Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
For those who know that questioning everything includes questioning this show's existence. The Last Show with David Cooper.
It is back to the basics with conspiracy theories here on Conspiracy Corner. Well, let's talk about when planes vanish, ships disappear, compasses spin, and it's all happening in the Bermuda Triangle. Or is it? Mysteries, myths, media coverage, other M words. We are talking everything to do with the Bermuda Triangle. And I want to ask, is the ocean really haunted there?
Here with Lee Kudla, a political science professor at Humber Polytechnic. You can check out his podcast. It's called The Uncover Up Conspiracy Cast. Lee, welcome in.
Thank you, David. You're on fire today. What an introduction. I love it. Thank you.
Of all the introductions I've ever done, that was definitely one of them. That was a great one. As a kid, I was obsessed with the Bermuda Triangle, and I was always scared whenever I flew, which is so weird because I never went to Europe.
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Chapter 2: What myths surround the Bermuda Triangle?
It was like Toronto, Miami, Toronto, Miami. That was my childhood. Uh, parents went there for Christmas, but I would like check the flight charts and like Google and this, that, and the other to make sure the plane wasn't flying anywhere near the Bermuda triangle. Cause I just was scared the plane would go down. Cause I guess I saw a lot of nineties TV shows. This was a hot topic back then.
It was. was. You're right. And there's a reason for that, because it really gets going in the 70s. And like you, I was growing up with all this kind of stuff in the 80s and 90s. You know, there's all the cryptids and Bermuda Triangle and the ancient aliens building the pyramids.
And this certainly fits in that kind of classic model of one of those conspiracy theories that a bunch of us grew up with. And I think it's a good one. Like there's really interesting stuff that's here.
Maybe I should just briefly note for the rest of us who didn't grow up in the 80s and 90s, and maybe this has passed you by somehow, there is a theory that there is a triangle, you could sort of draw it on the map, between Miami, Barbados, and what is it? Puerto Rico. Sorry, Bermuda and Puerto Rico. And that that makes, what, 500 square mile triangle?
And that there's weird stuff that's going on in here. Like, as you say, boats are disappearing. Airplanes are disappearing. And for completely unknown reasons. Like, they just are gone. And I'll tell you some stories in a moment that, you know, for the... For the rest of us who maybe now don't believe this, there are some facts here that are really awkward.
And I think this is what's so fun about stuff like this. But let me ask you, David. I got a list here. Okay. I got a list of what? I don't know. Six. Oh, six, seven possible explanations of what it might be. Right. If there's something here and it's mysterious, here are some of the things people have said. So wormholes. There's a wormhole somewhere and that's just sucking stuff up.
That makes perfect sense. Believe that one.
Right.
Next.
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Chapter 3: What are some historical disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle?
So that's an uncomfortable fact. Do you want to get back to how this all started? Like some of the most famous shipwrecks, flight wrecks, this kind of thing?
Yeah, so then there are these stories, right? So, okay, this story, it stresses me out to no end. It combines everything I don't like about life, which is airplane travel, getting lost, and obeying authority. And I don't like each of those individually, and this story has all of them together. And so just like I'm sweating just talking about it. Okay. It's December 5th, 1945. Beautiful day.
The Second World War is over. We're in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and there is a training mission. This is known as Flight 19. So if anybody wants to look it up, that's what you're looking for. Flight 19. It's a group of 14 men, I think it's, I don't know, four aircraft, and they go on a training mission just off the coast of Miami.
Now, at some point, so this is the middle of the day, I think it's around 3 o'clock, there's a radio message that comes in, and I'm quoting here directly from the pilot, this is Charles Taylor, quote, "...we cannot see land. Everything seems wrong and strange. We cannot be sure of any direction." So these guys are out on the ocean. They have gotten lost.
And apparently their compass isn't working. Things are not, as you hear, you know, the ocean doesn't seem to be right. And they're getting some direction about how to come home. But it's just they're not coming home. Like they just keep not being there. And then eventually the air traffic control loses touch with them. And they're gone. Like, that's it.
So then, now this is, you know, this is one of these like, oh, it happened to the military. This isn't just some pleasure boat, something got drunk. You know, it's just like this was a thing that happened and it was a mystery. But it might have remained a mystery were the next thing not to have happened. But what happens right after, of course, is that they send out a rescue plane.
And that rescue plane goes looking for them. And then it disappears. And all crewmen are also lost. And so now you have these group of guys who go out in the middle of the day, who know what they're doing in airplanes, and their airplanes all disappear. And then the rescue crew that goes after them, their airplane also disappears.
And this is all verified, like government admits to it. There's no secret.
Totally.
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Chapter 4: What theories explain the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle?
Got it. Now, it's not the only one. Again, this is a very... This is earlier. This is 1918. And it's the USS Cyclops. And this is a big transport ship. And it's going through the Bermuda Triangle. There's a distress call that is logged. The ship disappears. Nobody is ever found. All crew are presumed lost. There's a crew of over 300 people.
