I'm Helen and I'm Liz and we're sisters, scientists and lifelong ex files fans.
And this is We Want to Believe.
Okay, welcome back.
We are talking about.com,.com,.com.
I'm just repeating you.
Norwegian words.
We're talking about Norwegian words today.
Yeah.
The whole episode just about at Mology.
Yeah.
I have a language neither of us speak.
So yeah.
Yeah.
I've been consistently speaking to Gatsby in French lately.
Really?
Oh, he's a poodle.
It seems appropriate.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah.
Do you feel he responds better in French?
Like, does it connect with him?
Maybe.
I don't speak to Leo in French as much.
Maybe it's because there isn't a French word for labradoodle or doodle, but there is a
French word for poodle.
Wait, there's a French word for poodle?
What is it?
Kanish.
Really?
Oui, mon petit kanish.
I had no idea.
How did you spell that?
C-A-N-I-C-H-E, I think.
Oh, okay.
Nice.
Yeah.
So I tell him he's a kanishmal, he's a bad poodle.
Oh, he's a bad poodle.
The name of his pop punk album that he will be releasing, Bad Poodle.
I know there is a French word for greyhound.
I can't think of what it is, but I looked it up once, but unfortunately it is also slang
for a sex position.
So yeah, I was like, oh no, what is happening?
So I should double check that just in case.
I think that you would have already realized it, like if you googled it at all.
I can't imagine that in French, every dog breed is a different sex position or something.
I don't know.
No, I checked it.
You're fine.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
Kanish is fine.
Good.
I spent a long time looking into the history of poodles one night recently when I couldn't
sleep and discovered it then.
I know poodle comes from a German word for like water.
Oh, does it?
Yeah.
Like poodle.
Oh, right, like puddle.
Yes.
And I learned this because of a game of trivial pursuit where that was a question.
Oh, that's awesome.
Yeah.
What a good question.
Yeah, it is.
So yeah, Norwegian.
We do not speak Norwegian.
We don't speak Norwegian.
Nope.
No.
We are not even tangentially related.
You've been to Norway.
I have.
It was fine.
It was nice.
Okay.
Have you been to the sea in Norway, specifically the 65th parallel?
I don't know.
Was it near Oslo?
Because I was near water.
I don't know.
Maybe.
We went to Oslo and we did do like a little bit of going outside the city, but it was
just to this like cultural outdoor museum with all these old buildings that had been
like relocated to be like a museum.
It was very cool.
I think you've told me about that.
I think I have.
They had like buildings with grass on the roofs like Al Johnson's restaurant.
Yeah.
In Door County, Wisconsin.
Yes.
Where they have grass on the roofs and goats as well.
Yeah.
I don't know what parallel we were at.
And I don't know.
We were definitely by water though.
There was water everywhere.
Oh, interesting.
I was merely at the 60th parallel.
Ah, darn it.
So close.
Yeah.
Well, this episode takes place.
We start in the Norwegian Sea near the 65th parallel.
And people are arguing and kind of fighting and some people are leaving the boat that
they're on.
And the captain is standing there and saying, you know, this is mutiny.
And they're speaking Norwegian and it's translated?
No.
No, they're speaking English.
Oh, okay.
And they have American accents.
Oh, okay.
And the captain pulls a gun on one of the guys, but the guy says he doesn't want to end
up like the others and gets in like a lifeboat.
They're like all just leaving.
Okay.
Wow.
And so then, yeah, 18 hours later, it shows another ship.
These are Canadians we find out.
Oh, okay.
So it's a Canadian accent.
Very strong Canadian accents.
Yes.
I thought maybe they were Norwegian.
It was a very strong accent.
And the guys see in their radar a ship just kind of like floating.
So they throw them a line and tell them to like hold on and they'll pull them in.
And it turns out it was the lifeboat full of the Americans, but they're all really old
now.
Oh.
Yeah.
Huh.
So I'll tell you, so this episode didn't grab me.
Okay.
Like it seemed it had a very, very similar vibe to fire and ice and the one with the fluorescence
in the woods like Mulder and Scully are stuck somewhere.
Something weird is going on.
If there's like some one other person there who might be suspicious, like, I don't know.
It just had a very formal.
Yeah, like tensions are high.
Like, yeah.
Yeah.
It didn't grab me.
I did do, I do have a few interesting stories grown in here.
Awesome.
Because I was super interested.
I am up for interesting stories and I'll hopefully remember it.
Something happened in my life recently that I was like, oh, I would love to spin this
into an X file.
It would be perfect, but I don't remember what.
So.
Oh, wait, were we going to talk about time traveling?
Oh, a time time time traveling bison.
Yeah.
So let's let's make sure to talk about time traveling bison today.
Okay.
Yeah.
At the end, shall we?
Or yeah.
Sounds good.
Yeah.
Great.
So the intro plays and then we see Mulder and Scully in hospital in Bethesda and Mulder
is seeing how a Navy ship recently went missing with no sign.
It just kind of disappeared.
And then suddenly the night previously they picked up a lot of the crew members and one
of them is still alive.
So that's the lifeboat that was found.
And Mulder called Scully in because they won't let him in, but she's a doctor and so she's
hoping that she can get some more information.
And she's confused because she walks in and is asking like, oh, is this the patient and
he's supposed to be 28, but he looks about 90.
Oh, okay.
So you know, that's weird.
Yeah.
And so his doctor comes in and basically kicks Scully out and is like, you know, please
hand me my patient's medical file and leave.
And again, one of those situations where like, I think we're supposed to be annoyed, but
I was like, yeah.
Yeah.
Like, who are you?
Yeah.
Fair.
Yeah.
And so she was like, no, please leave.
So she goes back to talk to Mulder.
They're in their office and he starts, he shows her a map where he's got all these like pins,
you know, in it at different points and lines drawn on the map and says that other ships
have apparently gone past that part of Norway near the 65th parallel and have disappeared.
Mulder then brings up the Philadelphia experiment.
Are you familiar with that?
