Ridiculous CrimeWant To Get Away Week: Come Aboard the Sex Raft!
Want to get away from it all? What if you could climb aboard a homemade raft, and join a group of young and sexy strangers, and together you all drift across the Atlantic, as a Svengaliesque professor stirs up sexual chaos and documents it all for his study of human beings. Sound fun? Or does it sound... ridiculous?!
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Elizabeth Zerruh, my heart cannot keep those windows shuts.
They're so bad at this whole security.
Yeah, we just slid it open this time. I didn't even have to do a screwdriver.
Nothing, nothing, just they leave the windows open. All this equipment in here, which we could very easily paup.
We could howk this? Maybe we should we give at least a couple of cars out of this.
Yeah, Mama needs some underpants next time.
I think the challenges we go from underneath from the basement.
Oh yeah, we're getting that empty lot next.
Door to dig a hole. Let's do it, so Elizabeth, for our want to Get Away Week, Yeah, I wanted to take a listen back to one of our listener favorites. It's an episode folks often bring up in emails. Now, you know how I love to read the news, terrible habit, right, But also you know how I don't like Elon Musk, so it makes it very difficult for me these days to enjoy the news because he's everywhere. The dude is in every section of the paper except for the sports section.
Give it time.
Anyway, I saw this new story BYuT Elon Musk. This one gave me a grin. Okay, it's about his plans to colonize Mars, now, Elizabeth, would you believe it? Elon's Mars Adventures may have a sex problem. Oh surprise, Yeah, not that kind you didn't expect now, as in, like, our human bodies were evolved and designed to operate on Earth, and it may be extra difficult to make new Earthlings if you're trying to do it on Mars.
Oh I thought that like all the candidates to go or like sex offenders.
You're not sending a certain administration to Mars, Elizabeth. It turns out that our physiology, particularly male physiology, may not be cut out for frolican and forn cating on Mars. We may be able to get there, but not be able to get it up.
Interesting, and he's really concerned about Oh, that's growing populations and such.
Oh my godness. Yeah, he's all into baby making and population growth. But that's all in theory. Beats the road, so to speak. Mars ain't the same, misserves when it comes to making whoopee like okay. Twenty twenty three, Kelly Wienersmith and her husband Zach Wienersmith. Their names the Wienersmith They co wrote a book called A City on Mars and the waiter Smiths. They criticized Elon and other billionaires like him. To make their point, the wiener Smiths they focus on possible penis problems for men of Mark because it turns out men aren't for Mars, They're from Earth. Right as the Wienersmith's put it quote, these billionaires think it's an engineering problem. They think that if they get a rocket that's big enough, biology will take care of itself. But it won't, oh snarky. So once people are walking around on the surface of Mars, they experienced only thirty eight percent of the gravity they feel back on Earth. That's bad news for boners.
Oh oh, due to low.
Blood flow in low G. Like if you thought low T was an issue, wait till you're dealing with low G.
Wait. So when you're lighter because there's less gravity, you also have lower blood press various.
We're used to pumping at certain amounts. So they're just not quite sure what the low gravity environment could do for say, the movement of sperm and egg. Also, if Mars colonists are serious, like I think they'll probably want to load up a bunch of little blue pills just to keep things flowing.
It's really hot there.
Oh yeah, like for embryo like that, it's like for puberty, musco skeletal growth like this all relies on gravity, and you get that much less gravity.
Everyone's just jubbling and boneless.
Exactly, just soft bodied.
Bone, boneless wings up there.
So obviously this is some stuff that Elon Musk is not fully considered his boneless future. So I was reading about all this Mars Musk sex stuff, and it reminded me of this story I told you a while back about a similarly ill fated voyage into the unknown. Only this is a misadventure, was designed to be sexy. Elizabeth, you remember the voyage of Oh.
My gosh, that's right. Both grown men who consider themselves scientists but are really like thirteen year old boys.
Yes, they make exactly and they're like, we'll get some ladies and go over to this place. No one is that'll change things. So bone voyage truly truly and enjoy. Hey, Elizabeth Dutton Saren, I got a question for you. Yeah, you know what's ridiculous?
I do?
Oh Will hit me with it.
Okay, remember when I was telling you about Applebee's lip gloss. Oh god, yes, it's still ridiculous. But I found another food product crossover ridiculous thing.
Another lip gloss.
