Sex Raft!

processed cheese. Yeah, it was like cheese scented nail polish, But aside from that, that's not what I'm talking about is holding your nails underneath your nose. They invented the veltini, the Velvita Martini. It has Velvita infused vodka, olive, Brian and vermouth in it and it's garnished with a cheese drip and a cocktail pick of Velvita stuffed olives and olives,

olives and jumbo Velvita shells and cheese. Don't you normally have to go to a doctor if you have cheese dripped, Yes, you do, and it's very important if you want to get one, you have to go to a b LT steakhouse, which is apparently some chain of steakhouses. They can lettuce tomato steakhouses. I guess you have to order it in person in their happy hour, which they call their Golden Hour. So you can go to there's one stop. There's one in New York, one in d C, one in Charlotte,

and then in Chicago down. Yeah, go to Charlotte. If you're not at any of those places, you can actually order an online kit from gold Belly for fifty bucks that The kit includes two martini glasses, a gold cocktail shaker, to Velvita coasters, a jar of olives, cocktail picks, a box of Velvita jumbo shells and cheese, Velvita cheese sauce to infuse the vodka, and rimmed glasses, and a Velvita brick to stuff all of in a vl teeny recipe card.

Historians take note, this was when we took the turn. Yeah, so apparently it was a lot of people lost it on Twitter and what have you. But yeah, so that's ridiculous. I think of, in all honesty, if somebody served you a Velvita teeny, right and they said, hey, Elizabeth I made this for you. Would you earnestly and honestly try it and say, let's see how this is. I would

chug it and then go running the road. It's one of those things you'd probably like smell like like you're in a kem lab and you waffed the air towards your face first, and then you're like, all right, then you take a sip, and then I think that's the dividing line of humanity of the people who are like, you know what, this is actually pretty good, and then the people who just start dry heaving, like I've always wanted to know it a chemical platin hack and stack

New Jersey tasted like but cheese martini an alcohol together, I mean vodka and cheese, just like maybe for solid cheese. I'm with the I'm like, freezing to death in the Siberian forest, doll eat cheese and drink. That's your only consideration of Velvet Tina's Velvita teeny. Yeah, I'll put it. I'll put it in a go bag for an emergency rock out. So that's ridiculous. Oh that that's a good one. Yeah, thank you, I have one for you. Oh you do. I don't know if it reaches the heights of Velvita

teeny probably probably not. It's got I got two words for you, sex raft. Oh boy, Yeah, if you had to guess, what do you think those two words mean when used together? I honestly don't know, but I will say that here's the thing. Is that what when we do these stories, we know like a title or kind of like the basic subject of what the other person is going to talk about. But this isn't scripted. I don't know what you're gonna say. You don't know what

I'm gonna say. Um, But we do have the big board here at Ridiculous Crime h Q, and we have all these index cards with show ideas on them. And I've been the past. Yeah, I've been seeing one for a long time now, dead center that just says sex raft. And I didn't know what it was and I didn't put up there, so I didn't touch it. And okay, so today's the day, right, yep? If the raft is a knocking, oh wait, the rafts are rocking? Is that

how it goes? Anyway? I don't come a knocking. This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers. Heists and cons It's always murder free and ridiculous. Elizabeth, I take you through the seventies often. I've got one more story for you for the seventies. You'll have to forgive me. But I saw this one and I just got I was like, I have to just finish off my trifecta of seventies insanity. I'm here for it. Okay, the years and this is when anthropologist Santiago Genovese had

a revolutionary idea. Nor so he thought. Now as an anthropologist, he concluded that if you wish to understand violence in society, and you should start with his most obvious observation. But yet when he felt was integral to understanding violence in society, and I quote, most conflicts are about sexual access to

ovulating females. So he decided that obsessive female ovulation was the key to world peace, not women's menstrual cycles, but rather the fight between men for access and the controlling of access of the to them. Rather, Santiago's big idea was to find a way to counteract this male tendency to violence. And he's like, you know, we just have to work out this access to female ovulation. But he didn't say, like, oh, ladies, you need to like bend to the boil of men. He's like, no, that's not

the easy answer. I've got a better answer, sex raft. So, like Noah, he built an arc, except for instead of taking two of each animal, he decided he'd build his arc and invite ten young attractive strangers to join him for a boat ride across the Atlantic Ocean. Worst reality show ever? What are you talking about? A sexy slow boat to Mexico, which for him intends sexy and strangers sound it's reality TV before they even never thought of reality TV. Now, this anthropologist is he He is a

real like professor. He's at the university in Mexico. He has twenty years of experience in the field. He's not some fly by night grad student trying to make a name for himself. This is a guy who's thinking this will be the answer for world peace. Like he earnestly believes this. And he had also already taken a scientific trip across the Atlantic before. This was where he got the idea. And he's like, I can emulate that success.

I could top that right now. The Atlantic journey that he had been on before it was with thor hired all you're familiar with Thor hired all. So Cone Tiki was where they'd make an a ship or a ship according to ancient designs, and he tries to sail it across the Pacific to show that Micronesians could contact people.