Is it the name of a movie?
The Philadelphia something project?
Yeah.
What is the Philadelphia project?
Is that something?
Is that related?
The Philadelphia story is a 1940 movie that I was thinking of, which is with Kerry Grant
and Catherine Hepburn and completely unrelated.
But then the Philadelphia experiment was apparently, it looks like also a movie in 1984.
Oh.
And then there was a sequel in 1993 and a remake in 2012.
Oh, no kidding.
But that was definitely not what I was thinking of.
Oh, okay.
Is it some sort of invisibility experiment?
Yeah.
So this is bizarre.
Yeah.
I have a lot of questions for you.
Okay.
Ooh, I'm ready.
Okay.
Yeah.
So Mulder says that scientists on that project, this was a like just, it was a, it was a,
it was just, it was contemporary with the Manhattan project.
It sounds like that scientists on this project all disappeared on their way to Roswell.
Like they were finishing up the experiment and they were going to go to Roswell and they
disappeared.
This I did not fact check, but I expected is not correct.
And that they had been trying, the government was working on like making ships or submarines
or something invisible.
And Mulder thinks that they're messing around with wormholes involved some sort of aliens
because of the Roswell connection.
And he thinks that the military never stopped with those experiments.
Okay.
Oh, neat.
Okay.
So my first question for you is what is a wormhole?
Okay.
They're theoretical.
It's not like we can prove that they're a real thing, but the idea is that it would
be something my understanding as somebody who, okay, studied physics, but it's not like
wormholes and that stuff is my specialty.
Is that it's something that would be created by a black hole?
Oh, okay.
Do you feel comfortable with what a black hole is?
And do we feel our listeners are?
I believe so because a book I just finished reading talked about a black hole.
My understanding is that when a, okay, I don't know how correct this is.
You'll correct me.
Yeah, go for it.
Please, I say some really appalling things about biology on this podcast.
That when a star reaches a certain size, the gravity of it starts pulling itself towards
the center.
And we get this super gravitational.
I don't know what word I want to use there.
Super something with a super strong gravitational pull that like pulls the light into the center
and then things start getting pulled in too.
Yeah, basically.
So like, okay, all stars are going to reach the end of their life at some point because
the fuel is going to burn out and stars are in a constant tension between gravity to collapse
them inward and the reactions that are happening within the star that are kind of blowing
them outward.
So for them to be in sort of a stasis is like a war between those things.
Eventually as stars get bigger, they will collapse.
What happens then depends on the mass of the star.
Stars like our sun not going to turn into a black hole.
Oh, that's good.
I mean, sure.
We'll all be dead by then anyway.
So it doesn't really matter.
Yeah, because what's going to happen first to our sun is it's going to expand into the
red giant stage and it's going to have a radius about out to somewhere in the Earth Mars region.
So we're going to get swallowed up by the sun regardless.
So it's not great.
Stellar.
Oh, nice.
Nice.
Didn't even mean that one.
That was beautiful.
So what is our what type of star is our sun?
What is it now?
It's a main sequence star.
It's sort of middle age.
We've still got plenty of time.
We're not, you know, you know, it, it, I'm not exactly sure how long, but very, very,
very long before it does anything.
So cool.
Okay.
It expands outward and then it collapses inward and there was like an explosion called a nova.
And then what's left behind after that explosion depends again on the mass of the star.
So it might leave behind nothing much of interest like a brown dwarf.
It might leave if it's more massive, it leaves behind a neutron star, which is just what
it sounds like.
It's a star made of neutrons mostly and they're incredibly dense.
So like if you were to manage to get a spoonful of neutron star, like a teaspoon full of it,
it would weigh, I want to say about as much as the earth.
I might have that a little bit wrong, but that's about right.
So it's very, very, very dense and neutron stars are interesting.
They rotate and you can use them as sort of a like standard thing to measure.
Cause we have a sense of what their rotation should be.
And so like looking at their rotation can help us time other things and figure out where
things are in the sky.
It's been a while since I've thought about this, but then once you get stars that are
massive enough, even beyond a neutron star, when they collapse, they're, because how strong
gravity in is doesn't just depend on mass.
It depends on the density, right?
So earth's gravity is what it is because of how massive is earth is, but also the size
of earth.
The formula is like mass in the numerator, r squared, the radius squared in the denominator.
So like the more compact the mass, the stronger the gravity.
And so what's happening in sort of a like runaway situation is you picture, it's already
really, really dense.
And then we get the mask gets pulled in even harder because of how strong the gravity is,
but then that makes the gravity even stronger, which pulls the mass in even more, which makes
it even more dense, et cetera, et cetera.
And so the gravitational pull is super, super strong.
And it starts, you know, it's pulling things in the black hole is, but we can't even see
what's happening there because it is not even letting light escape because of how strong
the gravitational pull is.
And so the theory is that that sort of incredibly dense collapsing of matter into itself can
create a wormhole or some sort of connection or terror in things to another place in the
universe, maybe.
And that would be.
And that's the part that's theoretical.
So we know that everything, you know, prior to the wormhole situation with the black hole,
it has been that is really.
Yep.
Yeah, that is real.
Okay.
Why don't we care about brown dwarfs?
That sounds sad.
Why are they that interesting?
So a brown dwarf is like sometimes called like a failed star.
Like it's like, that is really sad, isn't it?
Like when I say it like that, like they think that like, like planets like Jupiter almost
could be considered that they're basically like, they didn't quite get it together enough
to shine.
Oh, I feel like every single thing I'm saying is making this worse.
I don't know how to describe them in a way that isn't sad.
Yeah, I think is far in a way the coolest planet, not temperature wise, but yeah, it's
the awesome.
Yeah, it's the awesomest.
So I mean, if they're like Jupiter, I think that's pretty cool.
Yeah.
Yeah, they're described as sub-stellar.
This again, kind of sad.
Yeah.
Why does it make me think of Gatsby?
Oh, he's kind of a golden dwarf.
He's sub-stellar.
Yeah, he's sub-stellar.
