00:00:00
This is exactly right. Isn't some far off concept? It's already here. Next starts now.
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Hyundai, an official partner of FIFA. Goodbye. When a charming neurosurgeon rode into Frontier Town
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selling a persona of confidence and care, patients trusted him. He wore cowboy boots in the operating room
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and became sought after by patients. He promised to heal them. Instead, he left a trail of broken bodies.
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This is a story of greed, betrayal, and a fight for justice. Listen to Dr. Death the Cowboy wherever you get your podcasts
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or binge the entire series right now only with Audible. Goodbye. There's always a point in the day when your feet decide they've had enough.
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00:01:51
Okay. We're like a well-oiled machine. Oh, we are. Do you hear that? You hear that churning?
00:02:01
The churning of the machine? We have to leave this in, right? We have to leave it in the episode.
00:02:07
Steven, this is the beginning of the episode. Oh! hello and welcome to my favorite murder thank you yeah that's karen kilgariff that's georgia
00:02:36
hard start and this is how we do it guys this is how we do it professionals all the way to the top
00:02:44
i was just actually smiling right as we turned and hit record in our separate homes i just was
00:02:50
smiling of like with thank god for steven ray morris we made it through this pandemic and through
00:02:57
this quarantine podcasting the entire time yeah it's not many people did much more that helped
00:03:05
many more but it just is was making me smile of like we just kept doing it like responsible like
00:03:13
like how i think of responsible people behaving oh like actually still doing your job like
00:03:18
continuing on to life instead of being like, well, this is the green light for me to lay
00:03:22
on the couch for the next two years in depression mode. Goodbye. Yep. No, we still picked up our bloomers and we sat in front of the zoomers.
00:03:32
And we, come on, finish it. We finish it. One more. Uh, that was great. Let's get out of here.
00:03:45
We've done it again. And truly, I feel like I've passed into 2021 has lasted about three years worth.
00:03:52
I've passed into an area. I don't give a fuck anymore. I want what's best for everyone.
00:03:58
But I also, you know what I mean? I just would love to wrap this year up. I'd love to, you know, chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
00:04:05
Did you put up speaking of, did you put up your white Christmas fake Christmas tree?
00:04:10
I should. I haven't done it yet because I packed so much stuff into my garage. that it's blocked. I blocked my own Christmas tree in.
00:04:21
Oh no. That's kind of a metaphor of what this year has been like. Your joy is blocked in by whatever.
00:04:28
I realize every day I think of going down and getting it and I'm like, you will end up really sweaty because you're going to have to move about five couches.
00:04:36
Maybe hurting yourself a little bit. Maybe just a slight lower back pull that affects me for three to six weeks.
00:04:44
Right. And so then you have to keep it up through January. And then you're that depressing person who has a Christmas tree up through January.
00:04:52
Right. Although I do have to say, if you're in the market or like thinking about a fake tree,
00:04:58
especially go all the way fake like I did and have a white sparkly tree with lights already in it.
00:05:03
Yeah. You kind of can leave it up for as long as you want. Yeah. Does it make you happy?
00:05:07
Great. Put it up in September. Take it down in March. Who fucking cares? Who fucking cares at this point?
00:05:12
We put up Christmas lights, which are great outside. But the problem this year is that we have a puppy and a kitten.
00:05:19
So there's no fucking Christmas tree this year for us. It would be asking for a pain in the eye, like asking to be annoyed all the time.
00:05:28
Well, yeah. And it would go down. Like it would be in the middle of the night kind of.
00:05:31
What's that? Is Santa here early? Crash. Yeah. I mean, I've already had to put all my plants, my beautiful indoor plants that I like kept
00:05:42
alive and love so much i had to put them outside because moses and now they're all dying because i
00:05:45
just if i don't see them i won't water them yep anyway do it pick a day not not like i'm some
00:05:52
green thumb but i just pick a day that what i learned yeah i looked it up because i was like i would love to keep my house plants alive yeah and I acting like I simply can quote unquote Yeah And then so I looked up some tips and it was just like like water your plants on Sundays
00:06:07
Then it's just like, and only one they're thirsty. Like, wait, let the dirt get really dry.
00:06:12
Right. Right. Those are my two tips from the, they're going to die. Green corner.
00:06:17
From Karen's, Karen's plant corner. Woo. Oh, speaking of Karen's corner, I have a Karen was right corner.
00:06:24
Oh, shit. You know, my favorite corner, you know, the fucking TV show. The Great on Hulu is one of the best fucking shows.
00:06:35
I would have never watched it if you hadn't told me. Now, Vince and I are like in it.
00:06:39
It is. I can't believe that was Elf. I didn't even know it was Elf Fanning. Isn't she fucking spectacular?
00:06:45
She is like next level, next level. Oh, my God. And the writing. What was the movie?
00:06:50
It's made by the same dude who made the movie with Olivia. Oh, The Favorite? The Favorite.
00:06:59
Yes. It's the same kind of vibe going on. Tony something. I look at his name every time I watch an episode going...
00:07:07
Because I always think of him as a playwright. I heard it was originally a play.
00:07:11
It does seem... It does have that vibe. Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos? No. Oh, sorry.
00:07:19
Like EP. OK, your ghost is killing it, though. I mean, Jesus Christ, that thing is a beautiful television show to watch.
00:07:26
Yeah, that sounds like a name from Game of Thrones. Is it Tony McNamara? Yeah. OK. And what else did he do?
00:07:35
Tony McNamara wrote The Great and wrote The Favorite and wrote Cruella and The Rage and Placid Lake.
00:07:44
He's good. He's a legend. I mean, and this show, it's like, what do you like? Do you like costumes?
00:07:51
Show up for this. Do you like comedy? Show up for this. Do you like history? Show up for this.
00:07:55
Do you like vintage cursing? I love when they use like modern curse words. I don't know why.
00:08:01
When they're like, fuck this and fuck that. I'm like, yes, they're speaking, literally speaking my language.
00:08:07
Literally speaking your language, but also teaching you about the Russian aristocracy
00:08:11
and the way their democracy unfolded. I don't really look at you. I didn't learn that. I didn't learn that much. And also the guy that
00:08:20
plays the general, her general. Oh, yeah. Who is he has been in all of my British shows. I bet
00:08:28
he's got over the years. Yeah. And and he is in a couple of the old and I can't offhand. I can't
00:08:33
remember which ones, but he's been in like Jane Austen style. Yeah. He's, you know, classic. He
00:08:38
started as like the the Hawkeye. And now he's like this character part that he is so good at
00:08:44
Where you're like, I love when that guy's on screen. And I love Elizabeth. I love the aunt.
00:08:51
Oh, my God. She's my favorite for sure. She's crazy. Yes, she's amazing. I was going to recommend there's a Netflix true crime documentary and it's German and
00:09:02
it's called Dig Deeper, The Disappearance of Birgit Meyer. Oh, and it is I think it was four or six parts episodes.
00:09:11
Oh, it's so unbelievable. You have to watch it. It's an unbelievable story. And it turned out that Birgit Meyer, her brother was like basically the head of the police in, I think, Hamburg.
00:09:27
And so she just disappeared. And so he was in it where he was in charge. He was way high up, but he was like somewhere else.
00:09:36
So he couldn't run the investigation or like interfere. Yeah. but then they it basically just went cold and they went yeah there's just no answer when did
00:09:46
it take place in the uh i think 80s okay 80s or early 90s okay you have to watch it though it's
00:09:55
it's really unbelievable what's it called again um it's called dig deeper the disappearance of
00:10:00
bergit meyer okay i'm in yeah really incredible what happened to this family and these people
00:10:07
her ex-husband who she was divorcing her brother her daughter oh it's you gotta see it okay i'm in
00:10:15
i'm on it okay once we watch succession tonight then we'll watch oh oh so excited oh just the
00:10:22
the living stomach ache of entertainment that is succession it's just getting better and
00:10:29
a brilliant piece of work um just wonderful do you have anything else or should we get into
00:10:36
Oh, I just have I just have one thing, which is and this is really I feel really bad.
00:10:42
But at the same time, I don't think we were talking massive shit. But when Michelle Boutot did the Celebrity Hometown with us, we walked we did a little
00:10:53
memory lane walk and we were talking about what we called the Winnipeg Comedy Festival.
00:10:59
OK. And then the guy that runs the Winnipeg Comedy Festival wrote in and said, hey, just so you
00:11:04
know, that's not us. that was that other comedy festival that took place in Winnipeg.
00:11:09
So there were a couple like, you know, saucy comments. I think Michelle made a joke about her check,
00:11:15
not clearing or something like that, whatever it was. It made this person feel like they really needed to say, Hey, that's not us.
00:11:24
So we, so our apologies to the Winnipeg comedy festival, which I have never been to. Okay.
00:11:29
I assumed Winnipeg as a city only had one, but I was wrong in that assumption. and um i think the one we were at isn't around anymore not sure not gonna name the name but do
00:11:41
it yeah but hey full uh apologies and props to the winnipeg comedy festival because the guy was
00:11:47
really nice and funny in his email but he was just like yeah that's not us oh my god i love it oh i
00:11:51
have a thing too wait hold on a second i forgot um oh well we got a lot of shit from people who were like how do you guys how do neither of you own a pizza cutter Like people were a little aghast last week when we both talked about that which I find
00:12:07
Were they aghast? A little aghast, which I find like calm down. But this one person wrote.
