Award or at
least an honorary mention for the attempt. I think it

(13:42):
is still in order here and let's continue on the
theme of explosives. The American fourth of July holiday is
fast approaching Independence Day, and this is a day when
a few people reflect and give gratitude for the fact
that they live in a free country, which means they

(14:05):
haven't read a single headline over the past four months.
Forgive me, I started talking politics. Bad, My bad, I'm
gonna get back to the point. Okay, Fourth of July
Independence Day, where we see a lot of flags and
we hear a lot of superior bloviations about American greatness.
And this holiday is defined by barbecues and the setting

(14:30):
off of fireworks, And every year you and I prepare
ourselves for the reality that at least a few eager
freedomers will be enjoying the last moments for which they
will have all ten fingers. The fourth of July is
an occasion which is known for its constant safety violations.

(14:54):
All you have to do is just walk up any
street where people are shooting off fireworks. Just look around
Ashually you will find somebody who is violating all safety
protocols and doing something purposefully stupid, And I honestly think
this may be a commentary or revelation of what people
are like. Do you want to know if somebody's intelligent

(15:16):
and wise and if they use temperance and wisdom and
maturity and empathy and operate in a way where they
want to make everyone safer and happier. You can often
tell this by watching how they handle black cats and
bottle rockets, etc. And there are so many basics that
people just ignore. Don't stick your face over the top

(15:39):
of the rocket when you light the fuse. The Roman
candles are designed to be stuck into the ground and
pointed up or away. Do not hold them in your hands.
Don't put extra gunpowder in the giant paper cannon. Don't
put your mortar inside pev DC pipes, which turns the

(16:01):
plastic into dangerous shrapnel. Don't throw bottle rockets at all
your drunk friends. Just don't. Just don't. This is basic,
And this is a conversation that would have benefited Devon
Staples of Maine, despite the protests from his many friends.

(16:22):
On the fourth of July, Devon thought, wouldn't it be
fun to grab a big, reusable mortar tube, load up
the projectile shell, set the entire thing on the top
of my head, and have my brother light the fuse.
That's what he thought. Did he realize at the time

(16:43):
that shell and mortar fireworks caused the highest number of injuries.
Forty percent of all fireworks injuries come from shells and mortars,
responsible for more than eighty five percent of all fireworks
related emergency room visits, which is why shell and mortars
are banned in several states. And when they are not

(17:05):
used properly or when they malfunction, that consequences can be fatal.
Devin Staples placed that tube containing the artillery shell rights
on the top of his head, and when the shell
misfired and exploded on site, it slightly boosts the statistic

(17:26):
about fireworks injuries. Did you know that young men? And
Devon was twenty two. Young men are most likely to
get hurt or killed when the fire hits the firework
coming up. I'm going to take you back in time
to the sixteenth century. This man's tail is so known,

(17:49):
so revered, that he is honored all of these centuries later.
I'm going to have that and a whole lot more
as we do. Darwin Awards hang on. You know, sometimes
I am asked what my favorite part of what I

(18:11):
do is, Like, what gives you the most joy is
if you can distill it down to one thing, And
that's not true for me. I love so much about
what I do. I'm an activist, I'm a crusader. I'm
going to go out and change the world. And I'm
thinking you may be the same way. Right we want
to get out and just get into it and try
to engage the culture and improve the world. And I

(18:32):
hope that doesn't sound too lofty, but I think let's
go out and do what we can. That feeds me
in a great way. But I'll tell you I love
being a storyteller. I feel like the world needs more storytellers.
So even though we're doing kind of a dark subject today,
you know, exploring the insanity of humanity or people who

(18:53):
may I don't know, be examples of devolution, you know
there is It was a joy in being able to
tell stories on the broadcast. Instead of going down the
bullet points of all the awfulness that has happened in
the daily news, we're telling stories. We're doing Darwin Awards

(19:13):
this week. Remember back in twenty nineteen when Elon Musk
unveiled the Tesla cyber truck. Big deal, right, He had
the big public events, all the fanfare, and they drove
the cyber truck outs. And then Elon had the lead
of his design team, a guy named Friend von Holshausen,

(19:36):
come out and test the cyber truck's armor glass. So
they gave this guy a steel ball, big heavy ball,
and they said, okay, I want you to throw the
ball against the window and show everybody that it shattered proof.
And we've all seen the video. He threw the big
heavy metal ball and the cyber truck window shattered, and

