Hi friends, you might have heard that Bark, Sandin and I are on the road this spring with brains on live. We've been to several cities so far and it has been so much fun. Our next two stops are Atlanta and Fort Lauderdale. That's at the end of March. Then we just announced that we added Lawrence, Kansas in May and Columbus, Ohio in June. We're also heading to Chattanooga, Durham, Milwaukee, Portland, Buffalo and Ann Arbor, Michigan. We hope you'll be able to join us at one of those shows. We can't wait to see you to get tickets and get more information. You can head to brainson.org slash events. That's brainson.org slash events. Brains on Universe. You're listening to Brains On where we're serious about being curious. Have you ever been somewhere that just gives you the heebie-jeebies like a dark, drippy basement? Or a stretch of woods that's unexplainably chilly and full of creepy shadows? Or that aisle in the pharmacy where the magazines are? All those smiling faces just staring at you, never blinking. Weirds me out. But a warm, sunny, tropical ocean? Seems like a strange place for a chilling mystery, but that's exactly what's going on off the coast of Florida in an area called the Bermuda Triangle. Today, Mark and Zandin are back as the hoax hunters, and they're investigating this stretch of spooky sea. They'll share some stories and separate the myths from the facts. Stay tuned. Hello, friends. Here's some exciting news. At the end of this month, at the end of March, we are doing a Smartie Party. That's where we invite everyone who's a part of Smartie Pass to come do a virtual hang with me, Mark and Zandin. We'll play some games. Guess some mystery sounds. We'll answer any questions you have, and I will do a live reading of the brain's owner role featuring the names of everyone who comes to the party. If you would like to come to this party, you could just join Smartie Pass at SmartiePass.org. If you're a part of Smartie Pass, you will be invited to the party. And if you can't make it live to the party, you can watch it after the fact. Joining Smartie Pass is a great way to support our shows and have some fun, too. Again, that's smartiepass.org. Thank you for your support. Coming to you from the deepest depths of the brain's on basement, which is in fact dark and drippy. But also kind of cozy and homey. Surrounded by artifacts of intrigue and suspense, like this chunk of lava from a deadly volcano, and a poster of the man beast known as Bigfoot. And wrapped in fluffy blankets with cocoa. But the marshmallows are shaped like bats. It's hoax hunters. Hoax hunters. Yeah. Welcome back. I'm Sandin. And I'm Mark. And together we look into claims too beguiling to believe. Too odd to accept. Too gnarly to gnar. And with us is our trusty sidekick, the Mystery Moose. Wait, where did that moose come from? Look, it's not important how I want a full grown moose in a high stakes game of go fish. Or how I got it to live in our basement and wear a t-shirt that says Mystery Moose. What is important is now we have a zany sidekick. We don't need another zany sidekick. We've got you. What? No, no, I'm the host. You're the co-host and Mystery Moose is the sidekick. Here to add fun and whimsy. Add some fun and whimsy, Mystery Moose. So is Mystery Moose supposed to be eating your Bigfoot poster? What? No, no Mystery Moose, no. That's a vintage blacklight rendering of the famous Patterson Gimlin Sasquatch photo. Now it's Moose chow. Fine, fine. You know what? That's not important. You keep being fun and whimsical, Mystery Moose. Today's episode was inspired by something a listener sent us. Aloha, my name is Kai. I live in Honolulu. My question is why do ships and planes disappear under one other triangle? Great question, Kai. What have you heard about the triangle? Stuff stops working when you're going through the area. It's very hard to escape and things disappear. I like thinking about mysteries. Us too, buddy. Us too. The Bermuda Triangle is an area of water in the Atlantic Ocean, but it isn't an official place. You won't find it on a map. If you drew a line connecting San Juan, Puerto Rico, to the island of Bermuda, then down to Miami, Florida, and then back to San Juan, I'm listening, it makes a triangle. That's roughly the area people are talking about. It's a spot where, according to legend, boats, planes, and people mysteriously disappear, leaving no trace. And that part is true. Ships and planes have gone missing in the Bermuda Triangle. Here's one of the most famous examples. It was December of 1945. Men dressed