Oh, and I'm so sorry when I said, but I made a mistake earlier.
I wasn't thinking when I said brown dwarfs would be left behind, that was on me.
That's a mistake.
Brown dwarfs are sort of stars that never get off the ground, you know, like they don't
quite get it together.
A white dwarf is what's left behind, like that's what our star would leave behind after
it goes supernova.
So, okay.
Okay, so sorry about that.
And again, the dwarf is just kind of like the size of the star and then the color, the
brown or white is talking about the light that it's emitting, like white dwarf, just
we're talking about white light, brown dwarf, it's meaning like it is not really shining.
It's not really doing it's thing.
It doesn't quite have enough fusion happening to do its thing and maintain itself as a star.
Yeah, I feel like this is also some sort of metaphor for Gatsby's intelligence.
Oh, we just don't quite have it together.
No.
Well, thank you.
Awesome.
You're welcome.
Very interesting.
So Mulder things wormholes are involved.
Okay, I mean, yeah.
Right.
Okay.
Yeah.
So, so this was when I was like, okay, well how often do so he's saying that all these
ships disappeared near the 65th parallel of Norway and I was like, well, how often do
ships disappear?
And I started looking it up and the answer is frequently and it's not mysterious.
Really?
Because I mean, yeah, like so you start looking into it and it's like, oh, you know, the Mary
Celeste, this famous ship that disappeared.
Oh, yeah, the Mary Celeste.
I've heard of that.
And then it's like, you know, like what could be the theories?
The theories are like, well, pirates or the people got off somewhere.
Like there's like not, it's not that big of a mystery.
But if they got off somewhere, would they have like told someone?
I mean, maybe.
But like this was a long time ago.
Yeah.
And so I was like, well, when was the most recent ship disappearance?
And the answer is 2008.
But that, no, but it wasn't actually a disappearance.
It's just that the ship sank and they don't know where it is.
Okay.
Well, okay, the ocean is giant.
So that doesn't really like like ships.
I don't know.
Maybe this comes down to how often I have been on Wikipedia when I can't sleep at night,
sometimes looking at poodles, sometimes looking at shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, because
one of the two.
Yeah.
It's a coin flip.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I find that fascinating.
Yeah.
Like in Weston, yes.
I think that's super interesting because like their lakes, what are they doing?
Swallowing ships and, you know.
I know.
Yeah.
What are they doing?
Being that big.
Right.
So I don't know.
It doesn't, none of these seem actually that mysterious to me.
It's like, well, they sank and we can't find them.
Okay.
Or the people got off somewhere or were taken and we don't know where.
Like again.
But then that all made me think of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.
I was just going to bring that up.
Yeah.
Ah, yes.
Do you know the story?
Do you know what the deal is with that?
What I recall, because it wasn't that long ago.
No, it was 2014.
Yeah.
It's like, okay, so clearly I don't know that much.
Do you want me to just tell you?
Plane disappeared.
Yeah.
Don't know where plane went.
That's what I know.
Right.
Yeah.
So this was March 8th, 2014.
Okay.
So this was going from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Beijing in China, Beijing Capital International
Airport.
And it last communicated with air traffic control 38 minutes after takeoff when it was
over the South China Sea.
So like it's, I looked at the map because as we're all aware, my geography is not strong.
Neither of us.
It's not our strong suit.
Yeah.
It's not.
But look at you describe a black hole and all these different stars.
Yeah.
Who needs geography?
So it's pretty much like a straight and northern shot from Malaysia to Beijing.
Okay.
So just like pretty much where it was going.
Now what I would have guessed.
Good to know.
Okay.
Yeah.
And most of that is over land.
Okay.
Or a lot or you know, like islands and you know, there's stuff.
It's not like over the Pacific or something, you know.
And so 38 minutes after takeoff and then they had some like secondary surveillance on it.
That saw it like a few minutes later.
And then the Malaysian military had radar on it for another hour after that.
But it was deviating straight westward.
Whoa.
Why was it doing that?
They don't know.
Okay.
So it was, it had been, it should have gone straight north and sometime over the South
China Sea.
Like a hard west.
It took a hard west.
And started, started traveling straight west, which it shouldn't have done.
And so over the past like 10 years, like as recently as 2023, there have been pieces
of it that have washed up a shore.
And it's clear that it like continued straight west for a while kind of towards the Indian
Ocean.
And so they have never found the wreck.
They've never found the black box.
They have never found any bodies washing a shore.
And so they don't really know what happened.
There are theories that like it could have been a plot by someone like it could have been
either the captain or passenger, some sort of terrorist event.
If it's a terrorist event though, usually terrorists want like the part of that is to
generate terror.
So you get like, you want creds for that, you know.
Right.
And that's why that's not a popular theory.
Yeah.
And the evidence that they do have from the pieces that have washed ashore.
And I, I don't know.
I don't know why I'm not anywhere.
I have nothing, no aviation information in my brain.
Okay.
Except the planes go in there and they get us places.
But evidence apparently shows from those pieces that it likely wasn't being controlled
when it crashed.
Oh, I have no idea how a piece of thing could show that.
When you said wasn't being controlled, do you mean wasn't being like piloted?
Like it was just lighting like a glider.
And then like eventually ran out and like spiraled is what they think.
So the, the most likely theory is that there was some sort of hypoxia event.
I was just going to guess if everybody died on board or something.
That's the most likely.
And it was on autopilot and just kind of kept going.
And yeah, they don't know why.
The only part of that, that doesn't horrify me quite as much is because like dying of
hypoxia induces like kind of a high, like it wouldn't have been a terrible death for
everyone.
I mean, frankly, better that than dying, you know, 10 minutes later when you crash into
the ocean, right?
Totally.
Yes.
Yeah.
And I, I, I fly a lot and I, but I guess I should keep in mind how many people die of
hypoxia not in planes.
Yeah.
Kind of a lot.
Yeah.
I have a, how many planes?
I mean, this is notable because air travel is so safe.
Right.
Yeah.
