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22. "Goodnight, Malaysian 370"
5 Plays2 years ago
UNSOLVED/CONSPIRACY: Disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370
On March 8th, 2014, 227 passengers and 12 crew members boarded Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 for a 5 hour commute to Beijing, China. The aircraft departed Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 00:42 MYT and by 01:19 MYT completely disappeared off the radar -- never to be seen or heard from again. Since then the Flight 370 disappearance has been the subject of countless newspaper articles, online discussion boards, a documentary and numerous conspiracy theories. In this 'sode, we learn about the timeline and theories as well as the people involved with and impacted by this mysterious tragedy. We also talk about the psychology behind ambiguous loss and the role of toxic masculinity in what we think is the most likely explanation behind the missing Flight 370
CW: suicide, mass death
Sources
Outro last updated April 2023
FYI: we've recently unpublished older episodes as we are in process of re-editing for a smoother flow & audio experience. they will be available again as we finish.
Thank you for listening to our passion project <3 You can find us on social media here! We're a team of 2 people & have always been ad-free. If you are enjoying, please consider supporting our sustainability on Patreon or by making a one-time contribution via CashApp $unpacktheeerie.
- your grateful hosts
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Unpacking the Eerie'
00:00:00
Speaker
I'm just going to leave it to the scientists.
00:00:02
Speaker
I'm going to leave it to the scientists.
00:00:05
Speaker
I know my niche, and this is not my niche.
00:00:07
Speaker
And the U.S. laws, however, that's my niche.
00:00:14
Speaker
Hi, I'm Akshi.
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And I'm Shana.
00:00:17
Speaker
And you're listening to Unpacking the Eerie.
00:00:20
Speaker
A podcast that explores the intersections of our dark and morbid curiosities through a social justice lens.
00:00:26
Speaker
You're welcome.
00:00:37
Speaker
Just a brief content warning, this episode will contain mentions of death and suicide.
00:00:47
Speaker
Hello!
00:00:49
Speaker
Welcome to our first non-
00:00:53
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cult slash MKUltra related episode which I'm very excited about because I was over it I was over it too Shoko really pushed me over the edge yeah Shoko was it I was editing that and I was like it just doesn't end me too
00:01:08
Speaker
I was like, I'm clearly over this by how much I've procrastinated listening to this episode.
00:01:12
Speaker
Yes, same with the editing.
00:01:15
Speaker
Yeah, you're like, I know that I'm really not feeling this cult vibe anymore.
00:01:20
Speaker
I'm over it.
00:01:21
Speaker
It's too much.
00:01:22
Speaker
Yeah, this is definitely like very different than that.
00:01:25
Speaker
It's like when you have a favorite song and you listen to it and you listen to it and you're like, I hate this song now.
00:01:31
Speaker
You get the ick.
00:01:32
Speaker
You get the ick.
00:01:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:33
Speaker
I got the ick with cults.
00:01:34
Speaker
Yeah, I got the ick with cults too.
00:01:36
Speaker
It's like, it's just too much like abuse dynamics over and over again, I think.
00:01:41
Speaker
It's the same shit.
00:01:41
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Yeah.
00:01:42
Speaker
It truly is the same shit over and over.
00:01:44
Speaker
Yep.
00:01:44
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Yep.
00:01:45
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It is.
00:01:46
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And cults persist and they still do the same thing.
00:01:49
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For real.
00:01:50
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Wow.
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So what?
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But now we're all prepared, so.
00:01:53
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It's true.
00:01:53
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If you haven't listened, check it out.
00:01:55
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Yeah.
00:01:55
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It's like five episodes.
00:01:57
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Yeah.
00:01:58
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Starting with- All of which are like two hours long or more.
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Yes, if you need to pass the time for any reason.
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Cleaning, you know, road trip.
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Something.
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Background music for doing puzzles.
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Or not music.
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Talking.
00:02:13
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But before we get started on the episode, since it is Spotify wrapped season, we got our own Spotify wrapped.
00:02:22
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It's true.
00:02:23
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We got a Spotify wrapped this week and I'll share some stats because they're kind of fun and exciting.
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So this year we were listened to in 13 countries, which is pretty cool.
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Our listeners were up by 100%.
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Our top episode is Don't Go to Lake Lanier.
00:02:40
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Which is cool.
00:02:41
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That one just kind of went viral or viral.
00:02:44
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I don't know what that means, but a lot of people listen to it.
00:02:47
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Yeah, it just, yeah, it spiked at random times.
00:02:51
Speaker
I'm really curious to know, like, the how and the when and the where.
00:02:55
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Yeah, so if you were one of the people that, like, I don't know, shared it or something like that.
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Yeah, please let us know.
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I am curious.
00:03:03
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Also, if you got the listener personality, The Adventurer...
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That was the top type of listener for the podcast, which is wild.
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Makes
The Mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
00:03:13
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sense.
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It does make sense.
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It's not wild.
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I was also adventurer.
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Were you adventurer?
00:03:16
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Yes.
00:03:17
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Okay.
00:03:17
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Yes, me too.
00:03:19
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Your listeners venture out into the unknown, searching for fresher podcasts and gems yet to be found.
00:03:26
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And then we learned that we are the top 10 podcasts for 111 people, top 5 for 79, and then top...
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For 21 people.
00:03:36
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Wow.
00:03:36
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Who are the 21 people?
00:03:38
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I mean, probably our friends.
00:03:40
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Yeah, that's true.
00:03:40
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That's true.
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Because there's definitely a lot of people who I talk to who are like, I don't listen to any podcast except for yours.
00:03:46
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I'm like, okay, cool.
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Shout outs.
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Thank you.
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Shout outs.
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But also very cool.
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Shout outs to this 111 people.
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Yeah.
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Love to see that angel number.
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Thank you for supporting.
00:03:56
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The countries are interesting, so the U.S. makes sense.
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But number two is India, number three is the U.K., number four is Australia, and number five is New Zealand.
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Interesting, yeah.
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But, you know, we've been doing this shit for two years.
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That's really nice.
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Two years and a few months, so pretty cool.
00:04:13
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This is also not a Spotify Wraps thing, but I do notice that every time we post a new episode, one of the first downloads comes from
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Frankfurt.
00:04:22
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Yeah.
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And I don't know who you are, but shout out.
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Shout out to the Frankfurt listener.
00:04:31
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Thank you.
00:04:31
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That's so targeted.
00:04:35
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Yeah, it's so funny how just like people all, you know, the most random places listen to our podcast now.
00:04:40
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I truly just like forget about that sometimes.
00:04:43
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Or always.
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I always forget about it.
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I always just forget that I'm being perceived in a pretty strong way.
00:04:51
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all over the world all over the world in general I forget I even forget that my Instagram followers are perceiving me sometimes I'm just posting and thinking I'm the only person who sees it what are you talking I don't know man I don't know it's just like a weird brain thing where I'm just like it tells you I know I know and I do look at it I do look at it I do look at it but then I just like immediately forget so like if someone brings it up later where they're like
00:05:19
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oh, XYZ, you posted that.
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And I was like, or like, oh, blah, blah, blah.
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And then I'm like, how do you know that?
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And they're like, you posted it.
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And I'm like, oh, move on from that.
00:05:29
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We're going to be talking about the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines.
00:05:36
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The whole time I'm thinking Malaysian Airlines, it's actually Malaysia Airlines.
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Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which...
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has been on my mind ever since it happened eight years ago, but I've never deep dove into it until I deep dove into it yesterday and today.
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Let's hear it.
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So this is the biggest mystery in aviation history, which I did not know, but it makes sense when we go through the story.
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Basically on March 8th, 2014,
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This Boeing 7-7 MH370 disappeared from the radar.
00:06:20
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To quote William Longavusha, who is an American author and journalist who also was a pilot for many years, I'm taking a lot of the information from today's episode from his Atlantic article that came out in 2019 about this, but to quote him, he says, The mystery surrounding MH370 has been focus of a continued investigation and source of sometimes feverish public speculation.
00:06:46
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The loss devastated families on four continents, and
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The idea that a sophisticated machine with its modern instruments and redundant communications could simply vanish seems beyond the realm of possibility.
00:06:59
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It is hard to permanently delete an email and living off the grid is nearly unachievable even when the attempt is deliberate.
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A Boeing 777 is meant to be electronically accessible at all times.
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The disappearance of the airline has provoked a host of theories.
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Many are preposterous.
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All are given life by the fact that in this age, commercial airplanes don't just vanish.
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But this one really just did.
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So get ready.
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Just buckle up in your seatbelt.
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Gird your loin.
00:07:32
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Gird your loin.
00:07:33
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So most of those infos from this article and then this documentary that I watched that actually came out pretty recently,
00:07:40
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It was done by Vice, but it was bought by the History Channel.
00:07:45
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And it is called MH370 Mystery of the Lost Flight.
00:07:50
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So basically this flight, a little info about the flight.
00:07:53
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It was carrying 239 people, two co-pilots, Captain Zahari Ahmad Shah, First Officer Farik Abdul Hamid, both Malaysian, 10 crew who are all Malaysian,
00:08:07
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And 227 passengers, including five children.
00:08:10
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The flight was going from Kuala Lumpur, which is the capital of Malaysia, to Beijing.
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And so 153 of the passengers were Chinese, 38 were Malaysian.
00:08:20
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And the remaining passengers were from 12 other countries, including Indonesia, Australia, India, France, the US, Ukraine, Canada, New Zealand, Netherlands, Russia, and Taiwan.
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So this was a red-eye flight.
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It took off at 12.42 a.m.
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on March 8, 2014 from Kuala Lumpur and was traveling to Beijing.
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It climbed up to an altitude of 35,000 feet.
00:08:49
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where it would be cruising, and it was supposed to be a five and a half hour long flight.
00:08:53
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So the first officer, Fareek Abdul Hamid, was the person that was flying, and the captain was handling the radios.
00:09:01
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And this is standard procedure because it was one of the first officer's training flights.
00:09:06
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It was actually going to be his last training flight before he was assessed to be a full-fledged pilot.
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He was 27 years old.
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He joined Malaysia Airlines as a cadet pilot in 2007.
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He became second officer and then was promoted in 2010 to first officer.
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In 2013, he began training as first officer for Boeing 777s.
00:09:24
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And Flight 370 was going to be his final training flight.
00:09:39
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And he was going to be examined on his next flight.
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By that point in time, he had accumulated 2,763 hours of flying experience.
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So he had a lot of experience.
00:09:49
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Captain Zahari Ahmad Shah was one of the most senior captains at Malaysia Airlines.
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He was 53 years old.
00:09:56
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He was married and had three children.
00:09:58
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He lived in a gated community, owned two houses, and he had a flight simulator in his home that he used a lot.
00:10:05
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And he often posted on online forums about it.
00:10:08
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He joined Malaysia Airlines as a cadet pilot in 1981.
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And after training, he received a commercial pilot's license and became second officer in 1983.
00:10:17
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He was promoted to captain of Boeing 737 in 1991.
00:10:19
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And then later in 1998, he was captain of Boeing 777.
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He had been a type rating instructor, so like the person that trains since 2007.
00:10:36
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And he had a total of 18,365 hours of flying experience.
00:10:41
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So like very, very senior loss of experience as a pilot.
00:10:45
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Knows what the fuck he's doing.
00:10:47
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He knows what he knows what he's doing for sure.
00:10:50
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It's like not only does he spend most of his time flying planes.
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He also has a flight simulator at home.
00:10:56
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So he's like, you know, spending time in his house doing that, too.
00:11:00
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So I'm going to go over the timeline of what happened.
00:11:04
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So flight takes off 1242 a.m.
00:11:08
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About 20 minutes later at 101 a.m., they radioed to air traffic control that they had leveled off at 35,000 feet.
00:11:18
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Keep in mind that it's not standard procedure to do this.
00:11:23
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It's the norm to report if you're leaving an altitude, not entering an altitude.
00:11:29
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Okay.
00:11:30
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And then it's a little even weirder that seven minutes later, he again reports the same thing.
00:11:36
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He's like, we're cruising at 35,000 feet.
00:11:40
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So that's definitely not normal because it's like, why?
00:11:42
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You got to say the same thing twice, seven minutes later.
00:11:46
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Then about 10 minutes after that at 1.19 a.m., they are leaving Malaysian airspace and they're entering Vietnamese airspace.
00:11:54
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So air traffic control basically like switches over and they
00:11:59
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The controller at the Kuala Lumpur Center radios them and says, Malaysia 370, contact Ho Chi Minh 120.9.
00:12:08
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That's the radio frequency.
00:12:10
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Good night.
00:12:10
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So that's the norm of how they kind of say, okay, we're handing over.
00:12:15
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And then Zahari is supposed to respond saying, good night, Malaysia 370, and then repeat back the Ho Chi Minh response.
00:12:25
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radio frequency.
00:12:26
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He only says, good night, Malaysian 370.
00:12:30
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He did not read back the frequency as he should have.
00:12:34
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And this was the last word that was ever heard from Malaysia 370.
00:12:40
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And this is like less than an hour into the flight.
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The pilots never checked in with Ho Chi Minh.
00:12:47
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After this, basically two minutes after this happened, they disappear off of the radar.
00:12:53
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39 minutes after takeoff, five seconds after they cross over into Vietnamese airspace, the symbol that represents the transponder of the plane dropped off of Malaysian air traffic control.
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And then the entire plane disappeared 37 seconds later.
00:13:10
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So the controller in Kuala Lumpur was dealing with like other air traffic and didn't notice.
00:13:17
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And when he did notice that it was off of the radar, he assumed that it was just like in the hands of the Vietnamese.
00:13:23
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So he just kind of was like, whatever.
00:13:25
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The Vietnamese saw that the plane crossed into their airspace and then disappeared from the radar.
00:13:31
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They were supposed to let the Kuala Lumpur people know immediately if the airline was more than five minutes late to check in.
00:13:39
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But instead, they just, like, kept trying to contact the airplane, and they only let Kuala Lumpur know 18 minutes later that they never checked in.
00:13:47
Speaker
So what they're supposed to say is they're supposed to say, good morning, Ho Chi Minh, Malaysia 370.
00:13:53
Speaker
But they never did that.
00:13:54
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:13:56
Speaker
And like basically there's a lot of chaos that happens right after this that is just like not standard procedure.
00:14:02
Speaker
They were supposed to they're supposed to let Malaysia Airlines know immediately if a flight goes missing.
00:14:07
Speaker
But they took an hour to let Malaysia Airlines know that the flight was missing.
00:14:12
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And in this hour, they're trying to make contact with the aircraft.
00:14:16
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And they're also trying to contact other airlines that are in the sky immediately.
00:14:20
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that are within range of the airplane to ask them to try to contact the aircraft as well.
00:14:25
Speaker
So that's like what they're trying to do.
00:14:27
Speaker
And they're trying to do this for four hours.
00:14:30
Speaker
Holy shit.
00:14:31
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And even though the aeronautical rescue coordination should have been notified within an hour of this happening so that they could have an emergency response, they were not informed until five hours later at 6.32 a.m.
00:14:44
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And then the emergency search began.
00:14:50
Speaker
So initially the search was happening within the South China Sea, which is where it was assumed that the plane was between Malaysia and Vietnam.
00:15:01
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And this included 34 ships and 28 aircrafts from seven different countries.
00:15:07
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They couldn't find it like anywhere.
00:15:10
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The wild thing is also like I was watching this documentary and the
00:15:16
Speaker
They didn't tell the family members of the people on the flight that the plane was missing.
00:15:25
Speaker
They kept just saying the flight was delayed in China.
00:15:29
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So it would just be delayed, delayed further, delayed further.
00:15:32
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And they didn't let them know for ages that actually the flight was missing.
00:15:35
Speaker
They kept being like, oh, it's going to come soon, even though that was not true at all.
00:15:40
Speaker
And they had lost it.
00:15:42
Speaker
They were just trying to quell people's concerns or whatever.
00:15:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:47
Speaker
Like maybe there was like some hope that they would like find it or something.
00:15:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:52
Speaker
So that's pretty fucked up already.
00:15:54
Speaker
And you can just like you'll see like throughout this thing like why the family members are just like so aggravated by all of the authority figures in this like case because there is just like so mismanaged.
00:16:06
Speaker
As it always is.
00:16:07
Speaker
Sure.
00:16:08
Speaker
Which sucks.
00:16:09
Speaker
But so initially they find debris and oil slick and they think that it's from the plane.
00:16:15
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But then they actually find, okay, it's not actually from the aircraft.
00:16:18
Speaker
And a lot of false alarms started happening like this where they're like finding stuff and they're like, oh, it's from the plane.
00:16:23
Speaker
It's not.
00:16:25
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So a few days later, a few days after this, they're searching at this point in the South China Sea.
00:16:33
Speaker
A few days after this, they actually find out
00:16:36
Speaker
that the plane made a U-turn after like disappearing from radar and went back to KL and continued straight beyond that point.
00:16:49
Speaker
And the way that they found that out is that the Malaysian Air Force had like secret radar technology that tracked it, but they didn't like
00:17:01
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let whoever know that they had seen that because this was like secret radar technology.
00:17:06
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So they didn't let people know for like five days that they like had this data actually showed that the plane
00:17:12
Speaker
turned around and went back and went a whole different route than it was supposed to.