00:12:13
I mean, so someone caught this girl named Nikki L. Bag on Instagram commented. My husband and I received a sterling silver Tiffany pizza cutter for a wedding gift.
00:12:24
Oh, can you believe that? It in no way reflects our lifestyle at all. It is currently in a drawer next to our $1.99 pizza cutter.
00:12:32
On pizza nights, if we think our pizza is on the fancier side, we scoff at the lowly cutter for the plebs and give a quick shine to the cutter made for pizza eating queens.
00:12:42
And then immediately fuck the pizza up by cutting right away before letting it cool.
00:12:47
I just thought that was like the nicest of the comments. Well, that's kind of hilarious.
00:12:53
Please remember, if you get married and you get a jacked up gift like that, return it for that money.
00:12:59
What are you doing? What are you doing? Get your Tiffany motherfucking gift card credit.
00:13:05
Store credit. Store credit. Get yourself so many beautiful butterfly necklaces. That's right.
00:13:11
But yeah, I don't, I've never really, I think there are people who live differently and they assume everyone lives like them.
00:13:18
And pizza cutter people being actually like aghast. That's silly to me because you order pizza from a restaurant that cuts it for you.
00:13:27
And if for some reason that doesn't happen good enough. Yeah. It's called a fucking knife.
00:13:33
Other than that, who gives a shit? What's crazy to think about is there are people out there who like live lives that have pizza oven outdoor like brick pizza ovens that like make pizza systems.
00:13:44
I know it's crazy. Wait, are you thinking of Papa John? because he does not listen to this podcast.
00:13:49
There's no way. Okay, so should we do some network business? Yeah, let's do it. Let's see.
00:13:55
This week on the Exactly Right Podcast Network, I saw what you did is doing a double feature
00:14:02
of the 1991 version of Point Break and the 2015 version of Point Break. Amazing. I love it.
00:14:08
Deep analysis, compare and contrast. Get in there. You're going to want to hear these observations.
00:14:13
You got to see it to believe it. And then we also want to wish That's Messed Up, an SVU podcast, a happy one year anniversary.
00:14:21
Yay! We love having them on the network. This week, they cover the episode of SVU called Pure, starring the great Martin Short.
00:14:30
And then their special guest this week is none other than SVU super fan, your friend Karen Kilgariff.
00:14:37
That's right. Oftentimes, when podcasts on our network have one year anniversaries, they ask one of us to be on it.
00:14:44
It's very funny. To mark that time with them, which is very fun. We had a great conversation.
00:14:50
I love those guys. Love it. And this week on Wednesday is our amazing, hilarious guest, Nicole Byer.
00:14:57
So please check out Celebrity Hometowns. Oh, and hey, there's lots of great MFM and Exactly Right merch for sale.
00:15:06
We have lots of cool Christmas. Stay safe. Do God's mission sweatshirt still exists.
00:15:12
You can get it. There's there's ornaments. There's all kinds of great stuff over there.
00:15:16
And you can still get it sent to you in time for the 25th if you order expedited shipping.
00:15:24
That's right. And also we have a lot of This Is Terrible Keep Going merch. So if you need that instead this holiday season, we got you.
00:15:31
Yeah, whatever you need. Yeah, we got you. Don't worry about it. So, you know, throughout December, we're giving to different charities because it's the holiday season and it's the giving season.
00:15:41
And so this week we're donating to the National Alliance to end homelessness. They're committed to preventing and ending homelessness in the U.S.
00:15:50
And we're going to give them ten thousand dollars. We're really happy to be able to give them a little help this holiday season.
00:15:58
Yep. And if you can, too, it's a great thing to reach out to. And if not. Think good thoughts.
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um all right well i'm first this week right you are are you ready i'm ready are you ready
00:19:01
i don't know thank god i'm ready that would be funny it's like no i need a little more time
00:19:07
to work can i have 25 minutes all right karen for this week today i'm going to talk about one of the
00:19:16
most influential music artists of all time her life and her tragic death the princess of r&b
00:19:22
aliyah oh wow yeah been wanting to do this one for a while um sources used in today's episode
00:19:31
are the aliyah website biography.com two cnn staff articles a new york times article by kurt
00:19:38
eichenwild a daily beast article by cheyenne roundtree and a new yorker article by jim de
00:19:43
regattis so here we are on january 16th 1979 aliyah dana houghton is born in brooklyn new york
00:19:52
to parents, Diane and Michael. And then at five, the family all moves to Detroit. So Aaliyah,
00:19:59
whose name is of Arabic origin and means like the heavens, highborn, exalted one. She starts
00:20:05
voice lessons pretty soon after she's even able to form full sentences. She starts singing.
00:20:11
She had the gift. She had the gift. She sings in choirs and churches. She eventually also attends dance and guitar lessons as well.
00:20:20
so she's a talented kid when she's still young uh alia has a small role in a production of the
00:20:26
musical annie she plays an orphan and only has one line but it makes her realize that that's
00:20:31
what she wants to do be on stage and perform for the rest of her life annie is a it's a
00:20:37
like a watershed moment for little girls who think they can sing or can't sing when you get
00:20:44
when suddenly you find out that there is a musical that just is filled with 10 year old
00:20:49
girls that are kind of scream singing it's like one of the most exciting things that can happen to
00:20:54
you as a young show off do you do you know this from personal experience karen kilgarry oh yes
00:21:00
yes i do yes what did you play who'd you play um well no we the annie i think it was like 1979
00:21:08
when the annie cast album came out with andrew cartel wow starring annie and um that just that
00:21:16
whole, you know, it's just like this kind of like, it was just all anthems for young girls.
00:21:24
Karen's doing a marching arm thing right now, like a fist pounding march. It just felt good. I know that feeling that she had.
00:21:33
It worked. And I know what you meant by that too. So yeah, she wants to do it forever. She later
00:21:39
says, quote, what I loved about it was just putting the production together, being in the
00:21:43
chorus, learning the routine, singing and doing a little bit of acting. That's when I said, I've
00:21:47
got to do this forever. In 1989, 10 year old Aaliyah performs in the youth vocal competition on Star
00:21:55
Search. Did you know that? No. Her dress is like, what in 19, I'm the same, pretty much the same
00:22:03
age as her. It would have just been the dress you've always wanted in your entire 10 year old
00:22:08
life, you know, the frilly bottom and the top. And then it has a little bolo coat on.
00:22:13
Yeah. Yeah. Look, she's so cute. She doesn't win, but it's OK because she does get a gig performing five nights a week with
00:22:22
Gladys Knight in Las Vegas. Yes. Holy shit. It seems random, but Gladys is actually Aaliyah's uncle, Barry Hankerson's ex-wife.
00:22:35
Oh, OK. They're connected. she sees this thing in Aaliyah and she's like she's fucking amazing I want her to perform with
00:22:41
me Gladys Knight I know the greatest is the legendary just truly that's amazing well also
00:22:47
there's so many people who were on Star Search and didn't win right and went on to become huge
00:22:53
that's right yeah I believe Justin Timberlake what was he on it yes I watched it I watched it
00:23:00
we watched it every time it was on I just don't remember any of it remember the acting category
00:23:05
That's right. What did they do? They just came out and did a terribly written scene.
00:23:09
Monologue or something. Yeah. It was like two people fighting over a kitchen table.
00:23:13
It was crazy. We loved the singing, the child singing, which now I can't, I have a hard time watching children
00:23:19
sing. Yeah. It just creeps me out. And the comedy. Yeah, exactly. And the comedy.
00:23:24
Yeah. Comedy. Lots of, there was lots of great comics on. There was. She sings My Funny Valentine, which is like, oh, that's cute.
00:23:33
But then like some of the lyrics are like, you don't have an Adonis's body. Like it's kind of a little bit weird.
00:23:41
Yeah. When children sing standards, that is what happens. That's inappropriate. Yeah.
00:23:46
But it's unavoidable inappropriateness. Um, so Gladys Knight later says this about Aaliyah from an early age.
00:23:54
I knew she had enormous talents and intrinsic gift. When she first performed with me in Las Vegas, she was still
00:24:00
quite young, but she already had it. The spark that the world would later see and fall in love
00:24:04
with. So by age 12, Aaliyah is signed with Jive Records and her uncle, Barry Hankerson's Black
00:24:12
Ground Records. And Aaliyah's uncle, Barry, isn't just Gladys' night ex-husband. He's also R. Kelly's
00:24:20
manager. In 1994, when Aaliyah is only 14 years old, R. Kelly writes and produces her first album,
00:24:29
age ain't nothing but a number. Oh, no. The first single back and forth makes it onto the top five
00:24:35
on the Billboard Hot 100 charts and becomes the number one R&B song as well on the charts.
00:24:41
Aaliyah later says, I still remember how nervous I was right before back and forth came out. I kept
00:24:46
wondering if people would accept it. When it went gold, I had my answer and it was just such an
00:24:50
incredibly satisfying feeling. While the album is very successful, many people feel that the lyrics
00:24:57
are too suggestive for a teenage girl. Aaliyah later responds by saying, I didn't feel I was
00:25:02
too mature. I felt for my age. I was just right. Yeah, I was a little bit sexy, but that's just
00:25:08
me. And I'm not going to deny being a little bit sexy. I think it's a wonderful thing.