No, well, I'm going to tell you about Velveta right now. At one point they did have Velveta nail polish, but that's not what I'm talking about.
The process cheese.
Yeah, it was like cheese scented nail polish, but aside from that, that's not what I'm talking.
About, is holding your nails underneath your nose.
They invented the Veltini, the Velveta in Oh God, Martini. It has Velveta infuse vodka, olive, Brian and vermouth in it, and it's garnished with the cheese drip and a cocktail pic of Velveda stuffed olives and olibs olives and jumbo Velveda shells and cheese.
Don't you normally have to go to a doctor if you have cheese drip?
Yes, you do, and it's very important. If you want to get one, you have to go to a BLT steakhouse, which is apparently some chain of steakhouses. Uh huh.
Bacon lettuce tomato steakhouses.
I guess you have to order it in person in their happy hour, which they call their Golden Hour, So you can go to there's one.
Stop.
There's one in New York, one in DC, one in Charlotte, and then in Chicago.
Writing these down, yeah, go to Charlotte.
If you're not at any of those places, you can actually order an online kit from gold Belly for fifty bucks that The kit includes two martini glasses, a gold cocktail shaker, two Velveta coasters, a jar of olives, cocktail picks, a box of Velveta Jumbo sheells and cheese, Velveta cheese sauce to infuse the vodka and rim glasses, and a Velveta brick to stuff olives, and a Veltini recipe card.
Historians take note, this was when we took the turn.
Yeah, so apparently it was a lot of people lost it on Twitter and what have you. But yeah, so that's ridiculous.
I think of, in all honesty, if somebody served you a Velveta teeny right, and they said, hey, Elizabeth, I made this for you, would you earnestly and honestly try it and say, let's see how this is.
I would chug it and then go run in the road. It's one of those things you'd probably like smell, like like you're in a km lab and you waft the air towards your face first, yeah huh, and then you're like all right, then you take a sip, and then I think that's the dividing line of humanity of the people who are like, you know what, this is actually pretty good, and then the people who just start driving like.
I've always want to know a chemical platin hack and snack of new cheer as he tasted like, yeah.
But a cheese martini, cheese an.
Alcohol together, I mean vodka and cheese. I mean, like maybe for the solid cheese on ac.
Like freezing to death in the Siberian forest. All eat cheese and drink.
That's your only consideration of Velvetina. That's it, Velvita teeny.
Yeah, I'll put it. I'll put it in a go bag for an emergency.
There you go, rock out.
So that's ridiculous.
Oh that's a good one.
Yeah, thank you.
I have one for you.
Oh you do.
I don't know if it reaches the heights of a Velveta teeny, probably not. It's got I got two words for you, sex raft.
Oh boy.
Yeah, And if you had to guess, what do you think those two words mean when used together?
I honestly don't know, but I will say that. Here's the thing is that when we do these stories, we know like a title or kind of like the basic subject of what the other person's going to talk about. But this isn't scripted. I don't know what you're going to say, you know what I'm gonna say. But we do have the big board here at Ridiculous Crime HQ, and we have all these index cards with show ideas on them. Oh yeah, and I've been quite yeah, I've been seeing one for a long time now dead center that just says sex raft. And I didn't know what it was and I didn't put up there, so I didn't touch it. And okay, so today's the day, right, yep?
If the raft is a knocking, oh wait, the raft is a rocking? Is that how it goes?
Sure?
Though I don't come a knocking. This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heiss and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and ridiculous Elizabeth Jarin. I take you through the seventies often. Hm, I've got one more story for you for the seventies. You'll have to forgive me. But I saw this one and I just got I was like, I have to just finish off my trifecta of seventies insanity.
I'm here for it.
Okay. The year is nineteen seventy three, and this is when anthropologist Santiago Gienoves had a revolutionary idea. Okay, no, so he thought. Now as an anthropologist, he concluded that if you wish to understand violence in society, and you should start with his most obvious observation, but yet one he felt was integral to understanding violence in society. And I quote most conflicts so are about sexual excess to ovulating females.
Oh oh wait, so he decided that's what about it says.
To female ovulation was the key to world peace. Not women's menstrual cycles, but rather the fight between men for access and the controlling of access of the to them. Rather, Santiago's big idea was to find a way to counteract this male tendency to violence. He's like, you know, we just have to work out this access to female ovulation. But he didn't say, like, oh, ladies, you need to like bend to the boil of men. He's like, no, that's not the easy answer. I've got a better answer, sex raft. So Mike, Noah, he built an arc, except for instead of taking two of each animal, he decided he'd build his arc and invite ten young attractive strangers to join him for a boat ride across the Atlantic Ocean.
