Speaker 1: Now scoot up closer to the fire, friend.
Speaker 2: It's burning down to the embers and the air is
Speaker 2: starting to carry a chill that settles right into your marrow.
Speaker 2: Now we just got done talking about the monsters that
Speaker 2: walk among us in the crowded city streets, but now,
Speaker 2: now I want you to cast your mind out to
Speaker 2: the places where there's not any streets at all.
Speaker 1: I want you to think about the ocean.
Speaker 2: Now the woods are deep and the mountains are high,
Speaker 2: but the Pacific Ocean, well, the Pacific is a whole
Speaker 2: different kind of hungry, my friend. It's a vast blue
Speaker 2: desert that goes on forever, full of cold currents and
Speaker 2: depths that have never seen the light of the sun.
Speaker 2: It's a lonely place to be. And back in the
Speaker 2: summer of 1937, it swallowed up America's sweetest darling, leaving
Speaker 2: behind nothing but static on the radio and a ghost
Speaker 2: story that we've been whispering out for nearly a century.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the.
Speaker 2: Silver bird and the girl with the tousled hair who
Speaker 2: flew it straight into the great unknown. Let's talk about
Speaker 2: Miss Amelia Earhart. Now, folks back then, they called her
Speaker 2: Lady Lindy. She had a smile that could disarm a
Speaker 2: bank robber and the kind of restless spirit that just
Speaker 2: couldn't abide keeping her feet on the ground. She had
Speaker 2: already crossed the Atlantic, already put her name in the
Speaker 2: history books. But Amelia, she wanted more. She wanted to
Speaker 2: put a belt around the waist of the whole wide world.
Speaker 2: She wanted to circumnavigate the globe following the sweltering line
Speaker 2: of the equator. Her chariot, it was a Lockheed Model
Speaker 2: 10E Electra. To hear the old-timers tell it, That plane
Speaker 2: was a beautiful thing. All gleaming steel and roaring twin
Speaker 2: engines built to punch through the clouds like a silver bullet.
Speaker 2: But a pilot, no matter how brave, needs a guide
Speaker 2: when they're up there in the empty sky. Sitting in
Speaker 2: the back, hunched over his charts with a pencil and
Speaker 2: a sextant, was a fellow named Fred Noonan.
Speaker 1: Now Fred, he was a master navigator.
Speaker 2: He was the kind of man who could look at
Speaker 2: the scattering of stars in the pitch black night and
Speaker 2: tell you exactly where you were on God's green earth. But,
Speaker 2: Fred had his demons too. He was known to find
Speaker 2: the bottom of a whiskey glass just a little too often. Still,
Speaker 2: Amelia trusted him with her life. Together, they set out
Speaker 2: to conquer the sky. And for a while, it seemed
Speaker 2: like they were going to do just that. They flew
Speaker 2: over the jungles of South America, across the scorched earth
Speaker 2: of Africa, and all the way to the edges of
Speaker 2: the East Indies. But the ocean was waiting for them.
Speaker 2: The ocean is always waiting. Now, it was July 2nd, 1937.
Speaker 2: Amelia and Fred took off from Lye, New Guinea, heavy
Speaker 2: with fuel and flying directly into the rising sun.
Speaker 1: Their destination? Howland Island.
Speaker 2: Now, listen to me closely here, because you need to
Speaker 2: understand the sheer terrifying madness of this plan. Now, Howland
Speaker 2: Island isn't some sprawling paradise.
Speaker 1: Oh no.
Speaker 2: It's a flat scrap of coral and sand, barely a
Speaker 2: mile and a half long, sitting right in the middle
Speaker 2: of nowhere. Hitting Howland from New Guinea is like trying
Speaker 2: to shoot a single firefly with a BB gun from
Speaker 2: a mile away, in the pitch dark. If your math
Speaker 2: is off even by a fraction of a degree, you
Speaker 2: don't just miss the island, you miss the whole world.
Speaker 2: You fly over endless water until your engines sputter, cough,
Speaker 2: and die.
Speaker 1: So down there on the water, the U.S.
Speaker 2: Coast Guard cutter Itasca was anchored near Howland, waiting to
Speaker 2: guide Amelia in. They had their radios tuned, sending out
Speaker 2: smoke signals, waiting to hear that silver bird come roaring
Speaker 2: out of the clouds.
Speaker 1: But, up in the sky, things were going wrong. The
Speaker 1: weather turned foul.
Speaker 2: Heavy clouds rolled in, thick and gray, blanketing the ocean
Speaker 2: and hiding the stars. Fred Noonan, the man who navigated
Speaker 2: by the heavens, was suddenly blind. They were flying on
Speaker 2: instruments alone, roaring through the fog, deafened by the drone
Speaker 2: of their own engines, completely cut off from the rest
Speaker 2: of humanity. Now, imagine the claustrophobia of that cockpit, friend.