(19:59):
then red faced. Elon Musk would later explain the window
had been previously compromised because earlier somebody had also tested
it with a sledgehammer and that caused a little dink
in the material it normally wouldn't shatter. Now, I'm going
to let you argue about whether or not that story
is a true story. But the windows story that I'm

(20:22):
telling here involves a Toronto lawyer, a guy named Gary
Hoy and he worked in an office building that was
so solidly constructed that he would boast about it. This
thing is so solid. He would even give tours to
law students, and he would talk about the windows, the

(20:43):
unbreakable nature of these floor to ceiling glass windows. You
want to see how tough they are, how sturdy they are,
how unbreakable they are. And this guy, Gary Hoy, would
point himself at the window, take a running start, smash
his body against it, and bounce right off. The students

(21:04):
would ooh and ah, and he would smile. I told
you this building is really well made. But as a
structural engineer named Bob Greer would later tell news crews
at the scene, I don't know of any building code
in the world that would allow a one hundred and
sixty pound man to run up against a glass window

(21:27):
and withstand it. And the reason for that news story
is what you have already guessed. Gary Hoy's demonstration of
window integrity only had to fail once one time to
result in his twenty four story plummet to the street below.

(21:50):
So the next time you see a floor to ceiling
window and you don't want to get too close to it,
it's okay if you don't want to lean on the
glass or test the fates. Totally understandable and probably prudent.
Lest you find yourself the victim of an unlucky break.

(22:15):
Here is a golden oldie from the sixteenth century, and
you might have seen this story featured in the Cabinet
of Curiosities, The story of an Austrian man named Hans Steininger.
He became famous for having the world's longest beard at
that time, estimated to be about fifty nine inches. Imagine

(22:39):
having a beard almost five feet long. Of course, navigating
your day with a five foot beard would be extremely impractical,
and so Hans Steininger would keep the beard rolled up
in a leather pouch, or he would just jam it
into a coat pocket to keep it out of the way.
It was a lot easier to walk and eat and

(23:00):
do whatever. Now. He was the mayor of brownou'm In
on the Austrian German border, and these hundreds of years later,
there's a large stone relief of Steininger on the side
of Saint Stephen's Church, a remembrance of this popular man
who became a kind of folk legend. It was the

(23:22):
twenty eighth of September fifteen sixty seven a massive fire
broke out in this town. There was widespread panic. Hans
rushed out to help, and yet as he tried to
get outside, he tumbled down the stairs. He struck his head,
he broke his neck, and died right there. He stumbled

(23:44):
because he had tripped. Guess what he tripped on. Yes,
poor Hans at that time had not had his beard
tucked away and stuffed in a pouch or jammed into
his pocket. It was flowing freely fire feet of hair
trailing the floor under his feet as he tried to

(24:05):
navigate the stairs. Now, I'm not inclined to poke fun
at this guy. He didn't die of stupidity. In fact,
he was in a frantic rush to help people. So
no Darwin Award for Hans Steininger, only honor for Hans Steininger.
In fact, if you want to pay homage or just
learn more about this man. Right now, a local museum

(24:28):
has on display under glass the four hundred and fifty
year old beard, the actual beard that tripped poor Hans
down the stairwell. It is laid out and to end
like a long, thin carpet, calling back to that tragic

(24:49):
event in September of fifteen sixty seven, one of the
worst bad hair days in all of human history. Here's
an example that qualifies as an outstanding misapplication of judgment,

(25:09):
or is like the old saying, wisdom has been chasing you,
but you have always been faster. There was a guy
named Michael. I will omit his last name in this example,
but he was a fifty eight year old man living
in Texas, and he was an alcoholic. Now, alcoholism is
a serious subject, but this particular story Warren's mentioned for

(25:34):
a reason that you will hear in just a moment.
Michael was apparently only happy, or maybe he was masking
unhappiness with the bottle. He was always drunk, and one
night he threw himself one hell of a party. He
imbibed two one point five liter bottles of sherry. Now,

(25:58):
the typical alcohol content of sherry ranges from fifteen to
twenty two percent, so more than one hundred fluid ounces
of this stuff poured into his body, resulting in a
physical shut down and a toxychology report that his blood
alcohol level was point four seven percent, That is five