You have a what?
A little portable carbon monoxide detector that brings me when I travel.
Yeah.
Really?
Yeah.
I mean, in Europe, it's not too big of a deal, but occasionally you hear about it in hotels
in Mexico.
People will die.
Like it's rare, but it's not impossible.
Like it happened a couple of years ago.
And so it's just, just to be on the safe side.
However, I gotta get a different model, but just the one that I have, like there's like
a button on the front of it that you can push to test it.
And if I shove it in my bag and then I like kick my bag or something, it starts beeping.
I was on a train last summer in Europe and I like called the conductor over into our little
like train compartment and I was like, there's like a beeping.
Do you know what that is?
And he was trying to turn it off and trying to help me and he's like, I'm sorry.
I don't know what that's from.
And I'm like, he left and I was with you.
It was me.
I was like, oh my God, it's my stupid thing beeping.
I moved my foot onto my bag.
I was like propping my feet onto my, my luggage.
Yeah.
Oh man.
Yeah.
That's smart.
Yeah.
I think, I think it's a good idea.
I just think it's good to get one that is can't be accidentally triggered.
I was being cheap and so I was getting one that like is not that can also be mounted
and I need one that's meant for travel and is a little bit sportier.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Anyway, God, well that makes some sense, but is right.
Yeah.
Oh boy.
Right.
So, okay.
So Mulder wants to go to Norway and makes it clear.
Scully said something like, you know, have you told Skinner?
And no, I mean the answer is no.
Of course not.
Yeah.
And Scully says she's coming with.
And so they get to Norway and they're trying to get information from some guys in a bar,
but no one will talk to them.
I don't know if it's because they're in like a fishing village bar and they don't speak
English or if they like, they say something about everyone looking scared or something.
I don't know.
But then they run into an American.
Okay.
And he says that he has been, he's from like Florida, but he's been, I almost said piloting,
captaining ships in Norway for a long time or whatever and people won't talk to them
because they're scared of a story of a stone coming out of the sky and that they say it
was an evil God.
I'm sorry.
I think this makes Norwegians sound like, I don't know, caveman or something.
Like, like the great stone came out of the sky.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Wait.
And I'm sorry.
Hang on.
They won't talk to him because they're worried about a big.
They won't talk to Mulder.
Because they're scared.
Because they're scared about the big sky stone.
Yes.
Fair enough.
Okay.
But he'll take them out to that part of the sea if they pay him.
Okay.
So they're on a boat, Mulder, Sully has been watching too much Monsters Inc.
We have a dog named Sully in our neighborhood that's real cute.
Oh, I bet.
Archer was a jerk to him on our morning walk today.
Barked out, doesn't care for him.
Also not surprising.
Yeah.
Now he's very opposed to the existence of other dogs.
Anyway, so Sully and Mulder go on a boat with the American.
Yeah.
Sully has good sea legs.
Mulder says Mulder has bad sea legs.
Getting very emotion sick.
Okay.
And so they're on the boat and something starts messing with the radar and with the navigation
system.
And suddenly there's another ship just like in front of them that they run into.
Oh, like physically run into?
Oh, okay.
Yep.
And it's the missing ship.
And so they go on to it and the captain says that with the corrosion that's present on
it, it looks like no one has been there for 20 or 30 years.
But of course we know it hasn't been that long.
Right.
So they go down to check the cruise quarters and there are all these bodies down there
that look mummified, except there's some sort of strange residue on them.
Oh, this does have a fire, ice, et cetera, feel to it.
Yep.
And so then they hear noise and the rest of the crew just took the ship and left Mulder,
Sully and the captain on the stranded ship full of bodies and.
Oh my God.
Okay.
Yeah.
So there's, oh, and there's the first mate is also with them.
That's right.
Okay.
One other guy.
Okay.
So the American was running, not the, from the ghost boat.
Okay.
Right.
And so they start trying to fix the ghost boat, for lack of a better term, it has a name.
I didn't catch it.
But the residue seems to be corroding everything.
And the first mate kind of runs off for some reason and they find him with a fractured skull
dead.
And they hear someone else kind of talking and hear some noise.
And so they go to follow it to find, you know, who killed the first mate.
And there's a guy hiding who looks super old.
Okay.
And he's cradling a body of whiskey.
A body of, did you say a bottle?
A bottle of whiskey.
Gotcha.
To which I wrote, fair.
Yeah.
Right.
And it's the captain from the intro.
It's captain Barkley is his name.
So he was the one who was like.
Yellig and people and stuff.
Mutiny.
Yeah.
And he says that they saw something burning come out of the sky.
And the American captain is like pissed and thinks he's the one who killed the first
mate and is calling him a liar and stuff.
And Scully tells him that like, you know, it's okay, we're going to do what we can to
help you.
And he says, what can you do to help?
I'm 35 years old, which I thought was funny because I'm 35.
And yeah, yeah, it looks like 90, you know, right?
Yeah.
And so the American captain whose name I later Trondheim, I think is his name or Trondheim.
Oh, really?
Because that's the name of a city in Norway.
Hmm.
Yeah.
I don't know.
And it's like writing the either that or they were like writing the episode and they
were like looking at a map of Norway and then someone was like, hey, we need a name for
this character and they just like looked at it or something.
So we see him, the American captain, pushing Halverson, the first mate off the side of
the boat.
So like giving him, you know, a burial at sea sort of a thing.
Yeah.
And he's talking to him and saying, you are a good first mate.
You always left me alone.
And I don't know that just struck me as funny.
And so then someone starts attacking him after he pushes Halverson's body overboard, but
Mulder gets there and pulls the gun on him and stops, stops him.
Okay.
I will say this real quick.
There's no one called Trondheim in this episode.
I went on IMDB.
What's his name?
Well, I'm not there is a Lieutenant Harper and there's a captain Barclay.
Right.
Okay.
Yeah.
And there's the Ionesco.
And there's a sailor.
And yeah, I mean, there's like a dude with like a kind of classically handsome sort of
face and I don't know.