00:17:16
Speaker
So this is corroborated with like primary radar, with the data that the Malaysian Air Force secret data revealed that after it initially disappeared, it turned southwest and flew back across the Malay Peninsula toward Penang.
00:17:32
Speaker
And side note, Penang is where the pilot is from.
00:17:36
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like was born.
00:17:37
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And then it flew northwest up the Strait of Malacca across the Andaman Sea where it fell out of radar range again.
00:17:44
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:17:45
Speaker
So then at this point, this is like five days later, they extend the search to that area.
00:17:50
Speaker
And this also suggested that it was like different than a standard hijacking or different than any incident that had ever occurred before.
00:17:57
Speaker
Because it didn't seem like there was like, I don't know, like a fire or something that had gone wrong because someone intentionally turned the plane around and took it in a different direction.
00:18:07
Speaker
Uh-huh.
00:18:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:09
Speaker
But they had realized they had been looking in the wrong place for the first few days.
00:18:12
Speaker
And obviously, people were pissed off because the Air Force didn't share this information with them until five days later.
00:18:19
Speaker
And one of the family members, her name is Grace Nothan, and she'll come up again later.
00:18:26
Speaker
She was like...
00:18:27
Speaker
talking in the documentary and she was like the ups and downs were very difficult to deal with we like weren't sure what's happening if it had been hijacked maybe i could see my mom again her mom was on the plane and the government of malaysia also kept kind of like changing the story so then two days after that seven days later they actually found that like basically when the airplane is flying it like
00:18:50
Speaker
pings to satellites just like kind of automatically and they're known kind of like as like electronic handshakes and they're routine connections that are sort of like whispers of communication but like most of the stuff on the aircraft at this point like passenger entertainment cockpit stuff automated maintenance reports had been switched off so like this was the only thing that they had but these satellite pings
00:19:18
Speaker
showed that the plane had continued to fly for six hours after it had disappeared off of initial radar, meaning that it did not crash or suffer a catastrophic event.
00:19:30
Speaker
And it's presumed that during the six hours, it remained at high speed, high altitude cruising.
00:19:37
Speaker
And it did this until the last ping was at 8.11 in the morning.
00:19:41
Speaker
So it was like flying in the air.
00:19:45
Speaker
Until 8 in the morning.
00:19:47
Speaker
Did you have a thought?
00:19:48
Speaker
Can the people who are driving, can they turn off their... Can they turn off something to make them, like, not traceable?
00:19:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:57
Speaker
Okay.
00:19:59
Speaker
So all of those things had been turned off, which is why the only thing that was, like, then happening were these satellite pings.
00:20:05
Speaker
Okay.
00:20:05
Speaker
Because that automatically happens with, like, I guess...
00:20:10
Speaker
An aircraft of this size.
00:20:11
Speaker
I'm not like completely... So that part's not a mystery.
00:20:14
Speaker
No.
00:20:14
Speaker
It's suspected they turned them off.
00:20:16
Speaker
Yes, they turned it off.
00:20:16
Speaker
Okay.
00:20:17
Speaker
So basically there were seven of these like handshakes that occurred.
00:20:22
Speaker
Two which were initiated automatically by the airplane and then five that were initiated by the satellite.
00:20:28
Speaker
There was also two satellite phone calls that went unanswered but provided just...
00:20:34
Speaker
data.
00:20:35
Speaker
There were two values that they got from this data that were important.
00:20:41
Speaker
One was something that they referred to in this article as a distance value that basically provided like how far was the plane from the satellite.
00:20:49
Speaker
It doesn't give like a single location, but it gives like
00:20:53
Speaker
A range of locations it could have been that were equidistant.
00:20:58
Speaker
And based on this data, they like created these like maps and they found that this arc that stretches from Central Asia in the north to Asia.
00:21:09
Speaker
Basically, Antarctica in the south was like this range was where it crossed at like eight in the morning KL time, Kuala Lumpur time.
00:21:19
Speaker
And this points that its end location was either around Kazakhstan in the north or if it turned south, it would be somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean.
00:21:30
Speaker
So then the second value that they got from this like satellite data, it's like called a Doppler value for some reason that I can't understand because I'm not an engineer.
00:21:41
Speaker
But it's something to do with radio frequency.
00:21:46
Speaker
And basically this analysis determined with near certainty that it turned south and did not turn north.
00:21:54
Speaker
Don't they use Doppler for the weather?
00:21:57
Speaker
Yeah, maybe.
00:21:58
Speaker
I don't know.
00:21:59
Speaker
Okay.
00:22:00
Speaker
But I guess they used it for this in this case.
00:22:05
Speaker
Anyways, they did some science.
00:22:07
Speaker
They did some science.
00:22:11
Speaker
That's what they did.
00:22:16
Speaker
Some engineers did some engineering.
00:22:20
Speaker
Some math.
00:22:22
Speaker
Reminds me, I don't remember which one.
00:22:25
Speaker
I don't remember which episode it was, but when we were like, I don't know, whatever Wi-Fi is, why are you in the ocean?
00:22:32
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:22:33
Speaker
That's exactly what this is.
00:22:34
Speaker
This is that.
00:22:35
Speaker
This is not my area of expertise.
00:22:38
Speaker
I'm a therapist.
00:22:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:39
Speaker
Talk to us about trauma.
00:22:41
Speaker
Yeah, you talked to us about trauma.
00:22:43
Speaker
We know.
00:22:44
Speaker
Doppler value, I can't tell you.
00:22:47
Speaker
Unsure.
00:22:48
Speaker
Unsure.
00:22:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:50
Speaker
But they suspect that the plane may have turned south around 2.40 a.m., kind of near Sumatra, which is the most north island of Indonesia.
00:23:04
Speaker
And then six hours later, the same data indicated that it...
00:23:09
Speaker
Like the plane steeply descended five times like faster than a normal descent.
00:23:15
Speaker
So that predicted that the plane then dived into the ocean, possibly like shedding parts along the way.
00:23:21
Speaker
And it also suggests that it wasn't a controlled landing and that it just like went like...
00:23:26
Speaker
straight, you know.
00:23:27
Speaker
And then they, because of the speed at which it was going, they assumed that if the plane would have immediately fractured into a million pieces when it impacted the water.
00:23:37
Speaker
But they have no idea where this actually took place.
00:23:41
Speaker
And there is no physical evidence that they have found to confirm the satellite interpretations are correct.
00:23:47
Speaker
This is like all just like based on this like radio, satellite, radar data.
00:23:53
Speaker
But let me show you.
00:23:55
Speaker
Basically, yeah.
00:23:58
Speaker
Okay.
00:24:00
Speaker
A is like where it's supposed to be going this way, turns around at this point, flies past, and then this is where it was last picked up on radar.
00:24:08
Speaker
And then- Past Thailand.
00:24:10
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:24:10
Speaker
Above Indonesia.
00:24:11
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:24:11
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:24:12
Speaker
Above and in between, like, Indonesia and Thailand.
00:24:14
Speaker
And then it's assumed that it went zoot down this way.
00:24:20
Speaker
And it could be, like, this is where they were searching pretty much.
00:24:23
Speaker
Oh, just in the middle of the fucking ocean?
00:24:24
Speaker
In the middle of the fucking Indian Ocean, which, let me tell you, it's the most dangerous ocean in the entire world just because of, like...
00:24:34
Speaker
The climate, there's just, like, a lot of storms that happen on it.
00:24:37
Speaker
So that also, like, contributes to, like, the search efforts because it's, like, just a dangerous place for, like, ships to be.
00:24:44
Speaker
The most amount of, like, shipping disasters happen within the Indian Ocean because of, like, how chaotic of a climate it is.
00:24:51
Speaker
It's also, like...
00:24:53
Speaker
I'll get into it.
00:24:53
Speaker
It's huge.
00:24:55
Speaker
It's just a fucking ocean, man.
00:24:58
Speaker
So less than a week after the disappearance, the Wall Street Journal published a report indicating that the flight was most likely like going for these six hours because the Malaysian government had not said anything about this up until this point.
00:25:12
Speaker
And only after this article came out was the Malaysian government admitted that, yes, this is probably true.
00:25:20
Speaker
Man.
00:25:20
Speaker
Okay, so then 16 days later, on the 24th of March, the Malaysian government sends a text message to the family members of people who are on the flight.
00:25:29
Speaker
They get this on a text, a mass text message.
00:25:33
Speaker
Not a text.
00:25:33
Speaker
To like 239 family members.
00:25:35
Speaker
Or family members of 239 people.
00:25:37
Speaker
Malaysia Airlines deeply regrets that we have to assume beyond a reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those on board survived.
00:25:48
Speaker
Oh my god, not a text?
00:25:49
Speaker
Oh my god.
00:25:49
Speaker
One of the people that they interviewed in the documentary is like his wife was on the plane and she was like going on conference.
00:26:08
Speaker
And he was like, yeah, just like not literally he was just like, it's not an SMS message, you know, like this is not the way that you should be like.
00:26:15
Speaker
And it was also way too soon for them to be like giving this information because they didn't have evidence to supposedly they did not have evidence to suggest this.
00:26:26
Speaker
But also at the time, the Malaysian regime was said to be one of the most corrupt governments in the region.
00:26:33
Speaker
And it was being very sketchy in the investigation of the flight and very unreliable.
00:26:39
Speaker
They had investigators from other countries like dispatched to Malaysia.
00:26:43
Speaker
And they also like commented on the fact that the officials were withholding information.
00:26:48
Speaker
And that like, you know, they searched the wrong area for like a few days, even though they knew that the flight had gone a different way because the Air Force knew that information.
00:26:57
Speaker
Were they involved?
00:27:00
Speaker
I don't know, you know?
00:27:02
Speaker
But, like, it also, like, I think a lot of this suggests that they just didn't want to make it seem like they did something wrong because Malaysia Airlines is an airline that's owned by the government of Malaysia, so they would be the ones, like, culpable.
00:27:15
Speaker
Sure.
00:27:16
Speaker
You know?
00:27:16
Speaker
But, you know, if they told the truth right away about, like, where the plane actually went, they would have searched that area for the first few days and maybe they would have found debris before it, like,
00:27:27
Speaker
sank or whatever or like drifted, you know?
00:27:31
Speaker
Or like the black boxes might have been found.
00:27:34
Speaker
So obviously like based on this...
00:27:37
Speaker
Yeah, so then they were searching in an area of ocean that was actually like thousands of miles away from where they actually should have been searching.
00:27:46
Speaker
But then even like narrow parts of the ocean are just like so large.
00:27:51
Speaker
So there was this Air France flight which crashed into the Atlantic on a flight from Rio de Janeiro in 2009.
00:27:59
Speaker
And it took them two years to find the black box even though they knew exactly where to find it.
00:28:04
Speaker
And I think we probably talked about this in the Titanic episode, but I don't remember.
00:28:08
Speaker
It took them 70 years to find the Titanic, even though they knew exactly where it sank in the ocean.
00:28:15
Speaker
I don't think we did talk about that.
00:28:17
Speaker
70 years?
00:28:17
Speaker
It took 73 years after it sank.
00:28:18
Speaker
They looked for it.
00:28:22
Speaker
For 70 years.
00:28:23
Speaker
And they started immediately looking for it.
00:28:25
Speaker
But because of, you know, it was the early 1900s, so they obviously did not have, like, the technology that we do today.
00:28:31
Speaker
Yes.
00:28:33
Speaker
But because of technical limitations and how, like, vast the North Atlantic Ocean is, American oceanographer and former Navy officer Robert D. Ballard led the first expedition in 1977.
00:28:45
Speaker
It was unsuccessful.
00:28:45
Speaker
And then in 1985, French oceanographer...
00:28:51
Speaker
And the same dude, again, looked again using experimental, like, submersible devices.
00:28:57
Speaker
And that is, like, when they found it.
00:28:59
Speaker
But, like, yeah.
00:29:01
Speaker
It's hard to find shit in the ocean, even if you know exactly where it is because the ocean is, like, so deep.
00:29:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:06
Speaker
And when, like, planes, like, also, like, hit the ocean, they, like, shatter into so many places because of, like, how fast they're going and stuff like that.
00:29:15
Speaker
And then they drift.
00:29:16
Speaker
So, like...
00:29:18
Speaker
But still, you should expect certain things, like seats and stuff, to float.
00:29:25
Speaker
Which is why, like... That's true.
00:29:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:28
Speaker
And shoes.
00:29:29
Speaker
And shoes.
00:29:30
Speaker
And feet.
00:29:30
Speaker
Right.
00:29:31
Speaker
Exactly.
00:29:31
Speaker
There's, like, certain things that float.
00:29:33
Speaker
It's not funny.
00:29:33
Speaker
I'm sorry.
00:29:34
Speaker
No, it's not funny.
00:29:35
Speaker
But, like, you know... There's, you know, the feet.
00:29:36
Speaker
There's things that you expect to find.
00:29:38
Speaker
It's a fucking giant-ass plane, man.
00:29:40
Speaker
It's a Boeing 777.
00:29:42
Speaker
Those are, like... How big are these planes?
00:29:44
Speaker
It's the world's largest twin jet.
00:29:46
Speaker
Jesus Christ.
00:29:48
Speaker
It's huge.
00:29:50
Speaker
Also manufactured in fucking Seattle, man.
00:29:53
Speaker
Because Boeing.
00:29:56
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:29:56
Speaker
But anyways, so obviously family, friends are pissed that they're getting this text message when they also have no idea what they're basing this information on.
00:30:08
Speaker
It seemed like a premature decision.
00:30:11
Speaker
There was no evidence to support this theory.
00:30:12
Speaker
So at this point, they're just like, they don't believe the government anymore.
00:30:16
Speaker
And they're not accepting that this is the explanation.
00:30:20
Speaker
So then about a month after the initial search ends, which is what was them pretty much just like looking on the surface.
00:30:27
Speaker
And it shifts to searching like deeper parts of the ocean.
00:30:32
Speaker
So even though Malaysia was technically in charge at this point of time, they lacked a lot of like technology and like means and expertise.
00:30:41
Speaker
So the Australians actually, because it was also pretty near Australia, they took the lead in the search.
00:30:49
Speaker
The satellite data that they found pointed to the area of ocean that I showed you in that map, which is about, like, 1,200 miles southwest of Perth.
00:30:58
Speaker
But it was also an area that is very deep, very unexplored.
00:31:03
Speaker
So first they had to actually map out the undersea topography to, like, basically, like, figure out, like, what it looked like so they know where to search, like, so they could have a map of it.
00:31:15
Speaker
Because they didn't have a map of this area.
00:31:16
Speaker
Because...
00:31:18
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:31:20
Speaker
We know nothing about the ocean.
00:31:21
Speaker
We don't know anything about the ocean.
00:31:22
Speaker
This is 2014, man.
00:31:24
Speaker
You know, this is not that long ago.
00:31:26
Speaker
Terrifying.
00:31:27
Speaker
Also, I think one of the oceanographers was quoted to say the ocean floor was lined with ridges in a blackness where light had never penetrated.
00:31:36
Speaker
This is scary, man.
00:31:37
Speaker
This is scary.
00:31:39
Speaker
I hate that.
00:31:39
Speaker
That gave me like a goosey bobs.
00:31:42
Speaker
I hate that so much.
00:31:44
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:31:48
Speaker
Oh, man.
00:31:49
Speaker
So then six months later in October of 2014 is when the advanced underwater search begins.
00:31:55
Speaker
And because it's a large area, it's going to take many, many months.
00:31:58
Speaker
And this underwater area has underwater volcanoes.
00:32:02
Speaker
It has something known as the Galvin Fracture Zone, which is basically like a Grand Canyon.
00:32:07
Speaker
But like, no, absolutely not.
00:32:10
Speaker
Extremely challenging, hard places to look.
00:32:13
Speaker
But they find no debris.
00:32:16
Speaker
They find no wreckage that seems like it's come from the aircraft.
00:32:20
Speaker
And usually debris, like we were just talking about, is found quickly or right away.
00:32:24
Speaker
So it was like pretty unusual in this case.
00:32:27
Speaker
Someone in the documentary quoted, I found it totally unacceptable to accept the fact that the aircraft crashed at a high speed and didn't leave an enormous amount of debris around.
00:32:37
Speaker
And yeah, like debris can like disappear and sink, but still like it's a huge fucking plane.
00:32:42
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:32:43
Speaker
Okay, so this is a part of the story that's kind of like strange.
00:32:47
Speaker
It's very much like this is a movie if you didn't already feel that way.
00:32:52
Speaker
There's this guy.
00:32:53
Speaker
His name is Blaine Gibson.
00:32:55
Speaker
And he's in this documentary that I watched.
00:32:57
Speaker
And he just looks so – you're like, who is this guy?
00:33:01
Speaker
He looks like Indiana Jones because he like wears a like hat.
00:33:06
Speaker
And he says in the documentary, I'm a lawyer.
00:33:09
Speaker
I don't practice law now.
00:33:11
Speaker
Mainly, I travel the world and try to solve mysteries.
00:33:14
Speaker
Currently, I'm trying to solve the mystery of Malaysia.
00:33:18
Speaker
Okay, Carmen Sandiego.
00:33:20
Speaker
He's from Seattle.
