Author: A_C_Unit

The content below is from Episode 118 of the Who’d a Thunk It? Podcast

RECOMMENDATION SEGMENT

• This week I recommend you watch Netflix’s Web of Make Believe: Death, Lies, and the Internet
  • This 6-episode series tells the story of 5 different criminals/crimes that were or are being committed via the internet.
  • Episode 1 is all about Swatting and a kid who had no real-life skills other than swatting and making bomb threats
    • Swatting is the action or practice of making a prank call to emergency services in an attempt to bring about the dispatch of a large number of armed police officers to a particular address.
  • Episode 2 is about the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich.
    • His death went from tragic mugging victim, to subject of conspiracy theorists, and finally to FOX news making a full report on how Seth was connected to wikiLeaks and Russian spies.
  • Episode 3 is about the Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally with the tiki torches and Neo Nazis.
  • Episode 4 talks about a serial sextortion case where a young guy was hacking young women for their nude pictures and blackmailing them.
  • Episodes 5 and 6 are part of a 2-part story about a very intelligent hacker that was detained by the FBI using unconstitutional tracking technology called the StingRay.
    • The hacker’s name is Daniel Rigmaiden and his story is one of the coolest criminal cases I have ever heard. The coolest detail is that all the money he stole from the taxpayers was actually paid back in full…. and then some. He is the perfect criminal. He is my hero.
• A lot of true crime documentaries are about old murder cases, but this show talks about modern problems that arise around the internet and how our legal system struggles to keep up with the advancement of technology.

NOW FOR THE MAIN EVENT!

• When I was 18 and had just graduated college I was STOKED for college. I couldn’t wait to start fresh and start over with a completely new social network.
  • Well, I did room with my best friend from High School and my sister had already been a student at SRU for 2 years before I got there so it wasn’t a “completely” new social network… but it was new enough that I could change.
  • I remember I first got really sad over not being able to see my parents and old friends all the time and the first weekend was a bit lonely. But once that pupa stage was over, I shed my shell and began stretching out my new metaphorical butterfly wings.
    • I know comparing myself to a butterfly isn’t very masculine, but that is ok. Because part of finding out who I was in college included the fact that I don’t have to be masculine all the time.
  • The point is, that people are complex. They don’t usually fit perfectly into the lives that they are born into. That is why it is important to explore. Explore different places, ways of living, and people.
    • When we explore we gain knowledge and experience of how we might live our lives differently. And that is important because otherwise, we might try to live out a life that doesn’t mesh well with who we truly are… and that can be catastrophic…. such as a person willing to just disappear.
  • Of course, you may just want to disappear because of legal or financial problems.
    • Either way, the logistics of disappearing in today’s society sounds fascinating and really difficult.
    • THIS IS MY DISAPPEARING EPISODE!
• **DISCLAIMER**
  • There are a lot of reasons to want to disappear and this episode, this podcast, is not about exploring why anyone should or should not disappear.
    • If you are feeling emotionally or mentally “Not OK” then go seek the advice of a behavioral health professional.
    • If you’re in a tough home situation, call a support line like the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. If you have a child with you, call 1-800-4ACHILD for immediate assistance.
  • This episode is about the logistics of disappearing and how that is even possible in today’s society. It is a fun thought experiment.
  • And for anyone under the age of 18, here is a note from WikiHow.com:
    • Stay put if you’re underage to avoid making problems worse. People are bound to come looking for you if you’re a minor. Chances are you will have a hard time making money and getting anything else you need to get by. Going on your own is tough, lonely, and even dangerous at times. Once you hit the legal age of adulthood in your country, which is usually 16 or 18, more opportunities open up to you. Keep in mind that being out on your own is usually worse as a minor. When you’re found, you will be taken home anyway. Unless things are very bad or even dangerous, find other ways to improve your life at home.
    • Even if you don’t think your friends and family will miss you much, you are better off finding safer ways to change the situation than simply disappearing. There are many resources out there that can help you deal with bad situations until you’re ready to leave.

• Cat and Mouse in our world
  • Now that we’ve got that important disclaimer out of the way, let me clarify what sort of disappearing I’m talking about:
  • As adults, it is totally legal to just up and leave. Of course, there are things like financial and legal obligations, but for the most part, we can just leave and law enforcement won’t care.
    • If you have a warrant for your arrest or have been subpoenaed to appear in court, that is a different story. Refer back to Episode #91 titled Bounty Hunting lol…
    • Also if you have a bunch of debt it might not be the best thing to just up and leave. Collection agencies will come-a-knockin’.
  • As far as family and friends go, you have some decisions to make. Do you tell them you are leaving or give them a note? Up to you.
  • This episode is more about a cat and mouse type situation and this has been done before:
    • In the summer of 2009, a journalist by the name Evan Ratliff had just written an article for Wired Magazine about people who fake their own deaths and wanted to try something new.
    • He decided to vanish and asked the general public to try and find him. He tried to stay hidden for 30 days but was found on day 25 by some computer-savvy participants.
    • There is a YouTube video where Evan tells this fantastic story. It is about 1 hour and 25 minutes long though. I have included it on the blog.
  • I bring up Evan Ratliff’s little experiment because I think in just 13 years it would be very different. Technology and societal norms have changed more than one might think since the summer of 2009.

• How to Disappear:
  • The first step that I can think of right off the top of my head is to wear a mask. It is globally accepted to wear a mask in public now and that would conceal half of your face so just wear one all the time.
  • Next good rule to follow: Travel alone to cut down on the risk of discovery. 
    • This is a big one if you are planning on disappearing with a child… consider that you might be committing the crime of kidnapping…
    • People come with baggage… even people who are trying to not be found, so travel alone. Other people in your party will add all sorts of unforeseeable variables to your vanishing equation. If there are other people with you that means there will be other search parties and a larger paper/digital trail for them to follow.
    • Eventually, you will probably find a group here or there to hang around. When you do just be sure to have a bunch of fake names and identities to use for each of them.
  • Travel light
    • I can’t tell you how much I love to travel with nothing but a backpack. It allows me to maneuver airports, train stations, and Ubers with ease. Plus, once I get where I am headed it takes me MUCH less time to settle in before I can start enjoying my surroundings.
    • Trying to do all those things with a large suitcase is a very different story: I have to check my suitcase at the airport and wait for it once I arrive. I have to lug it around everywhere I go and I have to unpack once I get to my destination. Not fun.
    • This ease of travel by having less stuff is amplified when you are trying not to leave a trace. Only pack the essentials. When you are preparing for your disappearance set everything out on your bed or perhaps the floor and decide what is actually necessary and what is just excess stuff.
    • some things I would bring: large backpack, warm clothes, a rain jacket, sturdy shoes, a tent, a sleeping bag, maps, a compass, a pocket knife, and a first aid kit.
  • Technology is a wonderful tool, but not when you are trying not to get caught
    • Get rid of all social media. Delete everything you can from your accounts and then deactivate them. No posting what you had for breakfast or how swoll you are getting at the gym.
    • Be sure to delete browsing history and cookies from your computer and phone. Doesn’t matter if your device is protected by a password. If someone with any computer knowledge is looking for you then they can get around that.
    • This does mean you have to Leave your computer and phone at home. I know, we’ve become so attached to our devices, but They can be tracked. Refer back to my recommendation segment and about the StingRay device: that is a portable device that can pull your cellular information with great accuracy and MANY law enforcement agencies have them at their disposal.
    • If you choose to use a public device like at a library or internet cafe (yes internet cafes still exist), then be sure to be extra careful. Everything you do on a public device is public. If you log back on to your old social media account, that will likely get you caught.
  • Now is a good time to reinvent yourself because you will want a new name.
    • I choose Barry Hammaker… Barry Jay Hammaker
    • My story would be that I’m new in town because I’m looking for a quiet place to write my book… and I would have some writing to fall back on… like the mess that is this blog lol.
    • Not just your name, but also reinvent what you look like.
    • Change your hair (I would just go bald or grow out my hair and dye it blonde).
    • Change your clothing (I usually dress casual so I might start wearing sweater vests and dorky stuff like that).
    • As I said before, I would wear a mask, but I might also wear a hoody and sunglasses a lot to hide my face.
    • I am a heavyset guy so I could lose a bunch of weight.
    • If I was worried about security cameras, I could use the infrared LED part on LED remote controls to attach to some sunglasses… this actually blurs your face on security cameras.
  • ALL cash, no cards
    • Anything other than cash has a clear trail to be followed and cannot be used
    • But you will need money so take out a bunch of cash before you bounce. Not too much at one time though because that looks suspicious. Take a gradual amount of money out over time.
    • Instead of carrying all that cash on you all the time, find a secure spot for your travels and only bring what you need. Your journey will be cut short if you get mugged with all of your money on you.
  • Pick where you are going?
    • If you are leaving the country you need a passport. Also check the country’s travel restrictions. You might need a visa or something more extensive.
    • If you stay in country, pick a city or town that fits your budget.
    • When you are picking where you are going you might as well plan the trip. Buy the tickets (plane, train, or automobile)
    • Airports and ship docks require ID and that means leaving a trail. Bus and trains typically don’t require ID so that might be a good option.
    • If you plan on really roughing it you could also use a bike or walk, though those do increase your chances of being seen on the street. If you use your own car there are traffic cameras and your license plate will be photographed at toll roads and traffic lights.
  • If you are evading people like in Evan Ratliff’s situation then you might want to buy tickets that throw people off your trail.
    • You can buy a ticket to NYC and just never board it… not cost-effective, but would probably slow down your pursuers.
  • What are you going to do for work?
    • You will need money when you disappear so where are you going to work?
      • I think I would find an under-the-table labor job like construction or landscaping.
    • But keep in mind that under-the-table jobs come with the risk of your employer screwing you over with less legal risk to them.
    • I might try to be a waiter or work in retail. Reminds me or Better Call Saul, the AMC show that had a major criminal lawyer who had to disappear and wound up as a manager at a Jamba Juice… he hated it, but he was kept under the radar for quite some time.
  • The last thing I could think of is to completely change my personality… or at least as much as I could
    • I walk fast and wobble when I walk. So I might try to incorporate a new gate by slowing down and walking with a fake limp/swagger.
    • Maybe I would start wearing a turban or join a local book club.
    • Whatever it might be, I would try to act differently. People can recognize you by the habits you keep, the walk you walk, and the talk you talk. Changing ones personality can really throw people off. I know! I could become a priest! lol jk, that is Such a cliche disguise.