Speaker 2: Just you, the rattle of the dials, the heavy smell
Speaker 2: of aviation fuel, and the creeping cold realization that you
Speaker 2: don't have any idea where you are. Now down on
Speaker 2: the Itasca, the radio operators sat with their headphones pressed
Speaker 2: tight to their ears, listening to the crackle of static.
Speaker 2: And then, cutting through the void, came her voice. Quote,
Speaker 2: KHAQQ calling Itasca, we must be on you, but we
Speaker 2: cannot see you. The gas is running low.
Speaker 1: Been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying
Speaker 1: at 1,000 feet. End quote.
Speaker 2: Now, her voice wasn't the calm, confident drawl the aviation
Speaker 2: hero of the newspapers loved.
Speaker 1: It was tight.
Speaker 2: It was frantic. The Itasca tried to reply. They tapped
Speaker 2: out Morse code. They spoke into their microphones. They blasted
Speaker 2: their ship's boilers to make a pillar of black smoke.
Speaker 2: But Amelia couldn't hear them, couldn't see them. It was
Speaker 2: a one-way mirror of sound. She was screaming out into
Speaker 2: the dark, and all she heard back was silence. Now,
Speaker 2: can you imagine the terror of those final hours? watching
Speaker 2: the fuel gauges tick down millimeter by millimeter, staring out
Speaker 2: the rain-streaked windshield, praying to see a scrap of land,
Speaker 2: but seeing nothing but the cold gray waves stretching out
Speaker 2: in every direction, waiting to swallow you whole. Her final
Speaker 2: confirmed transmission came in.
Speaker 1: At 8.43 in the morning.
Speaker 2: Quote, We are on the line 157337. We are running
Speaker 2: on line north and south.
Speaker 1: End quote. And then, nothing.
Speaker 2: The radio crackle was static, and the Pacific Ocean reclaimed
Speaker 2: its terrible silence. The most famous woman in the world,
Speaker 2: and her silver plane, and her navigator, had just vanished
Speaker 2: like a blown-out candle. Now, the government sent out battleships
Speaker 2: and aircraft carriers. They scoured hundreds of thousands of square
Speaker 2: miles of ocean, burning through millions of dollars. But the
Speaker 2: sea keeps its secrets. They never found a rivet, a propeller,
Speaker 2: or a bone. Folks have spent the last 80 plus
Speaker 2: years trying to solve this riddle. Some say the plane
Speaker 2: just ran out of gas and hit the water, sinking
Speaker 2: to the crushing depths where no sunlight has ever touched.
Speaker 2: A quick, violent end swallowed by the deep. Others whisper
Speaker 2: darker tales. They say Amelia and Fred were blown off
Speaker 2: course and captured by the Japanese military, then taken away
Speaker 2: to a secret prison camp on Saipan where they were
Speaker 2: executed as spies and buried in unmarked graves. Their names
Speaker 2: scrubbed from the earth. But there's one other theory that'll
Speaker 2: really keep you awake at night, friend. Some folks reckon
Speaker 2: she didn't crash into the open ocean. Oh, no. They
Speaker 2: think she managed to put that crippled plane down on
Speaker 2: the jagged coral reef of a desolate, uninhabited spit of land, Nikumaroro. Now,
Speaker 2: imagine surviving the crash, only to realize you're entirely alone,
Speaker 2: a thousand miles from salvation. The water's gone, the radio's dead,
Speaker 2: and you're not alone on the island. Nuku Mororo is
Speaker 2: crawling with coconut crabs, monstrous armored things the size of
Speaker 2: small dogs with claws strong enough to snap bone and
Speaker 2: an appetite for meat. They hunt at night, clicking and
Speaker 2: clattering over the coral. Decades later, expeditions found an old shoe,
Speaker 2: a piece of plexiglass, and a jar of freckle cream
Speaker 2: out on that lonely atoll. They even found some bones once,
Speaker 2: but they got lost in the shuffle of history before
Speaker 2: anyone could say for sure whose they were. So, what
Speaker 2: happened to Lady Lindy? Did she drown in the cold dark?
Speaker 2: Did she die facing a firing squad? Or, more frighteningly,
Speaker 2: did she spend her last nights huddled on a coral reef,
Speaker 2: listening to the clicking of the crabs as the tide
Speaker 2: slowly pulled her silver plane beneath the waves? Now, we
Speaker 2: may never know, friends, but the next time you look
Speaker 2: up at a cloudy night sky or look out across
Speaker 2: the endless ocean, just remember that the world is a
Speaker 2: whole lot bigger than us. And sometimes, It just opens
Speaker 2: its jaws and takes whatever it wants.