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Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, Chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia. I'm excited to introduce a brand new season of my podcast, Math & Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing. I'm having conversations with some folks across a wide range of industries to hear how they reached the top of their fields and the lessons they learned along the way that everyone can use.
I'll be joined by innovative leaders like chairman and CEO of Elf Beauty, Tarang Amin. Legendary singer-songwriter and philanthropist, Jewel. Being a rock star is very fun, but helping people is way more fun. And Damian Maldonado, CEO of American Financing. I figured out the formula is have to work hard, then that's magic. Join me as we uncover innovations in data and analytics, the math, and the ever-important creative spark, the magic.
Listen to Math & Magic on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, y'all. It's your girl, Cheeky's, and I'm back with a brand new season of your favorite podcast, Cheeky's and Chill.
I'll be sharing even more personal stories with you guys. And as always, you'll get my exclusive take on topics like love, personal growth, health, family ties, and more. And don't forget, I'll also be dishing out my best advice to you on episodes of Dear Cheekies. It's going to be an exciting year and I hope that you can join me. Listen to Cheekies and Chill season four on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Would you do that to me? Los Angeles, 2021. A friendly neighbor appears out of nowhere and promises to make all my dreams come true. Let's not forget that David Bloom was a professional con artist. So you didn't stand a chance. But my dreams soon turned into a nightmare. I'm Caroline DeMore. Listen as I take down my scammer on Once Upon a Con on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello, it's Richard McLean Smith here, not the imposter you've been listening to on the podcasts, the real one. Join me for Unexplained TV at youtube.com forward slash unexplained pod. Intro
It could be argued that our ability to comprehend our own death and the fear of such an idea is the very thing that makes us the conscious self-aware creatures that we consider ourselves to be. That only in understanding our lives as something in opposition to death do we develop a concept of the self. You might say that death is the ultimate price of self-awareness.
A recent Gallup poll, conducted across 61 countries around the world, found that roughly 60% of people believe in an afterlife. And yet, for many of those same people, the idea of death as a final end for us and the ones we love is still the greatest of fears.
We need only witness the ferocity with which people will instinctively fight for their survival, even if they believe heaven awaits them on the other side, to understand how potent this fear can be.
This instinct, hardwired into the brain's hypothalamus, suggests from a biological perspective at least, that despite what we hope may await us after we die, our bodies seem very reluctant to find out exactly what that might be. All stories, says Ernest Hemingway, are about death. What then of the stories we tell that go a little further?
The first law of thermodynamics dictates that the total amount of energy in a closed system is constant. It can neither be destroyed nor created, merely changing from one form to another. If the universe is a closed system, as many scientists believe, there is little dispute as to what fate awaits the material of the body after death.
its constituent parts will be broken down piece by piece, repurposed and reintegrated, never disturbing the scales of the universal totality of energy. Perhaps for the materialist then, this is satisfaction enough that we, in some way or other, continue to exist long after our bodies have decomposed,
The idea of where we go, we being the slightly more abstract and intangible notion of the self, has proven an altogether more difficult beast to pin down. It is an unknown that calls into question the very nature of consciousness and one that has been explored in stories told across every community and culture from as far back as we know.
You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith. Death as an ancient Greek, provided you had received a burial, would supposedly be followed by the separation from your body of your soul, which would then be led by Hades to the entrance of the underworld.
From here your soul, taking the form of your living world self, would be ferried by Charon across the Acheron river. Where, under the watchful eye of Cerberus, the three-headed hound of Hades, the judges of the underworld would decide your fate. For the virtuous, heroes and demigods, the golden fields of Elysium would await.
For those unlucky enough to be judged sufficiently undeserving, it would be to the unlit gloom of the Tartarus abyss that you would be dispatched. For the ancient Egyptians, differing traditions offered a variety of afterlife scenarios. The most well-known is to be found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which details a horrifying and complex journey into Duat, the Egyptian underworld.
Provided your soul was able to survive a treacherous gauntlet, chased by terrifying and grotesque entities, it would arrive at the Hall of Truth to face the judgment of Osiris, the god of the dead. If found to have lived a sufficiently virtuous life, your heart would be taken by Anubis, the god of embalming, and weighed against the goddess Ma'at's white ostrich feather of truth.