He then did it again with the Atlantic, trying to connect Africa and South American show that people in West Africa could easily make that little jaunt across to basically the bubble of Brazil, right and as the currents go there, it shouldn't take too long. So he gets a crew of anthropologist in him, seven dudes, and they set out in a boat made out of papyrus, and they go

from the African coast of Morocco to South America. On day fifty four, the boat sinks in the Atlantic Ocean because they didn't have any ovulating women exactly, so they've gone about three thousand miles. Right. So a year later, Thor and this most of the same crew, they try again with a boat called raw To. The first one was raw one notes raw To. They try this time they use a boat made by the Imato Indians of

like Tittycock on South America, and their boat works. It makes it fifty seven days across the Atlantic, proving with physical evidence that a trans atlantic journey like this could have been undertaken by people in West Africa, possibly by people from South America going back, showing that they had the technologies right. So, based on this scientific sense success, Santiago the anthropologist is like, I'm gonna take my own

boat trip. And for his trip, he's like, I think you know that whole thing of like we had a sale, we had like paddles, that was making it too easy. I want to raft, no engine, no sales, no paddles, just a platform bobbing and floating across the Atlantic Ocean, and on board, I want a dozen or so young and attractive strangers with me. And by the way, we're going to film it all in eight millimeter. So he had cameras aboard too. So I guy said reality before

TV before there was reality. No no sale, no paddles, They're just gonna float on. The current is to take between sixty nine days, between ninety days and days between basically three to six months. That's how long they just charted. No Santiago understands that some people may think it's unethical for a forty nine year old professor to include himself on a transatlantic journey with a bunch of young, attractive strangers. But Santiago he was ready for that. He's like, look,

I I see where you're coming. And it's not just about hookup culture. Although he wouldn't have said that. He said, and I quote, the most anti ethical thing I know is the fact that a man dies every twenty second at the hand of another man in an act of violence. To discover and investigate these things, it is necessary to be more flexible concerning our concepts of what professional ethics are. The problem concerns are survival. So he's like, look, we've

got bigger fish to fry. Don't get on me because I got these ten, twelve, sexty strangers with me on my boat. I'm trying to end World War. Don't sweat me. So, of course things did not go well. Realize you would not be hearing about it here. So you may be wondering a few questions, is right off the bat. Imagine many questions, like for one, who pay for this sex raft? That's a great question, right off the bad That's the question I asked. And turns out it was a Mexican

government what government paid for it? And they paid for it through a Mexican government funded television network. Well, yes, all I get to say is what exactly? So it's a federally funded study. More federally funded science. Now, second question the pops in mind. Why would a professor with a reputation of like his. You know, he's got clout in the field, he's got twenty years experience, why would he risk all of that on sex raft? Because it's

sex raft. I don't know, you know, it sounds like maybe something happened and he went a little bit over the edge. Boom, Elizabeth spot On. Can you guess what happened that pushed him over the edge? Did he get a divorce? That's another good solid. It's like a midlife crisis. I'll give you a hint. We're in the super crime seventies. Was he on a plane that got Remember I told you they're out wild and Ramino and folks are always

hijacking planes. Well, like, it was so bad. Some pilots would get hijacked twice in the same year, right, So it was so bad that when it would happened, people were be like, Okay, we're getting hijacked. I mean, it was like people getting bugged. I was reading the other day that It's like there was one a month basically exactly. So it was like, you know, it's like if you had a friend who lost a catalytic converter. Today, you're like, oh, here,

that happens. That was basically plane hijacking in the seven. But the other thing I read in the article was that only one person died in that whole long stretch. It wasn't a violent thing. They were after the power of the having the leverage. They didn't really want to kill people. So that's why, in a lot of ways, why it was allowed to persist. Right, So dude was on a plane that hijacked. Yeah, so Santiago, he's on a flight to Mexico City and he's going home. The

plane gets hijacked and redirected to Cuba. So now he's not cool and he's sitting there going like, oh man, this is not good. You know the reason why he went from I'm on a plane going to Cuba too, I need to have a sex raft. It was a little bit of a jump, I admit. That's an interesting trauma response exactly. So there is a documentary called The Raft by filmmaker Marcus Lindean, and I highly recommended if

you liked this story. He goes into great detail and you can learn a lot more about it right now. The surviving participants as visit the trip and they speak about what they endured, and this doc and includes all these notes from Santiago, And in one of the notes he recounts and I quote it all started with a hijacking In November nineteen seventy two. I was flying home into Mexico City from a psychological conference on the history of violence when suddenly a group of terrorists took over

the flight. It was too good to be true. I mean, imagine the irony me, a scientist who had spent my whole career studying violent behavior ends up in the middle of a hijacking drama. All my life, I've wanted to know why people fight and really understand what is going on inside our minds. When the hijacking was over, I realized, if I could create a similar situation, it would be the perfect laboratory to study human behavior. But where can you isolate a group of people and expose them to danger?

Then I had an idea sex. Sex gonna make your sex sex, right, you gonna make you wet. You have to keep in mind this is during the Vietnam War, right does that part of the quote, No, that's me. I added that the music part, that's me. So keep in mind from background context, this is in the middle of Vietnam War. Everybody's really worried about. We have carpet bombing, we have like just horrific scenes on the news. Uh. There's also been renewed fighting in the Middle East. We're

about to see the yam Kapoor war kickoff. There is Pinochet has just let it. It was about to lead a coup in seventy three down in Chile. So you have all this this tension around the world. You have the neoliberal school of economics going around fomenting like, uh, you know, new governments and juntas according to their idea of like oh, yes, we're gonna do proxy wars with communism, and Milton Friedman's telling everybody, yes, this is the path