00:33:21
Speaker
He would be from Seattle.
00:33:25
Speaker
So he was actually born in San Francisco.
00:33:28
Speaker
He's an Aries Gemini cusp.
00:33:30
Speaker
Why do you?
00:33:31
Speaker
I always do it.
00:33:32
Speaker
I always do it.
00:33:34
Speaker
It's good to know.
00:33:35
Speaker
It frames this character.
00:33:38
Speaker
But he, his father was the chief justice on the California Supreme Court.
00:33:42
Speaker
He's the only child.
00:33:44
Speaker
His father was a World War I vet.
00:33:46
Speaker
He had a lot of time to himself.
00:33:47
Speaker
A lot of time to himself.
00:33:48
Speaker
His mom was also a lawyer and an environmentalist.
00:33:53
Speaker
And I guess his mom took him on like an international trip when he was kind of young.
00:33:57
Speaker
And this was when his spark of travel was ignited.
00:34:02
Speaker
And he decided that his goal of life was to visit all the countries in the world.
00:34:07
Speaker
Okay.
00:34:08
Speaker
But one interesting thing is like people are talking about like how does he have all of this like money to be like traveling around the world?
00:34:15
Speaker
And I read this article written by another science journalist who writes a lot about aviation that pretty much found out from interviewing him that he actually was present in the Red Square when the Soviet Union ended.
00:34:31
Speaker
And he basically capitalized off of like newly capitalist rules.
00:34:35
Speaker
Russia and is how it's assumed that he made a bunch of money by like consulting to new business owners in Russia so he knows he's fluent in Russian and knows a lot of
00:34:46
Speaker
people in russia because of this okay and he's dabbled in a lot of other famous mysteries including like he went to the jungles of guatemala to like research the end of the mayan civilization the jungles of guatemala yeah and then i don't know what this is but it says the whitest shit i've ever heard i knew you're gonna i knew you're gonna say it
00:35:09
Speaker
This is his life.
00:35:11
Speaker
He also, I don't know what this is, but he went to investigate the Tunguska meteor explosion in eastern Siberia.
00:35:21
Speaker
And then he also went to, like, investigate the location of the Ark of Covenant in the mountains of Ethiopia.
00:35:28
Speaker
What the fuck?
00:35:29
Speaker
He's got nothing but time.
00:35:30
Speaker
He has a business card and it says on it, adventurer, explorer, truth seeker.
00:35:36
Speaker
But yeah, he, like, wears his little fedora.
00:35:38
Speaker
Get the...
00:35:39
Speaker
Okay.
00:35:41
Speaker
Blaine.
00:35:43
Speaker
This is Blaine.
00:35:44
Speaker
So how is Blaine connected to Malaysian Airlines 370?
00:35:47
Speaker
Okay, so his mom passed away.
00:35:50
Speaker
And while he's like grieving his mom's death and like packing her things, he's like watching the coverage of Malaysian Airlines 370 on CNN.
00:36:00
Speaker
And he got kind of like obsessed with the case.
00:36:02
Speaker
And he was also seeing that it was like not getting anywhere.
00:36:06
Speaker
And he was like, okay, well, I got to go help.
00:36:09
Speaker
He's got to go help.
00:36:10
Speaker
So he sold his mom's house and then moved to Laos.
00:36:14
Speaker
And him and his business partner were, like, starting a restaurant there or something.
00:36:19
Speaker
And then at this point, he joins a Facebook group that's, like, dedicated to, like, Malaysian Airlines Fight 370.
00:36:26
Speaker
And he starts thinking, like, well, you know, they're not searching for debris that might wash up on beaches.
00:36:33
Speaker
So someone's got to be doing that, right?
00:36:35
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:36:36
Speaker
So it's March of 2015.
00:36:38
Speaker
It's been a year since the plane went missing.
00:36:41
Speaker
And there's a one-year commemoration of the disappearance in Kuala Lumpur that's held by the loved ones of the passengers.
00:36:49
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:36:50
Speaker
It's supposed to be like collective grieving, but also like a way to pressure the Malaysian government to continue to provide explanation or continue investigations.
00:37:01
Speaker
Hundreds of people were present, many from China.
00:37:04
Speaker
It's kind of rough to watch this documentary, man.
00:37:05
Speaker
They have all these like
00:37:06
Speaker
videos of people like crying a lot and being super upset that the government is like lying obviously you know it's rough to watch it really just like it hits you in your heart but grace who i mentioned earlier her name is grace subteray not then south indian gal she was one of the main speakers at this event how this connects to blaine is that he just shows up at this event uninvited
00:37:32
Speaker
Blame.
00:37:34
Speaker
So Grace, she's also a lawyer.
00:37:36
Speaker
She's a criminal.
00:37:37
Speaker
This is very cool, actually.
00:37:38
Speaker
When I found this out, I was like, she's a badass.
00:37:40
Speaker
She's a criminal defense lawyer that specializes in death penalty cases, which are like very, very common in Malaysia because they have intense death penalty laws.
00:37:50
Speaker
But she has been pretty much like the representative of all of the like loved ones of the Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 because she just like
00:37:58
Speaker
She's a lawyer and a public speaker and like she was at this event and she was wearing this t-shirt that basically they have this campaign that's called like the Search On campaign that's like pressurizing the government to like
00:38:10
Speaker
keep investigating and also to provide an explanation.
00:38:13
Speaker
So she talks about her mom, the love that she felt for her mom and how it was like really difficult after the disappearance.
00:38:21
Speaker
In the documentary, it's actually really sad.
00:38:23
Speaker
She like, it's like the last time I talked to my mom, I like told her, we told each other that we loved each other, which was strange because we never actually like would do that.
00:38:31
Speaker
Like it's not really normal in our culture, but that was the last thing that I said to her.
00:38:38
Speaker
But Blaine, like, after she did this speech, like, approached her and asked her whether she would accept a hug from a stranger.
00:38:47
Speaker
And she said that she would, and they became friends.
00:38:50
Speaker
And then he left this event basically being like, they're not searching coastal areas for floating debris, but I'm going to search the coastal areas for floating debris.
00:39:00
Speaker
So he starts doing that at this point.
00:39:02
Speaker
The Indian Ocean hits 10,000 miles of coastline.
00:39:06
Speaker
That's a lot.
00:39:07
Speaker
That's a lot.
00:39:08
Speaker
He has absolutely no plan.
00:39:10
Speaker
He's just like, I'm just going to go places I haven't been before and then I'm going to ask the villagers where things drift to the shore and go look.
00:39:18
Speaker
Wow.
00:39:21
Speaker
He has nothing but time.
00:39:22
Speaker
He's amassed all his money from like
00:39:25
Speaker
capitalist Russia or something and then he has his like mom's inheritance I don't know so July 2015 it's like 16 months after the plane went missing there's a beach cleanup on the French island of Reunion and they come upon the first piece of debris that is then confirmed to be from the plane so where's the map there it is that's the island
00:39:54
Speaker
So it's like... Far away.
00:39:55
Speaker
It's far.
00:39:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:56
Speaker
It's like close to Africa.
00:39:58
Speaker
But this is a projection, right?
00:40:00
Speaker
No, this is where they found it.
00:40:02
Speaker
No, no, no.
00:40:02
Speaker
This pathway.
00:40:03
Speaker
Yes, yeah, yeah, yes.
00:40:04
Speaker
Pathway.
00:40:04
Speaker
Yes, this is a pathway.
00:40:05
Speaker
And I mean, also it's been...
00:40:08
Speaker
16 months, you know?
00:40:09
Speaker
So like drift.
00:40:10
Speaker
Okay, yes, yes.
00:40:11
Speaker
Just seems like a big space.
00:40:12
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I mean, it is.
00:40:14
Speaker
So a foreman who was a part of the beach cleanup, his name was Johnny Baig, found it and then he like let these like radio stations know and then they eventually determined that it was part of a Boeing 7-7, which they then identified it was like a part of the wing and then they found a serial number on it that basically showed that it was from MH370.
00:40:34
Speaker
So they like
00:40:35
Speaker
confirmed that it was from that flight.
00:40:38
Speaker
In the documentary, they also talk about how the way that the flap around was found meant that someone was controlling the aircraft and that it wasn't just like flying willy nilly on its own because the flaps were down, which meant that someone did that.
00:40:57
Speaker
essentially, which is weird because this evidence says that the flight didn't enter the water at a high speed and that it entered at a low speed, although like the other satellite data kind of shows otherwise.
00:41:09
Speaker
This is like there kind of throughout all of this evidence.
00:41:12
Speaker
It's like some of this indicates this and some of it indicates something that's completely the opposite of it, which is why this case is like so aggravating because it's like nothing points to one thing in particular.
00:41:25
Speaker
There's always like holes.
00:41:27
Speaker
in the things that they're saying because there's just not enough information but this is also the first point where they like find proof that a crash happened so like you know all the family members are like feeling like a second wave of grief because like up until this point like there's a possibility that like their family members could be alive but like this kind of proves that the plane did crash and
00:41:52
Speaker
So it proves death.
00:41:53
Speaker
So there's these oceanographers, one of whom is named, they call him Professor Chari in the documentary, but his name is Charita Patiarachi at the University of Western Australia in Perth.
00:42:06
Speaker
And then a different oceanographer, David Griffin, who works at the Government Research Center.
00:42:11
Speaker
They were consulting with the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.
00:42:16
Speaker
And they basically were like the people who are analyzing, doing this like drift
00:42:20
Speaker
analysis.
00:42:21
Speaker
David Griffin created a model that basically showed like how it could have ended up on that island of reunion.
00:42:30
Speaker
And then this helped to narrow the search area.
00:42:34
Speaker
And he also provided Blaine with other places that the debris might show up saying that it might show up in Madagascar or Mozambique.
00:42:43
Speaker
Blaine's like, I've never been to Mozambique.
00:42:45
Speaker
So let me go to Mozambique.
00:42:46
Speaker
I've already been to Madagascar.
00:42:48
Speaker
Okay, cool.
00:42:49
Speaker
Okay.
00:42:53
Speaker
Also, though, he's doing, like, a lot more than the Malaysian government is, so... That's real.
00:42:57
Speaker
There's that.
00:42:58
Speaker
He's kind of got body moving energy.
00:43:01
Speaker
Yeah, he's like... Don't fuck with cats.
00:43:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:43:03
Speaker
Well, I haven't seen that, because... What?
00:43:05
Speaker
I can't watch it, because it has animals being hurt in it.
00:43:10
Speaker
I mean... They don't show all that.
00:43:11
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:43:12
Speaker
Well, maybe I'll watch it then.
00:43:13
Speaker
They're very brief clips, and it's easy to pass them up.
00:43:17
Speaker
Okay.
00:43:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:18
Speaker
Okay.
00:43:20
Speaker
So...
00:43:22
Speaker
It's February of 2016.
00:43:25
Speaker
Blaine goes to Mozambique and he is like on a coastal area.
00:43:33
Speaker
He's talking to fishermen and he's asking them like, where would like stuff from the ocean wash up?
00:43:39
Speaker
And he's told if this like sand bank.
00:43:42
Speaker
And he goes there with this boatman named Suleiman.
00:43:45
Speaker
And they're both there together.
00:43:47
Speaker
They're searching.
00:43:48
Speaker
Mostly it's just like plastic that they find.
00:43:51
Speaker
And then Suleiman's like, hey, I think I found something.
00:43:56
Speaker
And it's like this triangular piece of metal that looks like it has like a honeycomb structure.
00:44:03
Speaker
And it has the words no step on it.
00:44:07
Speaker
He's talking about it in the documentary and he's like,
00:44:10
Speaker
I initially wouldn't have thought that this is from the plane, but I'd seen no step like on other airplanes before because it's like written on some part of the airplane.
00:44:21
Speaker
He wasn't sure whether it was from Malaysian Airlines, but on their way back from the sandbank, he saw two dolphins and he like associates dolphins with his mom.
00:44:32
Speaker
So he was like, oh, it's a sign that it's like
00:44:35
Speaker
Which, you know, that's neither here nor there.
00:44:37
Speaker
You know, this man just has a bunch of unprocessed grief and he said, I'm out.
00:44:41
Speaker
I'm going to spend all of this energy on this Malaysian Airlines flight.
00:44:45
Speaker
Because I want to help these other people with their grief.
00:44:48
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:44:50
Speaker
Exactly.
00:44:51
Speaker
We got you, Blaine.
00:44:54
Speaker
Gotcha.
00:44:56
Speaker
Do what you gotta do to you.
00:44:57
Speaker
Exactly.
00:44:58
Speaker
Exactly.
00:45:00
Speaker
But it did end up being from Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.
00:45:04
Speaker
So that was the second piece of debris that was found.
00:45:06
Speaker
Okay.
00:45:07
Speaker
And then a month later, he went to Kuala Lumpur for the second year commemoration of the flight going missing.
00:45:13
Speaker
And at this point, family members, they're a fan of him.
00:45:17
Speaker
They're like, you're helping us out, you know.
00:45:19
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:45:20
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:45:21
Speaker
We appreciate it.
00:45:22
Speaker
A few months later on the northeast shore of Madagascar, lots more pieces were found.
00:45:28
Speaker
To quote this article, there were several dozen pieces that have been identified as certain or likely from Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.
00:45:38
Speaker
And Gibson Blaine has been responsible for finding roughly a third of them.
00:45:43
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:45:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:45
Speaker
So yeah, yeah.
00:45:47
Speaker
Grace at one point in the documentary was like, I was questioning it.
00:45:51
Speaker
There were so many conspiracy theories popping up that people were planting the debris and that he was pretending to find it.
00:45:57
Speaker
But she like knows him.
00:45:59
Speaker
They're like friends.
00:46:00
Speaker
They've reached out and they like do work together now.
00:46:04
Speaker
So basically like finding debris, like it's
00:46:08
Speaker
Yes, it provides some amount of information, but what they were trying to do with the debris is work backwards to figure out, okay, where did the plane enter the ocean based on where the debris ended up?
00:46:21
Speaker
But no one was able to work that out regardless of the debris that they found.
00:46:25
Speaker
However, what the debris and where it was found does confirm is that the satellite signal analysis was correct, that the plane was flying for six hours, and that
00:46:37
Speaker
it was not brought to an end with like control.
00:46:42
Speaker
So there was three investigations.
00:46:45
Speaker
that was done that were like official investigations surrounding a Malaysian Airlines flight.
00:46:51
Speaker
The one that I've been talking about up until now is the largest, most rigorous, most expensive one that was done.
00:46:58
Speaker
And it was led by the Australians and it was an advanced underwater search effort.
00:47:03
Speaker
And the focus was locating debris to retrieve flight data and cockpit voice recorders.
00:47:11
Speaker
And within this investigation, they looked at aircraft performance, radar, satellite records, oceanic drift, statistical analysis of various things, and then physical examination of the debris that Blaine found.
00:47:26
Speaker
Also, like I mentioned before, this required maritime operations information.
00:47:31
Speaker
in some of the world's roughest seas, the Indian Ocean, which is one of the most deadly in the world.
00:47:38
Speaker
It counts for one quarter of the world's water or something.
00:47:44
Speaker
Jesus.
00:47:45
Speaker
Which is a lot.
00:47:46
Speaker
And because of its climate, it's very susceptible to typhoons, tsunamis, storms, and accounts for majority of shipping disasters.
00:47:55
Speaker
One cool thing is that, you know, like we talk about in like other episodes, specifically the Elisa Lam one, how there's like all these like internet sleuths, right?
00:48:04
Speaker
And like, I wouldn't say that there's internet sleuths that are part of this, but there's definitely like a lot of people who like tried to engage with this investigation to try to help.
00:48:16
Speaker
And so as part of this investigation, there were
00:48:19
Speaker
volunteers and scientists who actually found each other on the internet and they called themselves the independent group and they were actually so helpful that their work was taken into account by the Australians in their investigation and they were formally thanked for the help that they provided.
00:48:37
Speaker
Internet snooze are not always bad.
00:48:40
Speaker
I mean, I think a lot of internet snooze are not bad at all.
00:48:43
Speaker
They do way more than law enforcement.
00:48:44
Speaker
You're right.
00:48:45
Speaker
I mean, like Blaine's doing a lot.
00:48:46
Speaker
Blaine's doing a lot.
00:48:47
Speaker
This independent group is doing a lot.
00:48:49
Speaker
It reminds me a little bit of... It's like crowdsourcing, you know?
00:48:53
Speaker
Well, for sure.
00:48:53
Speaker
And especially in this case, you require a lot of people that know really niche-specific information.
00:48:59
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:49:00
Speaker
I mean, it goes to show that if we really had the drive...
00:49:04
Speaker
There's so much that we could do to fucking change the world.
00:49:09
Speaker
But anyway, it does remind me of, I don't think we talked about it on an episode.
00:49:14
Speaker
I think we talked about it on Instagram Live.
00:49:16
Speaker
But there's a group of volunteer scientists that are forensic scientists, and they specifically are...
00:49:24
Speaker
Trying to identify, like, bodies that don't have, like, an identity signature or whatever, you know?
00:49:31
Speaker
Uh-huh, uh-huh.
00:49:32
Speaker
Like, they don't know who it is.