If the heart was equal to or lighter than the feather, your soul would be granted access to the reed fields of Aru, a paradisical land where, again in the guise of your once living body, your soul would dwell for eternity. A heart heavier than the feather of truth would be thrown to and promptly gobbled up by the goddess and devourer of the dead, Amit.
condemning the soul to an eternal restlessness. In contemporary cultures, influenced by the Abrahamic religions of Islam, Judaism and Christianity, stories of the afterlife follow a similar theme, promoting a version of continued life consistent with our living sense of self-image.
Just as it was for the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, life becomes a test of moral courage and where we end up is subsequently dependent on our actions. The options are invariably divided between some form of heaven or hell.
Followers of religions such as Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism however, believe our lives to be but one moment in the process of Samsara, the repeating cycle of birth, life and death, more commonly known as reincarnation. Much like the eschatology of other faiths, those that incorporate Samsara believe too in the karmic process of the life you lead dictating your fate in death
while also employing a dualist separation of body and soul. A fundamental difference is the complete rejection of a singular image of the body. Instead, Samsara dictates that the soul, your true essence, is the only consistency, while its body will take potentially infinite forms as it is reborn ceaselessly into the material world.
Release from the infinite cycle comes only to those souls who are able to become so transcendentally enlightened that they are liberated from the bondage of consciousness altogether and dissolved back into the great oneness of all things.
Buddhist teachings of samsara have suggested that such a process could allow for the remembrance of previous lives since all previous lives are considered to be merely different experiences of the same soul. Some believe this phenomenon, known as Jatismara, although traditionally the preserve of great Buddhist saints can be unearthed through past life regression,
The technique of using hypnosis to recover these apparent memories. Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward. And he was just staring at me. And they had secrets of their own to share. Gilbert King, I'm the son of...
I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it. I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known. I never expected to find myself in this place.
Now, I need to tell you how I got here. At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer. Bone Valley, Season 2. Jeremy. Jeremy, I want to tell you something. Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
Although common in ancient India, it wasn't until the late 19th century through the teachings of occultist Helena Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society that she co-founded in 1875 that the idea of past life regression gained prominence in modern European society.
Many accounts have been dismissed as simple cases of false memories, recollections of names and places that have been subconsciously absorbed. However, there are a few cases that have not been so easy to dismiss.
In 2015, a young boy named Ryan from Muskogee in Oklahoma, who was 10 at the time, hit the headlines with the claim that he could remember the life of a man who died 50 years previously. It began with a nightmare when at the age of four, Ryan woke up screaming, saying that his chest was exploding.
He began dreaming about a life spent working in Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s, a trip that he'd once taken to Paris, that he had a sister, and lived on a street with the word 'rock' in it, as well as the bizarre claim that he had had five wives.
Ryan became so insistent that his mother, not quite sure what to do about it, took out some books on the golden era of Hollywood and brought them home for Ryan to look at. While perusing one of them, Ryan yelled, That's George! Pointing at an image taken from the 1932 movie, Night After Night. And that guy's me, he said, pointing to another man at the back of the picture.
Growing increasingly unsettled by Ryan's proclamations, his parents enlisted the help of child psychologist Dr. Jim Tucker from the University of Virginia, whose Division of Perceptual Studies specializes in investigating cases of apparent reincarnation.
With Dr Tucker's help, the man that Ryan pointed out in the picture was identified as Marty Martin, who'd appeared in the movie Night After Night as an extra. Incredibly, the other man Ryan had pointed to was indeed called George. It was the actor, George Raft. Neither man was listed under the image in the book.
It was later discovered that Marty Martin did indeed have a sister, had at one point visited Paris, and incredibly, had had five wives. Martin was also found to have lived on, not Rock exactly, but Roxbury Drive, and that sensation of his heart exploding that had so terrorised Ryan at four years old
Some might say it had something to do with the heart attack that killed Marty Martin at the age of 61. Or at least, that's how old Ryan claimed Martin was when he died. However, when Dr. Tucker located his death certificate, it listed his age at death as 59.
It was some time later when Dr Tucker found Marty Martin listed in an old census report, amazed to discover that the death certificate had incorrectly listed Martin's birth by two years. He most likely had been 61 when he died, after all. The Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia was founded in 1967 by psychiatrist Dr Ian Stevenson.