of freedom. So all this tension, right, and there's economic violence and physical violence and it's all culminating and he's like, oh, how do we get through this exploited a violent phase in history, and he's like, sex raft. That's the answer, man, I need to build a sex raft, invite ten strangers from me for a cruise, and so that would fix it,

all right, Sure, so I say that all of this. Now, keep in mind, technically no criminal charges were filed in this story, but this did happen in you know, international waters where there is no coptical But in this case, the captain is the law, and the captain in this case is basically the guy running them. Yeah, so you can well on the international waters, no one can hear you scream. No, that is very very true. So after

this short break, we'll climb aboard the Journey of sex Raft. Okay, so it was the press who called this boat sex raft, like Santiago going around and going, hey, guys can hop on a sex raft. I thought it like a little flag sex right, just like two people like doing like that, is it a beast with two backs? Like that's the

flags top. I'm sorry, so Santiago, because it sounds like something you'd see like on lake have a su someone with a homemade raft of a sign that is sex raft, And everyone's like, kids, don't look over, no, no, no no, no, no, they're turning their hands over the eyes of the children. Yeah. Well, Santiago, he called his boat something far more demure and pastoral and lovely, something that you would probably like. It was a colleague, which means home on the water is nice. Nice.

So he decided to make this home on the water the opposite of how life is on the land. He on his sex raft would be in charge, but not really, he would make sure that women would be in charge. So he decided he would hire this Israeli woman as the ship's doctor. He hired his French woman as the ship scuba diver. He hired like he basically wanted all the lowly task to go to the men and all the power positions to go to women. He just flipped it. How big is this raft, oh girl? About by six ft?

I'm like, legitimately thinking like six by eight, you know's there's a lot of people hear that. But twenty one by six ft is like two bedrooms, two big bedrooms

put together essentially just and there are no walls. There's a cabin on the center, so imagine a platform, but like a flat like rectangle one by thirty six, and then there's a like a like a tough shed in the middle, kind of like a tough shed, yeah, raised with sloped walls, and it has like a cabin area and then there's a roof that you can also go on top, so it's kind of like two levels of the roof is not very big. And then there was like a helmsman's area in the back where there's the

tiller and to steer the boat. And because that's pretty much all that, they have this very simple rut and you know they didn't but they can't power to me. They can't power. They can go back and forth you want to, like just not gonna. It's just basically to help them steer out of the way of the shipping lanes, because if they get into the shipping past, the big supertankers will just crush them. And I see them, they'll just be chumped from Thank you, ireated that clarification. So

Santiago he has his dream. He's like, the women will run my sex rst. So he says, and I quote, I wonder if having women in power will lead to less violence or more Maybe men will become more frustrated when women are in charge and try to take over power. So he's like ginning up everything with like setting up situation after situation in terms of his analysis that it's the women's fault either. The melication is always this is hinged on women, and we have to we can control

women or negotiating women better. You see right through the game. But you know, he has a certain machismo he is. He's from Mexico, so he has a little bit that that Spanish language machismo where he's thinking about things. And you'll hear it later on in quote I'll tell you he thinks of them so very much as a man, right, so women should be women. So there's this really hard dichotomy. He does not have like a spectrum of people for him. There are two types of people. So anyway, so the

captain of his sex raft is a woman. Santiago travels to Sweden to personally meet Maria Bjornson. So she's a professional Swedish sea captain, one of the first women to become a professional sea captain. Now the idea initially sounds ludicrous to her. She is a legitimate professional Stampton. So she's like a raft with no power, no sales, nothing. You just got and you got oh ten sexy strangers, and you go on, is there food on this ten sexy strangers? And you always he's exempt from there. This

true descendant of Viking culture. She signs on for this adventure. She's like, you know what, it's like, I'm a megababe. Everything that's wrong, I'm doing it though. So for the rest of the Chris Santiago asked for volunteers. He's like, I got enough budget for this one. So he plays his ads in international newspapers all around the world, and his respondents they see this ad and here's the add I'll read it to you that you were opening the newspaper in you know, New Delhi and you're saying, oh,

what what is on the paper? Oh? I need a job. Expedition leader looks for volunteers to sail on a raft across the Atlantic. Duration three months. Males and females preferably married, but participation without spouse, age forty Write letter in details curriculum Vita to box zero three seven eight A. The times applications will be kept confidential. He wants them married, but they don't bring the spouse yes, because he wants more conflict. He wants them to be able to have

something that's restricting their choices. This is so chaotic. Yes, that would you apply? No? So wait and does he didn't ask for a head shot. He's going to be like a tasteful nude or you know, give me your in your undy things. He uh, he does? I mean, like, so he's going to verify sexiness in an interview. Yeah, exactly, he'll He'll take care of that in person, got it. He needs to be in the room with that. I can't process how chaotic. Hundreds of people apply. Hence strangers

are selected out of the whole planet. The whole planet. I mean it was. It wasn't like the newspapers and it's like in the want ads and it's under expedition later, so like you had to keep all this in mind. So the people he gets to come from different ethnicities, nationalities, socio economic backgrounds. But at the time, the press summed this up a little bit differently than I'm summing it up. Now. Here's how they described it. Quote the raft. This is from a U p I wire service report spread all

around the world. The raft, expected to drift across the Atlantic at about two miles per hour, will carry two Jews, an Arab and African, one black and one white American, a Swede, a Greek, a french Woman, a Japanese, and Uruguayan and Genovese. That's how his presses pitching it like. It's like a box of crayonic crayons of people. It's like a Benetton ad that like is walks into a

bar joke exactly. So it's not telling those goals you've noticed is to make this toll trip about it is difficult and as dangerous as possible, fraught with tension, racial dynamics. Anythink he can do to make people like be likely to like come to blows right. And so these ten fortunate strangers they meet at the dock and less Palmas, Spain in the Canary Islands on May eleven, nineteen seventy three, they all load onto the sex raft and they will

spend the next three months together on this boat. That is, as you asked Santiago. He's planning, also, by the way, to collect data for his semi weekly questionnaires, which will feature questions like to whom do you feel the closest too? And why who annoys you the most on the raft? With whom on the colleague have you had sexual contact. If you could get rid of one of the others, who would it be? This is like this is like a high school bully girl quiz that she hands around class. Wow.