00:49:33
Speaker
Right, right, right.
00:49:33
Speaker
Jane Doe's and John Doe's.
00:49:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:49:35
Speaker
Right?
00:49:35
Speaker
And that's who was able to connect the Green River Killer to some...
00:49:40
Speaker
some skeletons that were found but never really tied.
00:49:43
Speaker
And, like, the reason that the Golden State Killer was identified was because of a journalist who did tons of research on it.
00:49:50
Speaker
RIP to her.
00:49:51
Speaker
Damn.
00:49:53
Speaker
Her story is sad.
00:49:54
Speaker
It is sad.
00:49:55
Speaker
But I'll Be Gone in the Dark.
00:49:57
Speaker
TV show slash book.
00:49:59
Speaker
Yes.
00:49:59
Speaker
Worth reading and then worth watching the TV show.
00:50:02
Speaker
Exactly.
00:50:02
Speaker
Okay.
00:50:04
Speaker
So regardless of like this massive search effort, after three years and $160 million spent, they closed the investigation after pretty much finding absolutely nothing except for this debris.
00:50:19
Speaker
And like, you know, all the information I've shared up until now, they figured all of that out, but that doesn't give
00:50:25
Speaker
anyone, any information into what happened or why or where the plane actually is.
00:50:30
Speaker
Why did they close the case?
00:50:33
Speaker
I don't know.
00:50:33
Speaker
They were just like, we spent three years doing this.
00:50:36
Speaker
We spent this much money.
00:50:37
Speaker
We don't have any more space to do this.
00:50:40
Speaker
You know, they were kind of just like, we're done at this point.
00:50:44
Speaker
Okay, but okay, whatever.
00:50:46
Speaker
So obviously family members are like pissed about it.
00:50:49
Speaker
So they actually continued to work with Blaine to raise awareness about like where debris might show up and they would like go to different places to be like, hey, this is what like fuselage from a plane or whatever, you know, like parts of a plane look like.
00:51:04
Speaker
And if you find it, contact this person XYZ.
00:51:07
Speaker
So one of the people that was interviewed in the documentary, her name is Yakita Gonzalez.
00:51:12
Speaker
And she was the wife of someone named Patrick, who was in charge of the cabin crew.
00:51:17
Speaker
It was rough to watch her interviews because she was obviously real, real, real sad.
00:51:22
Speaker
And when she said that they found out that the plane was probably somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean, she was like...
00:51:28
Speaker
Damn, what the fuck?
00:51:49
Speaker
Oh, man.
00:51:51
Speaker
Then there was another person that they were interviewing in the documentary.
00:51:55
Speaker
He's this French dude.
00:51:56
Speaker
His name is, I'm probably not going to pronounce it correctly, Gisleon Waterloss.
00:52:02
Speaker
But he lost his wife, son, and his daughter.
00:52:04
Speaker
They were all on the plane.
00:52:06
Speaker
His entire family was on the plane.
00:52:09
Speaker
But he says, so this is, you're like asking, like, why do they close the investigation?
00:52:14
Speaker
He said, it's a big story.
00:52:16
Speaker
It's a dirty story.
00:52:17
Speaker
At least it involves many different countries.
00:52:19
Speaker
I strongly believe the plane was shut down.
00:52:22
Speaker
Basically, like, at this point, like, conspiracy theories are really, like, going wild because the government is, like, being sketchy.
00:52:32
Speaker
There's, like, no information that's, like, actually conclusive.
00:52:36
Speaker
So, like, it's, like, a breeding ground for that.
00:52:40
Speaker
And these people are trying to find meaning and find answers.
00:52:43
Speaker
Also...
00:52:45
Speaker
Blaine was starting to worry that there was people that didn't want the plane to be found because he starts, like, getting death threats on the internet and via text.
00:52:56
Speaker
And he was being accused of being exploitative, being a fraud, being a Russian agent, which, like...
00:53:02
Speaker
connects to basically like his ties from making money in Russia, a publicity hound, like a spy, basically.
00:53:10
Speaker
The Atlantic author interviewed him and said that he actually received tons of hate on Twitter and that he's like traumatized because of it.
00:53:20
Speaker
He, one time a person called his friend when he was in Madagascar and told his friend that he wouldn't be leaving Madagascar unless it was like in a coffin.
00:53:30
Speaker
He felt like he was being followed and photographed.
00:53:33
Speaker
Oh, no.
00:53:34
Speaker
Jesus Christ.
00:53:36
Speaker
And so then he had this system set up where basically if he would find debris, he would let a liaison person from Malaysia know, and they would come pick up the debris and take it back to Malaysia.
00:53:48
Speaker
And in 2017, the person who was in charge of transporting debris from Madagascar to Malaysia was shot down...
00:53:55
Speaker
In his car.
00:53:56
Speaker
What?
00:53:57
Speaker
By an unknown assassin on a motorcycle who was never caught.
00:54:01
Speaker
A different, like, there was a news account about it in France that said that it may have had nothing to do with Malaysian Airlines because this guy, like, had ties to, like, other kind of, like, crime things.
00:54:13
Speaker
But also there's still ongoing, like, that's an unsolved murder, basically, of, like, this person who was killed while trying to transport debris.
00:54:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:24
Speaker
Bro, what the fuck?
00:54:26
Speaker
This is an update.
00:54:26
Speaker
Obviously, conspiracy theories are going to come out of this because, like, this shit's wild.
00:54:30
Speaker
Yes.
00:54:31
Speaker
It's wild.
00:54:32
Speaker
But because of all of that, Blaine now avoids disclosing his plans online.
00:54:38
Speaker
He avoids email.
00:54:39
Speaker
He avoids telephone.
00:54:40
Speaker
He, like, only uses encrypted software to communicate.
00:54:43
Speaker
And he, like, swaps out his SIM cards really often because he's just, like, really paranoid.
00:54:48
Speaker
For valid reasons, you know?
00:54:49
Speaker
For valid reasons.
00:54:50
Speaker
So...
00:54:51
Speaker
That's like one huge main part of the investigation that was like searching for where the fuck is this plane.
00:54:59
Speaker
There's also investigation that was happening parallel that was being done by the Malaysian police that was looking into the background of everyone who was on the plane.
00:55:09
Speaker
Makes sense.
00:55:10
Speaker
Okay.
00:55:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:12
Speaker
So they were doing background checks of everyone and their contacts and
00:55:17
Speaker
From this Atlantic article, they believe that a lot of these reports still remain classified information and that a lot of the information that they found is being withheld by Malaysian investigators, mostly information regarding the captain, which I will get to later.
00:55:34
Speaker
But at the time that this investigation is happening, I already kind of talked about this.
00:55:38
Speaker
The prime minister of Malaysia was known to be
00:55:40
Speaker
Very corrupt and that the press was very censored.
00:55:43
Speaker
Oftentimes people who they identified as, quote, troublemakers would disappear or would be arrested.
00:55:53
Speaker
You know, just that kind of thing.
00:55:54
Speaker
Very autocratic government.
00:55:55
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:55:56
Speaker
It was also, like, kind of obvious that certain avenues for investigation were just, like, not pursued that would make Malaysia Airlines or the government look bad.
00:56:06
Speaker
There was, like, a whole situation, which felt very racist to me, where they found out that two Iranian men boarded the flight with fake passports, and they were like, they are terrorists.
00:56:19
Speaker
Okay.
00:56:19
Speaker
It actually turned out that they were just asylum seekers and students trying to go to Germany.
00:56:26
Speaker
So...
00:56:26
Speaker
That was the whole thing at one point where I was like, wow, racist as fuck.
00:56:30
Speaker
They were like seeing political asylum in Germany.
00:56:34
Speaker
That investigation, they said every single passenger and crew member has been thoroughly investigated and cleared of any suspicion by the Malaysian Chinese investigators aided by the FBI.
00:56:44
Speaker
That is not 100% true, but I will come back to that later.
00:56:48
Speaker
Okay.
00:56:49
Speaker
There's so much here.
00:56:50
Speaker
There's so much here.
00:56:51
Speaker
There's so much here.
00:56:52
Speaker
So continuing on...
00:56:54
Speaker
After all the failed searches for the plane that happened, in January of 2018, the Malaysian government contracted this U.S. private exploration company known as Ocean Infinity to find the plane on what's known as a no-find-no-fee basis, which means that they won't get paid unless they find the plane.
00:57:15
Speaker
And so they just do it on their own dollar.
00:57:18
Speaker
The Ocean Infinity company takes on all of the costs of the search.
00:57:21
Speaker
And they're not going to get paid unless they find the plane.
00:57:23
Speaker
So there's like a high incentive to find it because they're not going to get paid unless they do.
00:57:29
Speaker
Yes.
00:57:29
Speaker
So they were initially given a 90-day deadline to search.
00:57:32
Speaker
And this is like a really, it's like a private company that has a lot of really intense...
00:57:37
Speaker
technology so they have tons of advanced underwater surveillance like a lot of the stuff that they have is like not manned like submarine like robots that go searching for stuff kind of like what they use for the titanic i think at one point they're searching with these like unmanned robots they have all this really intense technology they're searching an area that's 112 000 kilometers squared
00:58:00
Speaker
It's a large area.
00:58:02
Speaker
And they were initially given a 90-day deadline.
00:58:04
Speaker
It was then extended.
00:58:05
Speaker
138 days later, they ended the search because they didn't find anything.
00:58:14
Speaker
And then a representative from the Malaysian government said, we cannot keep on searching for something that we cannot find.
00:58:20
Speaker
So at this point, they're also like thinking like maybe the pilot landed the flight, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense because why the fuck would they find debris that's confirmed to be on a plane if the flight was landed?
00:58:31
Speaker
Right.
00:58:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:32
Speaker
Unless, I don't know.
00:58:34
Speaker
Unless it's, like, being planted there or something, you know?
00:58:36
Speaker
I mean, or the water's super choppy.
00:58:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:38
Speaker
Like, did they... Did parts of the plane, like, you know, I don't know.
00:58:42
Speaker
I don't know.
00:58:43
Speaker
Like, I am confused about the motive.
00:58:47
Speaker
Right.
00:58:47
Speaker
You know?
00:58:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:48
Speaker
But, like, I don't know.
00:58:51
Speaker
they for some reason landed in the middle of the indian ocean and something was going on and people were killed or yeah have you just leaving the plane there would it have just fallen apart yeah yeah i don't know
00:59:07
Speaker
I don't know.
00:59:08
Speaker
So then that what I just talked about was like the Malaysian police's like investigation.
00:59:15
Speaker
Then there was like a third official investigation that was called the accident inquiry.
00:59:22
Speaker
And the focus of that was to find out the cause.
00:59:25
Speaker
And this was like completed by a team.
00:59:29
Speaker
An international team.
00:59:31
Speaker
And it was supposed to be like of the highest of standards.
00:59:34
Speaker
It was led by a working group that the Malaysian government assembled, but it was an absolute mess from the beginning.
00:59:40
Speaker
The police and military in Malaysia hated this group.
00:59:43
Speaker
The government ministers for some reason saw it as a risk.
00:59:47
Speaker
And then the foreign specialists who were asked to help out to be a part of this group found it really, really hard to do so because they were just like facing all of this like withheld information, resistance.
00:59:58
Speaker
So there's this such a thing called like Annex.
01:00:01
Speaker
Annex 13, it is aircraft accident and incident investigation international standards, basically.
01:00:09
Speaker
Like, so if something goes wrong, these are like the standards at which like investigations should occur internationally.
01:00:17
Speaker
It's tailored for investigations that happen within confident democracies, is what it says.
01:00:26
Speaker
But in countries like Malaysia that have really insecure and autocratic systems of bureaucracy...
01:00:34
Speaker
So the airline is like owned by the government is seen as a matter of like national prestige.
01:00:42
Speaker
They're like reputation as a country is kind of like tied to it.
01:00:46
Speaker
So they have a lot of like ulterior motives to like not let the truth come out because they're I guess their country's ego like relies on it or whatever the fuck.
01:00:58
Speaker
Okay.
01:01:22
Speaker
That would be embarrassing.
01:01:24
Speaker
Were they covering up?
01:01:25
Speaker
Yes, they were covering up for the unknown.
01:01:28
Speaker
So it's not like they were covering up because they knew what happened.
01:01:31
Speaker
It was like they were covering up because they didn't know what happened and it would make them seem like incompetent or like...
01:01:38
Speaker
You know what I mean?
01:01:40
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:41
Speaker
So this is absolutely infuriating.
01:01:43
Speaker
But July 2018, so this is more than four years after the plane has gone missing, this particular investigation ended with the accident inquiry team producing a 495-page report.
01:01:59
Speaker
report that was supposed to be in line with Annex 13 requirements, but mostly had just been like tons of information that was lifted from Boeing manuals about Boeing 777s.
01:02:12
Speaker
There was like nothing in the report that was of technical value because they said that the Australian publications had already did that.
01:02:19
Speaker
And literally, even though it's like almost 500 pages long, it said absolutely nothing other than the fact that like there were some failures on part of that air traffic control that they ended up blaming on the Vietnamese air traffic control.
01:02:33
Speaker
And in summary, they said they had no idea what happened.
01:02:36
Speaker
In the documentary, one of the family members was like, so pretty much four years later, we were like excited to get this report.
01:02:43
Speaker
And there is absolutely no new information than what we knew, like right when the plane went missing.
01:02:52
Speaker
oh my god um we just went on a whole journey right so they say we're unable to determine with any certainty the reasons that the aircraft diverted from its original flight path and they cleared the crew and pilot of any wrongdoing because they said there was no evidence to support
01:03:15
Speaker
But we're going to move on.
01:03:18
Speaker
This is not a mini-sode, bro.
01:03:20
Speaker
It's not, but you know, here we are.
01:03:23
Speaker
Here we are.
01:03:24
Speaker
We're here.
01:03:24
Speaker
You're my sounding board.
01:03:27
Speaker
It's a soad.
01:03:28
Speaker
It's a soad.
01:03:30
Speaker
So now we're going to get into theories.
01:03:33
Speaker
So let's summarize what we know for sure at this point, because there's a lot of stuff that we don't know.
01:03:39
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:03:40
Speaker
For sure we know that the plane did not catch fire.
01:03:43
Speaker
It did not become a ghost flight, which means that everyone on board was dead and it was just flying on its own.
01:03:49
Speaker
It was not shot down.
01:03:50
Speaker
It was not landed in some like random secret location.
01:03:54
Speaker
And it's not, it was not in the South China Sea.
01:03:57
Speaker
We also know that it was like a normal flight for the first like 40 minutes and it disappeared two minutes after the captain said goodnight.
01:04:06
Speaker
Then it turned left, turned backwards and that the military radar showed that it was flying across Northern Malaysia, turned right, went upwards and then it disappeared off the military radar and that it probably turned back South.
01:04:21
Speaker
We have no idea why that happened.
01:04:23
Speaker
We also know that it was intentional and it wasn't a computer glitch or like a lightning strike, a bird strike, like anything that like wasn't planned that way.
01:04:33
Speaker
And we also know that it wasn't someone took control of the plane remotely.
01:04:37
Speaker
It like happened within the cockpit of the plane, like someone on board the plane.
01:04:42
Speaker
Did this.
01:05:05
Speaker
One of the pilots was either incapacitated, locked out of the cockpit, or dead.
01:05:11
Speaker
So one of the theories, it's called the hypoxia theory, and basically hypoxia is what happens when people don't get sufficient oxygen and you pretty much like, you start to feel like you're drunk or like kind of incapacitated.
01:05:24
Speaker
And then you like eventually die because you don't have enough oxygen.
01:05:28
Speaker
And so this is a theory that like the Australian government believes happened is that it was like an accident and that for some reason there was a failure of the pressurized system in the plane and it resulted in hypoxia to the pilots.
01:05:45
Speaker
And then they like...
01:05:46
Speaker
turned the flight around because they thought that that's what they should do.
01:05:50
Speaker
But then, you know, at some point they like lost consciousness.
01:05:54
Speaker
And then like when you get hypoxia, you feel drunk, giddy, lightheaded.
01:05:59
Speaker
So they said maybe whoever was flying the flight changed the flight path because he could feel like something was wrong and that that was happening.
01:06:06
Speaker
But as soon as the plane kept flying, like after the flight,
01:06:10
Speaker
Pilot went unconscious.
01:06:11
Speaker
But, like, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me because if they thought that something was actually wrong, they would tell someone, right?
01:06:17
Speaker
They wouldn't turn off all of the communication and turn off all the radar.
01:06:22
Speaker
You would want to make sure that people knew that something was wrong, especially if you're, like, you know, trying to do something like that.
01:06:28
Speaker
Where are the, like, is there, like, any chance at all that they could pass out and hit the things that
01:06:34
Speaker
I have no idea, but I feel like, dude, he's been flying like 18,000 hours or some shit, you know?
01:06:40
Speaker
That's true.
01:06:41
Speaker
Like, he knows what the fuck he's doing, and I'm sure he's been in situations that are, like, stressful before, or at least, like.
01:06:49
Speaker
In like trainings for situations like this.
01:06:53
Speaker
So that's... I guess I'm just thinking if their like brains are not right and they're just like... Still though, you know, like you would think that even if you start immediately feeling like something's off, you would let someone know.