(26:20):
times the legal limit for driving in Texas. How in
the world did this guy get to point four to
seven Well, you drink a bit differently when alcohol absorbs
into your system, not from the mouth, but from the
other ends, when you consume three liters of sherry through

(26:43):
your rectum. Michael had a throat irritation. It made it
painful to drink with his mouth, so he got himself
drunk with alcohol animals. He would just jam those bottles
into his rectal cavity. Did he stand on his head

(27:03):
or did he position himself a certain way? I have
logistical questions. Alcohol apparently absorbs more quickly through the capillary
beds of the rectum, something that is apparently already known
in frat houses across the country. But I wonder how
many of those party animals realize the dangers and the

(27:26):
irony when they put those bottles down or a bottoms up.
It was summer in Holland. Employees at a Dutch company
had been working so very, very hard, and they wanted
a break and it would be good for office morale,

(27:49):
and so these employees got away from business as usual
by taking a bus tour. It was a sunny August
day and on that us there were open air windows
in the roof of the vehicle, so as the bus
cruised along with a breeze in their hair and smiles
on their faces. Two boisterous workers popped their heads up

(28:13):
above roof level to feel the wind rushing upon their skin.
If only, if only they had kept their eyes open,
they might have seen the oncoming via duct. Okay, I'm
going to take a little more time and do some

(28:35):
more commentary with this next one, because it does lean
heavily into our wheelhouse as we talk about the effect
of religious belief on our behaviors and how even the
most sincere of people can do real damage, often to themselves.
And in this case, I'm talking about the example of

(28:55):
John Allan Chow. And you may already be familiar with
this one, but for those who are not, John Show
he was born in Alabama in nineteen ninety one, raised
up in a family of Christians, attended Oral Roberts University
that's about twenty minutes from my house. He got a

(29:15):
Bachelor of Science from OREU. Now a bachelor of science
from Oral Roberts University is kind of problematic. That's a
whole other conversation. But this guy, inspired by Jesus Christ,
wanted to fulfill the great commission go he into all
the world and preach the Gospel to all nations. And

(29:38):
apparently this included places where there were hostile tribes, natives
with deadly weapons, who weren't used to outsiders coming in
and encroaching and even molesting their way of life. No, no,
they didn't want any of this. Well, John Chow decided

(29:58):
he was going to cong the fears of the natives.
He went to a training camp in Kansas City. It
was called All Nations and I am not making this up.
This training camp was like a boot camp for people
who were going to spread the gospel in hostile tribal lands.
And they would do situationals, so missionary staff members would

(30:22):
pretend to be hostile natives. They even had fake spears
that they would wave and they'd shout and carry on,
and they would go through scenarios. How do you deal
with this? How do you handle that? How do you
keep yourself safe? How do you talk them down so
that you can eventually talk to them about Christ? This
was John Chow in twenty seventeen, and in twenty nineteen

(30:48):
he considered himself finally ready. He was going to North
Sentinel Islands, one of the Andaman Islands, which is a
protected area of India. He prepared himself by getting vaccinated
for travel. He underwent medical and linguistic training, and he

(31:08):
paid off some fishermen to get to the islands. And
the reason he had to pay them off is because
it was illegal for outsiders to go to the island
and bother these tribes. He was warned, this is dangerous.
These people are gonna mess you up. You do not

(31:29):
want to go and try to do missions work here
at North Sentinel Island. But John Chow would not be deterred.
He said in his diary, Lord, is this Satan's last
stronghold where none have heard or even had the chance
to hear your name. The eternal lives of this tribe

(31:50):
is at hand, and I think it's worthwhile to declare
Jesus to these people. Please do not be angry at
them or at God. If I get killed, don't retrieve
my body. So obviously john Shaw realized that his life

(32:10):
was on the line. November fifteenth, twenty nineteen, he made
his first attempt to visit the island in a fishing boat.
He was about five hundred meters from the shore carrying
his waterproof bible. The hostile natives drove him back. Later
on he would try again. He said the islanders reacted

(32:32):
to him with amusement and bewilderments and then eventual hostility.
Oh he tried to sing worship songs about Jesus, and
he spoke to them as best he could in their
native language, or what he thought was their native language.
If he couldn't find the words, he would parrot back
to them the sounds that they were saying to him,

(32:53):
and when he did so, they would jeer and mock
and point and laugh at him. He later guessed that
it would because they were saying native cusswords. He tried
to give them gifts, he tried to feed them food.
He did everything that he knew to do, and yet
a boy in the tribe at one point shot a

(33:16):
metal headed arrow that pierced the Bible in his hand,
right in front of his chest. So on that third
attempt he went away, but he was not gonna give up.
His final visit, November seventeenth, Chow paid the fisherman to
bring him again to this illegal island and then abandon him.