in fitted suits, women in knee-high skirts pair with shoulder-padded jackets. Radio was the hot ticket for home entertainment, where people would listen to swing music and crooners like Bing Crosby and the Andrews sisters. World War II had just ended, and America and its allies came out on top. Over in Florida, a group of five Navy fighter planes were about to take off for a routine training mission. They were called Flight 19. Flight 19, ready for takeoff. Everything was normal for the first part of the flight. But as they started the second leg, things got weird. One of the pilots radowed a nearby plane saying, I don't know where we are. We must have gotten lost that last turn. The pilot asked for more details. Someone from Flight 19 replied, Both of my compasses are out, and I'm trying to find Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I'm over land, but it's broken. This was alarming. The pilots should have known exactly where to go. They tried a few different things to get back on track, but no luck. They were confused, lost. Eventually, people on land were notified, and bases and boats were asked to start looking for the planes. Where were they? The weather got worse. The sun was setting. The radio signal was cutting in and out, and the pilots of Flight 19 were running low on fuel. A few land-based radio stations managed to pick up their location. They were north of the Bahamas and well off the coast of Florida, way off track. The planes changed course again, but no matter what they did, they couldn't find the shore. It was like they were trapped at sea. Fuel and time were running out. Eventually, a final message came through. All planes, close up tight. We'll have to ditch unless landfall. When the first plane drops below 10 gallons, it will all go down together. The planes were never seen again. Weirder still, another plane was sent out to look for the missing flight. It too disappeared. Ah, mystery moose. Don't sneak up on a guy like that. Also, you're very quiet for a moose. How does he do it? It's a mystery. Or it's the little moose booties I knitted for him. They look great on you, pal. Coming up, we'll talk about how this story helped create the lore of the Bermuda Triangle. Plus, we've got some pretty solid theories about what really happened. But first, it's Molly, here with a different kind of mystery. Hey, hoax hunters. Thanks for inviting me into your lair. Cool moose. Anyway, it's time for the... Mystery sound. Let's see if you too can figure this one out. Are you ready? Oh yeah, oh yeah, please. Always ready for a mystery down here at hoax hunters headquarters. Here it is. What do you guys think? Hmm. It sounded outside. And it sounded like, to me, like some sort of shoveling. Hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, digging gravel. Hmm. I thought, I don't know if it's just because my head is in a marine mystery, but I thought it was like somebody cleaning out a fish tank and that little gravel that's like really brightly colored and looks like candy that you keep being told. Oh. To not put in your mouth. I think it's that stuff someone was cleaning out an aquarium that had that gravel and they were scooping it out with a shovel. That would also explain there's kind of like a constant hum behind it. So like maybe like an aquarium motor. Hmm. But I didn't hear water, so it had to have, it would have to be like an empty aquarium. Yeah, that's true. Can we hear it again, Molly? Yeah. Hmm. All right. Okay. Okay. I definitely think it's outdoors. It's not an aquarium. Yeah. Because I heard like a, like also like insects or something, like a cicada or something. Hmm. Um, I don't know why, but I feel like it's corn, like corn kernels. Like shoveling corn kernels into something. I like it. That's where my mind goes. I think someone's filling up a pail with gravel. I haven't decided why yet. But they're doing it. Yeah. I don't know why they're digging corn either, but hey, I dig corn. Okay. Excellent guesses you two. I'm not going to tell you what it is yet. I'll be back with the answer at the end of the show. Later, Racketsanon. Bye. Do you have a question for the hoax hunters? Maybe there's a mystery on your mind. Like a lost city or a cryptic creature. Or do you have something that seems a little too hard to believe? Like if you keep making silly faces, your face is going to get stuck that way. Or the dogs always poop along the north, south axis. Whatever you're wondering, send it to us. We might investigate it in a future episode. And of course we love fan