00:25:12
She was like 14 years old and, you know. Yeah. And it was the unchecked 90s, right? It was,
00:25:20
it was the time where everyone was just kind of, you know, putting stuff out. Totally. Totally.
00:25:25
Yeah. So we don't want to focus on R. Kelly because he fucking sucks. But I just wanted to go over some of this stuff. And it's pretty timely because, as you know, in September 2021 of this year, R. Kelly was found guilty of many charges, including sexual exploitation of a child, bribery, racketeering and sex trafficking. And he now faces life in prison.
00:25:48
So during his recent trial, prosecutors actually discuss R. Kelly's relationship with Aaliyah, acknowledging that she was one of his victims.
00:25:59
Oh, they said. Yeah. They said Aaliyah and R. Kelly met in 1992 when he was around 25 and she was 13.
00:26:07
Oh, no. Uh-huh. And R. Kelly saw how talented she was. So he started producing and writing the music for her.
00:26:14
And not long after, he also started, quote, engaging in sexual activity with her, which we all know now is called rape.
00:26:22
Yeah. You know, Aaliyah was far too young to consent, obviously. But R. Kelly kept engaging in this sexual activity for several years with the child.
00:26:34
In 1994, R. Kelly was on tour when Aaliyah called him and said she might be pregnant.
00:26:40
So he starts panicking, knowing that if she's pregnant with his kid, he could get charged with statutory rape.
00:26:46
He decides he has to fix the situation. He flies home to Chicago. He gets his accountant who testified in the trial saying that he needed to come up with a plan to marry Aaliyah in order to, quote, keep her from talking and, quote, keep him out of jail.
00:27:01
so because aliyah was only 15 at the time um r kelly's former tour manager demetrius smith
00:27:09
he bribes a chicago official into giving him fake documents lying about aliyah's age and they use
00:27:15
those documents to get a marriage license so basically the documents say she's 18 instead of
00:27:20
15 oh wow and so on august 31st r kelly and aliyah marry in a hotel room at the sheraton
00:27:27
near the Chicago airport. Then he fucking leaves the same day, gets on a plane and goes to his next
00:27:34
show. So Aaliyah goes home to Detroit to tell her parents what happened. And they're obviously very
00:27:43
upset about the whole thing. And then rumors start to spread about the marriage. In 1994,
00:27:49
Vibe magazine got a copy of the marriage certificate, which showed R. Kelly's real age of 27.
00:27:55
while Aaliyah's 15. And people are talking all about this. It's really scandalous, as it should
00:28:02
be. And R. Kelly and Aaliyah deny it was true. They just say they're really good friends.
00:28:07
The marriage is annulled pretty quickly. And there's a settlement entered where they wouldn't
00:28:13
make any public comments about each other. And they would no longer have any personal or
00:28:17
professional contact with each other. I think her parents were upset. Obviously, R. Kelly,
00:28:22
admitted to no liability or wrongdoing and Aaliyah and her parents agree not to sue him.
00:28:28
And Aaliyah's Uncle Barry, I guess, quits his job as R. Kelly's manager when he finds out about this.
00:28:34
In his letter of resignation, he tells R. Kelly that he should, quote, seek psychiatric help for a compulsion to pursue underage girls.
00:28:42
Wow. Yeah. So fine. Let's fucking move on from R. Kelly. so back to 1994 uh alia's first album age ain't nothing but a number has just been released it's
00:28:53
a massive hit um it's just a really unfortunate title that i know that that's that he's involved
00:29:00
in it it just like it's so indicative yeah yeah but he's on the cover of the album too
00:29:05
oh no it's like not all bad it's all bad so it's a massive hit that everyone now knows about alia
00:29:14
and love her. She's got this really cool style. She's got like baggy pants and oversized shirts.
00:29:19
She becomes like a major fashion icon. She kind of like Teen Vogue says she like sets the prototype
00:29:25
for that time period. And in 1996, Aaliyah's second album, One in a Million, is released.
00:29:32
This time she works with Timbaland and Missy Elliott and they end up making this incredible
00:29:38
team. They work together many times in the future because they are just such a tight team.
00:29:44
You want Missy Elliott to produce your album if you a young talent I mean that is she the move that move of getting out from under that shadow and then to move to Timbaland and Missy Elliott It just like but but also she really was um insanely talented insanely beautiful like just primed so perfectly for show business
00:30:08
Yeah. She definitely, you know, it's like such a corny thing to call it, but like that it,
00:30:12
you know, she had that thing where you just wanted to like watch her at the time, like in the late
00:30:17
nineties, I was into like emo and punk and hardcore. Like I was not, and I bought her album.
00:30:23
I never fucking bought albums. Like I didn't own anything. I had like a boombox CD player on my car seat beside me because I couldn't afford a fucking car stereo.
00:30:34
And I still have that album somewhere. Like it was so good. Yeah. She was just incredible.
00:30:41
So the whole album, One in a Million, ends up going multi-platinum and Aaliyah starts performing shows around the world.
00:30:47
And at this point, she's a major star. Alan Light of Spin Magazine says, quote, there's a lot of popular, interchangeable young pop and R&B
00:30:56
singers. And Aaliyah had an element of mystery and sophistication. Okay. And at the time,
00:31:02
Aaliyah is not only releasing hit records and performing shows. She's also at this time
00:31:06
attending the dance program at Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing Arts
00:31:11
and getting a 4.0 GPO. Oh, my God. GPA. It's not a GPO. Right. I don't know what that is.
00:31:18
Yeah. So she's fucking finishing high school at the same time. And she plans to attend college. I know. Amazing. In 1998, Aaliyah's song Are You That Somebody is featured on the Dr. Doolittle soundtrack and it becomes one of Aaliyah's most recognizable songs. She's nominated for her first Grammy. And in the same year, she performs Journey to the Past on the Anastasia soundtrack and is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song. Yeah. So that's 1998. Great year for her.
00:31:46
So next, Aaliyah goes into acting because she can fucking do anything. And so in 2000, she stars in Romeo Must Die, a modern day martial arts version of Romeo and Juliet.
00:31:58
Do you remember that movie? Yes, I do. I don't think I saw it, but I remember how popular it was and how much everyone talked about it.
00:32:06
Yeah. Aaliyah was Juliet and Jet Li was Romeo. The movie's a box office success.
00:32:11
And not only did she star in the movie, she also executive produced the whole soundtrack and performed the hit Try Again.
00:32:19
And once again, she's nominated for a Grammy. I love that fucking song. But wait a second.
00:32:26
Is she like 18 now? I mean, like she's. Yes. Jesus Christ. 2000. So she's maybe she's 20.
00:32:35
How old was I? She's 20 or 21. OK. Yeah. I mean, just doing her work. Yeah, I was starting my drinking career at 20 and 21.
00:32:44
Like, what are you talking about, Aaliyah? Okay. Aaliyah spends the rest of the year 2000 and the first part of 2001 recording a studio album and shooting the movie Queen of the Damned, which was a horror movie where she plays a vampire queen.
00:32:59
And she's often working all hours of the day, but her hard work pays off. In July 2001, she releases her self-titled album.
00:33:06
It sells over 2.4 million copies And the songs More Than A Woman and Rock the Boat
00:33:12
Are like at the top of the charts She also accepts more acting roles In movies like Matrix Reloaded
00:33:19
Which she had started shooting And also the movie Honey And at the time her love life's also going great
00:33:25
Which she fucking deserves She is dating co-founder of Rockefeller Records Damien Dash
00:33:30
They met in 2000 through his accountant And they became friends and then had we're dating but it was like kind of secretly dash said that they would quote be in a
00:33:41
room full of people talking to each other and it felt like everyone was listening but it would just
00:33:45
be us it would be like we're the only ones in the room so i think they were totally true love
00:33:50
true love okay so in mid-august 2001 plans to make a music video for rock the boat again
00:33:58
the production company scouts multiple beaches for locations and they settle on miami florida
00:34:05
and a Cabo Islands in the Bahamas. On the 22nd, Aaliyah and her team shoot underwater scenes in
00:34:12
Miami. And the next day, they take a chartered flight to the Bahamas. So Aaliyah is a nervous
00:34:17
flyer. She doesn't like to fly at all. And flying to the Bahamas scared her because it was a smaller,
00:34:23
like a little plane. It wasn't like a commercial flight. But she's talked into going. She initially
00:34:28
didn't even want to go shoot in the Bahamas at all. This team spends the 24th shooting in the
00:34:33
Bahamas. The next day, Aaliyah and her dancers filmed some scenes on a boat. Director Hype Williams
00:34:40
later says filming the music video was, quote, very beautiful for everyone. We all worked together
00:34:45
as a family. The 25th was one of the best I've ever had in the business. Everyone felt part of
00:34:50
something special, part of her song. I know it's a beautiful video. They put it out. With the boat
00:34:56
scenes out of the way, the teams actually had a schedule. So they weren't supposed to leave until
00:35:00
the following day, but they decide to get a flight out that day because they were done
00:35:06
and take the flight back to Miami. So a last minute flight is booked through a small charter
00:35:12
company named Blackhawk International Airways. This company only owns one plane and it's a small
00:35:18
twin engine Cessna that can only hold eight passengers. There are two other charter companies
00:35:25
with bigger planes, including the company that's been hired to fly them out as scheduled the next
00:35:30
stay, but they're not called for some reason. And Black Hawk is available. So they go with it.