So yes, less ethics. Did they make sure that he did he try and make sure they are all diagnosed with angry he's already or like need of mood stabilize. He's going to keep them from There's no mention about that, like there's no mental health inventory on these people. But they come from some dire situations, as we'll get into. There's also one big problem. Some of the participants didn't realize that they were going to be part of a

science experiment until they were aboard the raft. They were like, wait, you're doing what now. They just thought they were going to chill on a raft. I don't know what. I have no idea what they thought. But they showed up thinking like, yeah, man, it's cool. I got a free boat ride across the Atlantic anyway. Oh so then you're

really getting stable, sane folks exactly. So on the day the ship leaves, you can believe it, the United Nations sends a message to the Collie wishing them success on their middle acknowledging that the importance for the hope for all people on earth, for world peace to be discovered through sex. Right. I thought for sure you're going to say the UN sent a message, get back to shore. Now stop it, you stop it right now. It was

more like, good luck, sex Raft. The people of are counting on you, God speed, go where no man and women have gone before without having sex. They all stood on the shore like a single two dropping down their cheek.

It's beautiful. The sex Raft is going to be in and out of radio contact, and so they're suppose they're scheduled to get a weather report every couple of days over the radio when they can make contact, and they're also once a week when when Santiago can make contact, he's gonna give a general status update and relay some of his notes and so forth. So they're gonna be literally on their own for days at a time. Nobody will know where they are in the world. Are they

like fishing and stuff. Yeah, they're gonna have to collect food from the from the water, so they they'll be fishing, they'll be dragging. They have a plenty of food to make it the thirties. How do they get fresh water. They have fresh water, they have all the they are provisioned for the trip, but they are still going to be fishing for extra protein and so forth and fresh

fresh meat. So trying to meet the crew, right, yeah, defently. Okay, So we have already met Santiago Genovese Tatazaga, who is the forty nine year old Mexican anthropologists captain of this and Captain Creeper. Then there's also Captain Maria Jorne Stump from Sweden. She's thirty years old. She's the first female press appened. Then there are four men on the raft. There is Jose Maria Montero Perez. He is a thirty four year old Uruguayan UH former student of Santiago. Then

they're radio operator Charles Anthony. He's thirty seven years old. He's a Greek Cypriot. And there's Aisuki Yamaki. He's a twenty nine year old cameraman from Japan. He speaks only Japanese and UH a smattering of Spanish. Then there is Bernardo Bungo. He's twenty nine year old from Angola. He's also a Catholic priest. A Catholic priest on board, because why not because being Mexican. He's like, this will up to tension because they won't want to get sex in

front of the priest. Everyone else is like really, and if the priest will have sex with people, it's the whole thing. Yeah, So Santiago and Vice the priest because of the sexual tension, and they tried to get the priest to like get involved in the sexual tension and none of it goes well. Now for the five women participants, there are two scientists aboard. We have a Rashida Manzani. She is a twenty three year old from Algeria. She's going to conduct a study on ocean pollution right. And

then there's servants a note. She's a thirty year old from France. She's the ship's frogman or the scuba divers gonna do any repairs on the steel understructure. Then there's Edna Jonas. She's thirty two years old. She's a Czechoslovakian resident who's living in Israel and she used the ship's doctor. Then there's finally the two Americans picked for their racial complexities. There is Faye Evangelina Seymour. She's one of the youngest members. She's twenty three years old. She is a black woman,

and she is the ship's radio operator. Then there is the American white woman, a mother of three named Mary Gidley, who is thirty six year olds old and responsible for navigation and running from her husband who had tried to assaulter or killer basically, and so she's on the trip to get away from him, and so she leaves her three kids with the husband. So, now that we've met everyone aboard the ship, Elizabeth, I'd like to close your eyes and picture. I don't want it. I do not

want to take this. It's Mayo are climbing aboard the a colleague a sex raft. Now you've signed on as this ship's cruise director. And as you poured the sea, spray is wetting your face, The wind is blowing your hair about, The sun warms your shoulders. The journey you've waited for his finally here. Excite it palpable as the

sound of the seabirds above you. And as you gaze at of that wide expanse of watery blue that'll be your home for the next three months, you decide to dip into the cabin and see what's going on inside. You are the cruise directors, so you know, get to know the rest of the girl. At the hatch. You can hear Captain Maria on the ship's radio, your new boss, and then it's cruise ship director. You're like, let me go check what's up with the ship's vibe. I'm gonna

meet my boss. So you clock her vibe and you notice it seems a bit Off'm like, what's up? A home girl. She's talking on the radio with her boyfriend Off and he's on the tug boat that is currently telling the sex draft out into the open ocean current. Now soon you will be set adrift to float across the Atlantic. This is your last contact with society and civilization. And over the radio, the boyfriend Olaf. He sounds worried.

