Welcome back to the Cryptid Cocktail Party, a show where we share a few drinks, have a few laughs and take a dive into the unknown. The show is running a little late because Dave had a maple syrup emergency he had to attend to in Canada. And never fear, I'm still here unless you don't like me, in which case we'll see you guys next week. But don't leave just yet because I simply cannot do this show alone, so we have invited our friend Cam from the Narragansett Brewery.
Now before you say we have sold out, how very dare you. I have a lot of integrity and actually hang out with Cam. We've been, I've been down to the brewery a couple of times now and it has been an amazing time. So Cam, you got anything to say to the people's? What's up people's? Thanks for having me buddy. I'm very excited to be on. I've been a fan for a while now and I'm psyched that this is actually happening. I'm happy to have you on. We've had many conversations about weird things.
We've also done karaoke together so I feel like there's a brotherhood there. And so I should probably ask you, how do you feel about crabs? Well I guess it really all depends on which kind of crabs you're talking about, but I used to be a bit of a marine enthusiast so if we're going that route, big fan. The other way, you know, we won't talk about that. College is weird. Excellent. That was exactly what I was hoping for. I am going to clip that and post it everywhere I can go.
Well of course you're familiar with them because you're from New England and nothing says New England like walking down a desolate granite encrusted beach that is wildly inhospitable to human life yet we still swim at it in the summertime and finding many dead horseshoe crabs which is, you know, they're fun for the whole family. You pick it up by its pointy little tail, you throw it back into the water. Apparently they use them for some kind of medical stuff. Something with their blood.
Yeah, we have blue blood. It's fucking creepy as shit. Well you might be surprised to know this but these angry clawed water spiders that want to hurt us, they've been turning into crabs for 350 million years. Or if you're a young earth creationist, God is punishing us by putting armor on aquatic spiders because you touch yourself at night. Every freaking time. There are currently 7,000 species of true crabs. These include members such as snow crab, blue crab, and spider crab.
Now you might be asking yourself what the hell do you mean true crab? Well there's a weird phenomenon where shit just keeps turning into crabs which kind of began around the Jurassic era. So what was happening is that there were these crustaceans that had long tails and they would evolve into crab-like beings. And they did this for a number of reasons. The first reason is it made it a little bit easier for them to travel around on legs. They could go on land.
But also the tail was just kind of like a flappy appendage that just gave their predators another thing that they could grab onto. So there's about 3,000 species of what they call false crabs. Fucking liars as we say in the biz. But they contain three of the most popular kinds of crab which is really fucked up. So you have the king crab is a false crab, the hermit crab, and the horseshoe crab. All false crabs. Even the hermit crab? Yeah. Yeah. Even the hermit crab. I know.
It's the crab everybody thinks about. Well, at least if you throw it up here it is. The one you drop your children with. Yeah. I mean you go to the beach, you can grab them and they've got those shells. Or you can go to like a store near the beach, like a general store, and they've got hermit crabs and these big things and you can buy like 12 of them and put them in a little thing and take them home and they just, you know, they die eventually. They die within like 12 minutes.
They do smell really bad, especially right after they die. You got to put like live, not live, but you got to put like real sea sponge in there with water on it so they don't fucking die on you. But they die anyway. And their food smells terrible too. New England is full of terrible things. I'm realizing as I say this out loud. We are not good at anything. But it is believed that, so evolutionarily it's better to be a crab apparently. So now that I've told you that they're so, sorry.
Now that I've talked about true crabs and false crabs together, about 10,000 species. What have I told you that there are reports of a monster crab? I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah, me neither. Because they're horrifying creatures. Dating back to the voyages of Sir Francis Drake in the 1580s, there were reports of a giant three foot spider tank that has a claw strength that is reportedly actually stronger than a lion's jaw.
Some say this beast is brown and red, while others claim it is more of a brown and light blue or turquoise. These creatures apparently climb trees, hunt by scent and even steal from the homes of the people around them in the dead of night. How the giant tank stealing from people's homes? I don't know. I don't know. It's fucking wild. Very sneaky. So the thing that's even more unbelievable as this crab sounds is that it's actually very real. It's a real live crab. It actually exists.