By the time of his retirement in 2002, Stevenson had logged over 2,500 cases of apparent reincarnation with varying degrees of credibility. One such case involved a young boy from Middlesbrough, England, whose story he would learn about after reading an article published in 1983 detailing the boy's extraordinary claims.
It would prove to be one of the most compelling cases that Dr. Stevenson would ever come across. On the bitterly cold afternoon of January 15th, 1942, with night beginning to fall, Captain E.S. Parks of the SS Empire Bay watches from the ship's bridge as all across the British Isles the lights go out. The sky shimmers like oil.
Electric pinks dissolve into inky blue as the last of the sun's rays drop below the horizon. At 1700 hours, the ship's engine gurgles and sputters before roaring into life as thick black plumes of smoke are belched into the air. The cargo ship is laden with 3,800 tons of coal and 38 crew bound for London.
Such journeys are among the most treacherous for the merchant navy as they attempt to deliver fuel to the capital to aid the British war effort. They skulk close to the coast in small convoys in the hope that their limited company and the cover of darkness will keep them safe from the peril above.
It is shortly after 1700 hours and 15 minutes when the Empire draws level with the SS Corsi and Captain Parks orders the anchor dropped while they wait for the final vessel of their convoy to catch up to them. The crew pull their pea coats a little tighter taking drags on woodbines as the boat gently rocks and creaks on the ebbing tide. All eyes are turned nervously to the skies
It's just gone 1700 hours and 30 minutes when the looping wail of an air raid siren comes twisting out of the dark from somewhere in the direction of Hartlepool. Action stations, screams parks, glowing embers are flicked overboard and hats hurriedly pulled onto heads as the crew scurry into position.
Along the coastline, bulbous barrage balloons, fast inflatables designed to obstruct low flying aircraft are drifting up into the air as the men continue to scan the sky. They crane their necks in manic desperation for any glimpse of incoming planes. Chief Steward John Kavanagh is perched behind the twin Lewis guns on the port side of the ship's bridge.
His eyes fixed on Captain Parks, waiting for his signal, when he finally hears the dreaded unmistakable hum of approaching aircraft. Kavanagh spins round, squinting into the distant darkness as his eyes work desperately to adjust to the gloom. Clouds and eye spots tease shapes in the sky that swiftly vanish into nothing, until finally something solid materialises.
A row of small spots, 12 miles or so off the port beam, steadily growing in size as the rumble of engines grows ever louder. The spots grow longer and thinner and sprout wings and tails. Kavanagh grips the gun tight and positions the planes in his sights. Then one breaks suddenly from the pack.
Guns! Hold fire! Yelled Parks.
Kavanagh's fingers hover over the triggers as the aircraft, now less than five miles away, bears down upon them. Hold. Two miles. Hold. One mile. Fire! Kavanagh squeezes the triggers, releasing a thundering racket as the plane roars overhead, swerving viciously to the left before circling back round and heading for the SS Corsi.
Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward. And he was just staring at me. And they had secrets of their own to share. Gilbert came. I'm the son of...
I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it. I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known. I never expected to find myself in this place.
Now, I need to tell you how I got here. At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer. Bone Valley, Season 2. Jeremy. Jeremy, I want to tell you something. Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
"'Kavenagh watches with alarm as the plane reaches the second vessel. "'It veers away at the last moment, releasing a single bomb. "'Mercifully, it misses the ship and drops straight into the black waters around it. "'The crew find their breath as the plane pulls up and away, "'heading inland toward the River Tees.'
A strange calm descends as the worst looks to be over. But then comes that dreaded sound again. Portside bellows Captain Parks. Kavanagh swings the guns back round and there it is again, dropping out of the sky and heading straight for the SS Empire Bay. He fights to ignore the trembling in his fingers and steadies himself once more behind the sights. Hold your fire!
And again it comes, closer and closer, until finally it is so close that Kavanagh is sure he can see the pilot's eyes. "Fire!" A rocket shoots out from the bridge with a fierce rasp, as Kavanagh lets off another volley of fire. It pummels into the underside of the wing as the plane rears up, missing the ship's funnel by inches.
Kavanagh spins round just in time to see it swerve wildly again to the left before this time releasing five bombs from underneath its wings. For a moment they seem like soft clods of earth suspended above them before ripping violently through the air. Kavanagh breathes a sigh of relief as he catches sight of four of them disappearing down the port side and straight into the water.