01:07:04
Speaker
Let someone know, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:07:05
Speaker
But like literally two minutes before...
01:07:08
Speaker
He was like, good night.
01:07:09
Speaker
And then they just disappear.
01:07:11
Speaker
Yes.
01:07:11
Speaker
It feels so intentional.
01:07:13
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:13
Speaker
You know, and they are saying they were saying incomplete.
01:07:16
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:17
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:17
Speaker
We're doing things that like seemed off and not standard procedure.
01:07:21
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:21
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:21
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:22
Speaker
Now I'm going to share like some stupid fucking conspiracy theories that are probably not real.
01:07:27
Speaker
And, like, we'll just, like, remember back to, like, the first psychedelic nightmare episode where Shana tells us about conspiracy beliefs and conspiracy theories and how, like, these just, like, come out of situations of uncertainty because there's a lack of answers being provided by official investigators and people are bound to make their own conclusions even if they're not tracking with the actual evidence, like, the satellite data and stuff.
01:07:54
Speaker
This...
01:07:55
Speaker
author who's like from Harvard Cass Sunstein, who is this like author of this book, conspiracy theories and other dangerous ideas talks about how, when there's like a terrible event,
01:08:08
Speaker
People want an explanation.
01:08:10
Speaker
People are angry.
01:08:10
Speaker
People are scared.
01:08:11
Speaker
They lack a lot of information that probably contains the truth.
01:08:15
Speaker
So then they start coming up with their own theories.
01:08:18
Speaker
And because in this case also there's a lot of contradictory information, the government keeps changing their story.
01:08:25
Speaker
It's obvious that they're keeping things.
01:08:28
Speaker
It's hard to just kind of dispel conspiracy theories.
01:08:31
Speaker
So in that Atlantic article, he talks about a couple of weird theories.
01:08:35
Speaker
For example, there's this British woman named...
01:08:38
Speaker
I think this is her online name, Saucy Sailoress.
01:08:43
Speaker
Oh, okay.
01:08:45
Speaker
And she is a tarot reader.
01:08:49
Speaker
who travels around like South Asia in a boat with her husband and their dogs.
01:08:56
Speaker
Oh yeah, for sure.
01:08:57
Speaker
She's British.
01:08:58
Speaker
Um, she says the night of the disappearance of the plane, they were in the Andaman sea and she spotted what she thought was a missile.
01:09:06
Speaker
She then realized it was a plane.
01:09:08
Speaker
And then based on no information at all, she goes, it's a suicide mission against the Chinese Naval fleet.
01:09:14
Speaker
What?
01:09:15
Speaker
And then the next day, like, or whenever she finds out about the Malaysian Airlines flight, she's like, oh yeah, that's definitely what it was.
01:09:21
Speaker
That's her theory, based on nothing other than her intuition, I guess.
01:09:25
Speaker
Why in the fuck do white women believe that they have the wisdom of the fucking universe?
01:09:35
Speaker
It's a suicide mission against a Chinese naval fleet.
01:09:38
Speaker
She came out and she said this on the internet.
01:09:40
Speaker
Yeah.
01:09:41
Speaker
Saucy sailor.
01:09:41
Speaker
I just...
01:09:42
Speaker
Saucy sailor-esque.
01:09:44
Speaker
So, you know, sometimes you could just keep it to yourself.
01:09:47
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:09:47
Speaker
Saucy sailor-esque.
01:09:50
Speaker
Anyways.
01:09:51
Speaker
It costs absolutely zero dollars to just shut the fuck up.
01:09:57
Speaker
It's so infuriating because there are all these people who lost their families and she's just really coming out here with her spiritual ego to share what?
01:10:06
Speaker
For what?
01:10:07
Speaker
They're all literally grieving but in the worst way to grieve where you don't have any information and she's like, I know what happened.
01:10:16
Speaker
The way that if one of my loved ones disappeared on something like this and I saw this on the internet, the way I'd go in on Saucy.
01:10:21
Speaker
You're like, comment section.
01:10:24
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
01:10:24
Speaker
Like, Saucy, shut the fuck up.
01:10:27
Speaker
Saucy.
01:10:27
Speaker
Keep your opinions yourself.
01:10:30
Speaker
Maybe just tell your husband Saucy and leave it at that.
01:10:33
Speaker
Tell your diary.
01:10:34
Speaker
Tell your diary.
01:10:36
Speaker
My God.
01:10:38
Speaker
Yeah, the ego.
01:10:39
Speaker
Like, wow.
01:10:40
Speaker
Like, wow.
01:10:41
Speaker
Anyways, so then there's this other, there's this person in Australia who says she found the plane on Google Earth fully intact in shallow waters, but she refuses to disclose the location of where it is and is trying to crowdfund an expedition to go there.
01:10:57
Speaker
And I'm like, scam.
01:11:00
Speaker
Who is giving this person money?
01:11:01
Speaker
Who capitalizes on shit like this?
01:11:03
Speaker
If this person found the plane on Google Earth, then obviously other people could find it on Google Earth too.
01:11:09
Speaker
You know, some dumb shit.
01:11:12
Speaker
So other claims are that it's intact and in the Cambodian jungle.
01:11:17
Speaker
That it was seen landing in Indonesia.
01:11:20
Speaker
And then it obviously flew into a time warp, was abducted by aliens, was sucked into a black hole.
01:11:27
Speaker
None of these obviously have like any basis of anything other than the fact that people are just like, this is a weird story.
01:11:34
Speaker
So it's probably... That did not go where I expected it to go.
01:11:39
Speaker
What did you think I was going to say?
01:11:40
Speaker
I don't know.
01:11:41
Speaker
I have no idea.
01:11:42
Speaker
And then there's one that's, I guess, like slightly more realistic, which is that it was being flown to attack the American military base on Diego Garcia and got shot down.
01:11:54
Speaker
Okay.
01:11:55
Speaker
I'm unsure why it would be doing that, but... Why it's always have to come back to America.
01:11:59
Speaker
Right, yeah.
01:12:01
Speaker
Maybe it has something to do with, like, I feel like there's some, definitely some racist shit to do here where, like, both of the planes pilots are Muslim Malaysians, right?
01:12:12
Speaker
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
01:12:13
Speaker
They're like, must be terrorists.
01:12:15
Speaker
I hate it.
01:12:16
Speaker
I hate it here.
01:12:18
Speaker
Then there's like this weird online report in 2019 that said that the captain was alive in a Taiwanese hospital with amniac.
01:12:25
Speaker
Like, I don't even know who's coming up with this shit.
01:12:30
Speaker
This is really disrespectful, honestly.
01:12:32
Speaker
They've got nothing but time.
01:12:33
Speaker
Yeah, but it's so disrespectful.
01:12:35
Speaker
There's 239 people on this flight and we always talk about how every single person has so many people attached to them in their life, right?
01:12:43
Speaker
So this is like at least hundreds of people who are grieving and you're just like, because you have so much detachment from the actual event, you're just making up stories about it to like get attention.
01:12:54
Speaker
It's gross.
01:12:55
Speaker
Don't do that.
01:12:56
Speaker
You know, you can look into things, but like what gives you the authority to like be like, I know what happened based on what information.
01:13:04
Speaker
Just like giving people like false, weird hope, you know, because saying things like that makes people believe that their family members are still alive somewhere.
01:13:12
Speaker
Sure.
01:13:13
Speaker
Right.
01:13:13
Speaker
The soju got me a little tipsy.
01:13:15
Speaker
So, you know, that ADHD comes out.
01:13:18
Speaker
It's like, let's go on a tangent.
01:13:20
Speaker
And also I'm angry.
01:13:22
Speaker
This is like, okay.
01:13:23
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:24
Speaker
The reason why this case also, like, I'm like, I got to investigate it and I feel tied to it.
01:13:30
Speaker
You know, I grew up in Singapore and it gave me this newfound fear of flying because of what this happened.
01:13:38
Speaker
And then months after this, the Malaysia Airlines flight was shot down from Ukraine, which was not an unsolved case, but like...
01:13:45
Speaker
I literally was like, what the fuck?
01:13:47
Speaker
You know, this is scary.
01:13:48
Speaker
People just go on... Everyone's be going on planes, like, every single day.
01:13:53
Speaker
Like, it's a normal thing.
01:13:54
Speaker
You're just like, oh, I'm gonna go for a conference.
01:13:56
Speaker
Oh, I'm gonna go visit someone.
01:13:58
Speaker
Five hours is, like, actually not that long of a flight.
01:14:01
Speaker
It's so normal.
01:14:03
Speaker
You don't expect weird shit like this to happen.
01:14:06
Speaker
It's scary.
01:14:07
Speaker
Anyways.
01:14:09
Speaker
Anyways.
01:14:10
Speaker
So after the, like, I guess this like theory that the captain was alive, like went viral on the internet and then Malaysia was like super pissed about it and was like, this is not true.
01:14:21
Speaker
And then they found out that it came from a satire website.
01:14:25
Speaker
I hate it.
01:14:26
Speaker
People really need to be more critical in the things that they're reading on the internet.
01:14:30
Speaker
So Jeff Wise, who I mentioned earlier, but maybe I didn't say his name.
01:14:36
Speaker
He's written a lot about aviation disasters and mysteries.
01:14:39
Speaker
He had a theory that like somehow the plane might have been wrecked.
01:14:44
Speaker
reprogrammed to provide false data and that it actually went north to Kazakhstan instead of south because they knew that they would like be able to get this data later and they wanted to like throw investigators off.
01:14:56
Speaker
And he proposes that Russians might have stolen the airplane to create a distraction during the time where Crimea was being annexed.
01:15:08
Speaker
It's just super complicated.
01:15:09
Speaker
Wow, okay.
01:15:10
Speaker
I just can't even fathom that people are having this deep thinking.
01:15:16
Speaker
Like, oh, let's do this specific flight that's doing that to distract from this political event.
01:15:23
Speaker
Not to say like obviously that couldn't happen, but it's just like, but then obviously the hole in this theory is so then why is there a wreckage that's like showing up?
01:15:32
Speaker
And then Jeff Wise believes that Blaine is like an agent.
01:15:39
Speaker
Of the Russian government and he's planting the debris because he's the one that finds the most of it.
01:15:45
Speaker
Oh, wow.
01:15:45
Speaker
That's how.
01:15:46
Speaker
This is a movie.
01:15:48
Speaker
That's what I said.
01:15:51
Speaker
I said for real like, oh my God.
01:15:53
Speaker
But like just from watching Blaine in the documentary.
01:15:56
Speaker
And this is just based on, like, my vibe that I get from him.
01:15:59
Speaker
I really don't think that Blaine is an agent of the Russian government.
01:16:02
Speaker
I think that he was grieving his mom's death.
01:16:05
Speaker
He hyper-fixated on this case, and he wanted to help out when he could see that, like, the government and other authority figures were, like, not doing as much as they could.
01:16:15
Speaker
And his help is really appreciated by all the family members.
01:16:18
Speaker
So there is that.
01:16:20
Speaker
Anyways.
01:16:20
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:21
Speaker
I haven't shared a lot of information about the captain because there's a lot in this theory, because this is the main theory that I think a lot of people attach to.
01:16:32
Speaker
Captain Zahari Ahmad Shah, the 53-year-old who had 18,000 plus hours of flight experience, was the main perpetrator of this event.
01:16:45
Speaker
Okay.
01:16:47
Speaker
So evidence to back up this fact, the flight simulator that was at his house was analyzed and they found that one of the routes that he flew in that flight simulator was exactly the route that they found that the plane actually flew.
01:17:05
Speaker
And it's a weird route.
01:17:07
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:17:07
Speaker
You know?
01:17:10
Speaker
He was also the last person to speak on the radio.
01:17:13
Speaker
It's a highly unlikely route, so why would he practice it?
01:17:18
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:18
Speaker
So it suggests that it was something that he planned carefully.
01:17:21
Speaker
It was also done about a month before the flight even happened.
01:17:24
Speaker
Okay.
01:17:25
Speaker
People in the documentary that were talking about it and in the article were talking about it.
01:17:29
Speaker
He was testing how much fuel it would take to get there.
01:17:32
Speaker
He was seeing, like, where would the plane end up if it just flew for this long by itself like this.
01:17:39
Speaker
The fucked up thing about this theory is that this theory basically implies that he...
01:17:47
Speaker
kicked out his co-pilot he he said the co-pilot for some reason go check on the cabin he locked him out of the cockpit he depressurized the aircraft which means that all the passengers including the other co-pilot got hypoxic and then died within the course of 15 minutes it's like over 200 people this is this is when i get the chills because i'm just like
01:18:12
Speaker
It's like a giant flight of people that's just dead flying.
01:18:15
Speaker
Oh my god.
01:18:17
Speaker
Oh my god.
01:18:19
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:21
Speaker
I hate that.
01:18:21
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:22
Speaker
Yeah, I hate it too.
01:18:23
Speaker
An engineer who is part of that independent group from Boulder, he says that he believes the plane climbed to 40,000 feet.
01:18:31
Speaker
which is close to its limit, basically, and that during this time, passengers would have experienced being really pressed back into their seat and that he believes that it was accelerated to this level so that the depressurizing would happen faster and that everyone would die quickly.
01:18:49
Speaker
And this would have been the only way to, quote, subdue an unruly cabin in an airplane that was going to remain in flight for hours to come.
01:19:01
Speaker
And that the effect would have gone unnoticed, but for the sudden appearance of drop-down oxygen masks.
01:19:09
Speaker
But those oxygen masks are intended for use for 15 minutes so that the plane can descend to a point where they're not in that high of an altitude where they need it anymore.
01:19:21
Speaker
And they are at no value at all if you're just going to be cruising at 40,000 feet.
01:19:25
Speaker
So everyone in the cabin, including the crew and the co-pilot is what is assumed, would have been incapacitated within a couple of minutes, lost consciousness, and, quote, gently died without any choking or gasping for air.
01:19:39
Speaker
From this article, it's, quote, the scene would have been dimly lit by the emergency lights with dead belted into their seats.
01:19:47
Speaker
Why are they doing this?
01:19:49
Speaker
I know.
01:19:49
Speaker
Why are they doing this?
01:19:52
Speaker
Their faces nestled in worthless oxygen masks.
01:19:56
Speaker
Who wrote this?
01:19:58
Speaker
Why did they do that?
01:19:59
Speaker
The guy.
01:20:00
Speaker
The guy wrote it.
01:20:01
Speaker
Why did you do this?
01:20:03
Speaker
I didn't ask.
01:20:04
Speaker
Who asked?
01:20:05
Speaker
Nobody asked.
01:20:06
Speaker
I mean, somebody asked.
01:20:07
Speaker
Somebody asked.
01:20:08
Speaker
People were asking, but like this image.
01:20:10
Speaker
I'm just like, bro, unnecessary.
01:20:12
Speaker
Oh my God.
01:20:13
Speaker
The way that is so haunting.
01:20:14
Speaker
Right?
01:20:15
Speaker
For what?
01:20:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:20:16
Speaker
Oh my god.
01:20:18
Speaker
It's so scary.
01:20:19
Speaker
Compared to the cabin though, the cockpit has four pressurized oxygen masks that are linked to hours of oxygen supply.
01:20:27
Speaker
So whoever depressurized the plane would simply have to put one of those on and they would have been fine.
01:20:34
Speaker
1.37 a.m., an automatic condition report was not sent, which means that someone turned off this, like, notification from the cockpit.
01:20:43
Speaker
1.52 a.m., it passes Penang Island, which is where the pilot was born.
01:20:48
Speaker
Yes.
01:20:48
Speaker
So there's an assumption that he flew over there to kind of say goodbye to his, like, place of birth.
01:20:54
Speaker
And then there was a wide turn headed northwest.
01:20:58
Speaker
The first officer's cell phone registered with a tower below at this point, but there was no content.
01:21:03
Speaker
And then it seems like as it was flying through the Strait of Malacca that it was being hand flown because like the way that it was being flown, it couldn't have been just like cruising on autopilot.
01:21:16
Speaker
And then at 2.22 a.m., the Air Force radar picked up the last radar ping, and it was like northwest of Penang at this point.
01:21:24
Speaker
And then at 2.25 a.m., it seems like the satellite box returned to life, which means that someone turned the electrical system back on, and there's an assumption that by this point everyone on the plane would have died.
01:21:37
Speaker
And that it was, like, being pressurized again at this point.
01:21:40
Speaker
So that whoever's still alive on the plane could, like, do that.
01:21:46
Speaker
I'm never gonna get that image
Pilot's Role and Mental Health
01:21:48
Speaker
out of my head.
01:21:48
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sorry.
01:21:50
Speaker
I apologize.
01:21:51
Speaker
What the fuck, bro?
01:21:52
Speaker
This is why I said this is gonna give you chills.
01:21:54
Speaker
Because, like, it's just, like, the most eerie, creepy shit to think about.
01:21:58
Speaker
Just a plane that is filled with so many people.
01:22:01
Speaker
And they're just, like...
01:22:02
Speaker
They didn't even know what happened.
01:22:04
Speaker
It's like a couple minutes, you know?
01:22:06
Speaker
Yeah, they went to sleep.
01:22:07
Speaker
Yeah, they're just like, I'm passing out.