Worst reality show ever?
What are you talking about? A sexy slow boat to Mexico for him, intends SEXI a strangers sounds so bad going. It's reality TV before they even never thought of reality TV. Now, this is anthropologist. He is a real like professor. He's a in a university in Mexico. He has twenty years of experience in the field. He's not some fly by night grad student trying to make a name for himself. This is a guy who's thinking this will be the answer to world peace. Like he earnestly believes this. Huh. And he'd also already taken a scientific trip across the Atlantic before. This was where he got the idea. He's like, I can emulate success. I could top that right now. The Atlantic journey that he'd been on before was with thor Hired All are you familiar with thor Hired doll?
No?
Kon Tiki Oh?
Okay, yeah? Yeah.
So kon Tiki was where they'd make an ancient ship ship according to ancient designs, and he tries to sail it across the Pacific to show that Micronesians could contact people. He then did it again with the Atlantic, trying to connect Africa and South America, show that people in West Africa could easily make that little jaunt across to basically the bubble of Brazil, right, and did the currents go there? It shouldn't take too long. So he gets a crew of anthropologist in him, seven dudes, and they set out in a boat made out of papyrus and they go from the African coast to Morocco to South America. On day fifty four, the boat sinks in the Atlantic Ocean.
Because they didn't have any ovulating women exactly.
So they'd gone about three thousand miles. Right. So a year later, Thor in this most of the same crew, they try again with a boat called Raw two. The first one was Raw one. That was Raw two. They tried this time they use a boat made by the Imato Indians of like Tittycoca in South America and their boat works. It makes it fifty seven days across the Atlantic, proving wows with physical evidence that a transatlantic journey like this could have been undertaken by people of West Africa, possibly by people from South America going back, showing that they had the technologies right. So, based on this scientific success, Santiago the anthropologist is like, I'm gonna take my own boat trip. And for his trip, he's like, I think you know that whole thing of like we had a sail, we had like paddles that was making it too easy. I want to raft no engine, no sails, no paddles, just a platform bobbing and floating across the Atlantic Ocean. What and on board, I want a dozen or so young and attractive strangers with me. And by the way, we're gonna film it all an eight millimeter so what he had cameras a board too. Guys said reality before TV before there was reality, And.
There's no no sail, no no paddles.
They're just gonna float on the curve. It's to take between sixty to ninety days or between ninety days and one hundred and eighty days between basically three to six months. Okay, that's how long they just charted. Now, Santiago understands that some people may think it's unethical for a forty nine year old professor to include himself on a transatlantic journey with a bunch of young, attractive strangers. But Santiago, he was ready for that. He's like, look, I see where you're coming, and it's not just about hookup culture. Although he wouldn't have said that. He said, and I quote, the most anti ethical thing I know is the fact that a man dies every twenty seconds at the hand of another man in an act of violence. To discover and investigate these things, it is necessary to be more flexible concerning our concepts of what professional ethics are. The problem concerns are survival. So he's like, look, we've got bigger fish to fry. Don't get on me because I got these ten twelve sexy strangers with me on my boat. He don't ethics the land I'm trying to end World War sweat me. So of course things did not go well. Rightwise you would not be hearing about it here.
Good point.
So you may be wondering a few questions just right off the bat.
I imagine so many questions, like.
For one, who paid for this sex raft? That's a great question right off the bad That's the question I asked. And turns out it was a Mexican government. They what Mexican government paid for it, and they paid for it through a Mexican government funded television network.
Well, yes, all I get to say is what exactly?
So it's a federally funded study. More federally funded science.
Huh. Now.
Second question that pops to mind, why would a professor with a reputation of like his, You know, he's got clout in the field, he's got twenty years experience. Why would he risk all of that on sex raft?
Because it's sex raft? I don't know, you know, it sounds like maybe something happened and he went a little bit over the edge.
Boom, Elizabeth spot off. Yeah, can you guess what happened that pushed him over the edge?
Did he get a divorce?
That's another good, solid day.
But no, it is like a midlife I'll.
Give you a hint. We're in the super crimey seventies.
Was he on a plane that cuts hijacked.