And it's called the coconut crab. It was first described in detail by none other than the fundamentalist Christian's perennial boogeyman Charles Darwin. He called the coconut crab monstrous and was blown away by its ability to quite literally crack open a coconut with its claws. I have to say when you said crab tank, I immediately thought of that episode of Futurama where a Zoidberg's race has the giant, the giant walking embassy and it's got a bunch.
I wasn't thinking something on the smaller scale, but still coconut crab. I can see that being a tank, but I went right to Zoidberg, which I frequently. I mean, Zoidberg is a kind of an amazing character. He is by far my favorite Matt Cronin character of all time. Oh, hands down. Him and Bender together are the best. So coconut crab, they're actually gigantic. And if you Google an image of coconut crab, you'll likely see one trying to climb up a trash barrel.
They can be up to three feet in diameter. She's Christ. Yeah, they're insane. Weirdly enough, they are most closely related to the aforementioned hermit crab. Like the hermit crab, coconut crabs cannot actually swim, but still release their eggs into the ocean during high tide. Those that survive being cast into the ocean where they literally cannot survive, if they do make it, they can live up to 60 fucking years. 60 years. That makes absolutely no sense.
The shampoo they give you gets rid of it in like, you know, two to three weeks. Spoken like a man with true experience. So on top of the show, I said, take a dive into the unknown. So far, this topic is pretty, you know, known. But we're not talking about crabs. But you know, let me ask you, what the fuck are we doing here, Cam? That's a really good question. I've got a lot going on. Still kind of getting over my acceptance of crabs being dirty, whore-ish liars.
Well, while we know a lot about the coconut crab, there are most recent parts of a mystery lasting almost 90 years that we don't know. And that mystery is, of course, what the fuck happened to Amelia Earhart? Are you about to tell me that she was delicious? Yeah. Yeah, I'm about to tell you that. That's good to know. Now, we don't know for sure, but for those of you who don't know who Amelia Earhart is, Jesus fucking Christ, read a book. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. That was 90 years ago.
Well, almost 90 years ago. Amelia was an aviation pioneer. She was also she was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross, which is actually she she was the first woman to win that. It was something that had only been created, I want to say, about 10 years before she actually won it. So actually less than 10 years because it was created in 1926. And I believe she flew across the Atlantic in the early 1930s. I want to say pre 1935.
From the years 1930 to 1935, she set seven airspeed records. She was also known for activism. She was a member of the National Woman's Party advocating for equal rights for women. And before her piloting days, she even trained to be a nurse's aide to treat World War One wounded soldiers. And later, she actually treated victims of Spanish flu. Jesus. Get ready. I'm about to blow your mind. She also lived in Medford, Massachusetts for a couple of years. I was there last week for a comedy show.
Right. Well, so she lived. She had kind of traveled around the country. She had a sister in Canada, so she would often go up to visit her. That's actually where she became a nurse's aide. She spent time, a lot of time in California. She was from Burbank. She was from Arkansas. Spent some time in Minnesota, Canada, as I mentioned, went out to California and then her parents got divorced.
Now Amelia had some medical issues and she kept going getting surgery done and they could never really solve the problem. And she was getting a lot of headaches. Eventually, she traveled across the entire United States. And when she arrived in Boston, they did the surgery again for like probably the fourth or fifth time. And it actually kind of helped her. So she stayed in Boston. She became a social worker for a little while.
She also became a teacher before becoming a sales rep for an airplane company and doing flights for herself, just kind of training and, you know, perfecting her craft at an airport in my hometown of Quincy, Massachusetts. In fact, growing up, there was a bar right near where this airport used to be called Amelia's and I never knew why it was like I knew why it was called that. But I was like, why is it called that here? Like just some enthusiasts wanted to get people drunk with history.
Yeah, yeah. So unfortunately, the airport no longer exists. But there's a number of articles about it. Apparently around Quincy, they used to just call her Miss Amelia. So Amelia's next big accomplishment after all the other things she did in her life that make me feel like a piece of shit for not doing it myself, except for being the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. That ship has sailed for me. She wanted to fly around the world.
