Titanic Panic

I hate it my little fried chicken wing, my little drumstick, wing or drumstick, I think you're more of a drumstick than a chicken wing, you're bigger, you know, more solid. I would say a wing is a bit bigger than a drumstick, drumsticks are tasty little morsel, you do feel a bit drumsticky, I'll take that, I accept that, that's probably the nicest thing I've ever said to you. Hey now there's some controversy going on, I was calling Roosevelt before and I mentioned that you're having a birthday party in New Zealand that I also might be attending. And Roosevelt said to me, "What party?" Is this really the forum that you wanted to negotiate this, and David, this feels very public. I've told her about the party, yeah. Oh, what, but you haven't said that she can come? I've said that she can, yeah, I said of course you're invited, real friends. Oh for God's sake, now I'm going to have to sort this out, look, this is me and Roosevelt, me and Roosevelt has some beef going on about who's the favourite. Well look, I'm going to leave that with you to sort out because at the moment it's a real, it's a real disaster. Well look, speaking of disasters, this episode is about the Titanic and Americans that are particularly obsessed with the Titanic disaster, alternate theories of what happened, etc. I'm wondering what your thoughts are on the Titanic sinking. Yeah, I don't think it happened. Yeah, that's made up, there's made up things so that James Cameron could sell movie tickets. Are there any survivors of the Titanic or like family members who might get mad at me the same as? Oh my God, you're really swinging for the fences, usually you're such a voice of reason in this podcast and I feel like today you're really swinging in a different direction. There's only so long that you can stay buttoned up, you just got to fully commit to one conspiracy theory. There's a really good one that actually the Titanic wasn't the Titanic, it was this, the sister ship that looked exactly the same and so it wasn't really the Titanic. To be honest with you David, I think the Titanic did sink but there's a compelling case to be made that it was actually the sister ship and it's all a fake and it was a stand in. If people want to believe that then honestly go ahead because there are so many horrible conspiracies that you can believe in these days, but this one feels like a very low stakes fun one. Between not inviting her as well as your birthday and the Titanic sinking, what would you say is the bigger disaster? I'd say what is more likely that Titanic didn't sink or Roosevelt comes to my birthday and in this way and this one I'd say that Titanic didn't sink. I'm David Farrier in New Zealand, accidentally marooned in America and I want to figure out what makes this country tick. Now way back in 1912, 140 years ago, if my maths is correct, the Titanic had a nice Bergen sunk approximately 1200 miles northeast of New York City. Look, you probably know the story, we've all seen the film. The RMS Titanic was a British ocean liner on its maiden voyage, sitting off from South Ampton, England to New York City. There were 2,208 people on board and around 1,500 died, but this episode is not really going to be about the Titanic so much as the Americans who still find the tale incredibly captivating and really really scary and there's a group that still obsesses over exactly what happened out there, how it all went down, whether the Titanic actually sunk at all and just how terrifying the whole thing was and it's to those people we turned today. So prepare to see the Titanic in a way you've never seen it before because this is the Titanic Panic episode. Hi Rob, how are you? I'm good, I'm going to say straight out of the gate my knowledge of the Titanic is close to zero, I know it was a big boat. Have you seen the movie? I've seen the movie. I remember being in the cinema with my mother Pamela, my father Aleister and my brother Robert and I remember watching Rose and Jack fucking in that car and everything getting steamy and feeling incredibly aroused, but also conflicted because mother is there and father is there. I do remember that came on 97, I was 11 years old. I went with my family and a friend, another Robert, two Roberts, two Roberts for the price of one. You went by Robbie, Robbie, yeah, you still in touch? Nope. Okay. But we both had crushes on girls and I remember when the painting scene came on, we both were like, we can't go out of loyalty to our crushes Rob. We cannot look at. It's a beautiful one of the women, you got to look naked breasts, which I think may have been the first time I had seen I feel like in a movie because it was PG 13 and but it was a historical movie. So I feel like parents. It was like the passion, the passion, the Christ was the similar kind of thing, at least in my house where there are maybe any six things in the Christ to where the rating was beyond what we would have normally been allowed to see, but because of the subject matter, my parents made an exception. The passion of the Christ is such of any reference in New Zealand, and it might be the same case here in the States, church is a rally to bring the rating down so that they could take the church kids to see it. Was it PG only? No, it was a decent rating, it was like an A16 in New Zealand. It was restricted. Yeah, because it was fairly violent. It was a man being tortured, hideously. So the church has got the rating lowered so that younger people could go and watch it, which