He's really focused at the moment on the legal paperwork, and he's had time on while he's on the tugboat to actually read over the contract Maria was asked to sign, and all Off is a little worried, like very worried. You can hear the concern in his voice. You're like, that doesn't sound like a person who is chill. And over the radio static you hear him saying, nobody looked

through the contract, which seems to be a slave contract. Really, it says that you should give up your body, your mind and everything to Santiago, is that a method of a scientist? No, what do you think about it? Tell me the truth. You watch she grabs the radio and she responds to him, No, it wasn't written anything about mind.

And you look at Maria, You're like, wow, she's cool as all hell, unflappable, personally slipping through the contract that I just signed, like oh no, no, no no, no, no, no no, no, no no no no, mind and body, mind and body. So she's over there suppressing this little rebellious smile. She knows something she either. It seems that she's down for the adventure. But oh, he's unswa. He's just like freaking out. He's like, it was about the mind and about body.

You should do whatever he wants to at any time. That means you, as captain, might get in trouble with him. And Captain Maria looks at you. She rolls her eyes and she's piped whatever. She pressed the button on the radio and she's like, you know what I think about that paper? I didn't sign it? Oh love, asked her. One of the sign Wait, wait, do you want to stay on the raft? Then she's like hmm, and you're like, I don't know if I want to stay. I'm busy

putting on the snarkle. I'm getting ready to jump. So you're literally now holding You're waiting like unbated breath through, waiting to see what she want to say. And then you're here, Captain Maria. She holds the button down to the radio and she says, I'm going to stay on the raft, and you're like, what she wants to take the adventure. Meanwhile, you grab the radio from her. You're like, oh, bring the swing old and he does this told he swings to talk about over you were able to hop

off the sex raft. They throw the rope back over and the tug boat says good luck you and the tug boat go back to civilization as sex raft glides into the scene. And I lived happily ever after two reasonable people. So you dodge that very very sexy bullets. Well, sorry, I have to wonder why did you get off the raft? Because I'm not I don't trust Santiago in the legal contracts. You gonna trust these sex ten sexy strangers not a lick. Okay, well, then I'll just tell you what life is like on

the sex raft without you. Okay, yeah, I'll hear about it. I'm not gonna do it. For one, he's got a lot of rules, which is, you know, whatever it's to science experiment, there's going to be rules. He insists that there's no reading, no reading of books, and no nobody brought magazines, but no reading of books. Right, So what they are allowed to do to entertain themselves for the endless hours aboard this sex raft is they are allowed to sing songs or to tell stories from their own lives.

Oh that sounds great a right, So this is the idea is for people to get board and then do either become annoyed and get violent or to like find deeper parts of themselves. You got me there in like five minutes. That's why I had to bounce out of that boat. So I kind of want to hear people singing and telling me there's there's stupid stories. Oh yeah. And also, by the way, in the first few days, people are just vomiting everywhere. They're getting just puking on

each other. It's just it's a horrible scene. People are like heads over the side of the boat most of the first couple of days, because you know, not people who are used to the seat. To Maria born some she's like cool with everyone else is like they're all in their sexy bikinis, all sunburn and puke and they'll thank you. And as I told you, they have to stay on out of the shipping lanes. So that's the big fight, right, So they're worried about supertankers where they're

floating along. So there were like like the heads over the side they're puking and looking for supertankers. Those are the first two days on sex rafts right now. For the bathroom, mind you, they have this little area where you can kind of like I wondered about that, but I'm so gross. It's like kind of like you know, like the front like the prows of some boats. They'll have like the little area where you can stand as like like a you. So they have like that, but

it's off the side of the raft. And this in that little you there, they have like a platform and you could sit on the platform and do your business. And then for like men's treating women, they get a little worried about the sharks in the water because you're like, I'm just sitting up here a bloody target, just dripping a trail for these people. So yeah, so the women they have to do that three months, so that's three cycles are going through at least animum. Anyway, that was

they're worried about. You know what, I don't want to keep going. Now you may be wondering, Saron, but what about all the sex on the sex raft? No, it was not that. Are they hitting it, Zaron? Elizabeth, I'm glad. Yes, yes they are hitting it, but like, yes, but where do you like one to three people go to have sex on a sex raft? You know, it's twenty one by thirty six ft right, and they got ten ten

people with them at all times. So where do you go? Well, you can wait till nightfall and you go on top of that little like rooftop on the cabin starting hear you banging a way up top. Or you can go like hang out by look onto the walls and pretend

like you're vomiting or they're you're holding their hair. The other one is that the you can if you're the helmsman, if you have the rudder and you're alone at night you can like you got one hand on the rudder and the other hand on your lover, and then they make that one work. In fact, Edna of the Israeli doctors, she tells the story. She says, quote for me, it was not about love, it was about friendship. It was complicated to have sex on the raft because other people

could always see you. Well, maybe if two people are on guard together and you were a little quick, then maybe it was possible, but it was tricky because you had to use one hand for steering. So she was out there hit while she was still on the s s urinary traction section. So following all these sexy tropes of the day, men all agreed that the French woman was the sexiest, and the women all agreed that the

Uruguayan scientist he was the hottest man aboard. So there was his consensus on who, if they were having sex, who they'd want to be knocking boots with, which made some problems as well. Santiago knows all of this because he's asked them who would you want to sleep with on the questionnaires, So he's gonna start poking at that scene if he can like prime things to get things going. Now, Meanwhile, as this raft is drifting across the sea, the captain

begins to hate Santiago, like just literally despise him. Right, and this is not lost on Santiago, he records in his notes and I quote today during dinner, Captain Maria asked me in front of the whole group, what I really want to achieve with the experiment. Everyone got silent and waited for my answer. I told her that I want to find a way to create peace on earth.