She wanted to be the first woman to circumnavigate the world in the plane. She would stop in a number of countries to complete this journey, which would end with her flying for about 7000 miles across the Pacific Ocean, only stopping to refuel the plane before she got back up. And the plan was to land on Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean, which is from what I understand somewhat near Australia, if I understand correctly. Now she wasn't going to do this flying completely blind.
She had a navigator named Fred Noonan. Fred was picked because of his ability to do celestial navigation. He used to be used to work on boats before he worked as a flight navigator. She also had another navigator and they tried to fly and the plane, the landing gear in the plane broke and so they couldn't get off the ground. This other navigator, he fucked off, which is fine because by all reports he was just kind of an average navigator.
There was a story where he got them within 20 miles of where they were supposed to be and that's not great when you need to land on a tiny Pacific Island, right? That's not what you want. No, it's not what you want. So he was going to navigate the easy parts over land and Fred Noonan was going to navigate over water. After the setback, he left the project and Amelia and Fred Noonan raised the funds and started again. They were pretty successful. They made it pretty far across the world.
They had done 35,000 miles and they only had seven miles remaining in this journey. But again, it's 7,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean, which as many people know is an extremely dangerous place to either take a boat or fly because it's just water. There's not a lot of land. So if you have an emergency, you really got to hope there's an island nearby. Radio contact, however, would be maintained with a Coast Guard cutter.
Unfortunately, due to a number of misunderstandings, some problems with the radio frequency that she was using not being compatible with the Coast Guard cutter, there was a lot of communication that got cut off. Then they started using Morse code. And eventually, right after Amelia had told them that she was running low on fuel, they lost contacts. So in 1937, on July 2nd, Amelia Earhart would disappear. She was not the world of silent treatment. I know, right?
She's playing hide and seek for real. Rude. She wins. She wins. Her and Bigfoot. Though she went missing on July 2nd, 1937, she wasn't declared dead until January 5th, 1935. Now, there are a number of theories of what might have happened to her. Some believe she crashed or she landed on an island called Gardner Island. Now it's called Nikumororo. Nikumororo. If I said that wrong, I apologize. But it's your own fault for putting so many Rs in there.
So Nikumororo Island wasn't too far from where she needed to land. And it had a shallow reef sticking up out of the water. So the theory is that she landed on Nikumororo. Her co-pilot, Fred Noonan, was severely injured and Amelia was just kind of slightly injured. We'll get into why people think that in a minute. Others believe that she was actually blown off course and captured by the Japanese and executed a full four years before they declared war on the United States.
So they were just like taking her out for funsies. The theory suggests that she was actually spying in the Pacific for FDR. And that's why the Japanese killed her. But I mean, honestly, it really doesn't make a lot of sense. What was the project that the Japanese did? It was a project. Oh, no. Unit. Oh, yeah. Unit 421? Yeah, it was like unit 427 or I don't know. That horrible unit where they basically tortured people. Just getting captured by the Japanese. My mind immediately goes. No thanks.
No thanks. They actually, so there's some witnesses that say they actually saw her being executed on the island of Saipan. I don't know if I believe that either. Some even claim that Amelia vanished on purpose to assume a new identity, which doesn't make a lot of sense because she was like the most famous woman in the world at the time. Yeah, but it's fun to think about. Like who did she become? Yeah, I mean, to me it's like, why bother?
You know, I'm fairly certain that she is Nick Cage, but that's just a new theory I've just begun working on. Even if the topic doesn't line up, I don't know. I'm not good with math. Just like the same as the theory of Ted Cruz being the Zodiac killer. Oh yeah, but I mean, it makes too much sense not to be true. He is a serial killer. I just don't know if he's a Zodiac. However, those are all some interesting theories, but they're not the most interesting.
The most interesting theory introduces our friend the coconut crab. That's right. It's a fact at the beginning. The thought is that Amelia Earhart did land on Neku Mororo Island. Her plane had landed on a shallow reef and Fred Noonan was severely injured in the crash. The reason that people think that Fred was injured in the crash is because, hang on, waiting for my notes. Let me find it.