• In Japan, there are agencies called Yongie-Ya
  • In Japan, one’s respect or shame is very important. Acrewing lots of debt from failed businesses, dishonoring one’s elders, or being known as a social pariah can all be reasons to want to disappear… and some businesses have learned to capitalize on that.
  • From NewsOnJapan.com:
    • “Japanese culture is “Sekentei” which basically means it’s a culture obsessed with keeping up appearances, “pride and honor” rule above all, and “shame” is a very heavy burden.
    • These agencies are known as “Yonige-Ya” which means “Fly-by-Night shops”, originally dedicated to helping people escape loan-sharks, nowaways their cause is far more noble, the Majority of their clients are victims of domestic violence, who with nowhere left to turn, chose to flee.
    • Unlike your traditional moving agency, the Yonige-ya prepare your next residence for you, they apply to the government to keep your new address and contact info private, they prepare school and nursery paperwork for your children, and meticulously prepare your escape, all in complete secrecy.
    • On the day of escape, they arrive at the house shortly after the abusive spouse has left and rapidly box up all your belongings, they then transport you along with your children and belongings to your new home. The service doesn’t end here though, they continue to give their clients advice on how to remain hidden and help clients with any separation or divorce paperwork that may be needed.”
  • The cops don’t search for the disappeared person known as a “Jouhatsu.” Cops only have an obligation to search for someone if they have committed a crime… not for someone who has left on their own free will.
    • Jouhatsu or johatsu refers to the people in Japan who purposely vanish from their established lives without a trace. This phenomenon can be seen all over the world, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. However, it is likely more prevalent in Japan given certain cultural factors
  • So if someone is looking for the Jouhatsu, they have to hire a PI (private investigator). But a PI is going to have a hard time finding the Jouhatsu thanks to “The Personal Data Protection Act” that severely limits what private info is accessible even to the cops and even after a person dies.
  • Because Japan values personal freedom quite highly, the whole of society over there has a different mentality towards those who wish to leave their life behind.
• THANKS FOR LISTENING WHO’D A THUNKERS!
  • Don’t worry. I’m not going anywere lol. The entire time I was typing up this episode I kept getting this weird feeling that someone would assume I myself am planning to disappear. This was an oddly morbid topic to explore. I didn’t expect it to be like that. IDK I thought I would find a lot of fun articles about trying to hide in today’s society because what I found was A LOT of article and disclaimers about why people shouldn’t disappear. But fear not, I’m not going anywhere. I just thought it would be a fun thought experiment to preoccupy my mind with.
  • I like challenges and trying to disappear in the world today would DEFINITELY be a challenge, but one I think I could accomplish. I think I would probably pick a secluded forest somewhere and just camp out for a few months (not including winter lol… I’m not that tough).
  • But what would you do if you had to disappear? If you were being hunted either in an actually dangerous situation or perhaps a more fun experiment like the subject Evan Ratliff’s article, what would you do to remain hidden?
  • How do you think you would fare? How long would you last?

CREDIT:

• https://wish.co.uk/blog/disappear-completely-never-found/
• https://newsonjapan.com/html/newsdesk/article/130030.php
• https://www.wikihow.com/Disappear-Completely

The content below is from Episode 117 of the Who’d a Thunk It? Podcast

RECOMMENDATION SEGMENT

• This week I recommend you check out Love, Death, and Robots. It is an original Netflix show that is like no other.
  • This collection of animated short stories spans several genres, including science fiction, fantasy, horror and comedy. World-class animation creators bring captivating stories to life in the form of a unique and visceral viewing experience. The animated anthology series includes tales that explore alternate histories, life for robots in a post-apocalyptic city and a plot for world domination by super-intelligent yogurt. Among the show’s executive producers is Oscar-nominated director David Fincher.

• Season 3 just dropped a few months back and it is just as spectacular as the first two seasons. One episode in particular Jibaro caught my eye.
  • The animation is hard to distinguish from live-action or reality in most of the episode. The story follows a band of medieval Spanish knights as they traverse the new world. Then they come upon a lake that is guarded by a gold and jewel-covered siren. What follows is 15 minutes of tragic death and dance. Live actors were used to capture the episode’s ballet dances and I find it to be beautifully sad.

NOW FOR THE MAIN EVENT

• What is spontaneous human combustion (SHC)?
  • Spontaneous human combustion is the pseudoscientific concept of the combustion of a living human body without an apparent external source of ignition.
    • In Layman’s terms that means a person bursts into flames with no good explanation.
  • Victims are usually found as a pile of ash with their feet and/or hands less burned or kept entirely intact.
  • Adding to the mystery, while SHC victims are almost completely burned down to ash and bone, their surroundings are usually left intact and untouched by fire.
  • Investigators are almost always stumped by these SHC cases. There is usually no reason to suspect foul play. Some of the victims are just sitting in their houses relaxing. But one thing is always the same: no source of ignition can be found for the blaze and the rest of the room or house is left virtually unscathed as if confined to their body.
    • Coroners at the scene have sometimes noted a sweet, smoky smell in the room where the incident occurred
    • In a number of photos taken from the scene, the corpse’s torso and head are charred beyond recognition, but some extremities remain intact, with the hands, feet, and/or part of the legs being apparently unburned. In many SHC cases there is a greasy residue left behind on furniture and walls.
  • And not all victims die. Some SHC victims burst into flames and are able to get the fire put out before they die. Some people just report burns on their bodies without knowing how they got them.
    • Frank Baker, a Vietnam Veteran, was getting ready to go fishing with his buddy back in 1985 when it happened to him.
      • “I had no idea what was taking place on my body — none,” Mr Baker said.
      • “We were getting ready for fishing and sitting on the couch.
      • “Everything was great.
      • “Pete was sitting next to me — we were having a helluva time.”
      • The pair leapt to their feet and were able to put out the flames.

• Taking human bodies out of the equation you find there are instances of spontaneous combustion happening all the time. A pile of rags in a mechanic’s garage or a pile of hay left out in the field, have been known to catch fire without external ignition.
  • • Regular Spontaneous Combustion is defined as the ignition of organic matter (e.g. hay or coal) without apparent cause, typically through heat generated internally by rapid oxidation. That’s the official definition that doesn’t necessarily pertain to human bodies.
  • Dirty rags in a bucket can catch flames. Here’s how science explains it: As oxygen from the air hits the rags, it can slowly raise their internal temperature high enough to ignite the flammable oil.
    • When hay bales decompose, microbes and bacteria living inside them can generate enough heat to kindle a spark
  • So how does this happen to humans or does it really happen that way at all?
    • To tackle that question Let us take a look at some cases of SHC.

• Cases of SHC
  • The first case of spontaneous combustion on the record took place in Milan in the late 1400s, when a knight named Polonus Vorstius allegedly burst into flames in front of his own parents
    •  After quaffing a few glasses of strong wine, Polonus Vorstius began to feel unwell, and proceeded to burp long flames of fire.
    • Officially, Polonus Vorstius’ fiery fate didn’t enter the historical record until 1641 — nearly two centuries after Polonus’ demise. That’s when a Danish medical expert named Thomas Bartholin included the event in his magnum opus, the Historiarum Anatomicarum Rariorum, which catalogs strange medical cases from throughout history. Bartholin claimed that he heard the story from later generations of the Vorstius family, but with 200 years between the alleged immolation and Bartholin’s written account, it’s entirely likely that the story had been embellished by the time that Bartholin got to it. At the very least, like every other case of spontaneous human combustion, the Vorstius blaze is more or less impossible to verify.
  • In 1663, Bartholin described how a woman in Paris “went up in ashes and smoke” while she was sleeping.
    • The straw mattress on which she slept was unmarred by the fire.
    • In 1673, a Frenchman named Jonas Dupont published a collection of spontaneous combustion cases in his work “De Incendiis Corporis Humani Spontaneis”
  • Late at night on Christmas Eve 1885, in the small farming town of Seneca, Illinois, a woman named Matilda Rooney burst into flames.
    • She was alone in her kitchen when it happened. The fire quickly incinerated her entire body except her feet. The incident also claimed the life of her husband, Patrick, who was found suffocated from the fumes in another room of the house.
  • In 1951, a 67-year-old widow named Mary Reeser was at home in St. Petersburg, Florida. On the morning of July 2, her landlady discovered that Reeser’s front door handle was hot. When the landlady broke into the apartment with the help of two workmen, they found a slipper-clad foot and what looked like a charred, shrunken skull.
    • No other body parts were present. Those gruesome remains sat in a puddle of grease on the floor where Reeser’s easy chair used to be. The rest of her apartment bore very little evidence of fire. Paranormal enthusiasts see Reeser’s death as a classic example of spontaneous human combustion. Skeptics point out that the woman was a confirmed smoker who’d taken at least two sleeping tablets that day. Maybe a dropped cigarette — and not SHC — was what sealed her doom
  • On Dec. 5, 1966, the body of 92-year-old Dr. J. Irving Bentley was discovered in his Pennsylvania home by a meter reader.
    • Actually, only part of Dr. Bentley’s leg and a foot were found. The rest of his body had been burned to ashes in his bathroom. Part of the good doctor’s incinerated robe lay at the site and his walker was left propped against the blackened bathtub. But the most eye-catching clue was a massive hole in his vinyl floor. Measuring 2 feet (.6 meters) wide by 4 feet (1.2 meters) long, it had eaten into the wooden floor beams and left a pile of ashes in the basement below. The rest of the house remained intact
    • At first, Bentley’s demise was identified as a careless mishap. The elderly gentleman loved to smoke his pipe and he had a habit of carrying matches in his robe pockets. Upon reviewing the scene, the coroner deduced that Bentley had fallen asleep while smoking in the bathroom and was burned alive after some of his clothing caught fire