But there were five. A booming explosion reverberates from out of the starboard quarter as the boat is lifted from the sea. Flames and fountains spray up in unison. Kavanagh is thrown to the floor, his ears ringing from the chaos as the boat crashes back down.
When he finally gets his bearings, the ship appears to be holding, and in the space beyond, he can just make out the hulking silhouette of an aircraft heading towards the mouth of the River Tees with a trail of thick, dark smoke spewing out of its engine. Twenty miles inland, on the outskirts of Billingham, a call comes through reporting enemy aircraft spotted off the coast of Hartlepool.
Leading aircraftman, Walter Myers and his crew leap to their stations and begin manically pumping hydrogen into defence balloons. Once inflated, they stand back and watch together as Annie, as they'd christened it, the last of their set, makes its slow ascent into the sky. Its limp tail, flapping casually in the wind, ''Come on, before it's too late!''
Hands turn faster and faster on the winch, unspooling the cable until a final click locks it into place. A sudden gust of wind catches the tail, expanding the balloon to its full corpulent glory. The men make their way back to the station hut and have only just settled in when the telltale rumble of a spluttering engine is heard drawing closer.
Maya spots it first, coming in far too low and trailing huge clouds of black smoke. The rumble turns to a sickening, shrieking whine as the plane lurches suddenly to the right and heads straight for the hut. "'He's going to machine gunners! No, look! The cable!' The air itself seems to tear apart as the plane roars past, sending the men scattering for cover.
A horrifying crunch and the hulking winch lorry is lifted from the floor before it clatters back down to the ground. The balloon's cable has sliced straight through the starboard wing propelling it in the opposite direction. The rest of the plane jerks to the side and veers off towards the Middlesbrough docks before slamming into the ground in a ball of fire just south of the River Tees.
An air raid warden watches the drama unfolding from his back garden. He tracks the plane until it disappears just meters from his home onto the train tracks behind the dormant long steelworks at the bottom of Clay Lane. The warden races to the crash site as quickly as he can. When he arrives, he's immediately sent sprawling to the ground by the aircraft's ammunition exploding in every direction.
When the violent popping stops, a fire has engulfed the plane. It's already too intense to attempt a rescue of the men trapped inside. It'll be 30 minutes before firefighters are able to extinguish the inferno.
Meanwhile, 20 miles up the coast, the crew of the SS Empire Bay, having all been successfully retrieved, watch huddled together from rescue boats as the ship's bow raises into the air before steadily sinking below the waves.
First light on Teesite reveals a monochrome landscape of industrial plants and wastelands, little changed from the evening's drama save for the smouldering pile of metal, a hundred feet of smashed rail track and a large hole in the ground measuring roughly 10 feet deep and 12 feet wide.
In the distance beyond, the slag and coal heaps lie dotted with snow, while the chimneys of the dormant long steelworks blow white clouds into the morning air. At the crash site, rescue workers watched over carefully by two men wrapped in thick woolen coats pull three charred bodies from the wreckage. A fourth body was thought to have likely evaporated in the flames.
The two men presiding over the grisly scene have been sent by British intelligence to gather what they can from the German bomber. But with little of interest to be found and the government keen to rebuild the rail track as soon as possible, the officers wrap up the search that morning. Within days, the remains of the aircraft are buried under a mound of earth and the track is reinstalled as if nothing had ever happened.
The three bodies, identified by their dog tags as Feldwebel Joachim Lainis, Lieutenant Rudolf Mattern and Oberfeldwebel Heinrich Richter, are taken to the nearby Thorneby-on-Tees Cemetery and laid to rest.
At the turn of the 19th century, Middlesbrough is little more than a farm located on the banks of the River Tees in the north-east of England, populated by roughly 25 people. But a tidal wave of change is approaching that will soon turn this bucolic idol into one of the country's most prolific industrial powerhouses.
As the spirit of enlightenment begins to permeate all aspects of British society, there comes a sudden synchronicity of vision with the means of production, igniting a fuse from which there will be no going back. From the bowels of the earth, the British Industrial Revolution erupts in an explosion of steam, fire and smoke.