Remember I told you in the seventies they're all wild and criminal folks are always hijacking planes. Well, it was so bad. Some pilots would get hijacked twice in the same year. Right, So when it was so bad that when it would happen, people were be like, Okay, we're getting hijacked. I mean it was like people getting.
Mugged streeting the other day. That It's like there was one a month, basically exactly.
So it was like, you know, it's like if you had a friend who lost a catalytic converter today, you'd be like, oh, here, that happens. That was basically plane hijacking in the seventies.
But no, But the other thing I read in the article was that only one person died in that whole long stretch.
It wasn't a violent thing. They were after the power of having the leverage. They didn't really want to kill people. So that in a lot of ways why it was allowed to persist. Right.
So, dude was on a plane that got hijacked.
Yeah, so Santiago, he's on a flight to Mexico City and he's going home. The plane gets hijacked and redirected to Cuba. So now he's on Cuba and he's sitting there going like, oh man, this is not good. You know the reason why he went from I'm on a plane going to Cuba too, I need to have a sex raft. It's a little bit of a jump.
I admit, that's an interesting trauma response exactly.
So there is a documentary called The Raft by filmmaker Marcus Linden, and I highly recommend it if you like this story. He goes into great detail and you can learn a lot more about it right now. The surviving participants after visits a trip and they speak about what they endure. And this doc includes all these notes from Santiago, and in one of the notes he recounts and I quote, it all started with a hijacking in November nineteen seventy two. I was flying home to Mexico City from a psychological conference on the history of violence when suddenly a group of terrorists took over the flight. It was too good to be true. I mean, imagine the irony me, a scientist who have spent my whole career studying violent behavior ends up in the middle of a hijacking drama. All my life I have wanted to know why people fight and really understand what is going on inside our minds. When the hijacking was over, I realized if I could create a similar situation, it would be the perfect laboratory to study human behavior. But where can you isolate a group of people and expose them to danger? Then I had an idea sex x rat gonna make your sex sex right, You're gonna make you wet. You have to keep in mind, this is during the Vietnam War.
Does that part of the quote, No.
That's me. I added that the music part, that's me. So keep in mind for background context, this is in the middle of Vietnam War. Everybody's really worried about. We have carpet bombing, we have like just just horrific scenes on the news. There's also been renewed fighting in the Middle East. We're about to see the Yam Kapor war kickoff. There is Pinochet has just led was about to lead a coup in seventy three down in Chile. So you have all this this tension around the world. Do you have the neoliberal school of economics going around fomenting like you know, new governments and juntas according to their idea of like, oh, yes, we're gonna do proxy wars with communism, and Milton Friedman's telling everybody, yes, this is the path of freedom. So all this tension, right, and there's economic violence and physical violence and it's all culminating. And he's like, oh, how do we get through this exploitative, violent phase in history? And he's like, sex raft, that's the answer, man. I need to build a sex raft, invite ten strangers from me for a cruise, and so that would fix it. All right? Sure, now, so I say that all of this. Now, keep in mind, technically no criminal charges were filed in this story, but this did happen in you know, international waters where there is no cop to come. But in this case, the captain is the law, and the captain in this case is basically the guy running the criminals. Yeah, so you can.
Well on the international waters. No one can hear you scream.
No, that's is very, very true. So after this short break, we'll climb aboard the journey of sex Raft. Oh okay, so it was the press who called this boat sex raft. Like Santiago was around going, hey, guys, got hop on a sex raft.
I thought it was like a little flag sex d.
Just like two people like doing like that? Was it a beast with two backs? Like that's the flags? I'm sorry, so, Santiago, it.
Sounds like something you'd see like a lake, have a suit, someone with a homemade raft of a sign that is sex raft, and everyone's like, kids, don't look over it. No, no, no, no no, they're turning.
Their hands over the eyes of the children.
Yeah.
Well, Santiago. He called his boat something far more demure and pastoral and lovely, something that you would probably like. It was a collie, which means home on the water.
Okay, nice.
So he decided to make this home on the water the opposite of how life is on the land. He on his sex raft would be in charge, but not really, he would make sure that women would be in charge. So he decided he would hire this Israeli woman as the ship's doctor. He hired his French woman as a ship scuba diver. He hired like he basically wanted all the lowly tasks to go to the men and all the power positions to go to women. He just flipped it. How big is this raft, oh girl? About twenty one feet by thirty six.
Feet I'm like legitimately thinking like six by eight.