She just rolled her eyes and looked away. Yes, yes, but he does also start to get what he wants, because now violence is starting to rear its ugly head. So this all happens when a the folks on the raft they pull something out of the ocean that changes who all of the humans are and in a relationship to each other. After this little break, I'll tell you what they pulled from the sea and how this crazy sex rapt journey comes to a wild culmination. So, Elizabeth,

you got free of the sex Raft. Everyone else is still on the boat rocking their way across the Atlantic, and now they've dropped their line into the sea and about that will change everything. So what happened is one of the dudes was fishing and he caught a shark and he pulls the shark aboard. This triggers like a blood lust because he decides that he needs to beat the shark to death, which is often what happens when you have a shark on board. You get a wooden club,

you hit him in the head a few times. But he does this and then it gets a little extra and then the other people they all also get a little keyed up. Right, And I quote from Santiago's notes. Look, he said the heart is still beating. It was like turning on a switch. Suddenly everyone wanted to feel the flesh that was still warm him with life. Finally here it was the violent behavior that I've been waiting for. But to my surprise, it didn't come from sexual jealousy

or from conflicts between the participants. Instead, we witness a clear example of crowd frenzy, where people no longer act as individuals, but as part of a dangerous collective. That's the lord. Yeah, Piggy's about to get it. So so this though, is the only flash of violence that he really gets to see on his boat. That was it. They get their one little flash. They get a blood lust up. He gets to see the potential for the

group violence dynamic, and then everything just settles down. And now they're like, you know, almost halfway across the sea, and he's like, oh man, what am I gonna do? So Santiago is he's getting disappointed with these people. He's like, they're they're frustrating my experiment. They're trying to do me, so he says, and I quote, they clearly don't understand what I'm trying to do. Instead of supporting me, they behave like a bunch of children, and and they're getting lazy.

No one seems to remember that we are out here trying to find an answer to the most important question of our time. Can we do without war? So he instigates violence. He's the one who brings the violence into it. He's like, I gotta go with what I know, what I love. So he takes that big button marked emotional distress and he just twists it as hard as he can. He calls her a ship's meeting and he informs everybody

got to come to the ship's meeting. They I'll get there and he's like, look, things are gonna change, Like what do you mean what do you things are gonna change? You kicked somebody off the boat and he's like, no, no,

but you know your questionnaires. Okay, We're gonna play a little game today called the Game of truth, and I quote I began by saying that Edna has written that she wants to have sex with jose Maria, but jose Maria has written that he thinks Edna is the most annoying woman he has ever met because she talks all the time. These feelings can't be hidden anymore. They have to stop being so afraid of confrontation and be open about what they really feel about each other so that

I can finally get some material to study. He read their diaries like this is now one of the most unethical experiments ever, like mean girls on a raft like this is Stanford prison experiment with me and girls on a boat And he's not done so more controversy. He goes after the youngest member of the crew of the Black Woman from America Fee. He calls her quote a primitive and a thief and lazy in order to see if calling her black stereotypes will set her off. No,

of course not. She she didn't go for that. She's like, man, you think that this I'm from America. You need to try a little harder if that's all you're gonna throw at me. Right, So, but he's still desperate for results. His racism doesn't work, so he's like, what can I do? Mean, So he just keeps reading their diaries. He's just doing

anything he can to foment like anger, intention and aggression. Meanwhile, back in civilization, his colleagues have taken to the newspapers and they have been anounced him as a total quack. So they've written a letter to and it's been published in the press around the world. And he eventually hears about this over the ship's rand, and seagull comes and

drops the newspaper exactly right. So during the weekly call, he he not mind you, anyone can hear the radio, so everybody else, they're all going to get the fact that he gets unmasked. So and I quote from Santiago. One of the articles is a statement signed by some of my colleagues at the university where I've been working for over twenty years. They right that the publicity about the sex raft is bad for the reputation of the university, and from now on they don't want to have anything

to do with me or my expedition. He's risted all for this and he's become basically a failure in his career, a total like you know, outcast. And also now he's the emotional dictator on a sex raft. So that's good on LinkedIn totally. Now at this around this point, the radio goes silent, and it wasn't he didn't like break

the radio. They just is, We're happened to go silent, right, So they end up getting lost and they drift out of radio contact for four days, and so people are to wonder did the sex raft sink somewhere in the Atlantic. Planes are sent up into the sky to try to find sex Raft multiple days past. Finally, on July eighteenth, the search plane spots, Hey, that's sex Raft. So the crew is okay, the people wave. Everyone's like, yeah, we're

still here naked on ship. Not not really, but they're safe and they're about to enter the Caribbean sea right. And I say they're safe, I mean in that moment because right behind them is a hurricane that's forming in the warm waters of the Atlantic. Because Captain Maria knew about this, she's like real leaving too late season if we if we drift too long, we get blown off shore, we could have it. And he's like, don't worry, I'm from this area. So she's like, okay, I don't know anyway. Satiago,