(33:39):
He said, I'm committed, so don't wait for me. I'm
going in. And it was during that fourth visit the
John Chow finally ultimately paid with his life. How presumptuous
of this brainwashed young man to show up at an
island and essentially declare that the tribe people of North

(34:01):
Sentinel Island were living incorrectly, but he had brought the
good news of how to live correctly, how to do
it right. He was saying, you're broken. I have brought
the fix, you are diseased. I have brought the cure.
And this tribe, not knowing what he really represented or
who might be behind him, what threat he might pose,

(34:23):
they responded with lethal force. This tribe of between fifty
and one hundred and fifty people unleashed a barrage of
arrows John Allan Chow, killing him and leaving his body
right there on the beach by the way. Seven of
the fishermen who illegally transported John to the island. They

(34:45):
were arrested. The inhabitants of the island itself have always
resisted outside contact. The little that is known about them
comes from photographs that have been taken from the air,
and even in those pictures you can see the tribe
members rushing toward the aircraft, the helicopters, etc. With bows
and arrows. John Allen Chow had he not been indoctrinated

(35:11):
with this idea, this tragic idea, that he was to
go and preach the Gospel to everybody everywhere, including in
the most remote parts of the planets. Perhaps he might
be alive today. Out of compassion, I won't give him
a Darwin Awards, but I do think his story is

(35:33):
a teachable moment for everybody else. Poaching the illegal hunting
or killing of wildlife, often for sport and sometimes for
the acquisition of things that can be sold unlawfully, things
like horns, tusks, meet etc. In the twenty nineteen case

(35:58):
of a would be poacher in southamb Africa, the trophy
in question was the tusk of a rhino, and so
this armed man snuck into a national park with literal
sights on killing a rhino and cutting off the tusk.
Stories like these are made even more pathetic with the

(36:18):
understanding that some rhinos have been hunted to near extinction,
but on occasion the universe comes through in the name
of equilibrium, justice, or maybe just desserts. As this poacher
hunted his rhino, he was seen and then stampeded by

(36:39):
an elephant, and after that lions showed up and feasted
upon his body. Now, this had happened just one year
before with another group of poachers who's not gone to
the Sibuya Game Reserve in South Africa. They also had
their sights on rhino horns, and on a morning in

(37:01):
July twenty eighteen, around four thirty a m. The owner
of the reserve heard a terrible commotion, mostly the sounds
of lions roaring as they attacked prey. The following day
would reveal pieces, and only pieces, of those poachers. NPR

(37:24):
reported the nineteen ninety seven story of a Russian poacher.
He shot and wounded a tiger, but he didn't kill it.
The tiger roared and ran off, and this man was
not able to catch the animal and finish the job,
so he hiked slowly back to his cabin, where the
tiger had already followed his scent and was waiting there

(37:50):
for him. The last sight this poacher ever saw was
the eye and perhaps the teeth of a tiger he
had tried to kill. He was a guru and supposed
health healer. His name was mister lim Bah of Kuala

(38:13):
sang Lang, a small coastal village in northern Malaysia. Mister
Limbaugh's customers and community called him by a nickname. He
was known as Black Dog, and for more than a decade,
Limba had been performing a ritual on himself which he
claimed purified and fortified his body and spirits. It was

(38:38):
also kind of a cool trick. He would steam himself,
and on one October day in twenty seventeen, at the
age of sixty eight, the Black Dog once again prepared
himself for ritual steaming. Not in a steam room or

(38:59):
even playing his head or body over a cauldron of
boiling water, this man used a gigantic stainless steel walk.
He took off the lid, he hopped into the container,
and alongside him were placed food items that would also
be steamed. There was rice, sweet corn, vegetarian buns. I

(39:23):
am not kidding, So Limbaugh was there inside the walk.
He sat in the lotus position as the lid was
sealed above him, and then a fire was lit beneath
the walk. You and I can only imagine the shouting
and the banging that soon rattled that container as this