is deranged to me. So I'm thinking about the first breasts I would have seen on camera. It was either it would have been James Bond, which was just on all the time I feel like it might have been there. On TV though? No, it wouldn't have been TV, because they wouldn't have shown that on TV. Good point. They would have had a censored version. So my memory, my first memory of breasts pre-titanic was the science fiction film that I remember renting it, or maybe my older brother renting it for me off the shelf. I remember the cover. Species. So Tasha Hinstridge, she was a sexy sort of woman that would turn into a horrific alien when she would mate with men. So she'd have sex with them and then she'd shoot out a big alien tongue and it would kill the men. But she would seduce them first. And I remember that is so severely in my brain, that movie. So that was pre-titanic for me, I believe. I do like that. It came out in '95, Titanic was '97. I do like that our association with Titanic, which this episode most people is the fear that came from this transition with this like disaster. But for us, it's Kate Winslet. It was. And I think for a lot of people it would have been, probably, that was like such a scene, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Coming on from such juvenile recollections of what we took from Titanic, I don't have a huge interest in it, which is why when I decided to sort of meet these people that were deeply invested in the story and is still freaked out by it. Right. I mean, that's surprising to me. I did not know that this existed still. There was a group of people that are still concerned with it. It's a worry for them. 1912 was a long time ago terrible things that have happened since there isn't dangers everywhere that are making us more dangerous and are these just people that frequent cruises? Cause it's easy to also not go into a situation like this. That's the thing. It's not like we are commonly on massive ships. Yeah. It's not a huge thing. One quick fact check, because Hayden was deeply worried that he was going to offend survivors of the Titanic disaster. There are no Titanic survivors still alive. Last survivor. Milvina Dean passed away in 2009, age 97, a ripe old age, amazing, if I lived in 1997, I'll be so happy. She was two months old when the ship sank in 1912. She lived. Crazy. I mean, it's best in drum board. It's a long time ago that it'd be very old if you were still alive. Me insane. So Hayden, you haven't offended anyone, which is good. In 1912, it collided with an iceberg, damaging the hull's plates below the waterline on the starboard side, causing the front compartments to flood. It sank for two hours and 40 minutes, 1,496 fatalities as a result of drowning or hypothermia. I mean, it was a very culturally. significant movie, at least in America. - Back to the movie? - Yeah, back to the movie. - There's big James Cameron. - And just like, I have very visceral memories of watching that on the big screen too. - Yeah. - I'm happening. I mean, I'm a big James Cameron guy. I mean, as if it was a side trivia, he lives in New Zealand now on an organic farm, which is kind of an interesting, but just not where I would expect him to end up. - And you're going back to New Zealand, you're gonna try to track him down to have a conversation with him about, you're gonna stop that far from him. - Probably not. - He was on a flight on my plane. He was way up the front of the plane. I was sort of mid back of the plane, and but I saw him boarding for New Zealand. I'm a big fan of his, Titanic, you know, Titanic, obviously, Terminator. - Yep. - Oh my God, aliens. - Avatar, not so much. But hey, the other bit of sort of information on the Titanic that I find interesting, of course, is the Titanic submersible. That little sub that went down full of very wealthy people that imploded squashed under the pressure of the deep ocean. - There also was the documentary series or movie, documentary, where they went and uncovered it, right? They found the Titanic, and they-- - Are they? - Yeah. - Don't know. - Some things in my brain just doesn't get all that excited about space as one of them, even though I'm into space exploration like good on them. But my brain doesn't get excited by it, and it doesn't get excited by like big boats or the ocean. I don't know. - Have you banned on a cruise before? - Never. - Never. - I've never been on a big boat, and I don't particularly want to be on a big boat. - Is it because of the Titanic? - No. - No. - No, I just don't know their idea of being stuck in any area for an extended amount of time. - Crew ships are pretty massive. It's being like stuck in a city block. - You've been on one map since I've been on them once. - You've been on them once. - And yes, the idea of it's not great thinking about it, but it's so massive that-- - Yeah, you're not feeling confined or claustrophobic because there's restaurants. There's multiple restaurants. There's multiple pools you can go swimming. - Yeah. - There's tons of floors. - There's things to do. There's water slides, there's bars, there's shows. I guess I just, I don't know. I've never had the massive urge to go. I feel like if the cruise is going somewhere, I was excited to go do. Like a destination. But just being anything, it strikes me as like being in a really big hotel for a week. I don't know. - Right, no, no, I mean, not for me either. Especially, John Oliver's done a lot covering-- - Titanic? - Titanic, cruise ships and how they