01:22:09
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:10
Speaker
And the person who... This is saying that this pilot did that, which is like a really huge accusation to say to someone, but it's saying that this person just was so disconnected from it that they were just sitting in the cockpit, did all of these things, not even thinking about the fact that everyone on the plane was dead as they're doing it.
01:22:29
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:30
Speaker
We'll get to why they think that he did this because there isn't just like a, oh, he did this without any motive at all.
01:22:37
Speaker
I've just never, that's never been an image that I've ever conjured up in my brain ever.
01:22:43
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:44
Speaker
A lot of people are like, how could this pilot murder hundreds of people, innocent people, just because he wanted to kill himself?
01:22:52
Speaker
But there's actually precedent of this happening before on other planes, which is also just terrifying.
01:22:58
Speaker
In 1997, there was a Silk Air captain, and Silk Air is a Singaporean airline.
01:23:03
Speaker
He disabled the black boxes of the Boeing 737 he was on and plunged the airplane into a river.
01:23:08
Speaker
1999, there was a Egypt Airlines flight.
01:23:12
Speaker
that deliberately crashed into the sea by its co-pilot off the coast of Long Island.
01:23:21
Speaker
Everyone on board died.
01:23:23
Speaker
Oh, what the fuck?
01:23:24
Speaker
There was another Mozambique Airlines flight with 27 people on it.
01:23:29
Speaker
Similar thing happened.
01:23:30
Speaker
And then about a year after, a German-winged Airbus crashed into the French Alps because of co-pilot.
01:23:38
Speaker
Are these all men?
01:23:39
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:40
Speaker
Probably.
01:23:40
Speaker
They are all men.
01:23:41
Speaker
What is it with men that makes them feel like, oh, I'm wanting to die, so I'm going to externalize all of that vitriol and everyone else is going to join me.
01:23:49
Speaker
Do you know how many ways that you can die by suicide that's not this?
01:23:54
Speaker
Oh my god.
01:23:55
Speaker
Like, that happened on the...
01:23:58
Speaker
The Aurora Bridge.
01:23:59
Speaker
Remember that story of the bus?
01:24:01
Speaker
The guy who shot the bus driver and then himself and then the whole bus just went off the bridge.
01:24:06
Speaker
Like what?
01:24:07
Speaker
And then all of those school shooters who decide, like what?
01:24:11
Speaker
There's something very uniquely male about this kind of...
01:24:17
Speaker
self-destructive behavior.
01:24:20
Speaker
If this is what happened, which it sounds most likely.
01:24:22
Speaker
Yeah.
01:24:23
Speaker
I'm just like, I'm sure he probably convinced himself that he was doing everyone a kindness.
01:24:29
Speaker
By giving them like an out in like a way where they didn't even have to think about it kind of thing.
01:24:35
Speaker
Yeah.
01:24:35
Speaker
Yeah.
01:24:36
Speaker
Well, so the reason why they don't think that it has anything to do with the co-pilot is because he was a lot younger and he actually had recently gotten engaged to be married with another Malaysia Airlines pilot.
01:24:46
Speaker
Damn, what the fuck?
01:24:47
Speaker
And he had no history of anything being, like, off about him at all.
01:24:51
Speaker
And it was going to be his last training flight before he, like, became official pilot.
01:24:55
Speaker
So, like, why, you know?
01:24:58
Speaker
However, even though they said that they found nothing in their investigation...
01:25:03
Speaker
against captain zahari and i just want to preface this by saying like some of his co-workers and family members like completely are like there was no way that this was him this goes completely against this character however the person who did this atlantic article did interview people that were close to him he did not name who they were because they didn't want to be named but he did interview people that were close to this person by the government he was portrayed very much as like a family man a good pilot with like all of these like
01:25:34
Speaker
Years of experience, but apparently there was stuff that was not told to the public about him.
01:25:40
Speaker
What the police report said was that the pilot and command's ability to handle stress at work was reported to be good.
01:25:47
Speaker
There was no known history of apathy, anxiety, or irritability.
01:25:51
Speaker
There were no significant changes in his lifestyle, interpersonal conflict, or family stresses.
01:25:55
Speaker
There were no behavioral signs of social isolation, changes of habit, or interest.
01:26:01
Speaker
On studying the CCTV footage on the day of the flight, there was no significant behavioral changes.
01:26:06
Speaker
They said all of this stuff, but... Okay.
01:26:10
Speaker
This is not actually true.
01:26:12
Speaker
A lot of people that the author of this Atlantic article spoke to said that he was often lonely and sad.
01:26:19
Speaker
That very soon before this flight happened, his wife had moved out of their house and was living in their second home.
01:26:29
Speaker
He admitted to his friends that he spent a lot of times pacing empty rooms.
01:26:36
Speaker
He was known to be a romantic and there were rumors that he had had a relationship with someone else who was married and had three children and that he would obsess over models that he met on the Internet or just like saw their stories.
01:26:49
Speaker
social media profiles and he would leave like kind of like suggestive flirtatious comments on their photos.
01:26:55
Speaker
He, it seemed like he was pretty detached from his like former life and that he used social media a lot and was like trying to like communicate with like women in this way on social media.
01:27:07
Speaker
And that there was a suspicion that he was clinically depressed.
01:27:09
Speaker
And like, I didn't look into this, but I've heard of it before of just like how pilots are like not allowed to have therapists or something like that.
01:27:17
Speaker
Cause they're going to lose their job.
01:27:19
Speaker
If they have therapists.
01:27:20
Speaker
Have you ever heard of that?
01:27:21
Speaker
I haven't for pilots, but I know that like for like, I don't know, the military, any job in the military, if there's any suggestion that you might need a therapist, they'll tell you.
01:27:35
Speaker
And he's like been in this job for years.
01:27:38
Speaker
Yeah.
01:27:40
Speaker
30 years, like, almost.
01:27:43
Speaker
And he lives in Malaysia, which is, like, a very, like, conservative country.
01:27:47
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:27:48
Speaker
He's a man.
01:27:49
Speaker
It just feels really dumb to me.
01:27:51
Speaker
I'm like, what?
01:27:53
Speaker
How does this make any sense?
01:27:54
Speaker
You would rather just, you would rather just, like, pretend that people are chilling and just they don't go to therapy and then they kill a hole?
01:28:03
Speaker
Oh my god.
01:28:06
Speaker
And then he flew this flight route on his flight simulator.
01:28:11
Speaker
And it's just interesting that the Malaysian investigators just like dismissed that.
01:28:15
Speaker
And they were talking about how like if this was a country that like actually wanted to find the truth, like maybe they would have like...
01:28:23
Speaker
actually portrayed what they found in this light.
01:28:26
Speaker
But because of the corrupt nature of the Malaysian government at the time, the omission of evidence kind of like makes sense.
01:28:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:28:34
Speaker
I mean, it would imply that they hired and sustained this person who clearly was not right.
01:28:41
Speaker
And Malaysia Airlines is an airline that's run by the government of Malaysia.
01:28:46
Speaker
So they would be the ones that are culpable for this.
01:28:48
Speaker
And actually, I was talking to my dad about it on the phone yesterday.
01:28:51
Speaker
And he said that, like, the family members never received, like, insurance money from the plane ever either.
01:28:57
Speaker
Which is, like...
01:28:59
Speaker
Which they would have had to do if, like, evidence like this, like, they officially found it, right?
01:29:04
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:29:04
Speaker
You know, like, they're trying to, like, avoid culpability so that they can avoid, like, financial damages being paid and shit.
01:29:12
Speaker
But there was, like, one thing about, like, some people were saying how, like, well, there was all of these other flight routes that he did on it as well, and it was just, like, a hobby of his that he, like, was on this flight simulator, so that's not obvious evidence that he did this.
01:29:25
Speaker
However, of all of the profiles of, like, flight routes that did...
01:29:29
Speaker
This one, the one that matched the path, was the only one that he didn't run as a continuous flight, which meant that he would take off with it, let the flight play out, but then he also would advance it manually at multiple stages.
01:29:45
Speaker
He would try different things with it.
01:29:47
Speaker
He was playing around with it a lot more than he played around with other routes, meaning that this particular route
01:29:55
Speaker
meant something more and he was trying to practice something with it or like see what happened with it more than the other routes that he was like playing with.
01:30:05
Speaker
Basically, they said in the article, given that there was nothing technical that Zahari could have learned by rehearsing the act on a game like Microsoft Consumer Product, this person suspects that the purpose of the simulator flight may have been to leave a breadcrumb trail to say goodbye.
01:30:20
Speaker
So also it was like a way...
01:30:22
Speaker
like a suicide note in some way of being like, I did this kind of thing.
01:30:28
Speaker
That's like a theory and assumption, but there's like no note that he left.
01:30:32
Speaker
So there's no way of knowing the reasoning if it was actually true.
01:30:37
Speaker
The author of the Atlantic article also met with one of his lifelong friends who was also captain of Boeing 777.
01:30:44
Speaker
And he did not name himself because he didn't want to get in trouble.
01:30:47
Speaker
But he said that even though he did not want to believe
01:30:51
Speaker
That this was true.
01:30:52
Speaker
He did believe that he was guilty and that he believed that he would have probably just told the first officer to go check something in the cabin and that he would have locked him out.
01:31:02
Speaker
He said Zahari's marriage was bad.
01:31:04
Speaker
In the past, he slept with some of the flight attendants.
01:31:07
Speaker
And so what?
01:31:08
Speaker
We all do.
01:31:10
Speaker
What?
01:31:10
Speaker
All right.
01:31:11
Speaker
I don't know why that's a necessary side comment.
01:31:13
Speaker
And so what?
01:31:13
Speaker
We all do.
01:31:14
Speaker
Okay.
01:31:15
Speaker
You're flying all over the world with these beautiful girls in the back.
01:31:21
Speaker
What's the relevance here?
01:31:22
Speaker
But his wife knew.
01:31:25
Speaker
So then he decides to kill a plane of like 200 people.
01:31:28
Speaker
But he says that his emotional state was not good at the point where he was flying a plane.
01:31:34
Speaker
But all of this info is absent from the official report.
01:31:38
Speaker
Yeah.
01:31:39
Speaker
And that seems intentional.
01:31:40
Speaker
Yeah.
01:31:41
Speaker
He either was like alive till the end or he could depressurize the plane again.
01:31:47
Speaker
There is like some analysis that shows that like we talked about earlier that the plane was unmanned because the way that it dived into the ocean, it didn't seem like it was man.
01:31:56
Speaker
But there's also other evidence that shows that it was still being controlled.
01:32:01
Speaker
Like I think it could go either way, you know, like either way, he's not alive anymore.
01:32:05
Speaker
Yeah.
01:32:06
Speaker
It says in the article, either way, some way along this, like the area that I showed you on that map, after the engines failed from lack of fuel, the airplane entered a vicious spiral dive with descent rates that ultimately may have exceeded 15,000 feet a minute.
01:32:22
Speaker
We know that the descent rate, as well as from Blaine Gibson's shattered debris, that the airplane disintegrated into confetti when it hit the water.
01:32:30
Speaker
Yeah.
01:32:30
Speaker
One more evidence piece that is the latest evidence because it came out in 2021 and it's very interesting actually.
01:32:38
Speaker
And I think it, it connects to this theory is from Dr. Malcolm Brenner, who's a human performance specialist.
01:32:47
Speaker
What does that mean?
01:32:49
Speaker
He like analyzes speech to pick up on things like a heart rate monitor would pick up that we wouldn't pick up with our ears.
01:32:59
Speaker
So,
01:33:00
Speaker
They actually played out the recording and the documentary a couple of times, and you can hear like a slight amount of stress in the captain's voice.
01:33:10
Speaker
But like when I mentioned in the beginning how he firstly said how they reached 35,000 feet when he didn't need to say that, the speech analysis...
01:33:19
Speaker
showed that the controller did not ask them to report when they reached 35,000 fees, but he reported that.
01:33:25
Speaker
He repeats it a second time seven minutes later.
01:33:27
Speaker
It's unusual for a Czech airman to demonstrate bad procedure like that, especially when he has like so many years of experience, you know?
01:33:35
Speaker
And then the computer analysis of the speech found that there was a significant difference from the like first statement to the final statement in terms of speaking rate to like how fast he was speaking.
01:33:47
Speaker
And if you listen to it, you can kind of hear, oh, he's speaking faster too.
01:33:50
Speaker
Like my friend was over and she was like, oh, he's speaking faster in that second one.
01:33:55
Speaker
Mm hmm.
01:33:55
Speaker
Mm hmm.
01:33:55
Speaker
And he's speaking faster in that last message than he is in any of the previous messages.
01:34:00
Speaker
And the last thing he said was goodnight?
01:34:02
Speaker
Last thing he said is goodnight, Malaysia Airlines 370.
01:34:04
Speaker
That's the last thing they ever heard from a plane.
01:34:07
Speaker
Chills.
01:34:08
Speaker
The combination of speaking fast and making errors like he did suggests that he...
01:34:13
Speaker
was distracted, stressed, something else was happening, and it adds weight that the captain was somehow involved.
01:34:19
Speaker
This theory talks about like, oh, a hijacker could have come into the cockpit.
01:34:24
Speaker
There's stuff about that theory though, where it's like the cockpit is like electrically bolted and surveilled by video feed.
01:34:33
Speaker
And if a hijacker was able to come in, they would still have had like some way to quickly inform someone that that had happened.
01:34:41
Speaker
There is a possibility that hijackers were invited into the cockpit, but still there could be like some signal indicating that the pilots were not okay.
01:34:49
Speaker
That was not happened.
01:34:50
Speaker
And there was like no distress signal that ever happened.
01:34:53
Speaker
There's also a theory of like possible storm.
01:34:55
Speaker
stowaways, but like hijacking and like terrorism, usually terrorist groups take accountability for that because it's for a specific purpose.
01:35:03
Speaker
Right.
01:35:04
Speaker
And no one has ever taken accountability for this.
01:35:06
Speaker
Yeah.
01:35:06
Speaker
Right.
01:35:07
Speaker
So like, what, what is the purpose?
01:35:08
Speaker
You know, anonymity is not consistent with like terrorist motives because they're doing it for a specific purpose.
01:35:15
Speaker
To evoke a sense of terror.
01:35:17
Speaker
Yeah.
01:35:17
Speaker
From them specifically.
01:35:19
Speaker
Yes.
01:35:19
Speaker
And no one ever took responsibility for this.
01:35:21
Speaker
So yeah.
01:35:22
Speaker
That doesn't track.
01:35:23
Speaker
But also, like, there's people saying Zahari's not a violent man.
01:35:27
Speaker
He's been flying for all of these years.
01:35:29
Speaker
He's not confrontational.
01:35:31
Speaker
All of this was very passive.
01:35:33
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
01:35:34
Speaker
Like, you know, he's someone who has spent so much of his life in a cockpit.
01:35:39
Speaker
He can dissociate from the fact that he's doing any of the stuff that he's doing.
01:35:43
Speaker
Yeah.
01:35:44
Speaker
It's very, very passive.
01:35:46
Speaker
Some like people are saying, I don't think Zahari has in it to do this.
01:35:49
Speaker
They interviewed his sister in the documentary.
01:35:52
Speaker
And she's just like, she says his nickname was Ari.
01:35:55
Speaker
He's a generous man.
01:35:57
Speaker
He has a passion for life, for family.
01:35:59
Speaker
I want the world to know he's a loving man who will stop at nothing to render help when it's needed.
01:36:04
Speaker
It's quite rough to have to come to terms with the fact that someone in your family did something like that, you know?
01:36:09
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:36:10
Speaker
Like, how are you going to... And like you said, it's just like a very passive act.
01:36:14
Speaker
Like, you don't have to confront what you're doing at all.
01:36:17
Speaker
At all.
01:36:17
Speaker
You don't have to look at it.
01:36:19
Speaker
And then it sounds like depressurizing the cabin.
01:36:21
Speaker
It's like pressing a button.
01:36:23
Speaker
Yeah.
01:36:25
Speaker
It's kind of like, you know, we talk about being in the military and engaging in violent acts.
01:36:29
Speaker
Like, you can be so detached from it.
01:36:31
Speaker
Yeah.
01:36:31
Speaker
Yeah.
01:36:32
Speaker
I'm also thinking about how, like, suicide is often a very impulsive act.
01:36:37
Speaker
Not always, clearly there is a plan.
01:36:40
Speaker
But, like, you know, when you're talking about the bridge or things where people are, like, jumping in front of things, those are very impulsive moments.
01:36:47
Speaker
Maybe they didn't plan for that.
01:36:49
Speaker
And, like, people who survive, typically they'll tell you, when I was falling, I realized I didn't want to die.
01:36:54
Speaker
And so, like...
01:36:57
Speaker
had this person been given the space to consider the act and the aftermath, there would be a different... He would feel differently about it.
01:37:08
Speaker
But in the moment, it was really easy to impulsively do that.
01:37:11
Speaker
Just press a button.
01:37:12
Speaker
Yeah.
01:37:13
Speaker
And then it's just like, it's done, so what are you going to do at that point?
01:37:16
Speaker
Yeah, and they're like, he was not aggressive.
01:37:17
Speaker
That wasn't aggressive.