Yeah, no, no, it's a little there's a lot of people hear that. But twenty one by thirty six feet is like two bedrooms, two big bedrooms put together essentially.
Just out and there are no walls.
There's a cabin on the center, so imagine a platform like a flat like rectangle twenty one by thirty six and then there's a like.
A like a tough shed in the middle, kind.
Of like a tough shed. Yeah, they go raised with sloped walls and it has like a cabin area and then there's a roof that you can also go on top, so it's kind of like two levels, but the roof is not very big, okay. And then there was like a helmsman's area in the back where there's the tiller where you're supposed to steer the boat because that's pretty much all that very simple rudder. You know, they didn't but they can't power. They can't power. They can go back and forth like they're just going, but it's just basically to help them steer out of the way of the shipping lanes because if they get into the shippings, the big supertankers will just crush them and then they'll see them. They'll just be chumped from thank you.
I just that clarification.
So Santiago he has this dream. He's like, the women will run my sex rush. So he says, and I quote, I wonder if having women in power will lead to less violence or more men will become more frustrated when women are in charge and try to take over power. So he's like ginning up everything with like setting.
Up situation after a situation. In terms of his analysis that it's the women's fault.
Implication is always this is hinged on women, and we have to we can control women or negotiate women better. You see right through the game. But you know, he has a certain machismo. He is He's from Mexico, so he has a little bit that that Spanish language machismo where he's thinking about and you'll hear later on in quotes, I'll tell you he thinks of himself very much as a man. Right, so women should be women. So there's this really hard dichotomy. He does not have like a spectrum of people before him. There are two types of people. So anyway, so the captain of his sex raft is a woman. Santiago travels to Sweden to personally meet Maria Bjornson. So she's a professional Swedish sea captain, one of the first women to become a professional sea captain. Now the idea initially sounds ludicrous to her. She is a legitimate professional sea captain. So she's like a raft with no power, no sales, nothing, You've just got and you got ten sexy strangers, and you go on, is there food on this boat.
Of ten sexy strangers?
And you always he's exempt from that, this true descendant of Viking culture. She signs on for this adventure.
She's like, you know what's likeababe, yeah, everything say that's wrong.
I'm doing it though. So for the rest of the Chris Santiago asks for volunteers. He's like, I got enough budget for this one. So he plays ads in international newspapers all around the world and his respondents they see this ad and here's the ad. I'll read it to you because if you were opening the newspaper in you know, New Delhi, and you're saying, oh, what what is on the paper? Oh? Look, I need a job. Expedition leader looks for volunteers to sail on a raft across the Atlantic. Duration three months. Males and females preferably married, but participation without spouse. Age twenty five to forty. Write letter and details curriculum VITA to box zero three seven eight A. The times applications will be kept confidential.
He wants them married, but they don't bring the spouse.
Yes, because he wants more conflict. He wants them to be able to have something that's restricting their choices.
This is so chaotic.
Yes, now would you apply?
No?
Oh?
What so?
Wait and does he didn't ask for a headshot.
No, for sure.
He's going to be like a tasteful news or you know, give me your in your und things.
He uh he does?
I mean, like, so he's gonna to verify sexiness in an interview.
Yeah, exactly, he'll he'll take care of that in person, got it. He needs to be in the room with that of sex.
I can't process.
Hundreds of people apply. Ten strangers are selected.
Hundreds of out of the whole planet.
The whole planet. I mean, it was it was in like the newspapers, and it's like in the want ads, and it's under expedition later, so you had to keep all this in mind. So the people he gets to come from different ethnicities, nationalities, socioeconomic backgrounds. But at the time, the press summed this up a little bit differently than I'm summing it up.
Now.
Here's how they described it. Quote the raft. This is from a UPI wire service report spread all around the world. The raft expected to drift across the Atlantic at about two miles per hour, will carry two Jews, an arab An African, one black, and one white American, a Swede, a Greek, a french Woman, a Japanese, an Uruguayan, and Genovese. Wait, that's how the press is pitching it. Like it's like a box of crayolic crayons of people.
It's like a Benetton ad that like is into a bar shoke exactly.
So the Santiago's goal, as you've noticed, is to make this toll trip about is as difficult and as dangerous as possible, fraught with tension, racial dynamics, anything he can do to make people be likely to come to blows.
Right.