00:35:36
Aaliyah and seven colleagues, including her hairdresser, a bodyguard and a record executive
00:35:41
show up to the small airport in the Bahamas. So what happens next is up for debate. But a typical
00:35:49
story that's accepted is that a fight broke out between the pilot and the passengers.
00:35:53
The pilot saying that the plane is already overweight just because of the luggage And so bringing eight more people on is going to be way past the limit And the bodyguard himself is like 300 pounds So it like they can have
00:36:05
that many people, but they all want to leave. Oh, so and also the plane holds eight people,
00:36:11
including the pilot. So the team allegedly is telling the pilot that they need it. They need
00:36:16
to go anyways and take them to Miami. Like there's this big like hours long argument about whether
00:36:20
we'll go or not. You know, there's a kind of like, do you know who I am? Do you know? Sure.
00:36:26
Type of shit happening. Probably. Time is money. We're busy. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah. That's my
00:36:31
guess. I mean, yeah, absolutely. Okay. So no matter what the version of events is true,
00:36:36
and I'll get into that a little bit later, Aaliyah and her seven colleagues eventually
00:36:40
board the plane and it takes off at around 6 45 PM, almost immediately after the plane takes off,
00:36:47
a witness is standing outside the terminal and sees everything. The plane takes off,
00:36:54
banks left, and then almost immediately it crashes to the ground and bursts into flames.
00:36:59
I know. The guy that witnessed Claude says, quote, it took less than a minute. It was a heavy
00:37:06
blow when they hit. A lot of the plane just basically disintegrated. So people rush to the scene and find a grisly sight.
00:37:15
Bodies have been thrown out of the plane and they're now laying across the field.
00:37:19
The wings had been destroyed upon impact and the engines and landing gear were torn off.
00:37:25
Leah, who's 22 years old, is found around 20 feet away from the plane. She's still strapped into her seat and her cause of death is found to be severe burns and head trauma.
00:37:35
Most of the remaining eight people, Anthony Dodd, Eric Foreman, Scott Galen, Keith Wallace, Gina Smith, Douglas Kratz, Christopher Maldonado and Luis Morales.
00:37:48
They're already dead, although there are still a few alive and suffering terribly, but everyone on the plane eventually dies.
00:37:57
Musicians and actors around the world are devastated to hear that Aaliyah's died in a tragic accident.
00:38:02
I remember I saw it flash on the screen. I was watching. I had to be watching MTV or something at my grandma's house.
00:38:08
And I thought it was like fake because they showed the numbers like 79 to 2001. And I was like, oh, what is it?
00:38:15
Her birthday? Like I had no fucking I was so whatever. No, no. I was just really, really shocked because I was such a huge fan.
00:38:22
And she had this she was so young and full of life. And well, and she was peaking.
00:38:27
She was like, I remember a queen that they damned how much people were talking about it.
00:38:31
And this was like pre-internet show business. Yeah. And there was the photos of Queen of the Damned.
00:38:38
Maybe there was the internet, but it was just like she was clearly just leveling up, leveling up so fast and killing it.
00:38:47
And yeah, it was so shocking. It was truly like the height of her career. And what a tragedy, like, you know, an avoidable tragedy to die in a plane crash.
00:38:56
It's so sad. And so they all share stories of meeting her. of course, talking about what a genuinely good person she was. Hype Williams says, quote,
00:39:06
she was a very happy person. She had nothing but love to give to others. And she selflessly
00:39:11
shared much of who she was. I don't know if anyone really understands that about her.
00:39:16
She had these incredible, graceful qualities as a person. Fans are inconsolable. Hundreds send
00:39:21
bouquets to the hotel where her family is staying while they await the return of her body. And a
00:39:26
private funeral is held on August 31st and fans line Park Avenue as Aaliyah's caskets carried to
00:39:33
St. Ignatius Loyola Roman Catholic Church. And it looks like Princess Diana's procession. It's just
00:39:39
like so many so many people strangers and fans just, you know, mourning her. Yeah, of course,
00:39:46
then, you know, it's August 31st, 2001. So that it quickly gets overshadowed, obviously,
00:39:53
by September 11th. An investigation into the crash is conducted. Officials find a multitude
00:39:59
of causes for the crash all preventable. So it's within 805 pounds without people even on it. And
00:40:05
then they add nine people. Yeah. So according to the investigation, quote, every nook and cranny
00:40:12
of that airplane was packed. According to one story, the baggage holders and pilot told passengers
00:40:18
the plane was super overweight, but the passengers said they didn't care. They demanded to be
00:40:23
flown home that day. But regardless of him telling all this, he still flew the plane out, you know.
00:40:30
So in addition to being overweight, the weight wasn't distributed correctly throughout the plane.
00:40:34
So basically, it mattered where the weight was placed. And so in this case, the plane was much
00:40:40
heavier in the back, which can cause a pilot to lose control. So it's not evenly distributed.
00:40:46
And there was another reason, the major reason why the plane crashed. It's the pilot. Not only was
00:40:52
Luis newly on probation for possession of crack cocaine, he had traces of cocaine and alcohol in
00:40:59
his system when the plane crashed. And worst of all, he wasn't certified to fly a Cessna plane.
00:41:07
Oh, no. I know. I never heard that. Yeah. In fact, he shouldn't have been a licensed pilot at all
00:41:15
because he overly exaggerated the number of test hours he'd flown in order to get his license.
00:41:20
He had actually been hired by the charter company Blackhawk International Airways just days before the fatal crash.
00:41:28
I know. So Blackhawk was to blame for the crash as well. They weren't even authorized to operate charter flights in the Bahamas.
00:41:37
Not to mention the fact that they've been cited by the FAA four times between 1997 and 2000.
00:41:44
Violations that included failure to follow drug testing rules and failure to perform proper maintenance.
00:41:50
While there are other causes of the crash none of them really explain how this flight came to fruition how everything about it was wrong and it totally could have been prevented A music journalist and author Kathy Iandoli
00:42:05
was one of those people who didn't understand how, like, completely how this could happen.
00:42:09
In August of 2021, this year, she released a book called Baby Girl, better known as Aaliyah. And in
00:42:16
the book, Kathy wrote that the events that took place that day never added up for her. She questioned
00:42:23
why Aaliyah, who was known to be an anxious flyer, why she would have been adamant about
00:42:28
getting on a plane that was being told to them over and over again was not safe to fly.
00:42:34
Like, why risk it when she knew she could fly out on the scheduled flight the next day?
00:42:39
It just didn't seem like something someone who's terrified of flying would have done.
00:42:43
So as Kathy was writing her book, she saw a video where a man from Abaco Islands, a man
00:42:50
named Kingsley Russell, whose family ran a taxi and hospitality business there. He said what he
00:42:57
saw leading up to the plane crash, and she ended up interviewing him for the book. He said that his
00:43:02
mom drove Aaliyah and some of her team members to the airport that day. And Kingsley, who was just
00:43:08
13 at the time, was riding along so he could help load the bags. And he said that during the ride,
00:43:13
Aaliyah kept telling her team that she didn't want to get on the plane. It was two hours late,
00:43:19
and she was stressed out and tired. And when they got to the airport and she saw how small the plane
00:43:24
was, she was like, I'm not getting on the plane. So after the pilot said that the plane was too
00:43:29
heavy for all the passengers, luggage and equipment, Aaliyah gets back in the car saying
00:43:33
she has a headache. And her team kept trying to talk the pilot into flying them home without
00:43:38
removing any of the weight. Like they also didn't want any of the baggage to come off.