art. Send us your drawings too. Yeah, draw us with mystery moose, writing majestically on his antlers. Ooh, with blankets and hot cocoa. Just go to brainson.org slash contact to get in touch. Thanks. We're back with hoax hunters. Hoax hunters. We're talking about the Bermuda Triangle, a large patch of ocean between Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and Florida. And Flight 19, a group of military planes that mysteriously vanished without a trace. A few years after that fateful flight, a reporter from the newspaper called the Miami Herald wrote an article titled, Seas Puzzles Still Battle Men in Push Button Age. It collected a bunch of different stories of boats and planes disappearing in the waters around Florida, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Like passenger planes that never reached their destination, an afraid ship that disappeared after loading up with cargo. It is the same world the ancients knew, into which men and their machines and ships can disappear without a trace. This article was mostly grounded in fact. And it just simply pointed out that, despite improving technology, planes and boats could still get lost at sea. But it sparked the imagination of other writers. Soon, a magazine called Fate wrote their own version of the story. Fate was known for writing about paranormal stuff, like aliens and monsters and psychic abilities. It was more fun fiction than hard facts. But this story of a triangle-shaped mystery zone caught on. Soon, more magazines and papers were talking about the Bermuda Triangle. They began adding fake quotes from the pilots of Flight 19 to make the story even spookier. After all that hullabaloo, it was only a matter of time before people came up with their own theories on why things kept disappearing. Some say the area is an interstellar gateway, that there's a portal connecting Earth to distant galaxies. Aliens use that to travel to and from our planet. Ships and planes disappear when they accidentally slip through. Others say that patch of ocean sits above the lost city of Atlantis. That's a mythical kingdom that had technology way beyond what we know. And some argue that special energy crystals from this sunken world mess with navigation equipment. Another idea is that the Bermuda Triangle is home to a time vortex, and that people can slip through time there, maybe traveling far into the past or into the distant future. Either way, the travelers leave those of us in the present with no trace of their whereabouts. These are all pretty cool stories, but we at Hoax Hunters headquarters have a motto, which goes a little like this. Show me the proof! As we've mentioned in other episodes, we don't have any proof of aliens. Plus, there are lots of ships and planes and satellites that watch the Bermuda Triangle. After all, there are a lot of hurricanes in that area. So if UFOs were popping in and out willy-nilly, we probably would have spotted them. We also have no proof of Atlantis. The Atlantic Ocean is really deep in some places, and there's lots of stuff down there that we haven't seen yet. But from everything we have seen, we've got no reason to think there's a lost city. And the idea of time travel is super cool, but seems super unlikely given everything we know about time and physics. Plus, it turns out there are much more obvious explanations. We'll tell you about that in just a minute. But first, Sandin, I think Mystery Moose is trying to get your attention. Oh, is that what keeps poking me insistently in the back? Yeah, what do you need, pal? Oh, gosh, he wants to cuddle. So heavy. Oh, he's curling up in your lap. Can't breathe. Go to mailbag. Hello, Molly here with the Mailbag. Today I'm going to put on my fancy beret and turtleneck because things are getting artsy-fartsy up in here. Okay, I have a very awesome piece of fan art drawn by Aradhana in Bangalore, India. I'm going to describe it for you. This is very appropriate for an episode featuring the hoax hunters because Aradhana has drawn a spaceship with an alien inside of it. The alien is saying today is Friday the 13th. And guess what? The alien is beaming me up. So I am being sucked up into this spaceship. I am holding a brains-on flag. I've got a very cool ponytail. And I'm saying not my lucky day. And then below me on the ground, looking up, is a sun singing solar eclipse. Next to the sun is a moon going moon eclipse. And then we have a cat, a mummified cat. And the cat is saying, I'm a mummified cat. And then next to the cat is an Egyptian tomb. And coming out of that