A time of extraordinary physical and philosophical upheaval built on ambition, greed, and the blood and sweat of the men, women, and children who rip it from the ground and smelt it in the factories. Soon, throughout the land, colossal cauldrons of industry are springing up wherever the raw ingredients are most abundant.
In the early 1820s, railway pioneer Joseph Pease gazes out over the banks of the River Tees as it meanders towards the North Sea, seeing not the tranquillity of its placid waters, but rather a gateway to the world.
By 1850, having bought that Middlesbrough farm in 1829, Pease brought coal storage facilities and trains to the area, transforming the quaint hamlet into a bustling town with a population of over 7,000. Twenty years later, after iron ore is discovered, in the nearby town of Eston in the Cleveland Hills,
Middlesbrough quickly establishes itself as a world leader in steel production. By the end of the century, the population has grown to 90,000 and the town, widely referred to as Ironopolis, is producing a third of the nation's iron.
Before long, with the increasingly expanding British Empire, Eston Steel, as writer H.G. Reid put it, like a strong and invincible serpent, is coiling itself around the world.
In the 1920s, Arthur Dorman and Albert de Land Long, better known as Dorman Long, purchased the Teesside Ironworks and in 1932 will oversee the building of their most famous construction, the Sydney Harbour Bridge. But a lot can change in 50 years.
A combination of the reduced demand for steel and an ever-expanding pool of global competition leaves Middlesbrough's key industries floundering. By the early 1970s, the town, once known as the infant Hercules, is struggling to stay afloat.
1972 is an especially chaotic year, characterised by strikes and stalemates between a Conservative government intent on consolidating what little profit there is left to be made, and the workers' unions intent on protecting the interests of the people on whose backs that very profit had been raised.
Throughout Middlesbrough and many of the flailing industrial towns of the Midlands and the north of England, many jobs are lost as companies seek to reduce expenditure in the hope of maintaining what are by now unrealistic profit margins. The government's disastrous efforts to combat falling employment ultimately results in the worst unemployment figures since the 1930s,
It is into this turbulent period, on Friday 28th December 1972, that Carl Eden is born. You've been listening to Unexplained, Season 8, Episode 21, East of Eden, Part 1 of 3. Part 2 will be released next Friday, March 7th. This episode was written by Richard McLean-Smith.
Unexplained is an AV Club Productions podcast created by Richard McLean-Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, were also produced by me, Richard McLean-Smith. Unexplained, the book and audiobook, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores.
Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can find out more at unexplainedpodcast.com and reach us online through Twitter at UnexplainedPod and Facebook at facebook.com forward slash unexplainedpodcast.
Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, Chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia. I'm excited to introduce a brand new season of my podcast, Math & Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing. I'm having conversations with some folks across a wide range of industries to hear how they reached the top of their fields and the lessons they learned along the way that everyone can use.
I'll be joined by innovative leaders like chairman and CEO of Elf Beauty, Tarang Amin. Legendary singer-songwriter and philanthropist, Jewel. Being a rock star is very fun, but helping people is way more fun. And Damian Maldonado, CEO of American Financing. I figured out the formula is have to work hard, then that's magic. Join me as we uncover innovations in data and analytics, the math, and the ever-important creative spark, the magic.
Listen to Math & Magic on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, y'all. It's your girl, Cheeky's, and I'm back with a brand new season of your favorite podcast, Cheeky's and Chill.
I'll be sharing even more personal stories with you guys. And as always, you'll get my exclusive take on topics like love, personal growth, health, family ties, and more. And don't forget, I'll also be dishing out my best advice to you on episodes of Dear Cheekies. It's going to be an exciting year and I hope that you can join me. Listen to Cheekies and Chill season four on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey,
Hey sis, it's Dr. Joy from Therapy for Black Girls. We've had 400 episodes of conversations, growth, and healing. So we're celebrating. Join us for a special episode with internationally recognized yogi, Chelsea Jackson Roberts, as she shares wisdom on mindfulness, movement, and motherhood. I waited later to have children and I still have exactly what I knew that I wanted. You don't want to miss this special episode.
Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Would you do that to me? Los Angeles, 2021. A friendly neighbor appears out of nowhere and promises to make all my dreams come true. Let's not forget that David Bloom was a professional con artist. So you didn't stand a chance. But my dreams soon turned into a nightmare. I'm Caroline DeMore. Listen as I take down my scammer on Once Upon a Con on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.