I don't know, but he would have been young at this point.
I don't know.
You know, they're not naming anyone named here.
Let me see if I can see all cast and crew.
Let's be very thorough here.
Is there any other ways we just accept the American captain?
Oh my God.
No, no, no, no, no, you're right.
He just wasn't listed.
I mean, Trondheim.
Ha.
You are right.
I'm sorry.
I feel good about that.
Yeah.
I thought maybe my notaking was awful.
It's just bizarre because like why would they have the American be named that, you know?
Right.
Like there was a Norwegian captain in the U.S. named Chicago or something.
Yes.
That's exactly what it's like.
Yeah.
Anyway, Trondheim is at the 64th parallel North, if you were interested.
I am now.
Great.
Maybe it's his nickname because he's lived in there.
Yeah.
I like it.
Like, yeah.
Oh, that's our friend who always goes to Norway.
We call him Trondheim.
Yeah.
So Trondheim knows the blonde guy who looks very Norwegian and who is blonde, tall blonde
guy with a beard who had been attacking him and apparently he's a whaler.
And so now I have a story regarding whalers.
It's good though.
It's anti whaler.
Great.
So Zach went to high school with this guy named Willie.
You have a look like where is this going?
I do.
Yeah, I'm just going to tell you this is just a very interesting old friend of Zach's.
After college became a naval engineer who designed warships and saved up like all this
money, like made just tons and tons of money and then quit his job and spent two years biking
across the country and was just like biking across the country, across the U.S.
So this is in Wisconsin and he went to these coasts, west coast.
He ran into my in-laws, Zach's parents in Seattle.
Like they just happened he had biked to Seattle.
That is familiar and insane.
But yeah, I think I remember you saying that.
And so then after his whole biking adventure, he joined a ship in the Southern Ocean to
stop whalers and was on like some sort of TV show about like people that are like trying
to stop the whaling industry and like the boats and stuff.
So yeah, that's what that's what made me think of him.
Yeah, yeah, for real.
Yeah.
So they take Olyphson, we find out is his name, the blind guy.
Take him to the cabin and they find Captain Barkley has died.
And he has the same sort of stuff growing on him and it seems salt like some sort of,
you know.
That is familiar.
All of a sudden I feel like, oh, now I remember this episode from salt like stuff.
Okay.
Yeah.
And so they say they're going to tie up Olyphson and get some rest.
And when they wake up, they look at each other and now they look old.
Okay.
And how is the old person makeup in 1995?
Not awful, not good.
Okay.
Yeah.
I found a picture recently.
I was on ancestry.com and like they have, I don't know how they do this stuff and it
should freak me out a little bit maybe, but there's a picture of me from the high school
newspaper when I was in Antigone.
Whoa.
Yeah.
And when I, when I looked myself up and I wasn't in the picture, but I had to wear
old person makeup for my role in it.
Yeah.
That's right.
But it was real weird.
Yeah.
That is weird.
I thought you said that you were in the picture.
Oh, you weren't wearing the makeup in the picture.
Right.
I was wearing the makeup.
Yeah.
And so they start talking about possibilities and Mulder thinks it's a time warp and which
I again, don't know why, don't know how, but it's Mulder.
I also just feel like that's just like, I don't know, what does that mean?
You can just say it.
I don't know.
It's a time warp.
Okay.
Yeah.
It's a jump to the left.
Exactly.
I'm thinking now.
And Scully says, Mulder, what do you know about free radicals?
Which made me think of another side story.
If you recall when we had a Mary Kay lady come to our apartment when we lived together,
when I was in college.
It was like a friend of a friend, right?
Like, yes.
Yeah.
And she basically like came, showed up and insulted us.
Yes.
And she kept talking about free radicals.
And I remember I was in like intro chemistry at the time and was like, oh, so how, how
did free radicals, you know, relate to this makeup?
And I can't remember.
She said something real dumb.
I can't remember what it was off the top of my head.
But I do remember that she told me that she could tell me some tricks for my eyeliner to
make my eyes look less close set.
God.
Yeah.
And I was like, oh, I didn't know I needed to worry about that.
I remember her telling me about like some anti wrinkle cream that I might want.
And I was 25.
I think that was the free radical stuff.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
25.
Yeah.
So Scully correctly says that they are highly reactive chemicals that are carrying
extra electrons and that the prevailing theory on how our bodies age is that, you know, the
damage from free radicals can cause cells to break down.
And so Scully's theory is that there's a meteor or some sort of other highly magnetic
source nearby, maybe under the ocean.
And the ocean is acting like a battery.
And so they're encountering a huge number of free radicals.
Okay.
Yeah.
I feel like that's not the worst theory.
Yeah.
That could be worse.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So then they notice something stripping from the ceiling and its rust and they notice that
one of, so all the pipes are corroded except for one.
There's one line that hasn't been corroded.
And so they start following that and they find a bunch of rats drinking clean water.
Okay.
You always got to follow the rats and follow the rats.
Is that a thing?
Like follow the rats?
I don't know.
It's a, I feel like it is.
I don't know.
I mean, it is now.
It seems kind of smart.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Oh, you know what I'm thinking of is the follow the spiders thing from Harry Potter in the
Chamber of Secrets.
But you know what?
Oh yeah, but that's completely different though.
That's completely different.
You want to find a big spider.
Like, right.
Yeah, not like if you follow the rats, eventually you get to a giant rat.
Oh, that would be awesome.
It would.
Yeah.
Follow it long enough and you're going to get to a rat that's like the size of a hippopotamus.
I would love that.
Oh, it's so cute.
Speaking of this, essentially, have you ever looked at an ant's face highly magnified?
No, I'd be too afraid, I think.
That's the most horrifying thing.
Oh, I'm not going to Google it.
Okay.
I was about to.
So horrifying.
I saw it on like Instagram or something and someone had posted like, oh, thank God, they're
so tiny.
And I was like, there is no way that's what they actually look like.
And I Googled it and now I can never unsee it.
It is horrifying.
Wow.