And apparently... This is, again, a stat that just happened to come up while I was doing the research. Apparently... It's still one of the largest losses of life in the Navy outside of actual combat, like just something that happened for people who were working in the Navy. A huge transport ship, all crew lost, also in this area.
The Bermuda Triangle. We are talking about a shipwreck and a flight that went down, a rescue flight that went down after it, all at the beginning of the last century up until the 1940s. These are the foundational myths of one of the most, it's one of the wildest conspiracy theories that has persisted for so many years. I'm here with political science professor, at Humber Polytechnic.
You can check out his podcast. It's called The Uncover Up. His name is Lee Kuhnla, and it's Conspiracy Corner. Lee, this is a great topic. I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being back. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Thanks for having me. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, we talked about the USS Cyclops. We talked about Flight 19. These are two major military incidents of disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle. From there, how do we get to these wild conspiracies?
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Chapter 5: What are some plausible scientific explanations for disappearances?
Like it might be the Lost... nation of Atlantis and their tech. It might be a wormhole. It might be aliens. How do we go from there to that?
Yeah, it's a great question. And it's one that is also, it's the same dynamic that we see in a lot of other contemporary cultural myths. It's the same thing that happens, say, with the Roswell incident. The Roswell incident apparently takes place in 1947, but is really written about in 1980. And it's the same thing here in There are a bunch of articles that start coming out.
The first one comes out in 1950, and it's just a short article, and it's just noting that, hey, isn't it weird that, like, boats and planes are going missing? And they, of course, cite Flight 19. Now, it gets more interesting in the next couple of articles, because the publications today are maybe less known, especially if you're not, you know, spending all your days thinking about conspiracies.
Fate magazine is one, and in 1952, there's an article, See Mystery at Our Door, S-E-A, See Mystery at Our Door. And here we start getting into publications and we start to get into speculation. That's the kind of stuff that, look, I mean, you and I, we see this all over the place. It's just some of the stuff makes good money. And, you know, you got to publish some stuff.
And, hey, so that's how these articles get started. Now, in 1964 is when we first get the concept of the Bermuda Triangle. from an article called The Deadly Bermuda Triangle. But the real moment, like the kind of thing that kind of crystallizes the entire story as we know it today, it's 1974, Charles Berlitz's book, The Bermuda Triangle.
Now, Berlitz, he's one of these guys that, and I'm glad, David, that you started with sort of your childhood, because your childhood was full of Berlitz's fantasies. He's one of these guys that a lot of us don't know, but we know his stories. He's behind or partly involved with the MJ-12 alien papers, apparently. He talks about the Bermuda Triangle.
He's got his fingers in all these kind of 1970s, 1980s conspiracy cryptid pots or, you know, interests. And he's making good money off of it. Like, that's his beat. He's also famously one of the guys who writes about Roswell. So what we encounter after often these initial kind of perplexing and interesting stories is a kind of myth-making that begins. Not everybody engages in that myth-making.
A lot of people are trying to just figure out what's going on. A lot of people are not interested, whatever. But there is a tendency to start, you know, generating these myths for whatever reason, financial or otherwise. That then is really what starts to inform the speculation later. And now we have what I like to call the Bermuda Triangle problem.
And it's a kind of a heuristic I use in my classes for because, of course, the point of our teaching this stuff, Nathan and I, is to help our students at least unpack these ideas and come up with the right answer. So the question is this. If we were to draw a triangle of, you know, say the Bermuda Triangle size over any area of the Earth, anywhere, might we find some statistical anomaly there?
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Chapter 6: How do conspiracy theories shape our understanding of the Bermuda Triangle?
If it were a thing, like the thing that I'm asking about, is the Bermuda Triangle real? If it were real, is there anybody who could make or lose a ton of money? So that's my first question. Who stands to profit? Exactly. And also, who stands to lose? And then the second question is, is that happening? Because if there is money to be made, someone's going to make that money.
It's a juicy question, Lee, but we have like 30 seconds. Do you want to give me the quick answer to it?
Quick answer is this. There's tons of people who would lose money. International shipping companies, cruise ships, which basically go there all the time. That's the point of the cruise ship. And airlines, like passenger airlines. They would lose so much money if they were constantly going through there and, say, a tenth or a quarter or a third or whatever of their stuff gets lost, right?
And they would just not do it if that were the case. So they're not losing money on it, and the insurance companies aren't making any money on it.
So it's probably not real when major corporations could lose money if it were real and they do things anyway. I think that's really good evidence, too. It's a nothing burger. Lee, I wish we had more time. This was such a fun topic. Thank you for being on the show.
Thanks for having me as always, David. It's great to be here.
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Chapter 7: How does media influence the perception of the Bermuda Triangle?
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