(39:46):
magician and healer frantically flailed in boiling steam. Those outside
quickly grabbed the lid and removed it, and they found
inside limb was there, but he was inert, and big surprise,
his body was badly burned. Perhaps it's a small mercy

(40:07):
that he had not died from the burns themselves, but
from a heart attack. A horrible way to go, but really,
come on, if you're going to climb into a cooking
pot over an open flame while placed next to various
food items, wouldn't you already know that your goose was

(40:30):
probably going to be cooked. This story is a warning
to anybody who is driving or riding a vehicle that's
being towed by another vehicle. If you have to get towed,
do it slowly, do it carefully, and do it legally.

(40:51):
And this advice might have saved Cody Horn, who decided
to have himself towed behind a car on California's State
Highway four. That highway had no hard concrete median, only
the double yellow line which separated opposing traffic. The vehicle

(41:12):
he was in ramped up to speed behind the tow
car before it became unwieldy. The wheel eventually popped out
of his hands, and before Cody realized what was happening,
his vehicle flung itself across that double yellow line, directly
into the path of an oncoming forward truck. Twenty eight

(41:33):
year old Cody Horn did not survive, and perhaps I
should mention that he was connected to the pole car,
not via a rope or towing cable. He was connected
to that vehicle with a garden hose. And Cody himself
was not in a car. He was being dragged behind

(41:57):
another vehicle at speed on California State Highway four while
driving a golf cart. You and I always hear about
what a dangerous place Australia can be. I loved Australia.
I would love to go back to Australia, but I

(42:18):
would not mess with the wild life. And this would
have been good advice for Sean Cole, a twenty six
year old man who had been standing on the shore
of the crocodile infested Mary River. He was there as
part of a birthday party and he looked to the
other side, to the shore on the other side, and

(42:39):
he said, you know, I'll bet I could swim that
ninety yard distance. Sean did not make it to the
other side because, as we already know, it is a
crocodile infested river. The Merry River Wilderness Retreat actually has
warnings and advisories everywhere, and they say they do not

(43:00):
go within fifteen feet of the water's edge because there
are crocs. Hell, if I was told there were crocodiles
in a water source, screw fifteen feet. I'm not even
in the same zip code, you know what I mean.
These crocs are fast, These pop out of nowhere. I've
seen the movies, you know, I've seen the movies. More

(43:25):
Darwin Awards to come, and I'm gonna include some examples
of close calls where the people survived. And I'll bet
we all have a story where we were this close,
like this close to buying the farm, and yeah, we
got really lucky. I'm gonna get into some of those.
We're gonna have some fun coming up next. Okay, Before

(43:53):
I get into the final round of stories and cause
us all to worry a little bit about our collective
future as a species, I want to do a little
brain science. Let's be an adult in the room and
let's figure out what might be going on. Is it
always dumb people doing dumb stuff? And you and I

(44:14):
know the answer. Smart people can also be guilty of
doing stupid things. There was an article that posted by
Professor Heather Butler in Scientific American called why do smart
people do foolish things? And the article says we all
probably know someone who is intelligent but does surprisingly stupid things.

(44:39):
My family delights in pointing out times when I make
really dumb mistakes. What does it mean to be smart
or intelligent? Our everyday use of the term is meant
to describe someone who is knowledgeable and makes wise decisions,
but this definition is at odds with how intelligence is

(44:59):
tr additionally measured. The most widely known measure of intelligence
is the Intelligence quotient, more commonly known as the IQ test,
which includes visuospatial puzzles, math problems, pattern recognition, vocabulary questions,
and visual searches. The advantages of being intelligent are undeniable.

(45:23):
Intelligent people are more likely to get better grades and
go further in school, they are more likely to be
successful at work, and they are less likely to get
into trouble, for example, commit crimes as adolescents. Given all
the advantages of intelligence, though, you might be surprised to
learn that it does not predict other life outcomes, such

(45:47):
as well being. You might imagine that doing well in
school or at work might lead to greater life satisfaction,
but several large scale studies have failed to find evidence
that I can que impacts life satisfaction or longevity. University
of Waterloo psychologist Egor Grossman. By the way, Egor Grossman

(46:11):
is a great professor name. Grossman and his colleagues argue
that most intelligence tests fail to capture real world decision
making and our ability to interact well with others. This is,
in other words, perhaps why smart people do dumb things.