register in different countries so that the laws are different on maritime law, too, is-- I don't know the specifics of that to get into that. And it's not like the food's ever that great on a cruise ship. Lots of all you can eat. - I feel the food's probably the one thing I would really enjoy, it's like the terrible food. - All right, but the documentary was the ghosts of the abyss in 2003 James Cameron directed it. - James Cameron, he's back. - He led an expedition down to the Titanic wreck. - Because of course, James Cameron is a massive underwater subguy by he puts so much of his money into deep sea exploration. It's all coming back to me now. - Yeah, so they have footage. I do recall that footage of them going and finding the Titanic under. - Is that where there was that really airy photo of a bunch of shoes at the bottom of the ocean, or basically where that corpses had like come to rest on the bottom of the ocean, they had decayed and there were just shoes that were left in a row. - I don't reckon. - Really iconic, like terrifying image. Anyway, let's meet this very unique individual that I spoke to who is, I would argue, much more obsessed than the Titanic. - Definitely more obsessed than me, possibly more obsessed than you. I spent a lot of time on the Titanic subreddit, reading about all the different theories about what happened and about how the ship sank, all in a dizzying array of detail. But the most surprising thing in all the posts was a small group of people who seemed deeply sad about it all. One post was titled, "The Most Terrifying or Traumatic Thing About The Titanic," question mark. The answers came in. For me, it's the pair of shoes they discovered at the wreck, for them to be so close together at that depth means there was once a person in those shoes. Another answer. The noise she makes in the ocean. You can hear her singing and groaning as she appears out of the darkness, according to Dr. Ballard. Now I get that the sinking of the Titanic and all the deaths are a tragedy, but it's sort of rare to find so much empathy about something that happened over 100 years ago. So I decided to reach out to one of those deeply affected by the Titanic, all these years on, to try and figure out what was going on. - I actually paint a lot. So this is my most recent-- - Oh, that's beautiful. It's very dreamlike. It feels like a Titanic fever dream, a really beautiful one. - Yeah, so this is one of them. Mackenzie is 32 years old, and she paints the Titanic. A lot. She also tries to collect bits of the actual ship. - I've got my own, call it fake or not, piece of the Titanic. So there's a lot of collectors. Kevin Sossier is the guy who actually sells this, but people are major collectors in the scene, and all of them really tie back to James Cameron. - Tell me what you just held up then for people that are just listening to the podcast. - This is a piece of Reckwood. So the salvage rates are owned by a company, but essentially when the day after the wreck happened, a lot of the wreck when it broke came up, people salvaged that wood, and they turned it into different things. This was actually part of a chair that somebody made out of Reckwood, and then this guy, Kevin Sossier, he broke it up and sells it. I bring this to bars, anywhere with me, and people argue with me that it's not real. I choose to believe it's real, and that's what I'm seeking to. - All this is to say the McKenzie has been thinking about this particular sinking ship for a very long time. - Just being obsessed with the idea of it, and it living right in my head since I was six years old. So I'm 32 now, so what is that, 24 years? I live in Detroit, Michigan in the suburbs. I have a young son, he's eight years old. I work remotely. I spend a lot of time with my pets. I have two cats, two dogs, pretty run-in-the-mill. - She has a pretty run-in-the-mill life, but one thing that's perhaps a little different is her obsession with the Titanic. An obsession that hit her when she was just a kid, and not in a good way. For her, the Titanic freaked her out. - So when I was seven or eight, I was in the second grade. One of my classmates had brought me a book. It was a very simple picture book. I remember it. It was sitting in one of those loft beds, reading a story time. And she said, "Look at this, a ship sank." And I was like, "Who the hell cares about that?" So I opened up the book, and I started going through, and the story was boring, but when I got to the wreck and I saw the pictures, I remember my pond started sweating, and I had this really visceral reaction of, "Oh my God, this is real, this thing sank, like how the hell is that possible?" And I remember getting very nervous about it. She says she remembers going home and telling her parents. - And that was pretty much it, until if you know American curriculum, in the second grade and third grade, they have a lot of stories about the Mayflower, the first ship traveling over to bring immigrants to the United States. And they start talking about the Titanic and other maritime stories. And as I learned more, I remember, it started to become a phobia. - You heard that right, a phobia. - For example, I would be at home, and I would think about, you know, things being underwater, and I would feel like I was there, and I started to have, it sounds crazy, but panic attacks around the Titanic. And it got to the point, probably within a year where I wouldn't go to the school if I knew there were Titanic books in the library. So