when he hears about this coming storm, he's stopped. He's totally thrilled. He's like, yes, this is what could be the necessary bit to push my experiments over the top. Pure So rival man versus nature, humanity versus the sea. Captain they have versus the great white whale. He sees it all right, and he's just counting it all. Captain Maria, She's like, look, I'm taking the sex raft and I'm parking it in a Caribbean island, the closest one that we can get to. And he's like no, She's like,

what are you talking about. No, I'm the captain. What's he going to do to her? Oh? He says that quote from Santiago. If the group comes in contact with civilization, it will contaminate the experiment. We need to keep ourselves isolated and stay at sea. For the sake of science. We must continue, no matter what everyone else is like, don't matter, what is my life mother, I would just if I'm the captain, I just say I'm the captain now, and then I just captain. All right, So I go

and I parked the boat back. What are you gonna do? So, Captain Maria, she's got these ten people counting on it. This is exactly what her boyfriend Olaf warned her about. She was thinking about sex. Now He's like, oh, meant my life right. So he's like, but now I'm with exactly. You're cool you and aren't your new life together? Both of you are like being like logistical, statistical and safe. The fine prints you're working on that it's creating that

hig Swedish life, all coziness. So their lives are in the hands of Captain Maria, right, And she's like, Okay, I understand what I have to do now. Santiago, as I said earlier, He's like no, emphatically no. And so I quote once again from Santiago, Maria said she can't take that responsibility as a captain. I told her. In that case, she is no longer the captain of the raft. From now on, I am the captain. So you were close, captain,

real close. But this is the point the story where the feces hits the fans, right, so the science experiment is totally off the rails. The sex Raft is about to lose all of their lives to a hurricane. So what do they do. They batten down the hatches. They seal up the sex Raft as best they can. To keep in mind, there on a metal square in the middle of a her so important to Santiago, most important and more important than anyone's lives on the thing, is

his notes and the camera equipment recording the experiment. So he gets those all put in plastic bags and then he's like, okay, now we're good. Lock the doors on the raft. So because you are there pictures of this rat yeah, they're pictures of the raft. I'll put them up, thank you, because I need to see because in case this this raft sinks, he wants his experiment to move on because the answers of world peace. All right, So

the hurricane is about to hit sex Raft. The skies are growing dark, the rains have come, the season began to pitch and roll. The storm strikes, and they all sit there in silence, wondering what's going to come of the rest of their tiny little lives on this vast, vast ocean, locked in the metal box with a madman, and the hurricane luckily passes over them. They don't get the eye of the storm. They get the back side of you know, coming from the south. The back side

is not terrible. Yeah, on sex raft, The backside is not dangerous. Why do you set these things up? Okay? Because because I like you? Thank you. Santiago records in his notes that the hurricane must have changed directions and only brushed us by the tail. I looked at Maria, but she did not look back. Mary has still just

not given him almost noticed. Now at this point, Santiago's mutiny is officially changed everything because the crisis he had hoped for, that all the dreams of violence and aggression had come to pass, and he's the source of all the dreams of aggression. He becomes the crew's whole focus of their ultra violet fantasies. And they're sitting there and they decided that Santiago is a threat to them. In the in the words of a Tom Clancy novel, he is a clear and present danger. So they decide we

may have to kill him. We're like, we're weeks from the shore, but we may have to kill him. So they have a meeting about it. Now, three of them get on top of the roof of the boat and a late at night, they talk about explainable accidents and like how a person could fall off a boat, and like, what would happen if during the next storm somebody just fell over one quick and dirty accident, we're all suddenly safe.

Another on another woman's face, she's like, well, what about if we just took all the ship's medicine and we just gave him all of it? And I was like, oh, They're like yeah, so this is by the way, this is Mary the white amer can Fay the Black American in Aisuki the Japanese guy. They are the three plotters trying to decide to kill him, and they agree only speaks Japanese and Spanish. So yeah, they're doing like hand gestures, take the needle in the horb, load it up again.

She's like, quoting from the Murder on the Orient expresses like the dream of like we put all of our hands on the plunger and we all pushed down together, so we're all culpable. And they're like, yeah, they finally decide we'll just toss them into the sea. That'll be the easiest thing to explain. Nobody no murder, right, So I'm like, okay, they're they're pretty much set on this plan. But then they decide, you know what, we still have

our humanity, consider we are not these people. And then they kind of fall back from their plan and then times change, and then their murderous desire melts away like you know, like that like sand. And then they displayed impulse control. Yes, exactly, very important. Santiago never learns about his near death by his science experiment because they don't put this in the questionnaire. They at the bottom to

Santiago desperate to kill you. So he does, though, mind you end up having a panic attack while he's on the boat because he's starting to realize that he's the problem. So and I quote, well, if I was a boy, I learned that men never cry. We control ourselves. But suddenly I couldn't anymore odd on the deck, I thought about the experiment. I realized that the only one who has actually shown any kind of aggression or violence on the raft is me, the man trying to control everyone else,

including himself, and so he just freaks out. He breaks down. He has this total like cascading, emotional like avalanche. And at the same time they find out at night this run the same time, they've accidentally drifted into the shipping lane, and so while he's having his crisis, they see that a supertanker is headed right at them. And so it's the middle of the dark of night. I got a supertanker. They can't see them, and their captain, who is self

declared he's having an emotional crisis. He should have been working through this stuff back home, but instead he draws all these people. Okay, keep going his ten sexy strange. He's making me get angry, and I'm not an angry person. So what do you think he does in the face of this emergency, something stupid. Well, he's not at all calm in the face of emergency. Instead, he just starts screaming and run around the tack of the wrap yelling that's what the that's what everyone says that he did.