Yeah.
Do I want to know why?
Is it like a clustered holes sort of thing with a, like the tulip?
It's like a monster.
I don't know.
It's like a demon.
Wow.
It's just so terrifying.
So honey, I shrink the kids made it too cute.
When they were in the app.
Okay.
Much.
Yeah.
But giant rats, I feel like I would.
I should get that.
Sure.
I mean, we know what a rat is.
Like rats are big enough we can see their faces and I'd be into it.
And they're adorable.
Yeah.
So there's some sort of stash of clean water going through the pipes.
Okay.
Possibly like for the sewage or something.
I don't know.
But there's a reservoir of clean water on board.
And so Scully thinks that it's something in the water that is affecting them because
there's this one clean pipe.
Okay.
And it's like a separate water and everything else is rusted and being affected.
Right.
And she thinks that Barkley was alive for so long because he'd been mostly drinking
whiskey.
Oh, that's funny.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
And so they go back and Olyphson, we saw a short part where he had convinced the captain
to let him go.
And the captain is now claiming that he escaped.
And Scully.
Yeah.
And Scully says with little prompting that she's going to need blood and urine samples
from both the colder and the captain, which again, I feel like this has happened before.
Yeah.
And so we see her taking notes and she's saying that they apparently have huge amounts of sodium
chloride in their blood, which like hypernatremia is a thing, huge amounts of sodium chloride,
like too much in our bodies.
Is that salt?
Sodium chloride.
Okay.
Yeah.
And it doesn't cause this.
It doesn't make you old.
Okay.
No.
We know what it does.
It causes like seizures and unconsciousness and muscle weakness.
And like, you know, that's not something I can get from like eating too much salt.
Just eating it, right?
No, it's more, I mean, if you, if your sodium is too high, it's, it is, so you can get too
high sodium from eating too much salt.
Sure.
So it can be bad for your heart and bad for other things, but it would have to be like
from severe dehydration to cause like extreme hypernatremia.
That would not just like man, I'm really in the mood for a bunch of potato chips.
Yeah.
Okay.
No, right.
Yeah.
I mean, you shouldn't have too much salt, but, but for unrelated reasons and things that
are not going to either cause unconsciousness and seizures or cause sudden aging.
Got to right.
Yeah.
I feel very comfortable.
I eat a lot of salt, but I feel very comfortable with the amount of salt I eat.
So yeah, I mean, your doctor would tell you if you had too high salt.
So like, I mean, I have good blood pressure.
If you so, it's probably fine.
Yeah.
Um, salt is delicious.
That's a thing.
It really is.
Yeah.
It really is.
I, oh God, when I was in Cyprus and I lived in Cyprus for almost a month, one summer, on
an archeological dig and we, it was so hot.
They told us to drink a lot of water, but then you also have to eat a lot of salt.
Oh, because you're looking at all like, yes.
Yeah.
Wow.
Right.
So you need the salt in order to essentially hang on to that water and be stable.
And so it was awesome.
It was like free reign tea.
They were like encouraging potato chip eating.
It was great.
Oh, that's awesome.
Nice.
Um, so Mulder is faring worse than Scully and the captain.
And the captain starts trying to convince her to start looking out for themselves and
to like, uh, let Mulder die.
Essentially.
Oh God.
Because their, their water is running low.
And so like, let's save ourselves.
How long have they been on this boat?
Not that long.
I don't think like a day.
Okay.
I guess you need water a lot though.
Yeah.
Still.
Or cause I, I think they later say something like 36 hours or, I mean, still not like,
okay.
Deadly, but I guess if they're, they also have a ton of salt in them, then they're
going to need more.
Yeah.
Um, so Scully finds a snow globe in a cabinet and combines that with sardine juice and a
few lemons to make a drink and, uh, that's fine.
That does not sound good.
Okay.
Yep.
No.
Yeah.
Um, Chantheim, the captain has locked himself in the sewage hold with the clean water and
is hoarding it.
Oh.
And, uh, so Scully brings the water, well, water in huge quotes, brings the, the, the
cocktail that she's made.
Yeah.
Um, back to Mulder and is trying to get him to drink it cause he's worse off and he says,
no, she should drink it because she's a woman and not for like a, at first I was like,
excuse me Mulder, but no, because like she naturally will hang onto more water because
women have a higher percentage of water, um, and more fat, uh, higher fat percentage to
hold onto it.
And so he says like, you have a better chance of making it out.
Oh, I see.
Okay.
You should, you should take it.
And so they hear some sort of huge noise and the ship starts shaking and apparently the
hull broke and they're taking on water.
And during the shaking of that, the quote unquote water, the cocktail broke.
So they don't have that even anymore.
So, um, Chantheim is locked, uh, has locked himself in the sewage area or wherever the
clean water is.
But now that's filling up with water.
And so, cause that's where the hole broke and he's trapped.
Um, and it doesn't go well for him.
Okay.
And, uh, yeah.
Um, and so it just shows Mulder and Scully talking some more and they're talking about
like how it's really not fair that this is how they're going to die, you know, like,
yeah, don't see a way of rescue and that sucks.
I'm going to be honest.
I don't, I don't know what's going to happen here.
Like, yeah.
And we're getting towards the end of the episode.
And Scully says that, uh, she tells him about something she experienced when she was waking
up from being kidnapped and that she said that there's nothing to fear with death.
Um, nothing to fear on the other side.
And I wonder if she's talking about, um, the nurse.
Do you remember that?
Oh yeah.
That she talked to.
Yeah.
The mystery nurse who wasn't really there and Scully's in the rowboat and all that.
Right.
Yeah.
And Scully is dictating and tells the viewers that Mulder has lost consciousness.
Oh God.
Yeah.
So then someone finds them.
Um, someone somehow comes and rescues them and, uh, we see Scully wake up in the hospital
and the same doctor who treated the first guy who kicked Scully out, um, is there and
is treating them and said that Scully's responding well to the dialysis and, uh, that Mulder is
treated.
So they're getting treated in the U S.