(46:32):
The ability to think critically, on the other hand, has
been associated with wellness and longevity. Though often confused with intelligence,
critical thinking is not intelligence. Critical thinking is a collection
of cognitive skills that allow us to think rationally in
a goal oriented fashion, and a disposition to use those

(46:55):
skills when appropriate. Critical thinkers are amiable skeptical. They are
flexible thinkers who require evidence to support their beliefs and
recognize fallacious attempts to persuade them. Critical thinking means overcoming
all kinds of cognitive biases, for instance, hindsight bias or

(47:16):
confirmation bias. Critical thinking predicts a wide range of life events.
In a series of studies conducted in the US, and abroad.
My colleagues and I have found that critical thinkers experience
fewer bad things in life. We ask people to complete
an inventory of life events and take a critical thinking assessment.

(47:41):
The critical thinking assessment features five components of critical thinking skills,
including verbal reasoning, argument analysis, hypothesis testing, probability and uncertainty,
decision making, and problem solving. The inventory of negative life
events captures different domains of life, such as academic. For example,

(48:05):
I forgot about an exam. Health, I contracted a sexually
transmitted infection because I didn't wear a condom. Legal, I
was arrested for driving under the influence. Interpersonal I cheated
on my romantic partner, who I had been with for
more than a year. Financial, I have over five thousand

(48:28):
dollars of credit card debt, and so on. Repeatedly, we
found that critical thinkers experience fewer negative life events. This
is an important finding because there's plenty of evidence that
critical thinking can be taught and improved. Is it better
to be a critical thinker or to be intelligent? My

(48:51):
latest research pitted critical thinking and intelligence against each other
to see which was associated with fewer negative life events.
People who were strong on either intelligence or critical thinking
experienced fewer negative events, but critical thinkers did better. Intelligence

(49:13):
and improving intelligence are hot topics that receive a lot
of attention. It is time for critical thinking to receive
a little more of that attention. Keith E. Stanovich wrote
an entire book in two thousand and nine about what
intelligence tests miss, reasoning and rationality more closely resemble what

(49:35):
we mean when we say a person is smart, rather
than spatial skills and math ability. Furthermore, improving intelligence is difficult.
Intelligence is largely determined by genetics. Critical thinking, though, can
improve with training, and the benefits have been shown to
persist over time. Anyone can improve their critical thinkings sis

(50:01):
doing so, we can say with certainty is a smart
thing to do. Maybe that relates to this idea that
some people are books smart but not necessarily street smart.
But again we get into smart does it mean intelligence
or have people simply not been using critical thinking skills?

(50:24):
I am sorry if you're standing on the train tracks
as the train approaches, you have not been taught or
are not using critical thinking skills. And as we get
into our final few stories, let's do some honorable mentions
people who had really, really really close calls, but somehow survived.

(50:48):
The thumbnail of this broadcast shows a guy and he's
taking a selfie with a moving train approaching behind him.
It's just a funny image made me laugh, but it
was actually inspired by a true story which was reported
in June of last year. Three women and ubera Bob
Brazil were bicycling and they cycled up to a railroad

(51:13):
track in advance of an oncoming train, and they thought,
wouldn't this make a great selfie? So they got off
their bikes and they walked up to the tracks and
they kind of leaned in and readied themselves and put
their phones up and framed everything. And the train conductor
was blasting his horn the whole time, you are too close.

(51:37):
It didn't matter. They wanted to get the selfie. One
of those three women, her head might as well have
had a bullseye on it. She got clipped by the locomotive,
her body blasted to the ground like she'd been hit
by a meteor. Now do we call it lucky that
she never took off her bike helmet, never lost consciousness,

(52:01):
and survived with just a broken rib and a gash
on her leg and on the selfie front. Back in
twenty nineteen, there was a woman who jumped the fence
at the Phoenix Zoo because she wanted to take a
selfie with a jaguar. Somehow she got the shot and

(52:22):
she got out of the pen alive. There was a
guy named Paul Sounders of Alaska. He saw a grizzly
bear fishing for salmon in the river. Yeah, there's a
selfie of that, and yes, he is still alive. And
there's an entire culture. They're like whole articles of warnings
about this specific type of danger. People wanting to take

(52:47):
selfies and so they hang off of radio towers and
they stand on perilous edges of the Grand Canyon or whatever,
because wouldn't it be a great photo? And then they die.
This has become a chronic problem in the cell phone era.