• In 1982, a mentally handicapped woman named Jean Lucille “Jeannie” Saffin was sitting with her elderly father at their home in Edmonton, in northern London. To her parent’s horror, Jeannie’s upper body suddenly became enveloped in flames.
  • • The stove appeared to be unlit and no smoke or fire damage could be found anywhere else in the room. Even the wooden chair that she was sitting on at the time was spared. Mr. Saffin and his son-in-law, Donald Carroll, managed to put out the blaze, but after a brief hospital stay, Jeannie died of third-degree burns. Did she combust without warning? Believers think so, but some forensics analysts wonder if an ember from her father’s pipe ignited poor Jeannie’s clothing
  • In 2010, 76-year-old Michael Faherty of Galway, Ireland was found dead on his living room floor.
    • His body was thoroughly crisped, with his head lying beside his open fireplace. The ceiling space immediately above his body showed burn marks, and so did the floor beneath it. Yet nothing else in Faherty’s home was torched. News of his tragic death probably wouldn’t have spread beyond the local obituaries if coroner Ciaran McLoughlin didn’t point to SHC as its cause. “This fire was thoroughly investigated,” McLoughlin reported in an official statement, “and I’m left with the conclusion that this fits into the category of spontaneous human combustion, for which there is no adequate explanation.” Not everyone is convinced, though: Critics say that an ember from the fireplace could’ve landed on Faherty’s clothing and started a fatal blaze
• So what are the theories?
  • For an object to combust spontaneously, three things need to happen. First, the body must be heated to its ignition temperature — the point at which it will catch fire without being exposed to an external flame or spark. If the heat building up inside the object cannot escape, and if it’s being exposed to a steady flow of oxygen that isn’t rapid enough to cool it down, the stage will be set for spontaneous ignition
  • One of the biggest theories is to blame tobacco.
    • People creating small “controlled” fires inside their homes comes with risks. Especially when they are addicted to it and incorporate it into every aspect of their lives.
  • Another theory is that alcohol is to blame
    • Charles Dickens blamed booze. In the 1850s, the writer ignited great interest in SHC by using it to kill off a character in his novel “Bleak House.” The character, named Krook, was an alcoholic following the belief at the time that spontaneous human combustion was caused by excessive amounts of alcohol in the body. American prohibitionists helped spread this notion as they denounced the evils of alcoholism.
    • In the preface to the book edition of Bleak House, written after the novel had already been published in serial form, Dickens defended his use of spontaneous combustion against accusations of implausibility, citing several famous cases and the judgments of eminent medical doctors that such a thing was indeed possible. “I shall not abandon the facts,” he concludes with typical Dickensian panache, “until there shall have been a considerable Spontaneous Combustion of the testimony on which human occurrences are usually received.”
    • Dickens wasn’t the only one to mention SHC, Herman Melville and Nikolay Gogol used it to dispatch characters in their novels Redburn and Dead Souls, respectively.
    • Although the scientific support for spontaneous human combustion was weaker than Dickens stated, it was a widely discussed phenomenon in his time. The public largely accepted it as a reality on moral grounds. The victims were often alcoholic and overweight, and more were female than male, so there was a general perception that it was a kind of retribution for a debauched lifestyle. This idea was reinforced by lurid newspaper accounts of suspected cases. It made intuitive sense, after all, that a body saturated with a flammable substance—alcohol—would become flammable.
  • So of course religious fanatics like to throw in their two sense on the matter as if SHC victims were sinful and struck down by a higher power…
    • You might guess how I feel about that theory…
  • Maybe our farts are to blame
    • Other ideas are more popular today. One widespread belief says the fire is sparked when methane (a flammable gas produced by gut bacteria) builds up in the intestines and is ignited by enzymes (proteins in the body that act as catalysts to induce and speed up chemical reactions)
    • Yet this begs the question of why there are no reported instances of spontaneous combustion in cows, which produce far more methane than people
  • It’s also been suggested that the fire begins because of static electricity building up inside the body or from an external geomagnetic force. A self-proclaimed expert on spontaneous human combustion, Larry Arnold, has suggested that the phenomenon is the work of a new subatomic particle called a pyroton, which he says interacts with cells to create a mini-explosion. But as of August 2018, there’s no scientific evidence that proves the existence of this particle — or spontaneous human combustion itself
  • A possible explanation is the wick effect.
    • When lit by a cigarette, smoldering ember or other heat source, the human body acts much like an inside-out candle. A candle is composed of a wick on the inside surrounded by a wax made of flammable fatty acids. The wax ignites the wick and keeps it burning. In the human body, the body fat acts as the flammable substance, and the victim’s clothing or hair acts as the wick. As the fat melts from the heat, it soaks into the clothing and acts as a wax-like substance to keep the wick burning slowly. Scientists say this would explain why victims’ bodies are destroyed yet their surroundings are barely burned
  • Forensic scientist John DeHaan once watched this gruesome spectacle unfold in real time — to a pig, anyway. Don’t worry, it wasn’t alive.
    • In a 1998 experiment that was televised on the BBC, he wrapped a pig corpse in a blanket, then lit the garment ablaze with some petrol. As DeHaan looked on, the animal’s body fat liquified, adding more fuel to the fire. By the time he put out the flames a few hours later, the slow, intense burn had converted a large percentage of the pig’s flesh and bones into ash. (The rest of the room suffered minimal damage.)
  • Yet the dead pig’s feet remained intact. This is consistent with reports of SHC leaving disembodied feet or hands behind. Extremities don’t contain as much fat as the core of the body does, so they’re less likely to go up in smoke when the wick effect occurs.

• Is this a real thing like… according to scientists?
  • Probably not.
  •  None of the proposed scientific explanations for how a body would spontaneously burst into flames have held up to scrutiny. Some of the early proposed mechanisms rely on outdated medical ideas, such as the notion that an ignition could be the result of an imbalance of the bodily humors. The Victorian explanation that alcohol rendered the body flammable doesn’t work either, seeing that the concentrations of alcohol in even the most intoxicated people are much too low and that an external source of ignition would be required.
  • No one has proven or disproven that SHC is real. A lot of scientist tend to think it is not. When you look at the victims you notice that a lot of them were smokers and a lot of them were either under the influence of alcohol or their motor functions were affected in some way like old age.
• When you look up documentaries or articles about SHC you find a lot of sketchy sources. The only trusted sources say that it “almost certainly doesn’t exist.”
  • My verdict is… we don’t know. All the trusted sources proposed theories that made some sense like the Wick theory, but no one really knows. Fire destroys things so in many of these cases it could have destroyed a source of ignition or maybe humans can actually spontaneously combust…. which is a horrifying thought.
  • When I saw an episode of the Science Channel’s Unexplained Files that covered SHC as a kid it became my new fear. I remember for about a week or so I was worried I might burst into flames and not be able to do anything about it.
• But the fact is that this is a very rare occurrence… if it’s even real.
  • That being said… if this shit happened to you it would undoubtedly be the most painful experience of your life. This sounds horrible… to be cooked in your own fat from the inside.
• But seriously, rest easy Who’d a Thunkers. This stuff probably isn’t real…
  • now go about your day and BAM! Your abdomen starts feeling funny and before you know it the room is smelling like bacon and you realize the bacon is YOU!!!

THANKS FOR LISTENING WHO’D A THUNKERS!

Hope you don’t lose any sleep over this one lol

CREDIT

• https://www.nps.gov/articles/fire-prevention-52-spontaneous-combustion.htm#:~:text=Spontaneous%20combustion%20or%20spontaneous%20ignition,enough%20for%20ignition%20to%20occur.
• https://www.britannica.com/story/is-spontaneous-human-combustion-real

• https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/unexplained-phenomena/shc.htm
• https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/spontaneous-human-combustion-mans-body-2337320
• https://www.grunge.com/76211/mystery-spontaneous-human-combustion/

The content below is from Episode 115 of the Who’d a Thunk It? Podcast

RECOMMENDATION SEGMENT

• This week I recommend you check out a 10-year-old movie called The Impossible.
  • Starring Naomi Watts, Ewen McGreggor, and Tom Holland when he was just a boy.
  • The movie is about a true story of a family vacationing in Indonesia when a massive Tsunami hit.
  • I didn’t expect to like the movie. I only clicked on it to see if it was Tom Holland as a kid on the cover but Tubi started playing the movie right away.
  • I was BLOWN away by how real the experience felt. It totally immerses you into the story. You feel like you are right there with Naomi Watts as she limps around the wrecked of a city in search for her family. I was cursing at my TV, shedding tears, and jumping with fright.
  • This movie is a gem and it feels like they did everything possible to portray the events as they actually happened.

NOW FOR THE MAIN EVENT

• Robert Craig “Evel” Knievel was born on October 17, 1938 in Butte Montana
  • In the early 1900’s the town of Butte looked like something out of an old wild west movie. It was known for copper mining.
    • If you haven’t been to places out west like Montana I can tell you that it has a very different feel to it than places where I grew up on the east coast. The North American west was one of the last places to be tamed by society. It may have been tamed in the last 150 years, but it still has a wild side to it.
  • Evel’s parents married young and divorced fast. Evel was born in 1938. They had a 2nd kid named Nicholas in 1939 and by 1940 both of them decided to abandon their children and leave Butte Montana altogether. For that, I won’t even mention their names here.
    • Their father was 21 years old and known for sleeping around on his 17-year-old wife. When she was pregnant with Nic she filed for divorce.
  • So the two boys were raised by their paternal grandparents Ignatius and Emma Knievel.
    • Ignatius Knievel might be one of the coolest names I’ve ever heard.
  • Their father dropped the two boys (a toddler and an infant) off at his parents’ place and went on to race cars in Reno. Little did the boys’ father know (or care) that his father Ignatius suffered from Bipolar disorder. He would go months without speaking. Meanwhile, his mother in her late 40s was not up to the task of raising 2 very young and rambunctious boys.

• But little Evel made do with what he had and got busy growing up.
  • When he was just 8 years old, Evel went to a Joie Chitwood auto daredevil show. This is where he got the taste for adrenaline in the form of motorcycle stunts.
  • When he got a little older he joined the Track & Field and Hockey team at school. He excelled as an athlete, but his grades were not anything to write home about.
  • The people who grew up with him said Evel wasn’t a bad person, but he was always seeking a thrill and this got him in trouble.
    • No real surprise there… Evel Knievel was a handful in school
  • He was always pranking people and they usually were conducted in the name of good humor.
    • But one time he took things a bit too far. To get back at his sworn enemy the School Librarian, he took his belt and tied the library doors shut, and lit 2 large trash cans on fire. Firefighters arrived on the scene and no one was hurt, but Evel did get some legitimate punishment for this.
• Then, when Evel was 16 years old, his dad finally came back after going to the store for cigarettes… 14 years later.
  • Papa Knievel was too late to try and turn his son around. When his father returned to Butte Montana his son had already been expelled from high school and was looking for work at the town copper mine, Anaconda Copper Mining Company.
  • One mile deep underground Evel faced the harsh reality that is the life of a miner.
    • If a cave-in, fire, or poisonous gas didn’t get him, the lung disease eventually would.
  • When papa Knievel opened a Volkswagen dealership in Butte and offered a job to his son, Evel told his old man to shove it where the sun don’t shine. Evel was determined to make it on his own. He was able to escape the fate of a miner by getting a bus driving job for the Anaconda Minding company.
  • Can you imagine getting on the bus that is supposed to take you to work every day and having a young Evel Knievel be your bus driver? LOL. I also love the fact that the name of the company that gave Evel Knievel his first job was ANACONDA
    • Legend has it that Evel would terrify his passengers by attempting stunts with the work bus.
  • He eventually lost his job because he tried to pop a wheelie with a company payloader! Of course this attempt ended in disaster because it was Evel Freaking Knievel!
    • The payloader came down on a huge power cable that left most of Butte Montana in darkness.