Yeah.
Presumably they were brought back to the U S to Bethesda.
Okay.
I don't know.
I guess that makes sense.
But also if it's that urgent, I feel like Norway has good medical care.
Go to a hospital in Oslo or whatever.
Yeah.
Like big cities.
Yeah.
That's weird.
All right.
Um, maybe they were initially in the hospital unconscious.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Okay.
Um, Mulder's endocrine system was apparently worse off, but that the log book that Scully
had been keeping and the tests that she did on their blood and urine, which I don't know
how she was doing tests.
I don't know.
That's all very vague.
Yeah.
Like I like the idea that she's sort of like a MacGyver type biologist where she could
just, you know, given some blood and like, I don't know, duct tape and a coffee mug.
And like, I don't know.
Yeah.
Coffee filters.
Yeah.
Um, but that the nose cheek helped pinpoint which treatments to give them.
So they're going to be okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
So Scully wants to find out more, but the doctor says that the ship sunk one hour after
they were rescued and they still look old.
And that's the end of the episode.
What?
Oh.
So presumably the treatments are going to reverse the damage that was done.
Yeah.
Um, but yeah.
So next up is humbug.
You'll have to tell us if they still are old looking and humbug.
I will let you know.
And I've seen the episode humbug a number of times.
I don't recall them looking old.
So yeah.
Yeah.
But that, uh, oh, that's weird.
Yeah.
Mm hmm.
I feel like there's kind of a lot of episodes, a surprising number that just sort of end.
Like it's just like, and they're in the hospital and this is kind of a downer or neutral.
Like there isn't a big wrap up sort of feeling to them.
So yes.
Right.
Or even like, I like the ones that end.
And then you see like a little like hint that things are not wrapped up.
Do you know what I mean?
I can't think of an example, but like, um, you know, like, ooh, but this person is still
a lot, you know, like some sort of like a squeeze, squeeze ends that way where he's in prison,
but he's like, he's building this nest again.
He's got that little slot.
And then he's going to squeeze himself out through.
Yeah.
Yes.
Exactly.
And that, that I like, but yeah, I feel like there are these that just kind of are like,
well, all right.
And we're not really given any sort of closure even, you know, like a, yeah.
So that, that was it.
It was, you know, kind of for me, it was fine.
Yeah.
Make a whole lot of sense.
There was some science that made sense, I guess.
And a lot that didn't.
Yeah.
So.
Fair enough.
Yeah.
And I know humbug is the one with like, I don't know what the right word is because
surely it's not this, but I swear it's like the freak show.
Like there's like a circus people, like a traveling circus with people.
You're not thinking of home.
No.
Oh, okay.
Home is like, there's a creepy family of incestuous monster people.
This is different.
This is, this is a like, sort of sideshow attraction, theater circus traveler performers.
Yeah.
Sort of thing.
Well, I'm glad you're watching that because that stuff really bothers me.
Okay.
I read a, I read a book.
What was that?
I can't even name a thing.
It wasn't Geek Love by, was it Catherine Dunn?
No.
Was it?
Okay.
I don't know what that is.
I tried to read it twice and I've had to stop both times.
It's far too disturbing.
There's people who like love that book and I gave it a shot twice and was like, nope.
Oh, horrifying.
Yeah.
Huh.
I won't even get into it.
I'm not even going to get into it.
Yeah.
Don't know.
The book I read was more like historical fiction and it was like kind of interesting and I,
I like, I think I like stuff from the author, but I was, I don't know.
It was too much.
Yeah.
Actually it was kind of good now that I think about it, but never mind.
I can't even think the name of it.
This one, what I recall is that people say it's the start of the X-Files having a little
bit of like humor and self-awareness in some episodes.
Oh.
And that this is sort of seen as the first one of those.
So we'll see with that in mind.
Yeah.
Okay.
Cool.
Yeah.
And then after that is the Kalu Sari.
Yeah.
Scary stuff.
I know it's, yeah.
And I can't remember.
I don't know if I've seen.
So.
Exorcism stuff.
I can't remember.
I have like vague feelings of remembering.
Do you remember there's like an Eastern European woman and she has a son and there's like a
balloon and there's an exorcism?
Vaguely.
Okay.
Vaguely.
I think maybe I saw it once.
Okay.
Speaking of Eastern European women and I say this as a relatively half Eastern European
woman.
Yeah.
I think when William, our oldest, when he was a baby, like a baby, baby, baby, he, I'm
sorry.
I'm a baby, baby, baby.
Yeah.
And there's that, that pit bull.
What is it?
Oh, fire or something.
I'm not a pit bull expert.
Fireball, he says.
I don't know.
But he goes baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby.
You're on fire.
Oh, I don't know that.
And Zach used to say all those babies and then go, you're a baby.
To the babies.
To ours.
But that's not what I was going to say.
But he had, he was John-des when he was born and so we had to take him for a bunch.
He was a little glow worm.
Yeah.
A special outfit.
Yeah.
And so we'd have to take him for like pretty, like daily I think for a while or every other
day blood draws to check his belly room and levels.
And there was a woman one time who came in with this very heavy Eastern European accent
and went, I am here to take your baby's blood.
Back in the back and I rubbed like, oh God.
We kept joking that then like someone else would come in and be like, oh, I'm here for
the blood draw.
We'd be like, no.
The vampires.
That's awesome.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
Side question.
For a male roller derby.
Side question for a male roller derby player.
What would you think of Billy Rubin as a derby name?
I would love it.
It's kind of awesome.
It just came to me when you said it.
I like that a lot.
Yeah.
Great.
I thought of the thing in my life.
Oh, time travel bison.
And then I thought of the thing in my life that I thought would make a good X file.
Oh, awesome.
But first about time traveling bison because it relates to an announcement that you have.
Oh, actually, I don't know that I should announce it.
So let's do gotcha.
Just in case.
I don't know.
So let's do that.
Yeah.
Okay.
So first about time traveling bison in your paper that I was reading that you were
at my proposal, your book proposal.