(53:07):
Back in twenty sixteen, there were two guys. They were
walking in sunny Incinitas, California, just walking and walking, and
then they jumped a fence and walked some more until
suddenly both men walked off of a one hundred foot cliff.
They got banged up but survived. They had to be

(53:29):
rescued by the fire department. Why did they not see
the cliff because as they had been walking, they were
looking at their phones playing Pokemon Go. April twenty nineteen, Modesto, California,
there was a highway driver who ran out of gas,

(53:51):
so he grabbed a random plastic jug and he walked
to the closest gas station. The plan, of course, was
to fill up the jug with a gallon, or to
go back and get the car going so he could
fill up the rest of the way. But while he
was there with that plastic jug at the pump, he
realized there was a pesky valve that kept the fuel

(54:14):
from going into the container, and so he decided he
would reshape the neck of the bottle by melting it
into the shape of a funnel. And yes, to melt it,
he used a cigarette lighter at a gas station. Yes,
there was fire and chaos and screaming, and he received

(54:37):
some burns on his body, his shoes melted. But this
unintended burning man still walks and drives among us today.
Have you heard the story of the homemade rocket bike sled?
This was reported in the Twin Cities Pioneer Press. A

(55:00):
Minnesota man constructed a vehicle out of two skis a
modified bicycle frame and a motorcycle exhaust pipe. This thing
was fueled by something called heat hee t Now. Heat
is an alcohol based gasoline drying agent. You might see
it used as camping fuel for lanterns and stoves, etc.

(55:25):
And it dries gasoline up to keep it from freezing
in cold temperatures. And so this keen inventor grabbed his
invention and he added the fuel, and then he hoisted
his homemade rocket bike sled to the starting point, which
was on top of his roof. What happened next can

(55:51):
only be described as a spectacular failure. He was discovered
splayed out on his the'snoe driveway. His body was banged up,
and he was cursing the mangled bike sled lying next
to him. Lucky for him, because this guy should have
been out cold. That story reminds me of the legendary

(56:16):
account of the Jato rocket car. Remember that one. The
story about back in nineteen ninety six a guy mounting
a Jato rocket engine onto a nineteen sixty six Chevy Impaula.
So he mounted the rockets to the roof, according to
the story, and then he fired him up and blasted

(56:37):
himself into the side of a cliff at the speed
of a fighter jet. Investigators allegedly only found the man's
teeth and some fragments of bone. The MythBusters tested the
plausibility of this claim, and while it's a great story,
it's bogus. The Jato rocket car is just a legend,

(57:01):
something that has been told and told and told over
the decades. There is no evidence that a Chevy Impala
ever blasted into the side of a cliff. And we'll
finish with this odd story out of Logma Zero, Karelia.
I hope I'm saying that right. It's a village in
northwestern Russia. Police received a call from concerned residents who

(57:26):
said there was a guy unsafely anchoring his fishing boat.
So the authorities went out and interviewed the man. They
investigated his boat anchor, which turned out to be a
World War II aviation bomb capable of sending shrapnel five

(57:47):
hundred meters in every direction. Now, the detonator on the
bomb was missing, but this fisherman had hammered a metal
hook into the bomb casing so he could attach the
anchor chain. I don't know about you, but bombs and
hammers like these are two words you do not want

(58:07):
to see anywhere near each other. Fortunately, for all involved,
nothing ever blew up, and the authorities transported the bomb
to safety with the words anchors away. You would know
it was a bomb, right, I would know it was
a bomb. Bombs looked like bombs. What's the story here?

(58:30):
Was it that this fisherman didn't think a seventy year
old bomb could detonate? Or maybe he thought he knew
bomb mechanics. I don't understand. Was he that clueless in
this often clueless world? I am not optimistic? Right? Good
decision making doesn't seem to be a characteristic of our species.

(58:55):
Has any of this stuff affected the gene pool? I
suspect not. But today's examples have been entertaining stories to tell.
And again, you and I go from here back out
into a world where people stand for selfies in front
of moving trains, and they light fires at gas stations,

(59:19):
and they shoot fireworks from the tops of their heads. Oh,
it can be a stupidly dangerous world. So be safe
out there and I'll see you later.

Speaker 1 (59:32):
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