He just starts a giant supertanker casing them down, and he just screamed. He's just screaming, running around head but just kicked him right into the ocean. Yeah, Fay the Black American. She runs, gets on the radio and she tries to calling the supertanker. The supertanker is no response, right, Captain Maria steps in. She's like all right, she at the time, she's totally implacably calm, just the exact opposite Santiago. She tells the crew get from road flares. They start

waving road flares over their heads. A supertanker sees the road flares and goes into a vase of actions, barely misses the basically pushes them off into like the wake of its giant exactly, but they live. So she's the hero. She's the captain now, so everybody recognizes this, even Santiago. So what does he do? He decides, like a former cult leader, to fall inside of himself and collapse. Then decides, no more note taking, no more meetings, no more games,

no more any questionnaires. I'm just going to grow my beard more about my salt water tan. So he retreats to bed. He starts complaining about an infection. People are like, yeah, whatever, you got an infection. Doctors like he really has an infection, So he like wills an infection upon himself and Peace returns to the raft. Everyone now is calm, they're dancing,

they're singing, they're happy. They're making meals again because they have a common enemy, the shunned exile, who has brought them all together and they're giving them a group dynamic. So he's pushed them into this in group out group dynamic that is so key to human society. He finds the thing he was and he did it non violently, but anyway, the sex Raft finally arrives in Mexico after a hundred and one days at sea. It's a strange moment. They finally made it to the other side. They all like,

are so glad to be back on dry land. They get off the sex Raff, they spend the night on shore. The next day they come back to the sex Raft, not because they want to go back on. They don't need to get their stuff and meet and say like, let's let's have some you know, resolution for what we just went through. He's like, oh, thank you guys all for coming back to the sex Raff, thank you for doing This's like, by the way, I have one last questionnaire for you. So then in like an hour's long

hangout session, he has them filled the questionnaires. They filled the questionnaires. He apologizes to Maria. He's apparently very calm and very kind, and everyone's impressed by it. He asked them, what did you think of my experiment? And they're like, it was a total failure. This is the worst thing I've ever done. And everyone, I guess not everyone. Three

people say it's a total failure. Ultimately, though, um, the majority of them say it's a success because they learned things about themselves, they learn things about humanity, so forth and Faye, she said it's a huge success, which surprises everyone because he was picking on her and they all saw it right. And she says, and I quote, it was always them and us. We started out as them

and us, and we became us. And then she pointed out something that Santiago had missed, and she said, and they quote, I think Santiago's experiment was a huge success. But I think he missed it because we could talk to one another with sophistication and depth and understanding and love, and isn't that the answer to violence? So boom, there you go. Sex raft gonna make you sex sex? So I think I think Maria won sex raft. Oh yeah,

she definitely won. She like the reality show Big Winner and then fan favorite his fee and I, let's say the rest, Like, I have a soft spot for Edna because she was having sex while piloting a boat. Now I'm just into that. I'm like that, that's cool. Oh my goodness. So I asked, what's our ridiculous takeaway? Seculous to take play is be careful to kind of want as to respond. And also, this is just there were so many red flag I think there's a way to get the answer that they got without being on a

sex raft for three monthsout risking the lives of people. Yeah. Yeah, I think the the thing I was thinking about, and I was reading all these different stories reading on the newspaper accounts, is that it was so obvious on the face of it, both that it would fail and to that no lessons would be learned. People would just be hung up on the sex raft part of it. They would never really go like, oh, what did you learn?

What did you find? Tell us about your observations. Some people would buy the book, but they would not be buying the book because they wanted to read his science. They wanted to read the drama, the emotion, the sex. So the thing is is that human beings. Ultimately a rather simple and that Fee got it right. With our group dynamics are pretty consistent. There's in group behavior, there's out group behavior. There's wanting to punish the exiles and

the outcast. We have been doing this for any So if you take that dynamic as your starting point as opposed to women's ovulation is the key to world peace

or whatever is his starting point was. And you actually look at the observables of humanity as opposed to these like ineffables that he's going for, like men want to fight over the smell of a woman's ovulation, whatever the hell science he came up with, then you can actually get to something meaningful and which is what feeded and and I'm glad they made the documentary because that is

where you get that quote. So out of all this stuff, it is the observation by one of the participants forty three years later that really gives value to sex raft, A lot of value in the sex raft Make your Way raft, Well, thank you for joining us. I'm Zarin Burnett, I'm a sex raft and over there is Elizabeth Dutton sex Raft. You can find his online. A ridiculous crime on both Twitter and Instagram. You gotta tip for us about a ridiculous crime you'd like to hear about let

us know about it. You want to confess a ridiculous crime, hit us up email is that ridiculous Crown at gmail dot com. Thanks for listening. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaron Burnett, produced and edited by Captain of the Sex Free Rat Dave researches by our Frogman Extraordinaire, Marissa Brown. Our theme song is by Finnish chiropractor of the Soul Thomas Lee and Oakland's finest radio operator, Travis Dutton. Executive producers are Ben Bone, Ticky Boland and No Three

Bedroom Apartment on the Water Brown. We Die Say It one more Time. We Dequeous Crew. Ridiculous Crime is a production of I Heart Radio. Four more podcasts to my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.