is a word bubble that says, my cat can talk. And then next to that is a dog who has a balloon. But of course, this is an amazing drawing. Thank you so much for sending it to us. If you have a drawing or a joke or a question to share with us, get in touch. Head to brains-on.org slash contact and send it in. We can't wait to hear from you. Want to hear brains-on forever go and smash boom best without the ad breaks? Just head to brains-on.org and sign up for SmartyPass. It helps support our show and gives you ad-free versions of all of our stuff, plus bonus episodes, invites to our book club and Smarty parties, and more. Thank you so much. We're back with hoax hunters. I'm Sandin. And I'm Mark. And our zany sidekick, Mystery Moose, is over there sleeping on our inflated mattress. Excuse me, sleeping on our deflated mattress. We last left off talking about how the story of missing planes and boats in the Atlantic Ocean led to a myth called the Bermuda Triangle. People came up with all kinds of theories as to what was happening, from aliens to time travel. But it turns out there's a simpler explanation. Sometimes accidents happen. Let's take Flight 19 as an example. Those pilots got lost on a simple mission, but there are some clues as to what happened. Mainly, the lead pilot mentioned that he thought they were flying over the Florida Keys. But those islands are on the opposite side of Florida, not in the Atlantic, but in the Gulf of Mexico. Flight 19 wasn't supposed to be flying anywhere near the Florida Keys, so it doesn't really make sense that they'd be there. But the lead pilot had previously been stationed near the Keys and was used to flying there. So it's easy to imagine that he got confused and thought the Bahama Islands in the Atlantic Ocean were the Keys in the Gulf. This also explains why the pilot flew east. If you're in the Gulf of Mexico, you'd fly east to get to Florida. But since the planes were in the Atlantic, flying east just took them further out to sea. There were other errors made by the pilots too. One of the pilots even suggested that they just fly west to find land, which probably would have worked. But the lead pilot refused, and the rest followed orders. The Navy reviewed this and thought it was probably just a tragic case of someone getting lost and choosing the wrong way to fly home. The plane that got lost searching for Flight 19 was said to have some mechanical issues before it left. And there are reports people saw flames in the sky shortly after takeoff. It likely exploded, which is terrible, but not paranormal. And with pretty much every other example of a lost plane or ship, there are reasonable explanations from storms to running out of fuel. And the Atlantic Ocean is deep, so it makes sense that the remains from the accidents were sunk and never found. But we should stress, these accidents happened a long time ago, and traveling in planes and boats is actually very safe. And even though these accidents are rare, if you collected all of them in one story, it might look like a lot. But even if you did that, the Bermuda Triangle wouldn't even be the most dangerous part of the ocean. And most of the accidents involve cargo ships, so it's not aliens. Sorry, aliens. It's fine, Mark. The US Navy and Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have all stated the triangle isn't mysteriously dangerous. It's just a normal patch of ocean. Part of what happened here is likely something called a confirmation bias. That's where you look for examples that confirm or agree with your bias, or your opinion, like only looking at cases where a craft went missing. And ignoring all the many, many, many, many cases where nothing weird happened at all. If you're just looking for examples that confirm your bias, you'll miss the truth. So the legend of the Bermuda Triangle doesn't add up. That's the scoop. And speaking of scoop, Sandin, I think Mystery Moose just left a mystery mess behind the furnace. Oh, that is no mystery. Yeah, I'll scoop that up and take it out. Remind me to read up on how to potty train your basement moose later. Well, until next time, hunters, stay skeptical. The Bermuda Triangle is a stretch of water in the Atlantic Ocean. It was made famous after an article listed off a bunch of planes and ships that disappeared there. Magazines took this idea and ran with it, adding fake quotes and supernatural explanations. But in reality, it's just an ordinary patch of water that's no more dangerous than the rest. That's it for this episode of Brains On. This episode was