• When he lost his job at Anaconda he joined the Army Reserves… how do you think that played out? One of the most famous wildmen in history trying to join an organization that tries to break down and reconstruct the mentality of its members… Evel didn’t last very long in the military.
  • After the Army, he bounced from town to town as a conman and picked up odd jobs. During this period in his life he practiced his passion of motorcycle stunts and realized it could make him some cash if he promoted his stunts a bit.
• So he told a crowd to gather at the Butte A&W to watch him climb a ridiculously steep hill with a nice Harley Davidson motorcycle. He didn’t get paid cash for this stunt, but the A&W manager realized the crowd was good for business and fed Evel for free.
  • The Harley he used in the stunt wasn’t obtained legally and not long after it, Evel was arrested for theft. While in jail he rubbed elbows with some other known crooks about the town by the name of William C Knofel.
  • Then known as Bobby Knievel heard a cop at the jail say “well boys, looks like we better double our guard. We’ve got Evel Knievel and Awful Knofel.” And so one of the coolest monikers of all time was born.
  • The short stints in jail for motorcycle theft didn’t scare him away from a life of crime. Evel soon began cracking open safes, but when he realized he could face serious time behind bars he brushed up his act.
• So Evel decided to try his luck at athletics. He had a knack for many sports.
  • While in the Army he learned how to pole vault and wasn’t half bad.
  • As an avid skier, he tried to make money jumping off of ski slopes.
  • He even tried to start up his own hockey team.
    • He tried to be the owner, coach, and starting center of a semi-pro hockey team called the Butte Bombers.
    • He scrounged up money from his grandfather and took out a loan to start the team and pay his players $50 a game. He hardly ever was able to pay his players as the Butte Bombers didn’t draw a huge crowd.
    • Then in 1960, Evel was able to set up an international game with the Czechoslovakian Olympic hockey team.
    • Although the Butte Bombers lost the game, Evel was able to secure some extra cash lol. He started a fundraiser between the game periods to help pay for the Czech teams travel and lodging expenses. But when the game was over all that money and the receipts from the game went missing.
    • The US Olympic committee was forced to repay all that money. After all this the Butte Bombers team went belly up and Evel never went back to hockey.
  • Evel then tried to be an insurance salesman, but the 9-5 desk job didn’t suit him. This is where he realized he was one hell of a salesman though.
    • He started selling motorcycles in the state of Washington and to boost sales he would jump motorcycles over dangerous animals like mountain lions and rattlesnakes. This of course made him a local legend.
      • How could it not? I have no interest in getting a motorcycle, but if a dude was going to jump over a pit of mountain lions or rattlesnakes at my local dealership… you bet I would be there to see it
• In 1959 Evel Knievel married Linda Bork and the two had 4 kids:
  • Sons: Robbie and Kelly
  • Daughters: Tracey and Alicia
  • Evel was married to Linda for 38 years… but it wasn’t a fairy tale marriage… we will get to that later.
• Then in 1966, he started to go legit with his stunts by starting the Evel Knievel and His Motorcycle Daredevils stunt group.
  • But Evel must not be much of a team player because he split soon after and began his solo stunt career
  • In 1967 Evel appeared on ABC’s Wide World of Sports in a bright yellow and black racing uniform on the back of a motorcycle. He jumped 15 cars… this was his first big break in the name of fame.

• Not long after his first big TV appearance on ABC, Evel was strolling through the Las Vegas Strip. As he passed Cesar’s Palace he got a wild idea to jump over it in a blaze of glory… you know, Evel Knievel style. But how was he going to do it?
  • Well instead of going through the proper channels (asking permission), Evel decided to try unconventional means. He was more of a beg for forgiveness kind of guy anyway.
  • Evel Knievel apparently called Jay Sarno, the owner of Cesar’s Palace, and acted like a journalist who wanted to know more about a stuntman planning to jump the fountain. The Casino owner didn’t want someone to jump his fountain without his cut of the profits so he called up Evel Knievel. Without recognizing Evel’s voice as the same guy who called acting like a journalist, Jay Sarno asked if Evel Knievel would beat the non-existing other stuntman to the point and jump the fountain in an official stunt.
  • Even more legendary than how he got permission to do it, Evel Knievel’s Cesar’s Palace stunt gave the crowd exactly what they were looking for:
    • Evel cleared the massive fountain out front of the casino but as he came down the other side he fell short of the downward ramp. His bike slammed into the ramp’s edge and his limp body summersaulted through the air and then skidded across the pavement.
    • In the end, Evel had a crushed pelvis, broken hip, broken nose, fractured jaw, broken ribs, and he cracked his melon so hard he was in a coma for weeks.
    • Because he is Evel Knievel he woke up and fully recovered. He woke up and was welcomed with world-wide fame. The media had told the world that the stunt nearly killed him, but he was able to survive.

• Then came the stunt that I heard about when I was in elementary school: Jumping the GRAND CANYON
  • the idea was hatched in a drunken stupor back in 1966. One of Evel’s buddies jokingly said he couldn’t pull it off and Evel took that as a challenge.
  • For this stunt, our boy was able to get legit permission from the Department of the Interior. But apparently, they approved the request because they thought he was joking. When Evel scheduled a Jump date they realized he was serious and rescinded the approval.
  • Although Evel never was able to jump the Grand Canyon, his son did and he kicked ass doing it.
    • An article from the Guardian written in 1999 said: “Robbie Knievel, son of the motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel, became the first person to jump the Grand Canyon on a motorbike when he cleared a 60-metre (200ft) chasm to break his own distance record.”

• Undeterred by the Grand Canyon fiasco, In 1974 Evel decided to jump the Snake River Canyon in Idaho… it is a 1-mile chasm and he used a custom-made steam-powered rocket that he dubbed the Sky Cycle X-2.
  • Now usually Evel Knievel was known for being optimistic and balls-to-the-wall tough about attempting crazy stunts, but for this he was convinced he was going to die… but he did it anyway.
  • Evel Knievel sat inside a red, white, and blue painted steam-powered rocket and shot himself high in to the pale blue Idaho sky. As he began to plummet to the ground he deployed his parachute which promptly malfunctioned. This malfunction caused Evel to not technically make it to the other side, but it was still a spectacle. I mean, The man shot himself into the sky in a rocket (which had no ceiling mind you) and he was able to survive.
  • Regardless of how crazy I think the Snake River Canyon stunt was, it was the stunt that marked Evel’s downward spiral out of the spot light. Before Snake River, the public saw Evel as the guy who could do anything, but now they doubted his abilities… and there was another factor that contributed to his reputation going sour.
• While on the 60+ city tour to hype up his Snake River stunt, Evel Knievel had a reporter join him on the road.
  • While Evel liked to be seen as a tough guy who lived a moral life, the reporter saw something different. While touring the country Evel apparently got blacked out drunk all the time, cheating on his wife, disturbingly large ego, quick temper, and a tendency to abuse his wife Linda………
    • I’ve always thought of Evel Knievel as an American Hero of sorts, but if the domestic abuse stuff is real then I may have to rethink that. I expected a guy like Evel to have a huge ego, substance abuse, and anger issues… that doesn’t really bother me. But directly harming someone else, especially a loved one is a step too far.
  • And This article that exposed Evel behind the scenes didn’t sit well with the man himself. He tracked the reporter down and viciously beat the guy with an aluminum bat until he was unconscious. The reporter’s arm was shattered in the beating.
  • Big surprise that beating the reporter didn’t make things go away… After it came out, neighbors and friends of the Knievels were interviewed for a scoop on their home life. Apparently it was no secret that Evel beat his wife Linda. She was known as a kind soul in the area and Evel was looked down upon for how he treated his wife.
    • The thinking was that Evel viewed marriage in a very archaic fashion. He treated Linda like a 2nd class citizen in their home… for 38 years.
    • Again, I wasn’t there, but if all this is true, Evel Knievel subjected that woman to a life of hell for almost 4 decades.
• Evel known as a womanizer had seen many women, but when he started to sleep with pro golfer Krystal Kennedy in 1992 it would lead to Evel divorcing his first wife Linda in 1997.
  • Just 2 years later in 99′ Evel and Krystal get married… then 2 years later in 2001 they split. 1 year after their divorce, Krystal gets a restraining order against Evel claiming he beat her and threatened her over the phone. Evel was 63 years old… Krystal was only 32.
  • Evel accused Krystal of threatening him with a gun over some jewelry… through all this the couple stayed close until Evel died in 2007
• Evel Knievel was the world’s greatest stuntman.
  • The dude broke the world record for most bones broken in a lifetime with 433. He set that shit in 1975 and it still stands today.
  • That’s a badass statistic, but not one worth trying to beat. By 2006 Evel needed a morphine drip to keep the constant pain at bay.
  • Evel died of complications from diabetes, alcoholism, a rare disease called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (excess scar tissue around the vertebrae), and the obvious… countless injuries from a lifetime of stunts. He died in November of 2007 in Florida. His body was taken to Butte Montana for his final resting place.
• Evel Knievel was an American daredevil who attempted more than 75 ramp-to-ramp motorcycle jumps. His longest jump was 133 feet long. Some of the more famous include flying over the fountain at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, jumping over busses at London’s Wembley Stadium, and an aborted trip across the Snake River Canyon in a steam-powered vehicle.

Thanks for Listening Who’d a Thunkers!

Until next week

CREDIT

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evel_Knievel
• https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/may/22/5#:~:text=Robbie%20Knievel%2C%20son%20of%20the,break%20his%20own%20distance%20record.