they had to remove all the books from the library. I started to have these big phobias around water, ships, anything, it got to the point where I couldn't leave my house because I would have panic attacks. The movie, which she also saw quite young, didn't help things. Titanic came out 29 years ago, by the way, with so old. - Oh yeah, the frozen people in the water wait too much too soon. Like, exactly, I read the books, they don't really have all that, it's pretty redacted, and then you get to the movie, and it's like, he puts all that out on display. So the media part of it definitely influenced the fear, the part where the woman tucks her children into bed. And she kind of like says, she reads things to them and they go to sleep and they kind of go into the water. That brought it all in for me, it was so impactful because I'm like, oh my God, these are real people that this happened to, and all those individuals had a story. And tying it back and learning about their stories and how it can happen to anybody at any time, that was so profound. - Mackenzie acknowledges that her fear about a ship should never been on, a ship that sank 112 years ago, was pretty weird. But it kind of makes sense when you consider conditions like Thalas Sephobia, the persistent and intense fear of deepness. bodies of water. Which psychologists say can be triggered by thinking about things like the sinking of the Titanic or jaws. Mackenzie says she had peak fear between about seven and twelve years old. And I ultimately went to therapy over it for about two years as a kid and it worked through the trauma. Did you find you had anxiety over other stuff? Did you have other sort of obsessions or was it purely the idea of this ship, this unsinkable ship sinking? So I had OCD still do. Big anxiety, panic disorder. And I think for me it was like the manifestation of all the things I felt as a kid. Really the crux that was the Titanic. And to be honest with you, no, it was a single point of psychosis for me where I just felt like everything that I had in my life drew back to the incident. And I could always find something relatable about the incident. Sounds a bit on the nose to say, but for her, the real Titanic back then was her parents' relationship sinking. And I think what it was for me was my parents had separated. It was a really bad divorce. And they made me realize like all the things that you believe are true and that are going to hold you as a child, your parents, your family structure. Just like the Titanic, sorry, the Titanic, which you know people had said would never sink. It was an unsinkable ship. That could happen. And it's like your whole structure and foundation of who you are can crumble at any time. And for some reason that just absolutely freaked my shit out for like five years. Yes, OCD was also a big factor. A lot of things with OCD you just become obsessed with. And it's not so much like having to collect things or collect artifacts or like learn about it. It's more of like it gets in my mind and it gets stuck and I cannot get it out. How did your therapist kind of work through that? Was it kind of like a case of sitting with it and thinking about the Titanic until you felt safe? Like how did you kind of get out of that obsessive mode? You know what? My therapist was great. She tied it to the fact that we could learn something from the incident. What can we learn from this and how can we do better moving forward? So yes, it happened. You can't change that but there are ways to move forward and learn from incidents just like you do in your personal life. So maybe you had this issue with a person. You didn't say the right thing. Next time, how are you going to make sure that you show up in the right way and say the right thing? And for me, she tied it back to like things are going to happen to you, but how do you move forward? And I think we can learn a lot from the Titanic and also any personal situation through therapy. Stay tuned for more Flightless Bird. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Support for Flightless Bird comes from Aura Frames. 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They've got Bombas underwear and t-shirts, breathable, flexible, really soft. It's a full on upgrade from your usual basics. And for every item you purchase, an essential clothing item is donated to someone facing housing and security. One purchased, one donated with over 150 million donations and counting. Head over to bombas.com/bird and use code bird for 20% off your first purchase. That's b-o-m-b-a-s.com/bird code bird at checkout. I think we can learn a lot from the Titanic through therapy is not something I thought I'd ever hear in my life, but here we are. And I mean, it's worked out for McKenzie. She's a social worker now and a good one. She's helping other people hold their shirt together. But just, yeah, how do you grow for things? How do you learn from things? How do you do better and not get stuck in the past? I think a lot of us dwell on what I did wrong, but we never think about how could I learn from that and do better and that shift can change anyone's life. By the time she was 13, therapy had helped her out of her Titanic panic and her interest started to mold into something else. And over time it turned into a passion as I learned more about it. So this has been a lifelong thing for me. Everybody who knows me, I've got my Titanic sweater on for you right now. They know I'm obsessed with it now. It's become such a big