There were some radio transmissions that were picked up by a woman in West Texas that she believes were sent by Earhart, who claimed to have crashed and that she was injured, but not as bad as her navigator, Mr. Noonan. Why is that in quotes? Well, that's what she called him, Mr. Noonan. Oh, okay. I was like, that's suspicious. I think that is your real name.
The thing that's weird about this for me is that the Coast Guard ship right underneath her couldn't pick these transmissions up, but a lady in West Texas had no problem 7,000 miles away. But what gets weirder is a woman in Florida also claims to have heard a transmission from Earhart at the same time. This time she said that New York City was mentioned. What's interesting about Nuku Mororo Island is that there was a shipwreck there, a pretty well-known shipwreck at the time.
The ship crashed in 1926, and it was called the Norfolk City, I think it is, or Newark City, Norwich City. It was called the Norwich City. People have been trying to figure out if maybe instead of New York City, she was saying Norwich City. Oh. Now, her parents also kind of believe that it's possible, I'm sorry, not her parents, her family believes it's also kind of possible that she crashed on Gardiner Island because she wouldn't have spent time looking around for another place to land.
She would have just landed if she was that low on fuel and then used the radio to get in touch with people. Right. So it's kind of an interesting theory. And in 1940, the theory gained a little traction for a brief period of time because the British had set up a scientific expedition to this island and they found bones. They also found a bottle, a shoe, and a sextant box.
Now, if you don't know what a sextant box is, don't Google it because you might spell it wrong and get something you don't want to see. How about you don't tell me how to live my life? Fine. Fine. You know what? Google it. Go ahead. Turn off safe search. I've got a freaking VPN. All right. Whatever blows your hair back. So a sextant is a tool they use to navigate by the stars. Now Fred Noonan, as I mentioned, was somebody who was very adept at navigation by the stars.
However, there was also a shipwreck not far from the island. So it's possible that it could have just washed up on the island, the sextant box washing up on the island. However, they use the bones. They will not use them. They started studying the bones and they determined that the bones were from a man and then threw them out. Well, yeah, they're not looking for men's bones. They're looking for her bones. Yeah. And that's kind of what I thought.
I was like, oh, OK, so they weren't from an important person. So you threw them away. What? That guy. Yeah. Fuck that guy. You died on the island like a stupid dickhead. Go be a ghost, you loser. However, later on, they used some software to analyze the measurements from the bone back when we got out of the dark ages. And they actually suggested the bones were female. Oh, but wait, hadn't they thrown them out? Yeah, they're gone. Bones are gone. But you had the measurements. Oh, OK, I got you.
I got you. So the next time you find some bones, it could be someone important. And you should throw them out because that's what scientists do. We did die, you dumb schmuck. We're married. So the reason that people think that they didn't find more from Amelia Earhart, like a hut or some kind of settlement that she might have built to protect herself, is because they believe the coconut crabs on the island, of which there are many, ate her.
Now at the time, this island was completely uninhabited, so only coconut crabs lived there. Oh, OK. So they believe that the coconut crabs ate her. And this is not completely without the realm of possibility, because coconut crabs are not just eating coconuts. They also literally climb fucking trees and eat birds. Jesus Christ, that is ambitious. You can find pictures and videos of a coconut crab eating like a big seagull sized bird. So they're like they're like pigs.
Yeah, you can just float over by. They'll just fucking eat anything. Yeah, they'll eat anything. And it's funny that you say pigs because. Some scientists wanted to test this theory out. So with the understanding that finding someone we all know is definitely dead is a super important and reasonable use of valuable resources. Some people expended those valuable resources. To feed numerous dead pigs to coconut crabs. To see where the crabs put the bones. For science.
Like I just want to remind everyone listening right now that there's people starving around the world. And they grabbed bones. I mean, they grabbed a dead pig and fed it to coconut crabs who were fully capable of climbing trees and eating birds. These aren't like starving crabs. Just a reminder. Those poor people don't like pork. Yeah. To find out what happened to a dead lady. Anyway, there was no conclusive evidence because the coconut crabs just fucking ate the pig and then walked away.