01:37:18
Speaker
And I'm sure, like I said, I think he probably told himself this was the kindest way to let them go.
01:37:23
Speaker
Yeah.
01:37:23
Speaker
Yeah.
01:37:24
Speaker
Yeah.
01:37:25
Speaker
Yeah.
01:37:25
Speaker
And he was probably like, this was the chillest way he could die too.
01:37:28
Speaker
Right.
01:37:29
Speaker
Doing what he loved.
01:37:30
Speaker
And then also.
01:37:30
Speaker
And then he's like, it's definitely just going to be like a mystery because the plane is going to fall into the ocean in a part where it's really hard to find.
01:37:40
Speaker
I think that's the part of it that like makes everyone just like really like what the fuck because like they have found so little parts of the plane.
01:37:48
Speaker
And like, where is the plane?
01:37:50
Speaker
But we talked about that earlier.
01:37:51
Speaker
It's hard to find shit in the ocean.
01:37:52
Speaker
It's deep as fuck.
01:37:54
Speaker
In the area where there's no light?
01:37:56
Speaker
Yeah.
01:37:57
Speaker
No light has ever hit?
01:37:59
Speaker
And it was like, bam.
01:38:01
Speaker
It probably flew into so many different pieces, you know?
01:38:05
Speaker
Also... And now it's been 14 years.
01:38:07
Speaker
Those bodies are definitely decomposed.
01:38:09
Speaker
There's none of those bodies left.
01:38:11
Speaker
And probably parts of the plane.
01:38:13
Speaker
Remember, because we talked about the Titanic being like... Disintegrating because of the bacteria.
01:38:18
Speaker
Yes.
01:38:19
Speaker
At that like...
01:38:20
Speaker
that deep in the ocean.
01:38:21
Speaker
Yeah.
01:38:22
Speaker
So it's not implausible.
01:38:24
Speaker
No, it's not implausible at all because like we said it, I think in the Titanic episode, the ocean is very like unknown.
01:38:31
Speaker
And like he doesn't have to leave his family with the legacy of suicide.
01:38:35
Speaker
There's no confirmation.
01:38:36
Speaker
Yeah.
01:38:37
Speaker
Yeah.
01:38:37
Speaker
It's just unknown.
01:38:38
Speaker
So that's, that's the most likely theory.
01:38:41
Speaker
Some of his family members and people that they interviewed in the documentary, like totally don't agree with that.
01:38:46
Speaker
Okay.
01:38:47
Speaker
The Malaysia police and the Australian government say that it was like the hypoxia theory that it was an accident, but that, you know, we talked about how that doesn't really like track.
01:38:56
Speaker
Yeah.
01:38:58
Speaker
Hey everyone, this is Akshi.
01:39:01
Speaker
I am recording this while editing this episode about a month after we recorded.
01:39:10
Speaker
And I don't normally do this, but in typical unpacking the eerie fashion, a couple weeks after we recorded the episode, a article came out that said that they found new debris that
01:39:26
Speaker
from the airplane and i just felt like it was necessary to include that here so that y'all are up to date so the new piece of debris known as a trunnion door was found in the possession of a madagascan fisherman who had been keeping it in his yard and his wife had been using it as a washing board
01:39:48
Speaker
He had no idea what it was, but it was linked to the Malaysia Airlines flight.
01:39:53
Speaker
And this piece of debris suggested that the landing gear was down when the aircraft hit the ocean.
01:40:01
Speaker
And it's actually the first piece of material evidence that suggests that one of the pilots intended to destroy the aircraft.
01:40:08
Speaker
A fresh report published by Blaine Gibson and Richard Godfrey, who's a British engineer, says, quote, "...the level of damage with fractures on all sides and the extreme force of the penetration right through the debris item led to the conclusion that the end of the flight was in a high-speed dive designed to ensure the aircraft broke up into as many pieces as possible."
01:40:33
Speaker
The crash of MH370 was anything but a soft landing on the ocean.
01:40:39
Speaker
Another quote from this independent article states, The realistic possibility that the landing gear was lowered shows both an active pilot and an attempt to ensure the plane sank as fast as possible after impact.
01:40:54
Speaker
The combination of the high-speed impact designed to break up the aircraft and the extended landing gear designed to sink the aircraft
01:41:02
Speaker
As fast as possible, both show a clear intent to hide evidence of the crash.
01:41:08
Speaker
So you can see why I wanted to include that information following this theory, and you can do with that what you like, but I think it's wild that this info came out just right after we recorded this.
01:41:24
Speaker
this episode.
01:41:25
Speaker
Hopefully more stuff will keep coming out and there will be a continued effort to search for the plane.
Ambiguous Loss and Emotional Impact
01:41:32
Speaker
Okay, back to the episode.
01:41:35
Speaker
All in all though, this is like such a sad tragedy.
01:41:40
Speaker
You know, so many people passed away.
01:41:42
Speaker
Grace talks about in the documentary, she says, can you even begin to grieve when you don't even know what happened?
01:41:49
Speaker
I talk about my mom in the present tense.
01:41:52
Speaker
I refer to her as missing.
01:41:55
Speaker
And then there's this other person who is a sister of a passenger who said, I don't think there's any words to say how much I miss Kathy.
01:42:02
Speaker
I have a massive hole in my heart that no one can ever fill.
01:42:06
Speaker
And I was thinking about this and I learned about this term called ambiguous loss.
01:42:12
Speaker
And it's basically like a theory.
01:42:15
Speaker
I read this article that was about how to work with clients who have experienced ambiguous loss.
01:42:21
Speaker
And they used Malaysian Airlines as an example.
01:42:24
Speaker
Saying that it was like people didn't know what happened to their family members.
01:42:27
Speaker
So it's a large scale situation of ambiguous loss.
01:42:31
Speaker
And the definition of it is that it's a loss for which there is no verification or clarity and thus it carries the impossibility of resolution.
01:42:40
Speaker
There's two types.
01:42:42
Speaker
In this case, it's physical absence with psychological presence.
01:42:45
Speaker
So there's no proof of death or permanent loss.
01:42:48
Speaker
Families call this gone, but not for sure, leaving without saying goodbye.
01:42:52
Speaker
And the second type, which is not applicable in this case, is psychological absence with physical presence.
01:42:58
Speaker
So that's a result of like a cognitive impairment.
01:43:01
Speaker
I think about that a lot about how grief is kind of siloed into like one kind of grief.
01:43:05
Speaker
Somebody died and that's it.
01:43:07
Speaker
But I think about how, I don't know, grief is a response to any kind of loss or any type of potential that was never met.
01:43:14
Speaker
And so like, yes, if you lose someone to addiction,
01:43:19
Speaker
Yeah.
01:43:19
Speaker
And then their brain is permanently altered for the rest of their lives.
01:43:22
Speaker
You lost them.
01:43:23
Speaker
Yeah.
01:43:23
Speaker
It feels like a death.
01:43:24
Speaker
Yeah.
01:43:25
Speaker
And... You know, losing, like... Or traumatic brain injury.
01:43:29
Speaker
Traumatic brain injury is part of that.
01:43:32
Speaker
And, I mean, like, breakup is part of that also, whether it be, like, with friends or romantic partners and...
01:43:39
Speaker
we don't know how to deal with that either.
01:43:41
Speaker
That's true.
01:43:42
Speaker
Is that ambiguous though?
01:43:43
Speaker
Well, I guess so.
01:43:44
Speaker
It is ambiguous because the person is still technically present, but they're not present in your life.
01:43:48
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:43:50
Speaker
But it's not listed in this one, but it's like one thing that I think of when I think of grief.
01:43:55
Speaker
But then depression is listed here.
01:43:57
Speaker
Interestingly, homesickness and immigration is also like listed here because it's like
01:44:02
Speaker
You know, that is ambiguous grief because it's like grief as to like your identity in some way, you know, your connection to like a homeland.
01:44:12
Speaker
I mean, I feel like that totally ties into some bigger conversation about how white supremacy causes mass displacement, mass grief, mass like.
01:44:23
Speaker
dislocation from self and culture and community yeah for me i feel like these yeah that all of these fall under ambiguous loss but the the type two which is the psychological absence which is what we're talking about right now yeah is its whole own thing yes that is tied to so so many other things that is like very different than like
01:44:44
Speaker
Someone going missing, for example, you know, which is like the type one is what we're talking about that.
01:44:49
Speaker
Right.
01:44:50
Speaker
Someone going missing as it is related to like an event like the Malaysian Airlines, but also as it relates to war, natural disasters, kidnapping, but also has incarceration, immigration as part of that too.
01:45:04
Speaker
You know, like someone moving to a different country, you never get to see them again because they can't afford to travel.
01:45:10
Speaker
that way or are undocumented someone going to prison it says yeah it literally says work relocation military deployment young adults leaving home which is like empty nest oh man you know or i'm also wondering about like the state of um political polarization not that not that people haven't had all of these beliefs or whatever their whole lives or you know or
01:45:37
Speaker
I guess what I'm referring to is like when 2020 happened, when 2016 happened, there was like a really gigantic shift in the way people were relating to each other.
01:45:47
Speaker
And they were like particularly white people, honestly, but they were unable to put politics aside.
01:45:54
Speaker
Like that, that can't be like table talk.
01:45:56
Speaker
Yeah.
01:45:57
Speaker
All of a sudden it became table talk.
01:45:58
Speaker
Yeah.
01:45:59
Speaker
And then the way that people became so polarized and people lost family members,
01:46:06
Speaker
I mean, all of this just like falls under very complicated grief.
01:46:10
Speaker
But I like if you think back in time, complicated grief is happening all of the time.
01:46:15
Speaker
And like nobody knows how to deal with it.
01:46:19
Speaker
Yes.
01:46:19
Speaker
In like a way that is healthy because we all live under capitalism where we're just expected to continuously keep going.
01:46:27
Speaker
Yes.
01:46:27
Speaker
And take no breaks, take no time or space to process things.
01:46:31
Speaker
Mass unprocessed grief.
01:46:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:46:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:46:34
Speaker
Which keeps you stuck in a place.
01:46:35
Speaker
Which is why also the government here is like, oh, we're so tied to like our reputation that we don't want to tell people the truth.
01:46:44
Speaker
We want to keep things a secret.
01:46:46
Speaker
And we just want to be done with this.
01:46:47
Speaker
We want to be done with this and keep going forward.
01:46:50
Speaker
Even though there's all of these family members who are like, you need to give me an answer of what the fuck happened.
01:46:56
Speaker
Yeah.
01:46:56
Speaker
Damn.
01:46:57
Speaker
Damn.
01:47:00
Speaker
Okay, one more thing I guess in connection to, because I was trying to like, knead my thoughts together with the... Ambiguous loss.
01:47:07
Speaker
Ambiguous loss, like losing people to political polarization.
01:47:12
Speaker
I guess I'm thinking a lot about, I have friends who are like, I don't know what happened.
01:47:17
Speaker
My parents are like, super Trumpy.
01:47:21
Speaker
They are QAnon people.
01:47:22
Speaker
That feels like it's part of type two also.
01:47:24
Speaker
100%.
01:47:24
Speaker
Yeah.
01:47:28
Speaker
And they won't get their COVID vaccines.
01:47:30
Speaker
And I refuse to visit them because I can't have that on me.
01:47:35
Speaker
And so, I don't know, maybe relationships that were already a little rocky to begin with.
01:47:43
Speaker
have completely severed because of this really intense conspiracy-based thinking that people have fallen into and can't seem to get out of.
01:47:54
Speaker
Yeah.
01:47:54
Speaker
I mean, I think there's just... Yeah, it's fear, it's anger, and it's unprocessed fear and anger.
01:48:02
Speaker
And uncertainty.
01:48:03
Speaker
Exactly.
01:48:04
Speaker
And uncertainty, which is all present in this one case we're talking about.
01:48:09
Speaker
So there's no...
01:48:13
Speaker
Support, you know, especially when you're like living under like such, I don't know, like conservative political environments where there's like no space for you to talk about your mental health issues without losing your whole like livelihood or identity.
01:48:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:48:34
Speaker
And this person's entire identity was that he was like this pilot.
01:48:38
Speaker
Right.
01:48:39
Speaker
Right.
01:48:40
Speaker
He was doing it for so many years.
01:48:42
Speaker
He's literally like spending his free time sitting in the fight simulator and he's spending his other free time trying to chat up the internet models.
01:48:52
Speaker
Why is it always these people who are having some really intense love issues that do this shit?
01:48:59
Speaker
They feel so isolated and alone.
01:49:01
Speaker
It's because we socialize men to be emotionally incompetent and they just want to find mommies.
01:49:09
Speaker
Yeah.
01:49:10
Speaker
And when women went their life, then he no longer had a mommy.
01:49:14
Speaker
No longer had someone take care of him.
01:49:16
Speaker
And he experienced ambiguous loss because his wife moved out.
01:49:20
Speaker
Sure.
01:49:20
Speaker
And his three kids were grown and moved out.
01:49:23
Speaker
And they're listing that as one of the ambiguous loss things.
01:49:27
Speaker
And he just like, you know, he lost a lot of that.
01:49:29
Speaker
And it seems like a lot of his identity was tied to being a family man.
01:49:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:49:34
Speaker
Well, he probably was like, I have no purpose now.
01:49:38
Speaker
But...
01:49:38
Speaker
Also, men don't have friends.
01:49:40
Speaker
Yeah.
01:49:40
Speaker
Men don't have friends and men don't have emotional, like, intelligence.
01:49:45
Speaker
And they don't have the spaciousness or the wherewithal to self-reflect because we don't give them the tools to do that.
01:49:53
Speaker
And then... Especially, like, Asian men.
01:49:55
Speaker
Oh my god, yes.
01:49:56
Speaker
Yeah.
01:49:57
Speaker
What the fuck?
01:49:58
Speaker
And then I think what happens is they only, if they confide in anyone, they confide to the only woman that's in their life, which is...
01:50:07
Speaker
their romantic partner.
01:50:09
Speaker
And so when that leaves, it's not just like a partner that leaves.
01:50:13
Speaker
It's their purpose to live.
01:50:16
Speaker
It's their emotional support.
01:50:18
Speaker
It's their like care, like caretaker, all the things.
01:50:24
Speaker
And I'm just like, their best friend, their sexual companion.
01:50:29
Speaker
So many things.
01:50:30
Speaker
So many things.
01:50:32
Speaker
I don't know.
01:50:32
Speaker
I was like,
01:50:33
Speaker
On the internet and someone was like saying, I want you to ask like your average dude when they say they miss their ex.
01:50:43
Speaker
Do they miss their ex or do they miss what their ex was able to provide for them?
01:50:47
Speaker
Yeah.
01:50:47
Speaker
Like what are the things?
01:50:48
Speaker
And then usually they'll respond with, well, she took really good care of me or...
01:50:53
Speaker
she you know made me feel like a better person or there are all these things that are like i miss them because of what they were able to provide for me and make me feel about myself yeah it's never like i miss who they were yeah and and why is it that all of those roles fall upon this one person it's because we live in a society that that does that and maybe we should figure out how to parse out those roles
01:51:22
Speaker
It's the patriarchy.
01:51:23
Speaker
My gosh.
01:51:24
Speaker
My gosh.
01:51:25
Speaker
It's trash.
01:51:27
Speaker
Anyways, back to ambiguous loss.
01:51:31
Speaker
Just like, tangent.
01:51:33
Speaker
Shit on men.
01:51:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:51:35
Speaker
Coming back to ambiguous loss.
01:51:37
Speaker
I'm a little so ju-drunk.
01:51:42
Speaker
I just realized that we, like, there's only like one episode where we like drank otherwise.
01:51:47
Speaker
So I was like, oh, whatever.
01:51:48
Speaker
I'm going to.
01:51:49
Speaker
drinking this one because it's like less violent than the other ones.
01:51:53
Speaker
It's just like passively violent versus like
01:51:57
Speaker
Actively violent.
01:51:58
Speaker
Yes, it's still violent.
01:52:01
Speaker
Man.
01:52:02
Speaker
But ambiguous loss, psychology tangent, coined by Pauline Bose.
01:52:07
Speaker
This is interesting because this ties to this, what we were just talking about.
01:52:10
Speaker
It was coined in 1970s by her when she was a grad student at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
01:52:17
Speaker
And she was doing research about... She was participating in systemic family therapy, and she noticed how fathers would...
01:52:26
Speaker
constantly be absent during family therapy because they believe that family therapy was a mother's business.
01:52:33
Speaker
And she initially coined this term as it related to absent fathers.
01:52:38
Speaker
This makes so much fucking sense.
01:52:41
Speaker
The man tangent connects.
01:52:44
Speaker
Exactly.
01:52:46
Speaker
Exactly.
01:52:47
Speaker
She did research on families of military men who were missing during the Vietnam War.
01:52:51
Speaker
But basically her boss was like, you need to make this more inclusive.
01:52:56
Speaker
You can't just make this about absent fathers.
01:52:58
Speaker
Probably because he was a dude.
01:53:00
Speaker
Oh my god.
01:53:02
Speaker
So then she made it more inclusive to be like what it is today, which is what I already explained.
01:53:08
Speaker
But it started out as being her noticing that fathers were consistently absent during family therapy because they believed that it wasn't their role to be present during that.