thing, but what I didn't realize was how many people are attracted to the story, but are also obsessed with it. And every year celebrate or more in the syncing, they have routines around it, different traumas around it, and there's a huge underground community of Titanic fans. And how did you start to find out that there are other people like you that are really, you know, obsessively interested in the Titanic? Reddit? Yeah, of course, yeah. Of course, I read it. The subreddit, so there's ocean liners is one of them and then the Titanic subreddit. When I started reading it a long time ago, it was mostly people who were interested about the actual shift design, but then I started reading posts. It was like, "Hey, why do I feel some drawn to this and why am I so upset about it?" And I started connecting with people on Reddit and learn like a lot of people on April 12th. They celebrate or more in the Titanic day, so we just had our dinner last week. Yes, you heard that right. It did a foot Titanic day. We had a dinner where we made the dessert that they had on the Titanic. I kind of deviated some of the meals that they had in the first class cabin. And then I encouraged everybody there to give a speech about how the Titanic impacted them and what they can learn from it. So we were around to do that. We had a moment of silence for the sinking. We ate. We had some champagne. And that was it. It was pretty low key this year. I learned that people get very obsessed with the last 10 course Titanic dinner ever served, which included a very specific dessert that essentially was a boozy cake made mostly of jelly. And what do these Titanic fans talk about while serving each other Titanic food or hanging out on Titanic Reddit? What more is the to possibly discuss about the Titanic? People get really pissed about conspiracies around the sinking. So one of the big ones is that it was not actually the Titanic that sank, but it was its sister ship the Olympic because it was already damaged. And so people try to say that the Olympic is the one that's resting at the bottom of the ocean. The Titanic was never created or somewhere else. What have you? That's a big one people argue about. And they think it's absolutely ridiculous. Another one is JP Morgan of Chase Bank that he actually sank the ship because there were a lot of people that had a lot of money on it, his competitors. So John Jacob asked her the richest man on the ship. They sank it because they wanted him to die, which makes no sense because the money that you would have spent orchestrating that wouldn't have amounted to that anyway. So it didn't matter. So those are big things, but it's crazy because you think you're arguing about something that's pretty arbitrary. People have a lot of passion around it and we'll actually get upset. I've almost been doxed on Reddit because I said that one of them might be true. So I never said that again, but those are the big ones. There was also a fire that had happened in the bottom of the ship in the hull that a lot of people think weakened the hull. So by the time it hit the iceberg, it was already weak and caused the ship to split. Absolutely not true. There's in a way a fire that hot would have done that. But those are the things people you about and they get really, really into it and I think that's where the crux of it is right now. What was the slightly wacky theory that you endorsed that almost got you doxed? Not to get you doxed again, I feel like our listeners are pretty sane. They are, I hope. I had said that it could be plausible that that was not actually the titanic because we don't have any images of the actual ship, which I find quite weird. Like, why would you make such a thing and not have photos, but you didn't? Really are the not, are the not photos, a lot of photos of the titanic? No, and you know what I learned, David, people on these exhibits, they will pass them off as titanic photos or titanic artifacts. They are not, they're the Olympics. So I'll go around the exhibits and be like, somebody will say, this is a titanic, you know, piece of porcelain from one of the main cabins and I'm like, no, it's not. It's the Olympic and we start talking. But that, yeah, definitely some misconception around that for sure. As I start to wrap this interview up, I find myself wondering why this, why the titanic, why not 9/11 or host of other crashes and disasters? You know what I think it is and this is why I became obsessed with it in some way. It was the idea that so many people said, this is an unseekable ship. You're on it. You're good. You've got money. You're high status. You're going somewhere in your life. You've got everything. You get on the ship. You have no thought of that at all and all the sudden you're done. You're in the water. You're dead. And I think for a lot of people, it just draws this notion that not everything you hear is true, which is something society needs to hear right now. But you know, you're never safe. It's never 100%. Nothing is guaranteed no matter how much anybody promises you anything. And so I think that's what draws it in. The tragedy, the beauty of the ship, the luxury of the ship, all the promises made. And then I think honestly James Cameron with the story, a lot of people are obsessed with this romantic notion of the ship. Like it's something that was mysterious and sexy and luxurious. And now it's just sitting there. We all go about our day-to-day people spent time and money. People died making the ship. And all it