7:05

The content below is from Episode 114 of the Who’d a Thunk It? Podcast

RECOMMENDATION SEGMENT

• This week I recommend you watch The Orville.
  • Created by Seth McFarland (the creator of Family Guy), this show was expected to be a ridiculous parody of Star Trek, but turned out to be a legit SiFi series.
  • The show does have some McFarland humor throughout, but it isn’t saturated with comedy. Seth obviously has the ability to be funny and some of his projects in the past have been slam dunks like Family Guy and TED. But other projects of his were just too ridiculous for me. Luckily the Orville saves the humor for when it best fits the story. In my opinion that makes the few jokes that do make it past editing even funnier.
  • But this isn’t a comedy show, the main focus of the show is to go where Star Trek never did and certainly doesn’t today (today’s version of Star Trek sucks).
  • The Orville proposes some deep concepts only possible on a futuristic exploration starship. I think it is leagues better than the Star Trek spin-offs of today, and that is why I recommend you check it out.

NOW FOR THE MAIN EVENT

• The other weekend I was headed to bed after having a few beers and all I wanted was to watch a cool movie I’d never seen before. I turned on Netflix and saw U.S. Marshals.
  • It is a movie from the late 90’s starring Tommy Lee Jones, Wesley Snipes, and Robert Downey Jr. It is technically a sequel to the much more famous movie The Fugitive starring Harrison Ford. As I watched this mediocre movie I found myself wondering what a US Marshal does… What makes them different than regular cops or FBI agents?
  • And so this episode was born! LOL this episode is all about the different kinds of law enforcement and what they do.
• Before I get into the different kinds of law enforcement, let us cover some basics:
  • Law Enforcement is the sum of all the agencies and employees that are tasked with protecting the public, keeping the peace, and enforcing the law. This is a massive amount of responsibility and therefore Law Enforcement has been split up.
  • There are jurisdictions such as Federal, State, County, and Local cities/towns.
  • The Feds include the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and the U.S. Marshals.
  • State cops include State Troopers and Highway Patrol.
  • Then Counties have Sheriffs/Deputies and cities/towns can have their own police force.
• So let’s pick apart some of the big ones:

• Uniformed Officers
  • Uniform cops make up the majority of the US’s police force. They investigate crime and help the public… which includes menial tasks like directing traffic.
  • Have you ever heard of a Beat cop? Well, a beat refers to a specific patrol that an officer will take. That is their designated area and therefore they can become familiar with the area and will be the first to spot any irregularities.

• Detectives
  • Detectives are the guys that all the books, shows, and movies are written about. They talk to people who witnessed crimes and suspects. They interview everyone involved to collect clues and evidence to build a case. They organize all the facts and type up detailed reports on crimes. Detectives are typically very organized people as they are responsible for creating the prosecution in a court case. Everything they type up is picked apart by the defense’s legal team. If they are sloppy the case can be thrown out of court.

• State Police and Highway Patrol
  • State and Highway Patrol have a huge jurisdiction compared to local cops. They are typically patrolling major roadways or highways. But they also help local police during emergencies or situations that go past the jurisdiction of local cops. If local police don’t have the resources to address a situation they will rely on State police.

• Fish and Game Wardens
  • Now we’re getting into more uncommon police forces. Game wardens aren’t even typically thought of as Law Enforcement, but they are. These are the guys protecting wildlife such as fish and animals… as well as the forests as a whole.
  • They work with nature conservation departments maintaining the health of our forests. They also help federal departments with investigations.
    • As an example: if a murder victim is found in the woods or a suspect has fled into the woods, game wardens will assist investigating law enforcement by guiding them through the wilderness.
  • The main responsibility of Fish and Game Wardens is to enforce fishing and hunting laws. They make sure fishermen and hunters are safe and not poaching.
  • Similar to how they help investigating forces as guides in the woods, they also conduct search and rescue operations. They are supposed to know the woods better than any other official law enforcement so it makes sense. Game Wardens also follow up on complaints or accidents regarding parks and trails. They are supposed to know how to operate boats and off-road vehicles.
  • Fish and Game Warden is a very sought-after job. The competition to become a Game Warden is stiff because there are a lot of people like me who would love to be out protecting nature from people.
  • Wardens need a bachelor’s degree related to biology or conservation plus impressive experience helps as well.
  • Where a lot of other departments of law enforcement have come under fire for misconduct or blatantly illegal actions under the protection of the badge, Game Wardens are typically safe from all that negative PR. These guys care about nature and making sure people don’t muck it up. The only PR they typically get is positive.
  • You may think of a Fish and Game Warden as a simple nature protector, but I assure you that they have arresting power and will book your ass if need be. They have just as much authority as a regular cop, it is just that their jurisdiction is out in the woods.

• Transit Police
  • If you don’t live in a larger city then this kind of law enforcement might be a bit alien to you.
  • Transit cops patrol subways and freight railways stations. They typically stop property damage-type crimes like vandalism and theft. But they also patrol for trespassing and smuggling.
  • Transit cops are required to go to the Police academy like uniformed cops and some cities require further training.

• Sheriffs
  • The biggest difference between other police or law enforcement and Sheriffs is that Sheriffs are elected positions. They have to be voted into their roles.
  • They are also in charge of enforcing laws throughout a county instead of just a city or town so they have a larger area to cover.
  • While most Sheriffs have had some sort of education and/or experience in law enforcement before running for Sheriff’s office, it isn’t required.
  • The Sheriff’s Office is responsible for carrying out the orders of the Court to enforce Injunctions, serve warrants, the service of Out of County* ProtectionFrom Abuse Orders (PFA), Writs of Summons and Complaints, Subpoenas, and Writs of Attachment / Garnishments.

• Special Jurisdiction Police
  • Places like college campuses or other schools fall under special jurisdiction, and Air Ports and other transportation systems do as well.
  • Even though I always thought of them as rent-a-cops or not real cops when I was in college, they are indeed real cops. Please learn from my mistake: Special Jurisdiction cops have just as much authority as regular cops. They are not to be trifled with lol.
    • The main difference in their authority is that they don’t have jurisdiction outside their special jurisdiction. So if you are doing some shady stuff in town, the campus PD aren’t supposed to arrest you… but you can bet they will call the local police to do it anyway.

• US Marshals and Air Marshals
  • The USMS is a federal law enforcement agency in the United States. The USMS is a bureau within the U.S. Department of Justice, operating under the direction of the Attorney General,^[3] but serves as the enforcement arm of the United States federal courts to ensure the effective operation of the judiciary and integrity of the Constitution. It is the oldest U.S. federal law enforcement agency, created by the Judiciary Act of 1789 during the presidency of George Washington as the “Office of the United States Marshal”. The USMS as it stands today was established in 1969 to provide guidance and assistance to U.S. Marshals throughout the federal judicial districts.
  • The Marshals Service is primarily responsible for the protection of judges and other judicial personnel, the administration of fugitive operations, the management of criminal assets, the operation of the United States Federal Witness Protection Program and the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System, the execution of federal arrest warrants, and the protection of senior government officials through the Office of Protective Operations. Throughout its history the Marshals have also provided unique security and enforcement services including protecting African-American students enrolling in the South during the civil rights movement, escort security for United States Air Force LGM-30 Minuteman missile convoys, law enforcement for the United States Antarctic Program, and protection of the Strategic National Stockpile.^[6]
  • Next up are the Air Marshals. They are a special kind of Marshal. They protect passengers and crews of aviation transportation that including commercial flights.
  • Air Marshals need a bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice, Homeland Security, Criminology, or Sociology and completion of a 14-week special training. The training includes both basic training and specific air marshal training comprised of physical fitness assessments, firearm training, and tactical classes.

• Border Patrol
  • While you might imagine border patrol agents following tracks in rural areas or performing routine customs checks at the border or the airport, they can work in many other capacities as well.
  • While many of them are responsible for surveying land and coastal borders for smuggling and other illegal activities and communicating with those crossing the border, border patrol agents can also find specialized work within Customs and Border Patrol agency with opportunities in horse patrol, bike patrol, and emergency medical services.
  • If you’re looking for the best chance at becoming a border patrol agent, a combination of law enforcement experience and criminal justice college courses is a great place to start.

• CSI – Crime Scene Investigators
  • Crime scene investigators sometimes called forensic technicians or forensic scientists, are the law enforcement professionals who scour crime scenes for evidence, gathering and documenting what they find. Depending on the role, they may conduct laboratory analysis of the evidence they collect. Additionally, they may be called on to testify as expert witnesses in criminal trials—this can require explaining complex subjects in plain language, so strong communication skills are a big plus.
  • To become a crime scene investigator, you’ll need to earn a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice or a related field like forensic science or biology before stepping into that crime scene or onto the witness stand.