00:43:42
Then a team member came to talk to Aaliyah. This is all allegedly based on what Kingsley said he
00:43:48
saw that day. A team member came to talk to Aaliyah while she was still in the car and saying
00:43:54
she didn't want to fly. And then Kingsley said he watched as the team member handed Aaliyah a pill
00:44:00
that knocked her out. And once the plane was ready to go, Aaliyah was basically asleep and carried
00:44:07
onto the plane. Never even knew she was boarding the plane, according to this statement. The story
00:44:15
makes sense to Kathy, then she says she does. It doesn't make her feel any better. Obviously,
00:44:19
it's a very sad story. And we also don't know if that pill was given, if it could have just been
00:44:23
an aspirin. She could have just fallen asleep. It's all one person's story. So it all could
00:44:28
also have not happened. But yeah, but we do know the basics, which is what happened with that plane
00:44:33
and the fact that it was overloaded. Exactly. So for the 20th anniversary of her death,
00:44:38
Aaliyah's estate made some of her music available on streaming services. Finally,
00:44:42
like you couldn't get any of her music before this. And this was this year. So fans were finally
00:44:47
given an opportunity to legally listen to her hits. And also a ton of artists, including Adele,
00:44:54
The Weeknd, Beyonce, Rihanna, and J. Cole say that she was a huge influence to them. And actually,
00:45:00
Drake, Aaliyah had the biggest influence on his career. And he even has a tattoo of her on his
00:45:04
back. Oh, wow. I know. No, I didn't. And 20 years later, people still mourn the loss of the
00:45:12
extremely talented and genuinely kind princess of R&B, Aaliyah. Wow. That is the tragic story
00:45:21
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first purchase at thirdlove.com. Goodbye. All right. Mine is going to be a very strange left
00:48:30
turn. When when Jay sent me the research for this, I was like, Oh, what's this story? Because
00:48:36
we picked the I picked this, you know, like five months ago. Yeah. And it kind of makes me laugh
00:48:44
that, you know, this year isn't getting any easier. I'll just say that the news isn't getting
00:48:49
any better. We're not seeing stuff around that are making that that's making us feel like things are
00:48:55
really evening out and everything's chill on the up and up. No, not in the least. So this story is
00:49:02
kind of just makes me laugh because it's just the strangest and funniest and oddest timing. But this
00:49:09
is the survival story of maro prosperi okay so i'm about to tell you about this crazy
00:49:18
just it's just kind of like a random survival story because i said to jay we were trying to
00:49:25
you know find different ones it's like looking for this you want this kind of story and this
00:49:29
kind of story and then i'm like but then again every once in a while it's nice to just take a
00:49:33
break and hear a story about somebody surviving oh my god you gotta like sometimes we have to have
00:49:38
these fucking stories that aren't doom and gloom that's just you know it's just a break it's a real
00:49:44
departure and this one this one really is so let me just read you some of these sources uh there's
00:49:50
a bbc news article that i will read the uh subject line of later by maro prosperi used a lot of
00:49:58
information from your favorite magazine men's journal um there was an article called crazy in
00:50:04
the desert by Hampton sides that had a ton of information. There's a website called Off Grid
00:50:11
and Patrick McCarthy wrote an article called Alone in the Sahara, the survival story of Mauro
00:50:17
Prosperi. Wikipedia, of course. And there's a Nerdist article by Matthew Hart that I won't read
00:50:25
the title of right now because it gives it gives it away even a little bit more. Okay. So we begin
00:50:31
on April 10th, 1994 in the blistering hot Moroccan Sahara Desert. No. Yes. And you know why we're here in the
00:50:41
Moroccan Sahara Desert? Because 80 runners are at the starting line in a place called
00:50:49
Fon Zegwid for the Marathon of the Sands. The French name of it is the Marathon des Sables.
00:50:59
this is a six day 155 mile foot race through the sahara desert oh how did you say it was
00:51:10
or did you say it uh reaches i didn't say but it sometimes reaches up to 115 degrees why
00:51:17
yeah yeah and you're there you're running an ultra marathon and you probably paid a lot of
00:51:23
money to get there. Oh, I'm sorry. I have so many issues with this. So, so, so many. So,
00:51:28
and it's described in your favorite magazine, men's journal as quote, the equivalent of running
00:51:35
six marathons back to back in a convection oven. Oh, so, or an air fryer. It's exactly.
00:51:44
Oh my God. You're a human marathoner tater tot, which is quite ironic considering how much your
00:51:53
average marathoner fear starches. Okay. So one of these participants, one of these 80 runners
00:52:00
is a 39 year old Italian man named Mauro Prosperi. He's back at home in Italy. He's a police officer,
00:52:07
but his passion is competing in extreme athletic events. So that includes several Olympic modern
00:52:15
pentathlon so the pentathlon is the one that has fencing 200 meter freestyle swim equestrian
00:52:23
show jumping and then a combination of pistol shooting and a 3200 meter cross-country run
00:52:30
wait i'm sorry could you do that again like i don't pentathlon in the olympics which maybe many
00:52:35
people don't know involves fencing a 200 meter freestyle swim some equestrian show jumping on a
00:52:45
horse then some pistol shooting and a 3200 meter cross country run i'm sorry those are all individual
00:52:52
things that you get good at throughout your lifetime but then you have to do them all at
00:52:55
fucking once you have to do them all at once at the olympics against a bunch of other people who
00:53:00
are like i also love to do this so out of my fucking way talk about showing off fuck annie
00:53:06
this is like let me show it's show off time it's next level show off time because also it's it's
00:53:13
the show off time for the rich because right between fencing and equestrian show jumping.
00:53:19
Yeah. These aren't just like your average kids from the town high school. You know what I mean?
00:53:25
It's like serious. Okay. So by 1994, Mauro has retired as a pentathlete. So he's competed for
00:53:32
a while. Okay. But when his friend tells him about this Moroccan ultramarathon, he cannot resist
00:53:38
signing up. Oh God. Okay. So let me explain how an ultra marathon, this one in particular,
00:53:44
um, gets broken down. There are six stages, one stage per day. So on day one, the runners,
00:53:53
they run 18 miles on day two they run 18 Okay 18 miles on day one 24 miles on day two Wait 18 Okay 18 miles on day one 24 miles on day two
00:54:05
19.6 miles on day three. Are you catching on that these are actually meters, but
00:54:12
the reason the miles are so weird is because I'm taking it back out of the metric system
00:54:18
for you as an American. Day three, 19.6 miles. day four the longest day you run 53.6 miles that's illegal day five is just a regular marathon
00:54:34
26.2 miles thank you and then on day six you just cool it down with a nice 4.8 mile run
00:54:41
in the desert r.i.p to those people's knees i just want to say and also just i think about that where
00:54:48
i'm like sometimes when i like have to go back to the bathroom to like go get a brush or yeah
00:54:53
And you're like, kind of walking a little bit like, oh, my hip or whatever. And it's like these people travel to Morocco to run hundreds of miles.
00:55:06
They went back and forth to your bathroom a billion times. So many times with like with the heater with five sweaters on.
00:55:13
Oh, I'm like sweating and smiling the whole time. They're like, I love it. I love it.
00:55:17
I love this. Let me pay you. I just let me for this. I love living this way. I love this.
00:55:22
high. So each runner carries their own pack of supplies. So they have food, clothing, sleeping
00:55:29
bag, a compass. But then aside from the checkpoints throughout each leg where the runners are given
00:55:35
water, they're basically self-sufficient. So Mauro trains for this race by running 25 miles a day.
00:55:44
So he does like a little less than a marathon a day while he's steadily decreasing his water
00:55:49
intake. So he gets his body trained to to basically be running while dehydrated to not die.
00:55:56
You have to train your body to not die. That's how you know not to do a fucking sport.
00:56:00
Yeah, that's that's how you have to go. Hey, have you ever considered being interested in video games?
00:56:05
Or are you just going to run, run, run away? You know, it's great books and reading. Hey,
00:56:12
you know what? Have you ever had a fucking twice baked potato? It will blow your mind
00:56:18
and make you want to lay down for a while. Maro's wife, Cynthia, is supportive of his athletic pursuits,
00:56:28
but she's very worried about him running in this ultra marathon in the desert. Oh,
00:56:33
we have a smart person entering the building. Finally, someone shows up with a little bit of reason.
00:56:38
The elements are so tough on runners that every participant must sign paperwork that designates where to send the body.
00:56:45
If they don't make it out of life. That's right. You have to get real real at the beginning of this ultra marathon.
00:56:51
You don't have to do that when you're about to eat a twice baked potato. No, you don't.
00:56:55
Although you do have to chew and swallow to at least 35 times. That's the old big twice baked rule.
00:57:03
OK, so since Zia worries that if this happens, she's going to be left raising their three
00:57:09
kids who are all under the age of eight at this time. That's irresponsible of him.
00:57:14
I don't like that. When people make decisions, like when people are like parents of young kids and they make decisions that are like perilous to them.
00:57:22
But let me give let me tell you what Morrow told his wife to assure to reassure her.
00:57:28
He said he'll be fine. The worst that's going to happen is he's going to get a little bit sunburned.
00:57:34
So they're perfect. Oh, all right. Bye, husband. So now we're back to the race. Starting gun sound effect.
00:57:42
And they're off. the ultra marathon has begun it's day one um morrow is immediately taken with the beauty of
00:57:50
the desert so boom he's off and he's like this is incredible so yeah there is this thing about it
00:57:56
that i think is really amazing and that i would really i think would be an amazing thing to
00:58:01
experience which is you're just doing a thing most human beings can't do sure so there is that kind of
00:58:06
like you're getting your runners high but then you're also like you know you're on like you're
00:58:12
On a screensaver. That's my screensaver. It's like the desert with the dunes and the little patterns.
00:58:18
So you're saying summer 2022, Karen Kilgariff is going to run this. I'm saying 58 miles in one day is not a big deal if you stay positive.
00:58:28
If I stop eating twice baked potatoes now, how many months will it take me? Okay, so he's loving it.
00:58:37
He's bewitched by what he sees around him. He says it gorgeous. Also, his training is paying off because he maintains a very steady pace through the first three legs of this race.
00:58:47
And he ends up being in seventh place overall out of, I think, 80 runners. So he's he's doing good.
00:58:55
So the final checkpoint hits and then you go and you set up your tent and you get ready to just like drink a bunch of water.
00:59:02
And I'm sure some like some weird gel out of a packet. Right. A protein gel. some kind of a gel, some kind of an IV.
00:59:12
You look like you were going to say smoke a fatty the way you had. No, that was the that's a protein pack.
00:59:17
But, you know, that might be an option, too. So Morrow comes in. He sets up his tent.