is now is memory. Just a memory. A memory that for some, haunts them. For others, it's something to obsess and theorize over. A kind of innocent conspiracy theory to fight over. Just for like a final check on where you're head that, or a final check on your sort of thoughts on the Titanic, did the Titanic sink? Oh yes. Okay, just checking. I have docs or not. I 100% believe that it sank. I know it's the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean. I believe it in my heart. And I think too in terms of breakup theory, which a lot of people have different theories on how it actually broke and fell apart. James Cameron hit it on the head. His rendition of that and his movie Titanic is 100% factual. As well as wanting you to know that James Cameron's Titanic is 100% factual. Mackenzie also wants you to take from the Titanic what she took from the Titanic. A life lesson, if you will. All those years and childhood therapy over a sunken ship to still for you, loyal, flightless bird listener. Trust your gut and prepare for the worst case scenario without freaking out. I think that's what I've learned. I think a lot of people, they plan for things, they get ready, they trust their judgment, but they also trust what someone's telling them. So the policy or the guidelines. If you know something, does it feel right? Don't do it. A lot of people, I think, were concerned when the ship started sinking and wanted to get ready and wanted to start the Manning Life Boats. And they said, no, no, no, no, no, wait. This is an unthinkable ship. It's not going to happen. Don't worry about it, right? I think we need to learn from that and learn especially in American society. Not what everything everybody tells you that's written or spoken by people you trust is true. So always own your ownership of the situation. Trust your judgment and go for that. Don't always follow exactly what has stated. And I think I've learned that and it's gotten me out of tricky situations in the past. Support for Flightless Bird comes from Pestee. Now, ever since I've got into the United States of America, there's various times I need a tradesperson or a contractor. And sometimes they show up for a job and the price gets really out of control. And suddenly I just wish I'd taken care of it on my own somehow. Now, obviously a lot of jobs I can do on my own, but when it comes to pest control, I feel like I can because that's where Pestee comes in. I have an issue with too much information with cockroaches in my particular building and Pestee has been really great. 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Go to Pestee.com/Bird and get an extra 10% off your order today. That's p-e-s-t-i-e.com/Bird for an extra 10% off. I would say out of all the episodes we've done in flight this bird, that contain the most pieces of life advice that you can take away and use in your own life. I don't know if that's true, David. Yeah, a really fascinating person, deeply traumatized by the Titanic when she was a kid, learnt to love. Which happened a hundred years before. Yes. Yes, she wasn't there, didn't have any relatives, but just found the whole concept of it. Yeah. So stunning. And this unsinkable ship that sank, a broker-fragile young mind. I mean, I guess there are instances of that as a kid when you're learning something in the history class. I mean, what the fuck? What is this? The Holocaust was obviously a very impactful thing to learn about as a kid. Yeah, it's a scale, isn't it? Yeah. And your mind can't really rep your head around it. Yeah. But the idea that people are the conspiracy theories that didn't happen. I mean, when Hayden raised that at the beginning of the episode, it's like a no-one thing, which is something I was completely unaware of until this episode that this was even debated. Yeah, me neither. And I would have never considered that it wasn't real. And to me, that's like someone saying Pearl Harbor wasn't real. It's a little bit like Birds aren't real. It's just a bit of that conspiracy theory. Oh, that why would this be a. So just to recap, the main conspiracy theories. The most controversial one, which is what we talked about earlier, there was a sister ship, the Olympic. Robin Gardner wrote a book that kind of put this theory forward, it was called Titanic, the ship that never sank. Question mark. See this theory? I don't. And the owl is leading up to the sinking of the Titanic. The theory doesn't matter. Like a ship sank. There was actually the ship name this that looked exactly like the Titanic. Is it relevant to the story as a whole? A complex, insurance scam of some kind? Okay. Yeah. I guess that makes it a little more interesting. But it doesn't change anything. It doesn't change like the. Yeah. That a bunch of people passed away and died and everything else. But in this theory, the sister ship sank and it was an intentional or the insurance claim was done after. Okay, look, I'm going to read from my notes. So I took earlier as I become a Titanic conspiracy theorist. The conspiracy theorist Robin Gardner draws on several events and coincidences that occurred in the months, days, and hours leading up to the sinking of the Titanic. And concludes, the ship was in fact Titanic's sister ship, the Olympic disguised as Titanic. As an insurance scam by its own is the international Miss Santile Marine Group controlled by American financier JP Morgan. We know that name. Who acquired the white star line in 1902. Does another claim that JP Morgan deliberately