produced by me, Molly Bloom, Mark Sanchez, and Sandin Totten. It was sound designed by Mark Sanchez, who also wrote our theme music. Special thanks to Andy Doucet and Ken Taborsky at Kota the North for all of their website help. Mark and Sandin, are you ready for that mystery sound again? Oh, bring it on. I've been waiting the whole episode. Wonderful. Okay, fellas, here it is. Okay, let me refresh your memories. Last time you thought it was outside, Mark thought corn, Sandin thought gravel. Okay, so have you ever been to a playground that has those kind of like digger toys? Like they're like small versions of like you said, you sit on it and you kind of like put that digger into the sand or whatever. So it sounds like that is what's happening to me. I'm getting, I'm, that's the picture that I'm, that's unfolding before my ear eyes. Or? Yeah, and I still think it's somebody shoveling gravel into a cup. And I think they're by an AC unit. I think the humming, the mechanical humming is like a red herring because it's just throwing you off, but they're just outdoors by the side of their house where there's like an AC unit, but they're shoveling. They're picking up gravel from like the side of their yard, you know, maybe where they have like walking stones or something and a nice little like tea table set up for gardening and they're just putting gravel in a cup because they wanted a gravel cup. Sure. Of course. That said, I still hear corn. I don't know what, I've got corn on the brain. I'm a pretty corny guy. So he's a corny guy. You guys ready for the answer? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Here's the answer. Hi, my name is Rosemary and my name is Nora. And that was the sound of us cutting bird seed in the feeder. Oh, yeah. The bird seed, there might be corn in the bird seed. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Of course, obviously. So what birds don't like corn? You were correct with your corn, I'm going to say. And Sandin, you weren't, but they were shoveling something. Yeah, they were scooping. So I think like you're... And I was right about the mechanical sound being a red herring, being a totally unrelated to the sound. Excellent guesses you two, Hoax Hunters. Thank you, Molly. Thanks, Molly. It's so fun being the guesser. It is. Now it's time for the brain's honor roll. These are the incredible kids who keep the show going with their questions, ideas, mystery sounds, drawings, and high fives. Justin from Orlando, Florida, Joseph, Jesse and Josie from Toledo, Ohio, Celine and Connor from Framingham, Massachusetts, Adrian and Julian from Portland, Oregon, Ruby from Hanwell, New Brunswick, Everly from Kearney, Missouri, Trent from Del Mar, New York, Vihon from Mountain View, California, Eleanor from Highland Park, New Jersey, Nyla from Indonesia, Connor and Celine from Boston, Bo from Tampa, Florida, Nyla from Melbourne, Australia, Hannah from Mount Bridges, Ontario, Eli from Arrasibo, Puerto Rico, Ali from Coulomb Beach, Australia, Sophia from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Conrad and Shea from Awatana, Minnesota, Philip Hudson, Rowan from Tucson, Arizona, Sydney from Tacoma Park, Maryland, Moses from Princeton, New Jersey, Esther and Benny from Baltimore, Greta from Maryland, Tim, Maryland, Jack and William from Richmond, Virginia, Cyrla and Sy from Ballina, Kilelo, Ireland, Ethan from Temecula, California, Katie from Ada, Ohio, Ruby and Evelyn from Johnson, Rhode Island, Gordon from Seattle, Jonah from Los Angeles, Celine from Houston, Texas, Abby from Albany, Oregon, Alvara from Phillipsburg, Pennsylvania, Rosie and Lyra from Houston, Texas, Emma from West Lebanon, New Hampshire, Cole from Alicott City, Maryland, Hope from Boston, Veda and Lucy from Cambridge, Ontario, Lucy from Boulder, Colorado, Levi from Texas, Thomas, Ivy and Willa from Easton, Massachusetts, Emily from Roswell, Georgia, Taylor from Burlington, Iowa, Alice from San Diego, Esther from Chicago, Luciana from Silver Spring, Maryland, Florence and Clifford from Montreal, Kabeer from White Bear Lake, Minnesota, Patrick from New York, Finn and Berkeley from Hastings, Nebraska, Angelica from New Carlisle, Ohio, Ava from Madison, Wisconsin, Ruben from Peterborough, New Hampshire, Cedar from Marine on St. Croix, Minnesota, Jack from Santa Barbara, California, Violet from St. Cloud, Minnesota, William from Roslyn, New York, Lucian and Julius from Brooklyn, New York and Shai from Kalamazoo, Michigan. We'll be back next week with an episode all about raspberries. Thanks for listening!