00:59:22
He hangs his Italian flag on his tent. And that way, the other Italian racers, when they get to the campsite, they can find him.
00:59:29
Then they all hang together. And it's like the countrymen have a have a bonding time discussing their day and a little camaraderie.
00:59:38
and they smoking a fatty and talking about how afraid of carbs they are so okay so they do that
00:59:45
now it's the fourth day and it's the day that's the most daunting leg of the journey the 53.6 mile
00:59:52
day fuck uh so they already been running this whole time and now it it this day maro starts off with a bang By the early afternoon he increased his pace significantly and he jumped up to fourth place overall
01:00:05
So he's doing really good in an ultra fucking marathon, like killing it. But about 20 miles into the day, which is around one o'clock in the afternoon, temperatures begin to rise and they hit 115.
01:00:22
Oh, fuck that shit. remember last summer when it hit 115 degrees was it last summer this past summer i think it's this
01:00:30
past summer it was like the hottest in fucking history or whatever and we it was the day it was
01:00:35
july and it was scotty landis's birthday and we had a like covid birthday where there was only
01:00:42
seven of us we'd all had tests and we were all clear and we're all just standing in my pool
01:00:48
And so your body neck down was like pool temperature. And your head was blazing hot and it was windy.
01:00:56
Hot head. Everybody had hot head. It was hard to be in a pool. And this guy is running the long day of the ultra marathon in the same weather.
01:01:07
It's amazing. Yeah. So then, but he's doing fine. He's in fourth place. He stops at the third checkpoint for the day to get his water and to wrap a blister.
01:01:16
And then he takes back off. And 15 minutes into his continued run, the rise in heated surface air causes the winds to kick up.
01:01:26
And Morrow can start to feel the sand whipping at his face. And soon the winds get stronger and the sand dunes begin to lift into the air.
01:01:35
What? And that's right. It's a sandstorm that kicks up. Yes. No. Yes. So prior to the race, all runners were instructed to stop running and stay where they were if a sandstorm starts.
01:01:48
But Mauro's first thought is the only way to avoid being buried by the sand is to keep moving through it.
01:01:54
Also, he doesn't want to lose his place because he's in fourth place. Okay, dude.
01:02:00
So he just keeps running through a sandstorm. The winds grow stronger. Few runners Mauro can see around him.
01:02:09
They disappear. And basically, the air is now so thick with sand that he cannot see it all.
01:02:16
He thinks he's still on the trail and he just keeps running. Oh, no. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to him, the rest of the runners have all listened to the rules.
01:02:26
They have stayed put. They wrap themselves in their sleeping bags along the trail, do their best to protect themselves.
01:02:32
Some get bloody noses. Some get respiratory tract abrasions from the sand being nailed.
01:02:37
yeah it's pretty serious and the race staff actually decides to officially stop the race
01:02:43
for the day saying that they can resume from where they're all currently at the next day
01:02:49
with the sandstorm in full force morrow tries to keep going he's wrapped his head in like a shirt
01:02:58
to protect it from the sand he said it feels like a storm of needles hitting his face um and finally
01:03:05
he can go no further. So he crouches beneath a small bush for shelter and he waits for the storm
01:03:10
to pass. Guess how long it takes for the storm to pass? No. Eight hours. No. And you'd go out of
01:03:19
your mind from the sound and the fury and the small helpless bush that's like, oh, can I hide
01:03:28
under you? You're trying to hide under me. But I mean, horrifying. So now it's completely dark
01:03:34
and Morrow has not only lost sight of the trail, but of all his fellow competitors.
01:03:39
So he doesn't know where the fuck he is. No. He's exhausted. He spends the night sleeping out on the dunes.
01:03:45
He knows he's lost his fourth place standing. That's his concern. He's an ultra marathoner.
01:03:52
He's not fucking around. No, he's not. He's not there to make friends with other Italians.
01:03:57
He can do that back home. He wants to win this fucking thing. He plans on getting up and just continuing the race the next morning, hoping that at least he'll finish to the best of his ability.
01:04:07
So, yes, he's not going to get, you know, fourth place, but he can finish. So when he awakes the next morning, he finds the landscape is totally transformed.
01:04:17
He has no idea where he is and he is completely lost. Shit. OK, so we'll talk about Mauro Prosperi a little bit.
01:04:25
He was born on July 13th, 1955 in Rome, Italy. Roma. Roma. A bundanza. He's a natural athlete.
01:04:35
In 1973, he joins the Italian police force and he works in crowd control, which he finds boring.
01:04:43
The real reason that he joined a police force is because the very convenient for him perk,
01:04:49
Italy's police federation offers a generous subsidy for those training to be national caliber athletes.
01:04:57
What? So essentially, if you sign up to be a cop in Italy, but you're also like an ultra marathoner or a pentathlete like Mauro is, you get paid to do that.
01:05:07
So you can do both. Right. Because they want that. They only want the fittest. Sure. On their police squad.
01:05:14
Okay, so in the 1980s, while competing at a pre-Olympic pentathlon event, Morrow meets an English and Russian language translator named Cinzia Pagliara. Cinzia is drawn towards Morrow's positive attitude, his enthusiasm for taking on challenges, and his competitive drive. And he's also just a straight up hot Italian.
01:05:36
Is he? Oh, yeah. He has those like Italian eyebrows that kind of they both go up like like kind of like two little canoes that are tipped back that make him look really empathetic and like sweet and caring.
01:05:53
He's one of those. The two get married within six months of meeting and they settle in I want to say Acci Trezza Italy which is a Sicilian fishing village outside of the city of Catania
01:06:07
Can I go there, please? I know, for real. And then they have three kids. So Mauro continues competing in pentathlons for as long as he can and he retires when he reaches his late 30s, but he never loses his competitive edge.
01:06:21
So when his friend and fellow athlete Giovanni Manzo talks about the 155 mile ultramarathon through the desert that he plans on running, Mauro immediately wants to sign up alongside him.
01:06:34
And he does. So Giovanni, this same man, is the first one to realize Mauro is missing when he makes his way to the fourth and final checkpoint on the evening of April 14th.
01:06:45
And he sees that Mauro, who should have beaten him by several hours, is nowhere to be found.
01:06:51
So he reports this to the race staff and they're confident that Morrow couldn't have strayed far.
01:06:56
And they promised they're going to send out a search team the following morning.
01:07:00
So when Morrow awakes to a wildly different desert landscape on the morning of April 15th, he's not in any way discouraged.
01:07:10
He's mostly upset about losing his standing in the race. Guy. Yes. Just such a bro and such a dude.
01:07:17
he but he figures since he has his map and his compass that he's sure to find his way back to
01:07:23
the trail or he also thinks he's going to bump into another runner along the way at some point
01:07:29
and then once he does he can team up with that person and they can finish together so with that
01:07:35
in mind Morrow starts running again wow so he doesn't know where he is but he just starts running
01:07:41
And here I go. It's like the good faith. He makes his way through the desert, climbing up the larger dunes he passes to try to get a better view of what lies ahead. But he doesn't see any signs of the next checkpoint or of any of the other runners. And this goes on for four hours until reality finally sets in. Morrow is lost.
01:08:03
So meanwhile, the search party takes to the surrounding desert by land in a fleet of Land Rovers and by air in one lightweight aircraft.
01:08:11
They look all morning. They see no trace of Morrow anywhere. The race staff realizes that based on their water rationing system, Morrow has at most two liters of water on him, which is barely enough to sustain him for the rest of the day in this triple digit heat.
01:08:29
so with this in mind they commissioned a moroccan police helicopter to also help them search
01:08:35
so unaware of any of that moroccan drama morrow decides he's gonna stop running and just walk for
01:08:44
a while okay he's just still fucking going for it for hours um he figures there's no point in
01:08:51
expending all that energy when he doesn't even know which direction he should be headed
01:08:55
So as a precaution, and this gets a little bit gross, but also it's this, it's what we all expect.
01:09:03
He urinates into his empty water bottle because he knows that eventually it's going to get serious with him and water.
01:09:14
He's a smart person. He's got enough food on him to last a few days, but without knowing when he'll hit his next checkpoint,
01:09:22
water could be virtually impossible for him to come by he is in the saharan desert
01:09:28
still he figures that even if he can't find his way back to the trail the ray staff will surely
01:09:35
come looking for him soon he just needs to maintain and keep going no don't go you're
01:09:41
going the wrong way yeah he just needs he's just like you know what i just got to do that thing
01:09:46
that I love, which is to run in the blazing heat. Marl works with the desert conditions.
01:09:53
Basically, he's now only walking during the early mornings and then again in the evenings when the
01:09:59
temperatures are at their coolest. He wears two hats. He covers his skin with long sleeves.
01:10:04
And when the sun's beating down hard on him, protecting his skin. During the hottest part
01:10:09
of the day, he rests underneath anything in any shade that he can find. This goes on for two days.
01:10:15
No. Before Morrow hears another sign of life on the evening of April 16th, he looks up to see a helicopter flying right toward him. It's the Moroccan police helicopter that's on loan for the search of Morrow. And so he finally is like, thank God I knew it. I'd be rescued.