sank the actual Titanic to kill off several millionaires who were in opposition to the Federal Reserve? That's another theory. Have you heard about the mummy's curse? Is that in your list? know what is the mummy's curse theory that the ship was carrying an ancient Egyptian mummy. Are you serious? Yeah. The unlucky mummy from the British museum in the curse caused the disaster. Okay. The mummy was real. The mummy was on the ship apparently. There was a mummy on Titanic, but there's no way. The mummy was real, but there was no evidence that it was on the Titanic. It's slight before in that particular theory, but I like it. So there's also a conspiracy put forward by stupiders. Not a great guy, he gets into a bunch of Rothschilds kind of bullshit conspiracy theories in general, but he claimed that the Titan submersible implosion in 2023 was orchestrated by sabotage to prevent its own passengers from discovering that the Titanic was sunk by a controlled demolition instead of an iceberg. So these theories are still being put out there into the ether. Apparently the ships which theories most historians have considered that debunked because of the wreck site that has been visited since. I do. I do. Are you coming around to the idea? No. The mummy theory. No, you have a mummy theory. I think it has the most traction. The fact that photo, I don't speak your truth. No, I want to know. No, I don't leave her. Listener that the photos are of the other ship. Most of the photos are on the other ship. I believe her. I believe that that's a fact. Yeah. Not a lot of photos of the Titanic exist. Although what percentage would I bet my life on? That's true. Just be sent hearing one person say that. Yes. And I have to say for the record, flight this bird, it's not always vigorously fact-checked. I don't see it as an active journalism. I see it as more of an entertaining show at times. Yes. It's a serious topic like ice. I'll tend to do a lot of fact-checking. Talking to someone about where the Titanic sank, I do a little bit less fact-checking because I just like to sort of play in the sand for a little bit. But I guess what I like about this is a few things. I like that as far as conspiracy theories go. This is a little bit like the moon landing where it's kind of like an innocent one that's not heavy and awful and weighted down. It's not harming anyone by. It's a silly bullshit. It's not tied up to horrific political ideologies or some sort of race war. It's just a very silly debate that goes on. I will mention there is an entire podcast called Did Titanic Sink by New Zealander Tim Bat that goes through a lot of the stuff in a very amusing way with an Australian comedian called Carlo Richie. And that is worth a listen. If your brain is tickled by any of these conspiracy theories including the mummy theory, that's a really good podcast series to listen to. I looked up a little bit about this photo thing. There are genuine photos of the actual Titanic. Of the actual Titanic. Okay. Confirmed Titanic photos taken in Belfast during the construction before launch from 1911. Pre-bing built. Photos taken at South Hampton before departure in 1912. Are you sure it's not the Olympic? A few photos taken on board by passengers during the voyage. Where they onboard the Olympic. The famous photo of the ship leaving South Hampton is widely accepted as the real Titanic. Really by him. The confusion though, the Olympic in Titanic were nearly identical in appearance. Suspicious. Which is partly why the switch theory gained traction. Right. Early construction, photos of the Olympic were sometimes mislabeled as the Titanic. I mean, that was that was it. It has caused genuine mix-ups over the year. Some specific pre-departure photos are still debated by enthusiasts. A few details like porthole configurations have been scrutinized by conspiracy theorists trying to prove the switch. But mainstream historians and maritime experts, however, they're satisfied that those are real photos of the Titanic. Okay. I'm not against you bringing in a little bit of sanity into this conversation. And again, Mackenzie also is with you. She thinks the Titanic did sink. Yes. But she does like to sometimes entertain some of the other theories. But for the record, you're more of a mummy theory guy. Yeah, I do. I think that mummy was on board the Titanic. It was cursed. I mean, listen, the Skinwalker Ranch episode we put out, he convinced me that curses are real. He was pretty convincing. Yeah. Up on that stage. Look, we all want to be open-minded in this life to curses, to Titanic sinking or not. And let's remember the wise words of Mackenzie and all of this. Trust your gut and prepare for the worst-case scenario without freaking out. I think that's good life advice. I'm going to take that with me into my week. Yes, that's now. I mean, it's a little, it tip tells a little too much on being too pessimistic. It does. For my liking? Worst-case scenario. Yes. But I am being prepared for situations. Nothing wrong with that. Every morning on our wake-up, I spend half an hour going through all the awful things that could happen and now I'm going to get out of them. If you have feedback about the Titanic, maybe you were, you have a relative that was on the Titanic or the Olympic for that matter. Yeah. [email protected] would love to hear from you. And if you're a listener that believes the Titanic conspiracy, but it did not sink. Right in. What? Part two. Yeah. I don't even feel like a real good people think it