The Dunning Canoe-ger Effect
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Pushkin. Tim here with an exciting announcement about The Cautionary Club, our Patreon community for Cautionary Tales listeners. So many of you joined our live table read earlier this year that we're doing it again. Join me and my production team for a live reading of an unreleased episode about the people who almost invented the iPhone 15 years early and the surprising reasons they failed. This will be a chance for you to see how the stories we tell are developed in real time and ask your burning questions about cautionary tales. It's on the 8th of July at 5pm UK or noon Eastern. If you join the Patreon before then, or if you're already a member, you'll get your exclusive invitation. Head to patreon.com slash cautionary club.
That's patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash cautionary club.
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I'm Jake Brennan, and on my podcast, Disgraceland, I tell the stories behind music's biggest names, like how the story of the Foo Fighters isn't just about music, it's about grief, shock, and the moment everything changed. Imagine that. You're in the biggest band on the planet, as Dave Grohl was in 1994 in Nirvana, and the phone rings, and you learn that your singer, your friend, the reluctant voice of a generation, Kurt Cobain, is dead. Listen to Disgraceland on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On August 4th, 1962, Marilyn Monroe died. Then the rumors started, and she died again. And now we're going to set the record straight and learn about the way Marilyn Monroe actually died, the third way.
I'm Jake Brennan, and on my podcast, Hollywoodland, I revisit some of the biggest stories from Hollywood history, separating the myths people want to believe from the reality underneath them. Hollywoodland is part of the Exactly Right Network. Listen to new episodes every Monday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
A clothes store on Oxford Street, one of London's busiest shopping districts. In December, the busiest time of the year, it's 2007. A balding man in his late 50s approaches a store assistant.
Excuse me, I can't find my wife. Or the dogs. The Rottweilers.
The man isn't making much sense. He claims to have no idea where he is or how he got there. Why are there Christmas lights? Isn't it June? No, it's December. But the man is suntanned. Clearly he hasn't been in Britain all winter. Equally clearly, there's something not quite right with him. And whatever the problem is, the store don't want it to be their problem. A security guard escorts him to the nearest police station. The man tells the duty sergeant, I think I'm a missing person.
Why do you think you're a missing person? Well, if I knew that, I don't think I'd be here now, would I?
The man has no ID on him, but he says he thinks his name might be John. John Darwin. Five years earlier, in 2002, a middle-aged man called John Darwin indeed went missing in a canoe. He'd paddled out to sea one morning from the beach in the town in the northeast of England where he lived with his wife, Anne. And, said Anne, he never came back. The battered canoe later washed up on a beach, but no body was ever found. At the time, it raised some eyebrows. The weather had been calm, the sea as smooth as a mill pond. Not the kind of conditions in which you'd expect a canoeist to get into difficulties. Also, John Darwin, it turned out, was a man with many debts. But once the requisite time had passed, an inquest judged that the missing man must be presumed dead.
Anne claimed on John's life insurance and moved abroad to start a new life in Panama, a country with a reputation for sunshine and not asking too many questions about where your money comes from.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:06–13:50
2
What happened when a suntanned man claiming amnesia walked into a London shop?
13:50–20:29
3
How did John Darwin's 2002 canoe disappearance spark suspicion and an inquest?
20:29–38:16
4
Why did John and Anne Darwin accumulate crippling debts and buy two seaside houses?
38:16–48:11