01:10:35
as the helicopter approaches it's so low in the sky morrow will later say that he could actually
01:10:42
see the pilot's helmet it was that like kind of close to him yeah so he takes out this pen-sized
01:10:49
emergency flare out of his pack that basically the race provided for all the racers uh-huh um
01:10:55
and he launches it but the flare is so small that the pilot can't see it oh no please the pilot flies
01:11:03
right past totally unaware that Morrow is directly beneath him and as disappointing as a moment as
01:11:10
this is Morrow does not give up hope he just keeps going sure that someone will find him eventually
01:11:17
so on the morning of the third day of being lost which is I think the fifth uh no I think it's
01:11:26
the seventh day overall he's just walking in the desert and then he spots the outline of a
01:11:33
building off in the distance. He had stored it as fast as he can, hoping that someone might be inside that can help
01:11:40
him. But when he gets to it, he sees that it's, it's a building called a Maribout, which is
01:11:45
a small Muslim shrine. And they're common throughout the desert, uh, where Bedouins, um, stop and rest.
01:11:53
The Bedouins are the nomadic Arab people of the Sahara. So this is what it looks like.
01:12:00
See this. Oh, a little dwelling. A little dwelling out of the sun. And basically, he discovers that inside this particular Maribout, it's actually more of a mausoleum.
01:12:15
There's no one alive here. There is a deceased holy man that's buried in one of the walls.
01:12:20
And because of the sandstorm, this building has basically been filled with sand.
01:12:27
So the floor is up close to the ceiling. Oh, no. Yeah. So Morrow can reach the ceiling from a standing position.
01:12:35
And then up in the rafters, he finds a bird's nest with three eggs inside. Dude, you lucked out. He lucked out the poor bird to the birds like, what could happen up here?
01:12:46
So he eats these eggs for sustenance and for the for the hydration, which also allows him to ration some of the food that he has left.
01:12:58
Then he goes outside and he hangs his Italian flag from a wooden post on the building, hoping that if any like helicopters, anyone flies over again, they'll spot it and come look for him there.
01:13:10
He spends the rest of the day inside the Maribout shielding himself from the sun.
01:13:14
It must have felt so good in there. Totally. So for the next three days, Marl waits for rescue inside the Maribout.
01:13:24
So, again, it's a bit of a bummer. He has to use his own urine and a small portable stove to cook his dehydrated food rations.
01:13:34
I mean, it's, you know, desperate times. Yeah. When those run out, he turns to the small colony of bats that live in the tower of the Maribout.
01:13:45
Oh, no. Yes. So he needs the moisture that the bats have. So he decides not to cook them at all.
01:13:52
instead he rings their head off and he uses a knife to stir up the insides and he sucks the
01:13:59
bats dry turn about is fair play dracula who's the who's the vampire now motherfucker oh can you
01:14:11
oh yes he's he he he scrambled them he scrambled them and then kept them again like a
01:14:19
gel packet but it's a bat really intense i don't want that but would you want it more or less what's
01:14:28
your pick dehydrated food that you boiled in your own pee or a bat scramble remember it's 115 degrees
01:14:37
outside remember i like staying home and reading remember you're chafed and this is a serious
01:14:42
situation oh my god your nips can you imagine oh god your motherfucking nips so marl wakes up on
01:14:52
the fourth day at the shrine to an airplane flying overhead he rushes outside and he takes everything
01:14:58
in his backpack that can catch on fire and he sets it on fire he's like i'm fucking done dude he's
01:15:04
like i'm done with this shit i had too many bats i'm filled with i'm filled with inspiration to get
01:15:11
out of here. He also writes SOS in the sand beside the smoke signal hoping to catch the plane's attention.
01:15:17
Yeah. But just as the smoke starts to build, the desert winds kick up and another
01:15:23
sandstorm rolls in. Yes. This is why. Just go running in downtown like fucking Rhode Island or something.
01:15:31
Why do you have to go to the most dangerous spot on Earth? Yeah. Some people. So all of Morrow's distress
01:15:39
signals are blown away and And so he goes back inside to shield himself from another raging sandstorm.
01:15:45
Great. And once again, the airplane passes by without seeing Mara. So with another chance of rescue passing him by, he finally falls into a deep state of despair.
01:15:57
Yeah. The reality sets in that he will most likely die in this desert. He considers his last remaining options, either to die a slow, painful death by dehydration or to take his own life.
01:16:08
And he figures if he dies at the Maribout, there's a better chance of authorities finding his body more quickly.
01:16:18
And this is what he wants, because then his wife and kids will get his police pension.
01:16:23
But if he's just merely declared missing, his family will have to wait 10 years to receive any benefits.
01:16:30
God, what an awful choice. Awful choice. So he grabs a piece of charcoal from his failed smoke signal bonfire and he writes a note to his wife and then he takes his knife and he cuts his wrist.
01:16:44
But to his surprise, when he wakes up the next morning, he's still alive because his body is so dehydrated that his blood is too thick and it clotted to bleed out.
01:16:56
Oh, my fucking God. God. And in discovering this, Morrow is so elated that he's basically it's like he's beaten death and been given this chance that he takes it as a sign that is not his time to die.
01:17:13
He's re-energized and he rededicates himself to getting out of this desert one way or another.
01:17:19
Oh, my God. Right. Yes. So he remembers the race staff saying that the race would end in a mountainous village called Zagora.
01:17:28
So he scans the horizon and he sees that there's a mountain range, you know, off in the distance, basically.
01:17:36
So on the morning of April 21st, he gathers what little belongings he has left and he makes his way toward those mountains.
01:17:44
As he crosses the endless sands, he becomes tuned into his surroundings. So he starts to notice that there is like animal life around him once he starts paying attention So there beetles there snakes he so that what he starts eating because he like he paying attention He like basically desperate Yeah But he also basically he later describes it as becoming one with his surroundings and becoming like of the desert to survive He knew that what he had to do to survive
01:18:16
He says, The sound of mice running over the sand at night. Every thought, every movement of my body was devoted to surviving.
01:18:54
So along the way, Morrow drops little items that are no longer of use to him as clues to his whereabouts.
01:19:02
So that if there are any searchers still looking for him, they might be able to find him.
01:19:07
So he leaves behind a T-shirt, toothpaste, a shoelace, and more. He's just littering a trail of litter through the beautiful desert, hoping that the search party will find it.
01:19:18
Oh, no. So two days after Maro's disappearance on the 16th, his wife, Cinzia, learns about her husband having strayed from the race trail by reading about it in an Italian newspaper.
01:19:31
So no one from the race contacted her. so the next day her brother Fabio flies out to Morocco
01:19:40
to help search for his brother-in-law yeah and because Mauro is a police officer
01:19:46
and a national athlete for Italy Roman officials and officials from Italy's embassy in Morocco
01:19:52
now join the search as well alright they find small traces of Mauro in the desert a sock
01:19:58
here a power bar wrapper there and they even find that Maribout where Mauro was staying
01:20:04
complete with his Italian flag waving on the top of the building. But try as they might, they cannot find Morrow himself.
01:20:11
On April 22nd, Morrow does the thing that we've been waiting for him to do since this
01:20:16
story began. He comes upon an oasis. I thought you were going to tell me he takes out his cell phone and calls 911.
01:20:25
He's like, I finally, I'm going to break. I'm going to call it. No. He finds an oasis.
01:20:32
An oasis. a cartoon desert experience yes this oasis is not like the ones in the movies though
01:20:39
it's not super lush it's actually just kind of a big puddle of water but Mauro is so overcome with gratitude
01:20:46
he throws himself into it as soon as he sees it yeah he tries to drink the water
01:20:51
but his throat is so swollen from dehydration he can barely get anything down without vomiting
01:20:57
oh my god yep so over time he manages to take slow small sips every 10 minutes. He basically spends the day laying in the puddle drinking as
01:21:08
much water as he can. Here's what he didn't consider. That puddle was 80% camel spit.
01:21:15
There's just no way it wasn't. It's a spittoon. It's disgusting. We did that once, you know,
01:21:23
there was a creek behind our house that basically linked my aunt Jean's house to our house.
01:21:27
and we uh you know it would rain and get wider and smaller but it was really tiny yeah yeah and
01:21:35
then one time we came upon this widened out section of it and we were like oh my god it's
01:21:41
like a swimming hole and we all jumped in and went swimming oh no and uh this was before stand
01:21:47
by me we didn't think about leeches yeah there weren't leeches in it thank god that night we
01:21:53
were eating dinner at my aunt Jean's house and we were so excited and we told we told and my
01:21:57
cousin's team he couldn't stop laughing and he goes that was completely cow spit and cow pee that
01:22:03
you that you swam in look at Stevie man he's always he's he's the worst oh but he's right
01:22:09
how what did they just pick a place and do it I don't get it well yeah or either that or they just
01:22:17
do it and then it goes downstream like it's not a it's not a rushing body of water it was our
01:22:22
little tiny creek you know um that a lot of a lot of livestock also enjoyed basically we didn't
01:22:32
really think about that part anyway but maro would not care because at this point he's experienced
01:22:37
way worse than just a little camel spit gave me some camel spit he said so the next day is april
01:22:42
23rd and maro fills his bottles with the puddle water so he's done with his own pee he's like i
01:22:48
I have fresh water now. Fuck you. And he continues his trek toward the mountains.