Yeah, And so these ten fortunate strangers they meet at the dock in Los Palmas, Spain and the Canary Islands on May eleventh, nineteen seventy three. They all load onto the sex Draft and they will spend the next three months together on this boat that is, as you asked, twenty one feet by thirty six feet Santiago. He's planning, also, by the way, to collect data for his semi weekly questionnaires, which will feature questions like to whom do you feel the closest to and why who annoys you the most on the raft? With whom on the acollie have you had sexual contact if you could get rid of one of the others, who would it be?
This is these are like this is like a high school bullaker girl quiz that she hands around class.
Wow, so yes, it's with less ethics.
Did they make sure that did he try and make sure they were all diagnosed with angry issues already?
Or like he had people that need.
Have mood stabilized to keep them from them.
There's no mention about that, Like there's no mental health inventory on these people. But they come from some dire situations as we'll get into. Oh, there's also one big problem. Some of the participants didn't realize that they were going to be part of a science experiment until they were aboard the raft. They were like, wait, you're doing what now?
They just thought they were going to chill on a raft.
I don't know what the ocean. I have no idea what they thought. But they showed up thinking like, yeah, man, it's cool. I got a free boat ride across the Atlantic anyway.
Also, then you're really getting stable, sane folks.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So on the day the ship leaves, if you can believe it, the United Nations sends the message to the Ecolie wishing them success on their acknowledging that the importance for the hope for all people on earth, for world peace to be discovered through sex rap.
I thought for sure you were going to say, the UN sent a message, get back to shore now, stop it, you stub it right now.
No, it was more like, good luck, sex Raft. The people aren't counting on you. God speed, go where no man and women have gone before without having sex.
There they all stood on the shore with like a single tear dropping down their cheek. It's beautiful.
The sex Raft is going to be in and out of radio contact, and so they're suppose they're scheduled to get a weather report every couple of days over the radio. When they can make contact, and they're also once a week when he when Santiago can make contact, he's gonna give a general status update and relay some of his notes and so forth. So they're gonna be literally on their own for days at a time. Nobody will know where they are in the world.
Like fishing and stuff.
Yeah, well, they're gonna have to collect food from the from the water, so there they'll be fishing, They'll be drafted. They have a plenty of food to make it the.
Thirty How do they get fresh water?
They have fresh water, They have all the they are provisioned for the trip, but they are still going to be fishing for extra protein and so forth in fresh fresh meat. So time to meet the crew.
Right, yeah, definitely.
Okay, So we have already met Santiago Jenovese Tatazi, who is the forty nine year old Mexican anthropologist who is the captain of.
This and Captain Creeper.
Then there's also Captain Maria Bjornstam from Sweden. She's thirty years old. She's the first female Priess captain. Then there are four men on the raft. There is Jose Maria Montero Perez. He is a thirty four year old Oroguayan former student of Santiago. Then there's a radio operator Charles Anthony. He's thirty seven years old. He's a Greek Cypriot. And there's Isuki Yamaki. He's a twenty nine year old cameraman from Japan. He speaks only Japanese and a smattering of Spanish. Then there is Bernardo Bongo. He's twenty nine year old from Angola. He's also a Catholic priest. A Catholic priest on board because why not sure? Because being Mexican, He's like, this will up the tension because they won't want to get sexy in front of the priest. Everyone else is like really yes, and then he tries to see if the priest will have sex with people. It's a whole thing. Yeah, So Santiago and vice the priest because of the sexual tension, and they tries to get the priest to like get involved in the sexual attention and none of it goes well. Now for the five women participants, there are two scientists aboard that we have a Rashida Manzani. She is a twenty three year old from Algeria. She's going to conduct a study on ocean pollution, right. And then there's Servan Zanotti. She's a thirty two year old from France. She is the ship's frogman or the scuba diver. He's gonna do any repairs on the steel understructure. Then there's Edna Jonas. She's thirty two years old. She's a Czechoslovakian resident who's living in Israel, and she is the ship's doctor. Then there's finally the two Americans picked for their racial complexities. There is Fay Evangelina Seymour. She's one of the youngest members. She's twenty three years old. She is a black woman, and she is the ship's radio operator. Then there is the American white woman, a mother of three named Mary Gidley, who is thirty six year olds old, responsible for navigation and running from her husband who had tried to assault her, a killer basically, and so she's on the trip to get away from him, and.
So she leaves her three kids with their husband.