didn't sink, or they just thought it switched. Switched. Switched. It's not even not sinking. But people think that Titanic didn't sink, that it just sat like a vanish. It's still in somewhere else. What happened to the Olympic? They were on the Olympic. The Titanic never stood off. But the Olympic sunk then. They think the Olympics sunk. It's a big deal. It's a big deal. The name of the identical ship. Playing was used in 9/11. These are big questions. No, I don't care if it was flight, this versus flight that could happen. The tragedy happened. Some people died. Some of us care about the details, Rob. You know? Some of us care about the details. Nancy Rodin. With all you talk about chilies, I hope you do an episode and hopefully go back to its beginnings. In the late 70s, when I was in high school, we'd go to chilies on Greenville, in Dallas. It was a hole in the wall. The menu is one page. The old timer, great soft chicken tacos, and of course, my greeders run it. And if you weren't 18, which is a drinking age of the time, somehow they served you alcohol anyway. We loved it. Lots of fun memories. Do we need to go to chilies? I think we need to go to chilies. I will go to chilies with you, and I will eat chilies with you. Elizabeth says, "Gents, on the 7 o'clock episode you talked about doing a chilies episode. Lots of people want chilies." While chilies is quintessentially American, and I definitely think you should do an episode, there's one location that I think Y'all may find interesting. On the island of Okinawa in southern Japan, there is an airbase which is owned by the US Air Force. On that airbase is, from what I'm told, the busiest chilies in the entire world. Sounds like we found the chilies we need to go to. We're going to Japan. Do you know any chilies songs? No. Okay, we'll leave it at that for now. I'm into this already. When I was deployed there in 2023, we ate there at least once a week, and it was a great source of comfort wall away from our families and home. I hope you all do an episode on chilies. Cheers. Liz says, "time shares." We still have feedback coming in on time shares, so much feedback on time shares, deeply American. I think we need to do with time shares. We do. You can talk to my dad. I'm going to talk to your dad. I was looking for you up with a meeting at Wyndham. I was just fucking thrilling. I'll invest in my life ruined. I was just listening to the latest episode on superclubs, which is no longer the latest episode. I had to share my God awful experience with time shares. My husband had the unfortunate experience of inheriting one when both his mum and dad passed away decades ago. This all happened to be very into the picture, so while there may have been a way out back then, there is certainly no way out for us now. So sad. We've been married for almost seven years, and therefore I have also inherited the burden of the time share. What makes it even worse is that it's a time share on a lake in Minnesota. We live in LA, and our week is early January. Minnesota in January is a live cold I never want to experience. We've tried over the years to sell it with zero luck. We even listed it for one dollar, and no one wanted it. We are so indeed by-back led nowhere. At this point, we pay $850 a year and maintenance fees for a place of never and will most likely never visit. We've also been unsuccessful in any attempts to trade weeks. We start with January. Overall, time shares are a scam and and share. should be illegal. Never, ever purchase a time share. You're going to have to learn from my dad how to succeed in owning a time share. Do it smartly. Yeah. From all the feedback coming in, I feel like you can do it smartly and you can embrace it and you can also completely fuck it up and be left in a miserable situation. Yeah. I'm going to find out. I don't think I'll be buying one, but I want to find out more. If you have feedback, flight this [email protected], we have a bonus episode. As we always do over on Patreon, we also have chat channels. If you want to talk about the show, that is patreon.com/flatlistbird. And if you weren't aware of this already, we have video on Spotify. You can watch us over on Spotify. So if you want to go there, you can see all the visuals we've been talking about Titanic. It's all there. Yeah. You just toggle on the video. It's actually pretty cool. We have a whole visual element to the show that you're missing out on. If you're not watching it on Spotify, [email protected]. We would love to hear from you any Titanic theories. Maybe you're being on a different syncing ship and you have some feedback on what that was like. I think generally any other conspiracy theories that you've bought into, this was a fun episode I wouldn't mind more of. Yeah. More of this. I haven't seen you with that big grin on your face while you're listening to that documentary in like a really long time. I just genuinely enjoy in what you're hearing. Yeah. So yeah, if you have any in your family or you have any specific beliefs of maybe conspiracy theories that aren't quite so widely known and it may be just, you know, but also I like the idea of widely known that we don't know about that there's like, there's a big group in Minnesota that thinks the Minnesota Timberwolves are more people. I would love to hear about that as well. [email protected]. We're always there. Rob and I, we wait by that email address all day for your message to come in. We do. So please send it. We'll see you next week. [Music]