Yeah.
You were talking about, let me see if I've got this right.
Okay.
So, TB, tuberculosis, tuberculosis we thought was introduced into this area in a certain
time.
But then we looked for evidence of TB and found that some extremely old bison showed
signs of it.
And so we were like, hmm.
And when I say we, I don't mean me.
I mean, I don't know, humanity.
Yeah.
So it's like, hmm, TB must have been here sooner than we thought because this bison has
it, these bison.
But my other theory was no, what if the bison were time travelers because that would explain
it?
If the bison went through wormhole or whatever and they time traveled and they came here
and they got TB and then they went home.
Oh, that'd be so sad.
Oh, no.
No, actually, no, so my go back, my go bacterial diseases.
So like tuberculosis and others in the tuberculosis complex, they call it, that can cause similar
diseases.
They are relatively common in bovids.
So what is a bovid?
What's a bovid?
Yeah.
Bovines.
Oh, yeah.
So cows and cow related animals.
Okay.
Bison being related enough.
Yeah.
So it's, it's, it would make sense to find tuberculosis in a bison.
Okay.
Now whether, now I feel from later evidence, I feel pretty certain that it was not time
traveling, but I guess there's not really ever any way to know for sure.
No, I don't think there is.
No.
I mean, I mean, that's not true.
We could carbon date the bones.
And that would tell us, well, it would tell us how long it's been there.
And tell us necessarily when it came from originally.
And to be clear, for whatever reason, what I was imagining was ancient bison goes to
the future, gets TB, then goes back in time to its original time with a TB.
So then you definitely wouldn't know.
Yeah.
That's true.
Yeah.
I have no way of proving that didn't occur.
Yeah.
So, so solid theory.
Thank you.
Maybe that's something you can explore in your book.
Maybe.
Oh, hold on.
Okay.
There's bison outside of Fermilab.
Oh my God.
You're right.
The physics research.
Yes.
Hunter, you worked out in Illinois.
Yes.
That's what it is.
Obviously.
Yeah.
They're going to Fermilab.
They're time traveling somehow.
And there you go.
Bing, bing, boom.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yep.
I think there's like an outlander or time traveler's wife or like, you know, some sort
of like fiction where, you know, we've got time travel, but it's bison.
Yeah.
That'd be adorable.
If you need, you know, ideas for your new novel.
Well, I mean, I have.
I would love to read that.
I'm editing my story that takes place at Fermilab and has time travel in it.
Oh my God.
That's right.
I'm just going to be like, and also there was a bison there.
Just look in one sentence.
Just change all the characters to now be bison.
Like the story is the same.
I guess I never technically come out and say that my main character isn't a bison.
So I mean, she lives in an apartment and her mom owns a dress shop.
Again, I never state this human female owns a dress shop.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
I think it's possible.
I'm going to like, sometimes like writers like for fun will commission artists to draw
their characters or whatever.
And I'm going to be like, I need you to draw Vanessa.
She's she likes vintage clothes.
She's 17.
She's into physics.
She has black hair and she's a bison.
And I need you to draw that.
I mean, bison could have black hair.
That yeah, that tracks.
Yeah, it does.
Yeah.
I like it.
What happened in your life recently?
Well, actually, it was it was not my life.
It was Amanda telling me this that like last year, their car was at a commission for a
while because something some animal chewed through the wires in the car.
And then it happened again this year.
So her car is in the shop right now because something keeps chewing through the wires in
her car and like eating them or whatever.
Gigantic Texan cockroaches, perhaps.
I came up with a theory that it's her neighbor.
Which should be awesome and horrifying.
I think she's just as good as Rick and just like him like creeping out there in the night
and going into their car and she went through the wires.
Yeah, that would be so creepy.
I know.
Oh, man.
Yeah.
Our dryer started on fire.
Oh my God.
I heard.
Yeah, that's crazy.
And there's so many times when me and all my arrogance have tried to convince Adam, just
leave it run while we run errands or go to the gym or whatever.
It's fine and I'm so glad I don't.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
So is it okay?
You're so glad you don't.
So glad Adam stops you.
Yes.
So glad we haven't.
No, it's not okay.
Oh God.
I mean, the houses, the people are, the dryer has gone to a better place.
What happened there?
I don't know.
I mean, it was old.
Okay.
I don't know.
Man.
Is there a follow up?
Just something keeps chewing through her wires.
Is there a reason why she doesn't think that it's just like an animal that lives nearby?
I mean, it is an animal.
For sure.
Well, right.
But it might be Rick.
Rick is an animal.
No, I mean, she lives in Texas.
Odds are it is, I don't know.
I don't know.
Some sort of Texan squirrel.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I think I've told you somebody I know who was in Alaska for a while and they would have
to do this like she was in the Air Force, I want to say, and they'd have to do Arctic
survival training because they'd often have to go repair the fiber optics cables that were
out in the middle of nowhere.
This was in the 90s because polar bears liked the taste of the lining of the wires.
And so they chew through the wires all the time because they liked the taste of them.
So it's kind of a normal.
I know.
So I think it's possible.
Maybe it's a polar bear chewing through her stuff.
And one of those Texas polar bears.
Yeah.
So yeah, she's just like, oh yeah, it's probably like a chipmunk or something.
I don't know.
Yeah.
But I think it's possible.
It's her neighbor because I think that was really, really creepy to picture it.
So it would be really, really creepy.
Yeah.
Yes.
I know someone who studied geology in Greenland for her dissertation and was in a helicopter
flying out of like their site and saw a polar bear down on the ice below.
Oh, wow.
That's awesome.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Cool.
Yep.
Yeah, they're neat.
Yeah.
Cool.
Well, I guess that's it.
Yeah.
And next week is humbug, send us your emails, send us your stories or unexplained stories
or questions you have for us.
Yeah.
And follow us on Instagram, all that good stuff.
Yeah, we want to believe pod at gmail.com or we want to believe pod at Instagram.
Yep.
All right.
See you next time.
Bye.