01:53:21
Speaker
And not just the fathers who leave.
01:53:23
Speaker
The fathers who are present and just cannot be there.
01:53:25
Speaker
They can show up.
01:53:26
Speaker
They were just like, this is not my job.
01:53:28
Speaker
This is my wife's job.
01:53:29
Speaker
My job is to be a working man.
01:53:33
Speaker
Whatever.
01:53:34
Speaker
Oh my God.
01:53:35
Speaker
Wow, I hate it.
01:53:36
Speaker
Yeah.
01:53:36
Speaker
What goes on in their fucking brains, man?
01:53:40
Speaker
I don't fucking know, man.
01:53:41
Speaker
What goes on in there?
01:53:42
Speaker
I want to know.
01:53:43
Speaker
So daddies are the issue.
01:53:46
Speaker
It's the daddy issues again.
01:53:47
Speaker
We're back to it.
01:53:49
Speaker
Moving forward from there, Pauline has written many articles about ambiguous loss, and she's created guidelines for therapy and intervention.
01:53:59
Speaker
And she talks about how when people have experienced ambiguous loss, when you're working with them as a therapist, you've got to focus on building awareness.
01:54:08
Speaker
and teaching people how to like live with the uncertainty basically like both and thinking you know yeah and she provides these like guidelines which is finding meaning adjusting mastery reconstructing identity normalizing ambivalence revising attachment and discovering new hope those are like the six guidelines to working with clients and
01:54:31
Speaker
Okay.
01:54:49
Speaker
Yeah, maybe everybody.
01:54:50
Speaker
Maybe everybody.
01:54:51
Speaker
And then the like complicated thing about this kind of loss is that people are left to construct their own meaning because there's this paradox of absence and presence, you know, in both cases.
01:55:04
Speaker
It's like in type one, it's like maybe they're still alive and maybe they're somewhere and maybe one day I'll reconnect with them because that has happened.
01:55:13
Speaker
you know, in the case of missing people, especially.
01:55:15
Speaker
And then in type two, it's like the person is actually here, but they're like emotionally or psychologically absent.
01:55:21
Speaker
So like, how do I live with that?
01:55:24
Speaker
And especially with type one, it makes it very confusing in terms of like roles because people think, is this person ever going to come back?
01:55:32
Speaker
Should we keep their roles open until we know for sure?
01:55:36
Speaker
Am I still married to my spouse?
01:55:39
Speaker
if they've been missing for a lot of years or am I able to move on from that?
01:55:44
Speaker
Am I a wife or am I a widow?
01:55:47
Speaker
Confusing.
01:55:47
Speaker
Am I still the child if the person who is my parent is missing?
01:55:51
Speaker
Am I still a parent if my child is missing?
01:55:55
Speaker
The boundaries within like, it's talking about boundaries within family therapy, which is like very much a thing within family therapy, but like the boundaries get like very confusing and unclear when like,
01:56:07
Speaker
a case of ambiguous loss in terms of type one is present and then this leads to predicting symptoms of depression and family conflict that's what the research has shown that ambiguous loss leads to increases of depression and increases of family conflict within family systems because of that it makes sense yeah
01:56:27
Speaker
because it causes a high degree of boundary ambiguity among family members, both within individuals and within the family system.
01:56:35
Speaker
She talks about in this article, which I'll reference in the sources, how it's different from grief because people experiencing ambiguous loss are in states of limbo.
01:56:48
Speaker
And they don't know, so they can't logically resolve the loss that they've experienced because the ambiguity won't allow
Investigation Challenges and Societal Reflections
01:56:55
Speaker
it.
01:56:55
Speaker
Especially with physical ambiguous losses, it's not clear what needs to be grieved.
01:57:00
Speaker
Like I said before, is a missing loved one gone for good?
01:57:02
Speaker
Are we grieving a permanent loss?
01:57:05
Speaker
Are we grieving the fact that we are missing developmental milestones in the life of the missing person as well as our own?
01:57:13
Speaker
Our life feels like it's put on hold.
01:57:16
Speaker
Some people say that they feel guilty if they grieve before there's a certainty of death.
01:57:22
Speaker
And others are criticized for acting as though it's a loss because they're not sure that someone has died.
01:57:28
Speaker
So it feels like they're just like frozen in this limbo.
01:57:31
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:57:31
Speaker
You know?
01:57:32
Speaker
Yeah.
01:57:33
Speaker
And obviously all of these family members feel this way because the government is not giving them any information one way or the other.
01:57:38
Speaker
Or they're going very wishy-washy about it.
01:57:42
Speaker
And then, so, there's that.
01:57:46
Speaker
Last thing I'll share is kind of just like latest updates about the case.
01:57:51
Speaker
Official investigations have ended.
01:57:54
Speaker
In 2018, there was an event that Grace and Blaine were present at, as well as the transport minister of Malaysia.
01:58:04
Speaker
Apparently, the transport minister was miserable to the point of being angry.
01:58:09
Speaker
He barely spoke and took no questions from the press.
01:58:12
Speaker
And Grace was
01:58:13
Speaker
was so angry at his attitude.
01:58:15
Speaker
Rightly so.
01:58:16
Speaker
She said over dinner, she insisted that the government should not be allowed to walk away so easily.
01:58:22
Speaker
She said they did not follow protocol.
01:58:23
Speaker
They did not follow procedure.
01:58:25
Speaker
I think it's appalling.
01:58:26
Speaker
More could have been done as a result of the inaction of the Air Force of all the parties involved in the first hour who didn't follow protocol.
01:58:34
Speaker
We are stuck like this now.
01:58:36
Speaker
Every one of them breached protocol one time, multiple times.
01:58:39
Speaker
Every single person who had some form of responsibility at the time did not do what he was supposed to do to varying degrees of severity.
01:58:46
Speaker
Maybe in isolation, some might not seem so bad.
01:58:49
Speaker
But when you look at it as a whole, every one of them contributed 100% to the fact that the airplane has not been found.
01:58:54
Speaker
And this just reminded me of the Titanic because it was like, you know, a combination of bad events.
01:59:00
Speaker
Yes.
01:59:01
Speaker
And a combination of a lot of people doing things wrong.
01:59:04
Speaker
Yes.
01:59:04
Speaker
Yes.
01:59:05
Speaker
And then tons of people dying and grieving because of that.
01:59:10
Speaker
At least in the case of the Titanic, they know exactly what happened.
01:59:14
Speaker
In this case, they have no idea.
01:59:16
Speaker
They can only speculate.
01:59:17
Speaker
And in the article, they talked about how maybe the black box will be recovered.
01:59:21
Speaker
Maybe the cockpit voice recorder might be recovered.
01:59:24
Speaker
But even if they are, what extra information is it actually going to provide?
01:59:29
Speaker
Unless...
01:59:31
Speaker
The person was actually speaking while all of this was happening.
01:59:35
Speaker
Like, it could have just been silence, you know?
01:59:37
Speaker
Or, like, alarms going off.
01:59:39
Speaker
Yeah.
01:59:40
Speaker
In the article, he says, important answers don't lie in the ocean, but on land in Malaysia.
01:59:45
Speaker
He believes the Malaysian police know more than they're saying.
01:59:48
Speaker
Yeah.
01:59:49
Speaker
which like, you know, in March, 2022, a British aerospace engineer came up with this like new way of tracking that was called like whisper technology.
01:59:59
Speaker
I'm not even going to go into the science of that because it's like really, really new science and that data hasn't been verified, but it narrows the search area even more because it pinpoints like an exact location of where the plane could have crashed.
02:00:15
Speaker
And Ocean Infinity, the private search group,
02:00:18
Speaker
said that they would do another search for a no-find-no-fee basis, but they would only do it if the government agreed to it, and the government has to authorize it.
02:00:28
Speaker
And if they authorize it, they'll do it next year or in 2024, but Malaysian government hasn't authorized it yet.
02:00:35
Speaker
So...
02:00:36
Speaker
Basically, in conclusion, lots of things that we don't know, lots of things we do know.
02:00:42
Speaker
I think having talked about this, there's like certain things that seem more likely than others.
02:00:48
Speaker
But overall, it just like kind of remains a mystery based on the evidence that we have.
02:00:53
Speaker
Damn, that shit's so fucking sad.
02:00:55
Speaker
I know, it's really sad.
02:00:57
Speaker
It's really, really sad.
02:00:58
Speaker
It's really, really sad.
02:00:59
Speaker
Because it really could have been avoided in so many ways.
02:01:03
Speaker
Yeah, starting with toxic masculinity.
02:01:06
Speaker
But I also want to name that the tendency for me to go down this rabbit hole of men are just incompetent, da-da-da-da-da, they don't have any emotional intelligence, they don't know how to self-reflect, they don't do it.
02:01:19
Speaker
Also, I feel like
02:01:21
Speaker
is a slippery slope into denying accountability, implying that men are incapable of transformation, they are incapable of doing these things, and that's not what I mean.
02:01:31
Speaker
What I mean is we actively socialize men to be this way, and it's dangerous to everybody.
02:01:37
Speaker
It's the most dangerous thing in the fucking world.
02:01:40
Speaker
Honestly, I think everyone is capable of transformation.
02:01:44
Speaker
I believe that wholeheartedly, and I wish that more people were invested in the self-work to do that.
02:01:49
Speaker
And I wish we lived in a society that made accountability possible and even desired.
02:01:55
Speaker
If we're assuming that like it was a captain that like engaged in this way that he was like, you know, I'm not okay.
02:02:03
Speaker
So I'm going to take a leave of absence from work until I figure this out because I don't think it is safe for people to fly with me in charge.
02:02:13
Speaker
Yeah.
02:02:14
Speaker
There's that or steps before that, like what needed to happen.
02:02:18
Speaker
Or if like, you know, people noticing.
02:02:20
Speaker
Yes.
02:02:20
Speaker
People noticing.
02:02:21
Speaker
His coworkers noticing and saying something to him.
02:02:25
Speaker
Yeah.
02:02:25
Speaker
His partnership being more balanced.
02:02:27
Speaker
Yeah.
02:02:27
Speaker
Probably.
02:02:28
Speaker
Yeah.
02:02:29
Speaker
Assuming all the things that we know.
02:02:30
Speaker
And I'm just like, you know, people are like, oh, well, he was so gentle.
02:02:34
Speaker
He was not violent.
02:02:35
Speaker
He wouldn't do all these things.
02:02:36
Speaker
I'm sure all of those things are true.
02:02:37
Speaker
And also.
02:02:38
Speaker
And also.
02:02:39
Speaker
We're socializing men in this way.
02:02:41
Speaker
So if stoicism is the pinnacle of masculinity, then it requires that young boys actively fight against the very human desire and need to connect with yourself, to fundamentally disconnect from yourself.
02:02:59
Speaker
And when you fundamentally disconnect from yourself, you're also disconnecting yourself from others.
02:03:03
Speaker
And so empathy...
02:03:05
Speaker
is really impossible when we are so far removed from our own basic humanity and we socialize men especially to be this way.
02:03:14
Speaker
So it makes sense that they're able to engage in acts like this because we've spent years systematically taking away the ability to connect to other people as a fundamental part of what it means to be a man.
02:03:26
Speaker
Yeah.
02:03:27
Speaker
And that's what I was saying.
02:03:28
Speaker
Yeah.
02:03:29
Speaker
Well, thanks for sharing that.
02:03:31
Speaker
Yeah.
02:03:31
Speaker
I want I wanted to end this on a good note.
02:03:34
Speaker
Oh, but the good note to end it on is just to check out Colleen's articles about how to work with ambiguous loss.
02:03:41
Speaker
And I feel like she has a lot of good work that she's done about it.
02:03:45
Speaker
And she's done work with people who have lost people in line 11 and things further than that.
02:03:53
Speaker
It's a whole thing on its own.
02:03:55
Speaker
And the family members of the people that were lost on Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 are...
02:04:01
Speaker
still working together their campaign to keep figuring out what happened and like ask the government to actually provide real information with this.
02:04:10
Speaker
So like, you know, there's that too.
02:04:14
Speaker
And, you know, regardless of Blaine and his like silliness, he helped out a lot.
02:04:21
Speaker
in finding information in this case.
02:04:22
Speaker
So shout-outs to Blaine.
02:04:24
Speaker
Silly Blaine.
02:04:25
Speaker
Shout-outs to Grace.
02:04:28
Speaker
The documentary I watched was pretty solid.
02:04:32
Speaker
I would say check that out.
02:04:33
Speaker
This Atlantic article was really solid.
02:04:35
Speaker
There's a lot of people who have contributed to this much more than the people who are actually responsible to contributing to it.
02:04:43
Speaker
And it's like, like Shayna said earlier, really amazing to see
02:04:47
Speaker
what happens when people come together with their combined knowledge to figure stuff out.
02:04:53
Speaker
And I truly believe that like before me and you die, we'll figure out what happened with this plane because like enough people are invested in this case for that to happen.
Conclusion and Reflections
02:05:03
Speaker
And it really sucks and it's really scary and it's very sad and like sending my love to all of the souls that were lost and all the families that lost people on this plane.
02:05:14
Speaker
But yeah.
02:05:17
Speaker
This was supposed to be a mini-sode, but we've been recording for two and a half hours now.
02:05:22
Speaker
It's not a mini-sode.
02:05:23
Speaker
Classic.
02:05:24
Speaker
Classic.
02:05:25
Speaker
It's not a mini-sode.
02:05:28
Speaker
It's just a soad.
02:05:30
Speaker
I feel like I did do less research on it than on other ones, though.
02:05:35
Speaker
And, I mean, you did all of the research when I would have normally split it.
02:05:40
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
02:05:41
Speaker
So, like, yeah.
02:05:42
Speaker
But, I mean, there's stuff that I didn't go into, too, like all the science-y stuff.
02:05:46
Speaker
stuff there was a lot of sciencey stuff that I was like this is too complicated for me I'm not an engineer I'm just gonna leave it to the scientists I know my niche and this is not my niche and the U.S. laws however that's my niche
02:06:06
Speaker
Even though this was sad in its own right, this was so much less dark than all the cult stuff.
02:06:15
Speaker
Yes.
02:06:16
Speaker
Less actively violent.
02:06:18
Speaker
Exactly.
02:06:19
Speaker
Less actively violent.
02:06:20
Speaker
Still very, very eerie.
02:06:23
Speaker
Very eerie.
02:06:24
Speaker
Interesting.
02:06:25
Speaker
I will never lose the image of...
02:06:28
Speaker
No.
02:06:28
Speaker
That in the sky.
02:06:30
Speaker
Me neither.
02:06:31
Speaker
Thanks for that.
02:06:33
Speaker
I'm sorry.
02:06:33
Speaker
What the fuck?
02:06:34
Speaker
I'm still thinking about who the fuck wrote that?
02:06:36
Speaker
For what?
02:06:36
Speaker
Did they have this image floating in their head and they were like, I can't do this alone.
02:06:40
Speaker
Yeah.
02:06:41
Speaker
William Longavisha wrote it.
02:06:44
Speaker
Okay, William.
02:06:45
Speaker
American author journalist who is also a professional airplane pilot.
02:06:48
Speaker
okay William no one asked no one asked for this vivid ass image like what the fuck of a plane full I'm not even gonna say it again no that shit is floating in my head now oh my gosh that's haunting me haunting anyways thanks for listening thanks for sharing hope y'all take care of yourselves yes
02:07:11
Speaker
And yeah, feel free to look into this more if you're so inclined.
02:07:15
Speaker
And keep following it because I'm sure more information will continue to come out about it.
02:07:21
Speaker
One day maybe we'll know the exact truth, but I highly doubt that actually.
02:07:27
Speaker
No, we gotta make peace with the ambiguity.
02:07:30
Speaker
Exactly, just like Pauline wants us to.
02:07:32
Speaker
Okay.
02:07:34
Speaker
Peace out.
02:07:35
Speaker
Bye.
02:07:36
Speaker
Bye.
02:07:37
Speaker
Thanks for listening and for supporting us.
02:07:40
Speaker
You can find us on Instagram and Facebook at Unpacking the Eerie, on Twitter at Unpack the Eerie, and on our website at www.unpackingtheerie.com.
02:07:52
Speaker
Yes, and special thanks to all of you who subscribe to our Patreon.
02:07:58
Speaker
As we've mentioned before, we do all the research for this, we edit, and we don't have any sponsorships or ads.
02:08:06
Speaker
So Patreon support is super helpful in just keeping this project sustainable, keeping the Buzzsprout subscription going, paying for the website, all the stuff.
02:08:16
Speaker
So thank you so much.
02:08:18
Speaker
Sari, Liz, Clifton.
02:08:21
Speaker
Jill, Victoria, and Lindsay.
02:08:23
Speaker
Lauren, Vivian, Valerie.
02:08:25
Speaker
Micheline, Montana, Katrina.
02:08:28
Speaker
Raina, Allie, Jake.
02:08:29
Speaker
Drithi, Daphne, and Katie.
02:08:32
Speaker
Vern, Meredith, H, and Vince.
02:08:35
Speaker
To April, Aaron, and Ellen.
02:08:37
Speaker
And to Brittany, Alyssa, and Meredith R. Yay, thank you so much.
02:08:42
Speaker
Thank you.