• But what about…
  • TSA
    • Airport security or TSA…
      • People often believe that an agent has the same role as a law enforcement officer. However, TSA agents are not law enforcement officers. TSA officers cannot arrest a passenger. They also do not carry any weapons and are not allowed to use force as a part of their duties. They simply screen for security reasons and if a situation arises, they must contact the local law enforcement. In the case of a breach of security in an airport, the TSO would contact airport law enforcement to handle the situation. 
  • Deputies
    • We talked about Sherriffs, but what about their cronies the Deputy Sherriffs?
      • The main difference between a deputy sheriff and a police officer is jurisdiction. A police officer is solely responsible for the prevention of crime within their city limits, whereas a deputy sheriff is responsible for an entire county, which could include multiple small towns and several larger cities. Job responsibilities are also different for a deputy and a police officer. Police officers mainly patrol the city, issue tickets, and testify against criminals they arrest. The duties for deputy sheriffs vary by state but may include maintaining county jails, acting as security in courts, investigating crimes or accidents, and issuing warrants. Qualifications and training also differ, with additional training needed to become a deputy.
  • Prison Guards or Correctional Officers
    • Generally speaking, the men and women who guard prisoners on US soil do enforce the law… but within a controlled environment.
      • They don’t attend police academies. They typically don’t make arrests, but some states do permit arresting power to their correctional officers.
      • Where beat cops have reality to deal with, correctional officers have an enclosed world full of convicted criminals to deal with. They are two very different things. Prison guards are tasked with keeping convicts from getting out or committing further crimes when inside.
  • Texas Rangers
    • The Texas Ranger Division, commonly called the Texas Rangers and also known as “Los Diablos Tejanos“—”the Texan Devils”,^[4] is an investigative law enforcement agency with statewide jurisdiction in Texas, based in the capital city of Austin. Over the years, the Texas Rangers have investigated crimes ranging from murder to political corruption, acted in riot control and as detectives, protected the governor of Texas, tracked down fugitives, and functioned as a paramilitary force at the service of both the Republic (1836–1845) and the state of Texas.
    • The Texas Rangers were unofficially created by Stephen F. Austin in a call-to-arms written in 1823 and were first headed by Captain Morris. After a decade, on August 10, 1835, Daniel Parker introduced a resolution to the Permanent Council creating a body of rangers to protect the Mexican border.^[5] The unit was dissolved by the federal authorities during the post–Civil War Reconstruction Era, but was quickly reformed upon the reinstitution of home government. Since 1935, the organization has been a division of the Texas Department of Public Safety (TxDPS); it fulfills the role of Texas’ state bureau of investigation. As of 2019, there are 166 commissioned members of the Ranger force.
    • The Rangers have taken part in many of the most important events of Texas history, such as stopping the assassination of presidents William Howard Taft and Porfirio Díaz in El Paso, and in some of the best-known criminal cases in the history of the Old West, such as those of gunfighter John Wesley Hardin, bank robber Sam Bass, and outlaws Bonnie and Clyde. Scores of books have been written about the Rangers, from well-researched works of nonfiction to pulp novels and other such fiction, making the Rangers significant participants in the mythology of the Wild West. The Lone Ranger, perhaps the best-known example of a fictional character derived from the Texas Rangers, draws his alias from having once been a Texas Ranger. Other well-known examples include the radio and television series Tales of the Texas Rangers, and the several Texas Ranger roles, including Chuck Norris portraying Cordell Walker in Walker, Texas Ranger.
    • During the early years of the19th century, the Texas Rangers were the main fighting force against native tribes, namely the Comanche. While other colonizing forces used muzzleloading firearms, the Texas Rangers used the newly invented Colt Revolver.
      • Samuel Colt developed the first mass-produced, multi-shot, revolving firearms. Various revolving designs had been around for centuries, but precision parts couldn’t be made with available technologies. Colt was the first to apply Industrial Age machining tools to the idea.
      • The use of the revolver gave the Texas Rangers a major advantage over their enemy. Comanches were master horsemen and were able to rapid-fire arrows from their horses. Where other colonizing forces had to dismount their horses and take minutes to reload their firearms, the Texas Rangers could rapid-fire back to the Comanche.
      • Their ability to successfully face the Comanche in combat cemented the reputation of the Texas Rangers as badasses of the west.
    • The Rangers are culturally significant to Texans and are legally protected against disbandment.^[6] There is a museum dedicated to the Texas Rangers known as the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco, Texas, which celebrates the cultural significance of the Rangers.
  • Police Ranks
    • Police technician
      • Entry level – high school diploma – paper pusher – parking tickets – directing traffic –
    • Police officer/patrol officer/police detective
      • This is the uniformed police officer I spoke of earlier.
      • Most broad rank – training academy – HS diploma or Bachelors – patrol – investigate emergency and non-emergency
      • Some departments view detectives above officers
    • Police corporal
      • officers that show leadership qualities typically become corporals – in charge of officers
    • Police sergeant
      •  5 years of experience minimum – interpret and apply ordinances to a wide variety of situations – train officers – give out punishments – develop new policies
    • Police lieutenant
      • Many years of experience needed and an exam – Middle management – hire and fire power – assign titles and roles/shifts – work with other police departments and interact with public –
    • Police captain
      • College Degree – Public speaking/relations – Manage department activities – answer only to chiefs/deputy chiefs – Budget management – training/hire – work with public – conduct research
    • Deputy police chief
      • Deputy Police Chiefs are in big cities where it is too big of an area to police for just a chief. They can act as a Chief in the Cheif’s absence like a Vice President.
      • Becoming a deputy police chief is likely to require several years of service in a law enforcement management position. A Bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice is typically required, and some agencies may prefer additional training or education like completion of the FBI National Academy.
    • Chief of police
      • These are the head honchos of the police. They oversee everything at the top and assign officers to special task forces.
      • Most police chiefs are appointed by elected officials. As the public head of a law enforcement agency, they work closely with mayors and city government officials. They implement law enforcement programs for their cities and review criminal cases to look for trends and patterns. They handle the department’s budget, direct the systems that maintain records and legal documents, handle grievances, and address the public in the event of crisis incidents
      • As the high-profile leaders of a public law enforcement agency, the buck stops with them. They are ultimately responsible for any issues or incidents in the agency under their watch. Because of this, they often face criticism from public leaders, activists, and local politicians if things aren’t going well. This means most successful police chiefs are educated, articulate, and at least a little politically savvy.
• And that’s all Ive got on law enforecment.
• Thanks for listening Who’d a Thunkers!

CREDIT

• https://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/justice-studies/blog/types-of-police-officers/
• https://civilservicehq.com/tsa-agent-vs-tsa-officer-whats-the-difference/#:~:text=People%20often%20believe%20that%20an,a%20part%20of%20their%20duties.
• https://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/justice-studies/blog/police-ranks/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Ranger_Division#:~:text=Since%201935%2C%20the%20organization%20has,members%20of%20the%20Ranger%20force.
• https://study.com/learn/lesson/law-enforcement-types-levels.html#:~:text=The%20different%20levels%20of%20law,municipalities%20have%20local%20police%20departments.
• https://www.usmarshals.gov/duties/

The content below is from Episode 112 of the Who’d a Thunk It? Podcast

RECOMMENDATION SEGMENT

• I recommend you watch HBO Max’s Tokyo Vice
  • The show has 8 episodes out now, each lasts about an hour.
  • The story follows Jake, a young man from Missouri as he tries to make his way through a career at the prestigious Meicho newspaper in Tokyo Japan.
  • His Japanese is seemingly flawless as his new employers and co-workers speak with him in fluent Japanese throughout the show.
  • The show is set in the 90’s (when newspaper was a much more relevant medium). It takes a look inside 1990’s Japanese journalism, police, and organized crime known as the Yakuza.
• Shannon and I loved this show and we enjoyed watching every episode. Our only complaint is that there aren’t more episodes to watch!

NOW FOR THE MAIN EVENT

• Recently, within the last month or so, BBC Earth released footage of Dolphins engaging in a gang war.
  • The footage was taken by underwater cameramen Doug Allan and Didier Noirot.
  • This video sparked a curiosity in me. I’d heard of dolphins showing thug-like behavior before, but never showing up in gangs. What other thug things do dolphins do, and what about other animals we see as cute?

• Apparently divers have witnessed this dolphin gang behavior before, but this was the first time it was caught on camera.
  • Science Magazine (one of the most reputable scientific publications on the planet) came out with an article last year that talks about this gang behavior.
  • Ganging up is a regular part of the dolphin’s way of life. It is the males that group together to make advantage of the old saying “power in numbers.” Once they’ve created a unified gang, male dolphins will fight off rivals from their territory and also capture females that are ready to mate.
  • These dolphins use whistles to signal their gang to band together. Once they’ve joined up they can pillage however they chose. They are like Vikings of the sea.
    • I might be personifying these creatures a bit too much, but when you consider dolphins and whales have a remarkable mental ability, engage in group communication, and have individual names for each other, I think personification is warranted.
  • When the male dolphin gangs spot a female with a young calf they will kill the calf to force the mother into heat. The males will use their echolocation to target vital organs and then beat the infant dolphin to a pulp. Once the female goes into heat, she will be forcibly mated for weeks by multiple males. The males will make threatening whistles, movements, and even smack the female with their fins and tails to keep her in line.
    • I use the term forcible mating because there is nothing to suggest dolphins can grasp the concept of consent. Therefore, to use the term rape would be inaccurate.
  • There is video evidence that dolphins pursue humans for mating purposes. Videos of dolphins attempting to mate with human divers have been passed around the internet for years now.
    • A male dolphin’s genitals are shaped in a what that forced copulation with a human cannot be ruled out as a mechanical impossibility. So dolphins aren’t always so nice to humans either.

• Then there are the sea otters…
  • While mating, male sea otters bite the faces of female otters. This behavior can lead to fatal injuries.
  • When female otters aren’t available, male sea otters have been observed fatally humping baby seals. In some cases, they continue to mate with the corpse for up to a week after killing it. The thought is that they are so desperate to mate they take these drastic measures.

• Penguins might be the worst
  • Male Adelie penguins seem to reach all sorts of desperation in their quest to mate.
  • During the famous failed expedition of Captain Robert Scott
    • The celebrated explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott (1868–1912) also famously took part in the race to claim the South Pole in 1911. Captain Scott and four others perished after reaching the South Pole on January 17, 1912 – only to find Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had beaten them to it more than a month earlier.
  • But Dr. George Murray Levick was on the boat sent to help Captain Scott and crew. After their ship tasked with rescuing Captian Scott, the Terra Nova, was blocked in ice, Dr. Levick survived with 5 others in an ice cave for an entire antarctic winter.
    • The men battled the perilous polar winter and survived in part by eating penguin meat and seal blubber.
    • They survived despite having been forced to spend an entire Antarctic winter in an ice cave, unaware Captain Scott and four others had died.
    • Their journey was meant to save Captain Scott and during their entire 8 months of survival in the Antarctic they were told Captain Scott’s crew had died.
  • During his time in the Antarctic, Dr. Levick witnessed some groundbreaking discoveries about the mating behavior of Adelie Penguins. He is the only researcher to ever see the entire mating cycle.
  • What he saw shocked him.
    • They mate with other males, injured females, lost chicks and corpses. The most desperate penguins even try to mate with the ground.
    • In one scientific study, researchers set out a dead penguin which had been frozen in its mating posture. The males found this corpse “irresistible”.
    • In another case observers put “just the frozen head of a the penguin” on a rock, just to see how far the male penguins were willing to go. They were not deterred.
  • Back in Britain, he published a paper called ‘Natural History of the Adelie Penguin’, but his findings about the species’ astonishing sexual behaviour were considered so shocking that they were omitted.
  • Dr. Levick’s paper was found decades later at the Natural History Museum in the UK and was published for the world to read.
  • The hypothesis today is that sexual inexperience is to blame. Adelie Penguins gather at their colonies in October to start to breed. They have only a few weeks to do that and young adults simply have no experience of how to behave. Scientists believe the inexperience leads to the odd sexual behavior.

• So what’s the point here?
  • First off, I wanted shock value. Finding out the animal kingdom, especially the creatures we think of as cute and cuddly, is full of forced mating and other depraved acts is definitely shocking.
  • But I also see value in sharing that animals are different than us. They don’t have the same mental capacities as humans. Their ability for empathy and to understand the concept of consent is either non-existent or much less than our own.
  • Real bears aren’t cute cuddly like little teddy bears.
  • Dolphins aren’t magical beings that only want the best for us humans.
  • Otters are not sensitive and sweet.
  • And Penguins are some of the nastiest sons of bitches out there!
• No, the main point is that human morality and ethics can’t be put on to animals. We can’t judge animals by our standards. It doesn’t work that way.
  • The wilderness or nature is to be respected and understood as best as we can.