They didn't like they didn't like make necklaces out of the bones. It was you know there wasn't a coconut crab with like a necklace made of teeth. What were they expecting to happen? So they didn't find out if the crabs were the who that done it. Some people said what about the airplane? How is there no airplane?
And that's a little bit easier to talk about because they believe that the airplane landed on the reef and the tide could have just knocked the plane into the ocean and it could have gotten carried away. I mean airplanes compared to ships are fairly light. You know obviously because they have to fly. So a tide could very easily take the airplane that they were flying in and scatter it and you know sink it. Are we sure that they didn't just eat the airplane?
Coconut crabs could have eaten the airplane. Let me pitch this. Let's buy a bunch of airplanes and feed them to coconut crabs. Fuck the poor people. They don't need airplanes. You know what we do? We start the engine and we throw coconut crabs at the propellers to see if they can break through the propellers. I can get on board with this. This would be a lot of fun. It's science. It's definitely science. Somebody will intern and get college credit. It'll be fucking wonderful. Exactly.
Also just a reminder a coconut crab's claw strength is stronger than that of a lion. It's 3000 Newtons. A lobster is 150 Newtons. Pussy lobsters. Yeah goddamn wimps. So that's where it stands today. They threw away the bones. The plane's probably washed away and apparently pig bones fed to coconut crabs is not a great analog for what happened to a woman 87 fucking years ago.
However, if true, I want to make it abundantly clear that it would definitely not be the first time a person who spent some time in Quincy, Massachusetts had an unfortunate run in with some very aggressive crabs. Cam, how do you feel? I learned a lot. I'm a little terrified of the crabs now. I thought I had it all under control. I thought I had my crabs all in a row if you will. I certainly do not and that's a whole new nightmare character I can add to my arsenal of dream teeth.
These things are insane. They're just insane. Is it something that I could get as a pet? I don't think you'd want it. I wouldn't but I also imagine. Imagine we've all we've all like anybody who's had a pet has accidentally stepped on on their pet at some point in their life. It's going to take you off at the angle right there. Yeah imagine stepping on a coconut crab and you come back with three less toes at least. No thank you. You've got people with tortoises in their backyards.
That's like cute and sweet. You get a coconut crab out there and now you can't go in the backyard anymore. I mean sometimes you got to get rid of a neighbor. Pigs attract a lot of attention. What are you going to do? Anyway horrible nightmare fuel but I could not resist the story. A because they're related to hermit crabs which live here in New England but also B because poor Amelia Earhart the woman cannot get any rest and she spent time in New England which makes her she's one of us.
We claim her. I can tell you can't have her. Take a step back. Yeah she came here willingly so you have no claim to her because we we let women choose here. You're goddamn right. All right so that's all I got. Kim do you have anything you want to share with the people? No I've been drinking Narragansett or Narragansett Pilsner Bohemian Pilsner here. He's got the Del Shandy over there. I mean that's my whole claim to fame.
I love drinking beers and I love selling these beers so thanks for letting us be your sponsor. Is in the movie Jaws so watch Jaws. You will see Narragansett. This actually was in another movie recently whose name I have forgotten. We were actually we just had a like a 30 second spot in the most recent episode of I believe it was Law and Order. Really unpaid it just freaking happened. They just grabbed the can of Narragansett and.
Dude the guy from True Blood Andy from True Blood just walks out carrying a 30 pack and I got like seven different people. Well actually it was all old people that watch TV like not on streaming services. They all texted me and were like I just saw it on the law and order and I was like oh shit really it was my mom and my dad and they're like hey you work for that company. So that's so awesome.
I mean I'm so relieved that Narragansett went back to its old recipe and got popular in New England again because Narragansett just has the coolest fucking logo. They've been a part of the Red Sox culture for God knows how long. They were local beer and they don't do annoying commercials like the Sam Adams ones that make me want to put my head through a wall. So I hate to break it to you man.
I just hired Dave and he's going to be our cousin from Rhode Island so I don't know what we're going to do about that. But yeah so drink Narragansett if you have it near you and if you don't order it online and have it shipped to your home. I'm sure that's legal in most places. I don't have anything else so may the blessing blessings. May the blessings of Mothman be upon you and I love you. Thank you for listening.