01:22:54
But then in the middle of his path, he spots fresh animal dung. So next to the dung, he sees small human footprints.
01:23:02
And he excitedly runs and follows the footprints over a dune to find a young nomad girl with a small herd of goats.
01:23:12
Yes. She's the first human being he's seen in nine days. It's been nine days. It's been nine days lost and wandering in the desert.
01:23:22
Amazed and relieved, Maro rushes toward the girl, but his face is sunken. He's covered in dirt and he's lost so much weight.
01:23:30
He looks like a skeleton. So the girl screams and runs away. Yeah, she does. Good girl.
01:23:35
Good girl. Good girl. He follows her all the way to her encampment beneath a few scattered trees.
01:23:41
And there, Morrow meets the Turegs, a nomadic Saharan tribe, another nomadic Saharan tribe.
01:23:48
The men of the tribe are out hunting. So the women tend to Morrow having him rest beneath the shade and feeding him mint tea and goat milk It was so delicious Oh my God The best So when the men of the tribe get back they take Morrow to the nearest village
01:24:07
which is a several hour camel ride away. Wow. He would have never made it if not for this, if he hadn't happened upon this place.
01:24:15
Yep. Yes. I mean, that's the kind of romantic, beautiful thing that you see in movies all the time is
01:24:21
people lost in the desert and whatever. And then Bedouins, or in this case, the Toregs,
01:24:27
are the ones that save people because they're the ones that actually know how to live in the desert
01:24:32
correctly. So basically the men of the Toreg tribe, they're worried he might be a criminal.
01:24:37
So they turn him over to the military police when they get to that village. The police hold him,
01:24:43
they blindfold him in case he's a Moroccan spy. But when they question him, he explains that he's
01:24:50
an Italian police officer. And then when he says his name, the police officers there recognize his
01:24:56
name from the missing persons reports that have been sent out for the past nine days from the
01:25:02
marathon. Wow. So with Morrow's identity confirmed, the officer questioning him says,
01:25:07
welcome to Algeria, sir. We have received a report about you from the Moroccan authorities.
01:25:13
We must get you to the infirmary straight away. Yeah, you do. Yeah. So on April 24th, 1994,
01:25:20
Mauro Prosperi is finally strong enough to call his wife. You know he was scared shitless.
01:25:27
It's evening. She just puts the kids to bed. She picks up the phone and she hears her husband say,
01:25:34
Cinzia, it's me. Did you have a funeral for me yet? Oh, cold, bro. So he tells his wife he's alive.
01:25:42
He's being treated at the hospital in Tindof, Algeria. So when he was thrown off course, he he wound up running and walking about 180 miles out of the way.
01:25:55
He went east and south. He went over the mountains. He actually crossed the border, the Morocco, Algeria border, and he went 25 miles into Algeria.
01:26:07
He was so he was so off course. So I can show you this little map, but it's it's pretty funny.
01:26:13
The line of the actual race is like this. And he did this thing where he did this huge, insane loop and ended up like way over here.
01:26:23
Like nowhere near. So he's a great athlete, but he's not great with directions. He's not great with being in a sandstorm and going, you know what?
01:26:31
I'm not going to try to power through this one situation. So when Mauro was first admitted to the hospital, he'd lost 33 pounds.
01:26:40
Whoa. in nine days, which is 20% of his original body weight. His eyes and his liver are badly damaged.
01:26:48
Yeah. And he can only take liquids. He's given 16 liters of intravenous fluids. His skin is
01:26:55
weathered to a leathery texture that he compares to that of a tortoise. But he tells his wife,
01:27:02
don't worry, I'm still beautiful. ah yeah there's italians italians oh wait and he is look at that picture okay
01:27:11
that's him in the middle in the white shirt oh yeah very handsome so marl spent seven days in
01:27:18
the hospital in algeria before being flown back to italy when he arrives at home he's met with a
01:27:23
hero's welcome complete with applauding crowds photos with italian dignitaries media interviews
01:27:30
and his face plastered all over the papers. The Italian news outlets dub Morrow the Robinson Crusoe of the Sahara.
01:27:38
I don't know. Robinson Crusoe had a plan. Yeah. Yeah. This guy just kind of made the best of a really awful fucking situation.
01:27:48
Morrow's survival is nothing short of a miracle, and it leads some people to doubt it.
01:27:54
Some journalists consult sports physiologists about Morrow's story, And many of them believe that it would have been physically impossible for him to survive as long as he did if his journey truly unfolded the way he described it.
01:28:08
According to these physiologists, the dehydration alone would have led to his demise.
01:28:14
Worried about bad publicity for the Marathon Disable, founder Patrick Bauer jumps on the bandwagon and accuses Morrow of making the story up or of at least exaggerating it for publicity and personal gain.
01:28:27
He theorizes Morrow and his wife teamed up to concoct some big dramatic story so that they could write a book or make a movie about his alleged survival.
01:28:37
Morrow, however, fights back. He says, quote, if that was the case, then you'd never met two people who are more stupid than we are.
01:28:45
We never got any money for this. At one point, Morrow even considers suing Patrick for defamation and for poorly marking the marathon trail.
01:28:56
But he never follows through with that, citing that his beef is personal rather than legal.
01:29:03
Morrow believes that Patrick, a lover of the desert himself, who created this marathon after his own walking journey through the Sahara, is jealous of Morrow's tremendous story.
01:29:13
To this day, Patrick and Morrow remain at odds, but the main points of Morrow's story have never veered from the original recounting.
01:29:22
And later, clues were found pointing to the validity of Morrow's story. Like when a Roman film crew retraced Morrow's steps for a 1995 film and found the Maribout shrine, as he described, complete with leftover bat skeletons in it.
01:29:38
Not to mention the fact that Morrow was like dangerously ill when he was, um, he was taken to the Algerian hospital.
01:29:48
So the idea that he would do that and then damage his eyes and liver for some possible future story makes truly no sense whatsoever It takes Morrow two years before he fully recovered from his time wandering in the desert But when he does he left with a passionate longing to return
01:30:08
What? Yes, listen to this shit. He starts training for that marathon again as soon as he can.
01:30:16
And he returns and finishes the race in 1998. Oh, my God. Yeah. He ends up running the Marathon Disable six times after his disappearance in 1994.
01:30:32
And in 2001, he actually places 13th. Okay. Sadly, his love of risky endurance races leads to him and his wife getting a divorce.
01:30:42
It's an amicable one, but she just doesn't have the wherewithal to stand by him while he continues to put his life on the line.
01:30:49
Morrow has completed eight desert marathons and is still alive today at 66 years old.
01:30:56
Wow. And his survival story has been featured on National Geographic Channel's Expedition to the Edge, Sahara Nightmare, the Netflix series Losers, and a feature in Discovery Channel's six-part series Bear Grylls Escape from Hell.
01:31:11
and then he and his wife his ex-wife also partnered up to write a book in may of 2020
01:31:18
and it's called those 10 days beyond life wow um and in that so the bbc article i told you i was
01:31:25
going to tell you the name of yeah it was called how i drank urine and bat blood to survive
01:31:29
i'm glad you didn't tell me otherwise spoiler alert that was a huge a huge drinking urine
01:31:35
spoiler alert but in in that article he actually says these days the marathon disabled is a very
01:31:43
different experience with up to 1300 participants so when he first ran it it had 80 people he said
01:31:50
with up to 1300 participants it's like a giant snake you couldn't get lost if you tried
01:31:56
and that is the remarkable saharan desert survival story of maro prosperi wow Oh, I've never heard of it.
01:32:06
That's bananas. It's it's super crazy. And it's it's, you know, it's just a fun.
01:32:13
It's just a little fun excursion. Yeah. And the holidays. Let's have a nice little.
01:32:19
It's the holidays. And also, you know, what would you do? Like, what would you do?
01:32:23
What would I do? I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't. Hell yes. Ever do it. I'd love to go to Morocco.
01:32:29
I would love to see like do a one day tour. Sure. Oh, I'd love to go to Morocco in the winter or like when the sun, I don't know.
01:32:39
I would need a next level sunblock, but it's crazy. My both my parents have run marathons before my brother, I think, seven and a half.
01:32:47
It's like a thing, you know, that you're supposed to do in my family. You know, I have like like my uncle was a trail runner who like wrote books about it and shit.
01:32:55
But like I have no fucking interest. My dad ran a bunch of marathons. Really? Oh, yeah. In the in like 70s, 80s, my dad was all about jogging and ran marathons.
01:33:08
But I and he'd always be like, hey, like while he was training, he always wanted me to like ride my bike with them or try to do it with them.
01:33:14
And I was just like, that's a nightmare. I mean, I did it as my mom and I used to run together all the time.
01:33:20
But I was a little skinny kid. Like I don't who had energy. I don't have I don't do that anymore.
01:33:26
well you could if you just wanted to if you just applied yourself um all right well that was a great we did it we did it we did it guys yeah thanks for being here
01:33:42
with us in this endurance race of a podcast just hours and hours of podcasting you have to get
01:33:49
through while you drink your own urine and eat bats if you're not drinking your own urine eating
01:33:54
bats while you listen to this podcast. You're doing it wrong. What are you doing? Stay sexy
01:34:02
and don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? This has been an exactly right production. Our producer is Hannah Kyle Crichton. Associate
01:34:15
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