CREDIT:

• https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/203346/can-dolphins-rape-humans/
• https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2157129/Sexual-depravity-penguins-Polar-explorer-discovered-century-ago-revealed-time–shocking-print.html
• https://www.npr.org/2021/04/28/991503885/dolphins-are-considered-sociable-but-have-you-heard-of-dolphin-gangs
  • NPR’s morning edition by Steve Inskeep – People know of dolphins as friendly and sociable. But we don’t often hear the dolphin gangs. A new article in Science magazine says gangs are part of dolphin culture. Male dolphins band together to fight off rivals and capture females in heat. They learn the signature whistles of fellow members. Science magazine writes, quote, “like members of a street gang, male dolphins summon their buddies when it comes time to raid and pillage.” 
• https://slate.com/human-interest/2009/05/the-dark-secrets-that-dolphins-don-t-want-you-to-know.html
  • The Dark Secrets That Dolphins Don’t Want You to Kno – BY MIRIAM GOLDSTEIn – MAY 13, 2009
  • Dolphins are violent predators with a predilection for baby killing and rape. I feel it’s my duty to warn you, despite the risk of insulting creatures made of hundreds of pounds of muscle and rows of sharp teeth. Throw out your rainbow dolphin painting , and check out dolphins’ low-down dirty secrets:
    • –Dolphin sex can be violent and coercive. Gangs of two or three male bottlenose dolphins isolate a single female from the pod and forcibly mate with her, sometimes for weeks at a time. To keep her in line, they make aggressive noises, threatening movements, and even smack her around with their tails. And if she tries to swim away, they chase her down. Horny dolphins have also been known to target human swimmers -Demi Moore is rumored to have had a close encounter of the finny kind.
    • Dolphins kill harbor porpoise babies. In Scotland, scientists found baby harbor porpoises washed up with horrific internal injuries. They thought the porpoises might have been killed by weapons tests until they found the toothmarks. Later, dolphins were caught on film pulping the baby porpoises-the dolphins even used their ecolocation to aim their blow at the porpoises’ vital organs.
    • Dolphins kill their own babies. Baby dolphins have washed up alongside the dead porpoises, and some scientists think that all the porpoise-slaughter was just practice for some old-fashioned infanticide . For other mammals like lions, killing the babies makes the females immediately ready for the next pregnancy, and maybe that’s the case with dolphins, too.
• https://nypost.com/2013/10/29/the-cutest-animals-in-the-world-are-evil/
  • -2013
  • Slate also dismantled the unjustifiably clean reputation of the sea otter. Male otters have developed a bad habit of humping and fatally wounding baby seals in their desperation to mate, sometimes continuing to have sex with the seals up to a week after killing them.
  • Not that sex between consenting otters is much better. Males often kill females from their own species by biting their faces during sex.
  • That said, these crimes pale in comparison to the atrocities committed by Adelie penguins. Male penguins mate with other males, injured females, lost chicks and corpses. The most desperate penguins even try to mate with the ground, Slate reports.
  • In one scientific study, researchers set out a dead penguin which had been frozen in its mating posture. The males found this corpse “irresistible”.
  • Then the scientists placed “just the frozen head of a the penguin” on a rock, just to see how far the male penguins were willing to go. They weren’t deterred.
  • Brian Switek, who wrote the Slate article, was careful to stress that we shouldn’t judge animals by human standards.
  • That’s a fair point. Even so, we’ll never look at penguins or dolphins the same way again.

• BBC Earth
  • Dolphins and whales may appear to be totally alien to us. But with their mental ability, group communication and the discovery that dolphins have individual names, they are closer to us than we ever imagined. 

The content below is from Episode 111 of the Who’d a Thunk It? Podcast

RECOMMENDATION SEGMENT

• My mom did the recommendation segment for this week’s episode. Tune in to the audio version of the podcast to hear what Dee Lantz Carbaugh suggests you spend your time on.

NOW FOR THE MAIN EVENT

• Roald Dahl is a name you should know.
  • Maybe you don’t know him for the extraordinary life he lived or perhaps you won’t know him at all, the name may not ring a bell. But search deep in your memory. His name is likely one your mother or father read aloud just before reading one of the greatest stories your childhood ears ever heard.
  • Some of the stories that have “by Roald Dahl” on the cover include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The Witches, Fantastic Mr Fox, The BFG, The Twits, The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me and George’s Marvellous Medicine, not to mention he wrote adult tales as well, like Tales of the Unexpected. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide.
  • But the story of Roald Dahl goes beyond his authored works. His famous stories, like all authors, are but the byproduct of his colorful life.
    • He had a rather impressive service record during World War 2. He was a 6’4″ heavyweight boxing champion. And the man lived through more tragedies than one might ever imagine from a children’s author.

• Background
  • Roald Dahl was born on September 13th of the year 1916, right in the middle of World War 1.
  • He was born in Wales to immigrant parents from Norway. Most of his life was spent in England.
  • Roald Dahl’s dad was a successful shipbroker from Saprsborg Noway. He came to the United Kingdom and settled down in Cardiff in the 1880’s with his wife Marie Beaurin-Gresser, a Frenchwoman. Harald and Marie had 2 kids (Ellen and Louis). But then Marie died in 1907.
  • Roald’s father Harald remarried to another Norwegian immigrant in 1911. Her name was Sofie Magdalene Dahl. They gave birth to Roald in 1916 and named him after the famous Norwegian Roald Amundsen.
  • At a very young age Roald became very acquainted with death.
    • From RoaldDahl.com:
    • In February 1920 Roald Dahl’s older sister Astri dies from an infection following a burst appendix, aged seven.
  • It was a sudden rupture of the appendix. Roald was present when it happened. He watched his sister die.
    • Weeks later, Roald’s father Harald dies of pneumonia at the age of 57. Roald describes his death in Boy, saying: “[Astri’s] sudden death left him literally speechless for days afterward. He was so overwhelmed with grief that when he himself went down with pneumonia a month or so afterward, he did not much care whether he lived or died.”
    • This tragic series of events leaves Roald’s mother, Sofie Magdalene, with five children in her care: Roald and his two sisters, Alfhild and Else, plus Harald’s children by his first marriage, Ellen and Louis. At the time of her husband’s death, she was also pregnant with Roald’s younger sister, Asta, born in the autumn of 1920. 
    • So at the age of 35, Sofie is left to face the prospect of bringing up six children on her own, and at some considerable distance from Norway, the country of her own birth.
  • When his father Harald died he left a fortune to his family. Although raising 6 children alone is no small feat, Sofie inherited £158,917 in 1920. That amounts to £6,526,073 or $8,186,795 United States Dollars today.

• The schoolboy days
  • With all that casheesh, Sofie thought it best to give her children the best possible education. Roald was sent to the Cathedral School Llandaff in Whales.
  • There he got into all sorts of trouble. When he was 8 years old, he and some buddies got caned by the headmaster for putting a dead mouse in a jar of gobstopper candy at the local candy store. Apparently, the store was owned by a “mean and loathsome” old lady named Mrs. Pratchett. This event, at least among his compatriots, would be known as the Great Mouse Plot of 1924.
    • Gobstoppers were a favorite candy for UK kids between WW1 and WW2. Roald loved them so much he made them a pivotal part of his story Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and called them Everlasting Gobstoppers.
  • Roald was then sent to St. Peter’s Boarding School in the English town of Weston-super-Mare. Although he considered it his first great adventure, he wasn’t a fan.
  • The place just made him homesick to the point where he wrote to his mother every week.
    • Roald wrote to his mom but never told her how unhappy he was. It wasn’t until after her death that Roald realized she had kept every single one of his letters. BBC Radio 4 broadcasted an abridged version of them in 2016.
  • Then when he was 13 years old Roald was sent to Repton School in Derbyshire. This is where he got to understand the potential cruelty of his fellow humans.
  • At Repton the older boys preyed on the younger, treated them as their personal servants and lesser than themselves. The hazing went past servitude as the weak were frequently beaten at Repton.
    • This behavior seemed to have been learned from the adults at Repton. Roald watched as a friend of his was violently beaten by the headmaster to the point of injury. In his autobiography  Boy: Tales of Childhood, he wrote “All through my school life I was appalled by the fact that masters and senior boys were allowed literally to wound other boys, and sometimes quite severely… I couldn’t get over it. I never have got over it.” Roald said the violence he witnessed caused him to “have doubts about religion and even about God”.
    • Roald also wrote “Four years is a long time to be in prison…It becomes twice as long when it is taken out of your life just when you are at your most bubbly best and the fields are all covered with daffodils and primroses… It seemed as if we were groping through an almost limitless black tunnel at the end of which there glimmered a small bright light, and if we ever reached it, we would be 18 years old.”
  • While in school, Roald’s teachers didn’t believe him to be a particularly talented writer. One of his teachers said, “I have never met anybody who so persistently writes words meaning the exact opposite of what is intended.”
  • He seemed to be more of a jock in school. He would grow to be 1.98m or 6’4″ as an adult, so he had a competitive edge in sports.
    • He played cricket, football (soccer), golf, and was captain of the squash team.
    • But he always had a passion for literature and photography.
  • Another inspiration for Charlie and the Chocolate factory was that the Cadbury Chocolate factory would send boxes of new chocolate test kits to his school. I find it rather cute that a chocolate company sent test chocolates to school students. Roald loved chocolate and would daydream about inventing a new chocolate bar that would impress Mr. Cadbury. In addition to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, chocolate was a reoccurring theme in Roald Dahl’s stories.
    • The example that comes to mind is Brucie from Matilda and how he was forced to eat an entire chocolate cake.
  • For his summer vacations throughout his childhood and teen years, Roald would visit his mom’s family in Norway. Ever the prankster, he once replaced his half-sister’s fiance’s pipe tobacco for goat poop… he wrote about it with pride in his autobiography.

• Service Record
  • Roald served in the Royal Air Force (RAF) during WWII.
  • He was a fighter pilot (one of the most dangerous ways to serve.
    • Bomber Command aircrews suffered a high casualty rate: of a total of 125,000 airmen, 57,205 were killed (a 46 percent death rate), and a further 8,403 were wounded in action and 9,838 became prisoners of war. Therefore, a total of 75,446 airmen (60 percent of operational airmen) were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.
  • He joined up in November of 1939. He and 16 other men went into flight training and only 3 survived the war. By August of 1940, he was deemed ready to join a squadron and face the enemy in aerial combat. He was assigned to the #80 squadron flying Gloster Gladiators (the last biplane fighter aircraft used by the RAF).
  • In September of 1940, with little training, Roald was ordered to fly his Gladiator by an area of Egypt. During the final leg of the flight, he couldn’t find the airstrip he was ordered to land on. He was low on fuel and night was coming fast. He decided to land in the middle of the desert. The bottom or undercarriage of the plane hit a sizeable boulder and the plane crashed.
    • Roald’s skull was fractured and his nose was all smashed up. His injuries had left him temporarily blinded, but he still managed to drag himself away from the fiery crash before he passed out. This story would be Roald’s first published piece of literature.
  • After the crash, Roald’s unconscious body was taken to a medical post where he woke up but was still blind. He was taken to the Royal Navy hospital in Alexandria. That’s where he fell in and out of love with a nurse named Mary Welland.
    • An investigation was undertaken about Roald’s crash. Turns out he was given the wrong coordinates. Instead of the airstrip, he was supposed to land on, Roald was sent to an empty patch of desert on the edge of Axis forces. He was lucky to have survived the ordeal.
    • In 1941 Dahl was back in the cockpit fighting alongside the highest-scoring British flying ace of World War II Pat Pattle and Roald’s buddy David Coke. Twelve Hurricane fighters flew into the battle and 5 were shot down, including the talented Pattle.
    • Greek observers on the ground counted 22 German aircraft downed, but because of the confusion of the aerial engagement, none of the pilots knew which aircraft they had shot down. Dahl described it as “an endless blur of enemy fighters whizzing towards me from every side.”
  • That’s when Roald started to get headaches and started blacking out. The RAF wasn’t a fan of one of their pilots passing out mid-flight so they sent Roald home.
  • He tried his hand at training pilots for a while, but that didn’t stick. He met Under-Secretary of State of Air Major Harold Balfour. The Major took a liking to Roald and gave him the title of Assistant Air Attache at the British Embassy in Washington D.C.
  • Roald had come from the UK during WW2 where the Nazis had been starving the nation for years. The Brits had lived off nothing but rations for some time so when he made it to DC he was astonished by all the food and wealth he saw. He liked it at first. The Attache job was like a vacation. But after a week or so he started to feel guilty taking on such a cushiony job during the world’s greatest war.
    • “I’d just come from the war. People were getting killed. I had been flying around, seeing horrible things. Now, almost instantly, I found myself in the middle of a pre-war cocktail party in America,” Roald later explained.
  • While stationed in DC, Roald was tasked with persuading the US politicians and generals into joining the Allies in the fight. While most of America was deadset on staying isolated from Europe’s war, Roald was trying to convince them otherwise. That’s when Pearl Harbor happened and did his job for him.
  • During his time in America, Roald met British novelist C.S. Forester. Forester was tasked with typing up Allied propaganda to help the war effort. American magazine The Saturday Evening Post asked Forester to write about Roald’s time in the RAF. Forester reached out to Roald for simple notes about his service, something he could base his story on.
    • To Forester’s surprise, Roald’s “simple notes” turned out to be a compelling story and Forester decided to send it in to be published with no edits. The Saturday Evening Post published the story with only 1 alteration. Instead of titling it “A Piece of Cake” as Roald wanted, they called it “Shot Down Over Libya,” … even though his plane was never shot down. It was published in August of 1942.
  • It’s worth mentioning that Roald worked with Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond series.
  • Before the war was over, Roald also would do some spy work. He worked with Canadian spymaster William Stephenson (code name Intrepid). Under Intrepid’s guidance, Roald gave valuable intelligence to Winston Churchill himself.
    • “My job was to try to help Winston to get on with FDR, and tell Winston what was in the old boy’s mind,” -Roald said.
  • Roald also helped MI6 until his espionage skills were no longer needed and he was promoted to rank of Wing Commander.
  • His performance was noticed by military higher-ups and he became an intelligence officer and eventually an acting wing-commander.
    •  When the smoke of the war cleared, Roald’s record of five aerial victories, qualifying him as a flying ace, has been confirmed by post-war research and cross-referenced in Axis records. It is most likely that he scored more than those victories during 20 April 1941, when 22 German aircraft were shot down
• Life after the War
  • After the war Roald did what everyone else on Earth did, he got busy living and busy making babies.
  • He married an American actress by the name Patricia Neal on 2 July 1953 at Trinity Church in New York City. Their marriage lasted for 30 years and they had five children:
    • Olivia Twenty (1955–1962);
    • Chantal Sophia “Tessa” (born 1957), who became an author, and mother of author, cookbook writer and former model Sophie Dahl .;^[70]
    • Theo Matthew (born 1960);
    • Ophelia Magdalena (born 1964);
    • Lucy Neal (born 1965).^[71]
  • Then came the tradgedies again. In December of 1960 infant Theo Dahl was horribly injured. His baby carriage was hit by a taxi in NYC. He suffered from a condition called hydrocephalus which is excess fluid in the skull.
    • In response to this, Roald got to work trying to prevent similar incidents in the future. He helped develop the “Wade-Dahl-Till” or WDT. It was a medical device, a shunt that helped alleviate the pressure caused by the condition. It helped the lives of about 3,000 children around the world.
  • Then in November of 1962, not even 2 years later, Roald’s 7 year old daughter Olivia died from the measles.
  • The death left the author in a state of turmoil and darkness. An excerpt from a letter Dahl later wrote reads:
    • Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course, I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything.
    • “Are you feeling all right?” I asked her.
    • “I feel all sleepy,” she said.
    • In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.
  • Roald became an advocate of vaccines and dedicated his 1982 book The BFG to Olivia.
  • Olivia’s death shook Roald’s faith at least in organized religion. When he asked a church official about his daughter and her dog he was told that his daughter was in paradise, but her dog would never be with her there.
  • He said “I wanted to ask him how he could be so absolutely sure that other creatures did not get the same special treatment as us. I sat there wondering if this great and famous churchman really knew what he was talking about and whether he knew anything at all about God or heaven, and if he didn’t, then who in the world did?”
  • Then in 1965, Patricia, his wife, had 3 burst cerebral aneurysms while she was pregnant with Lucy, their 5th child.
    • Roald didn’t shirk his duties as a husband. For months he helped Patricia rehabilitate, re-learning to walk and talk. This didn’t keep Patricia down, she returned to her acting career. They even made a movie about her called The Patricia Neal Story (1981).
  • Then in 1972, Roald met Feclicity d’Abreu Crosland while she was working as a set designer on a commercial for Maxim coffee with Patricia (Roald’s then wife). It wasn’t long until they began an affair together. In 1983 Roald got a divorce from Patricia and promptly married Felicity.
  • In addition to the awards he received during his military service, Roald was given all sorts of awards from UK’s royal family. His country recognized his contributions to literature and humanity as a whole.

• The Writer
  • It was in the 1940’s Roald’s writing started to take off.
  • His first published work was the requested anecdote from C.S.Forester about his time in the RAF. Dahl ironically named it “A Piece of Cake.” Dahl’s story of his time in the war was bought by the Saturday Evening Post for $1,000 and published as “Shot Down Over Libya.”
  • The first children’s book he wrote was published in 1943 and called The Gremlins. It was about folklore surrounding airmen in the RAF. Pilots used to blame gremlins for all aircraft malfunctions. During his time in the US, Roald sent a copy to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt who enjoyed reading it to her grandchildren. Apparently, Walt Disney bought the rights to make a movie out of The Gremlins, but it was never made. -shame, that would have been a fun one I think.
  • While he is most known for his phenomenal children’s stories, he also wrote books for adults. They were full of dark humor and plot twists.
  • Roald’s last book Esio Trot was released in January of 1990. It was very different from most of his other works. All his life he wrote about cruel adult tyrants while the children in his stories were magical and often the protagonists. Esio Trot was about a lonely old man who had a crush on a woman he loved, but only from afar. In 2015 the story was made into a BBC comedy TV movie featuring Dustin Hoffman and Judi Dench.

• Criticisms
  • Today, Roald Dahl’s legacy is met with an asterisk.
  • There are quotes from his early life that lead people of today to think he was anti-Semitic, racist, and misogynistic.
  • Instead of remarking on these quotes myself, I will read his family’s words:
    • In 2020, Dahl’s family published a statement on the official Roald Dahl website apologizing for his antisemitism. The statement says “The Dahl family and the Roald Dahl Story Company deeply apologize for the lasting and understandable hurt caused by some of Roald Dahl’s statements. Those prejudiced remarks are incomprehensible to us and stand in marked contrast to the man we knew and to the values at the heart of Roald Dahl’s stories, which have positively impacted young people for generations. We hope that, just as he did at his best, at his absolute worst, Roald Dahl can help remind us of the lasting impact of words.”

• Roald Dahl died exactly 3 years before I was born on November 23rd of 1990.
  • He was laid to rest in the Church of St Peter and St Paul cemetery in Great Missenden Buckinghamshire, England. He was buried with some very good burgundy, chocolates, HB pencils, a power saw, and his snooker cues. To this day, children still leave toys and flowers by his grave.
  • During his life, he held a lasting commitment to donating to the fields of neurology, hematology, and literacy. After his death, those charitable donations were continued by his widow and the Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity.  The charity provides care and support to seriously ill children and young people throughout the UK.

“A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does.” -Roald Dahl

Nother interesting quote from Roald Dahl that my friend Brian told me about on the Who’d a Thunk It? facebook page:

In a hospital, surrounded by family, Dahl reassured everyone, sweetly, that he wasn’t afraid of death. “It’s just that I will miss you all so much,” he said—the perfect final words. Then, as everyone sat quietly around him, a nurse pricked him with a needle, and he said his actual last words: “Ow, fuck!”

CREDIT

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl
• https://medium.com/literally-literary/the-haunting-of-roald-dahl-a2df942d0d12
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Bomber_Command_aircrew_of_World_War_II#:~:text=Bomber%20Command%20aircrews%20suffered%20a,killed%2C%20wounded%20or%20taken%20prisoner.
• https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/sep/12/roald-dahl-day
• https://medium.com/literally-literary/the-haunting-of-roald-dahl-a2df942d0d12