Huh, we've met everyone aboard the ship. Elizabeth. I'd like to close your eyes and picture I don't want it.
I do not want to picture this.
It's May eleventh, nineteen seventy three and they are climbing aboard the Acolleague aka sex Raft. Now you signed on as this ship's cruise director. And as you poured the sea, spray is wetting your face, The wind is blowing your hair about, the sun warms your shoulders. The journey you've waited fore finally here site bit palpable as the sound of the seabirds above you. And as you gaze out of that wide expanse of watery blue, that'll be your home for the next three months. Oh, you decide to dip into the cabin and see what's going on inside.
No, I don't.
You are the cruise directors, so you know, get to know the rest of the girl. At the hatch, you can hear Captain Maria on the ship's radio, your new boss, and that's cruise ship director. You're like, let me go check us up the ship's vibe. I'm going to meet my boss. So you clock her vibe and you notice seems a bit off, like what's up a homegirl. She's talking on the radio with her boyfriend, Oh off, and he's on the tugboat that is currently towing the Sex Draft out into the open ocean.
Current.
Now soon you will be set adrift to float across the Atlantic. This is your last contact with society and civilization. And over the radio, the boyfriend ohl Off, he sounds worried. He's really focused at the moment on the legal paperwork, and he's had time while he's on the tugboat to actually read over the contract friend Maria was asked to sign. And all Off is a little worried, like very worried. You can hear the concern in his voice. You're like, that doesn't sound like a person who is chill. And over the radio static you hear him say, nobody looked through the contract, which seems to be a slave contract. Really it says that you should give up your body, your mind and everything to Santiago, is that a method of a scientist? No, what do you think about? Did tell me the truth? You watch she grabs the radio and she responds to him, No, it wasn't written in anything about mind. And you look at Maria You're like, wow, she's cool as all hell, unflappable.
It's like personally flipping through the contract that I just signed. Oh no no no no no no no.
No no no mind And body, mind and body. So she's over there suppressing this little rebellious smile. She knows something. She either seems that she's down for the adventure, but Ola, he's unsweet. He's just like freaking out. He's like, it was about the mind and about the body. You should do whatever he wants to at any time. That means you, as captain might get in trouble with him. And Captain Maria looks at you, she rolls her eyes and she's like whatever. She presses the button on the radio and she's like, you know what I think about that paper? I didn't sign it. Oh, I've asked her one time. Wait, wait, do you want to stay on the raft? Then she's like hmm, and you're like, I don't know if I want to say.
I'm busy putting on the goggles and the snorkele. I'm getting ready to junk.
So you're literally now holding you're waiting like unbaited breath for waiting to see what she's gonna say. And then you hear Captain Maria. She holds the button down to the radio and she says, I'm going to stay on the raft, and you're like, what she'd wants to take the adventure. Meanwhile, you grab the radio fromer. You're like, oh, bring the swing that tugboat over here off and he does as told. He swings the tugboat over. You were able to hop off the sex raft. They throw the rope back over and the tugboat says good luck, and you and the tug boat go back to civilization. A sex raft glides into.
The sea, and I lived happily ever after two reasonable people.
So you dotch that very very sexy bullets.
Oh well, sorry, I have to wonder why did you get off the raft because I'm not I don't.
Trust Santiago in the legal contract. No trust these ten sexy strangers.
Not a lick.
Okay, well then I'll just tell you what life is like on the sex raft without you.
Okay, yeah, I'll hear about it. I'm not going to do it. Well.
For one, he's got a lot of rules, which is, you know whatever, it's a science experiment, there's going to be rules. So he insists that there's no reading. No no reading of books, and no nobody brought magazines but no reading of books. Right, So what they are allowed to do to entertain themselves for the endless hours aboard this sex raft is they are allowed to sing songs or to tell stories from their own lives.
Oh that sounds great.
Yeah right, so this the idea is for people to get bored and then to either become annoyed and get violent or to like find deeper parts of themselves.
You got me there in like five minutes. That's why I had to bounce out.
You're off that boat so bad.
I want to hear people singing and telling me there's stupid stories. Oh yeah.
And also, by the way, in the first few days, people are just vomiting everywhere. They're getting seasick and just puking on each other. It's just it's a horrible scene. People are like heads over the side of the boat most of the first couple of days because you know, not people who are used to the sea. And Maria borns them. She's like cool with everyone.
Else is like yeah, they're all in their sexy bikinis, all sunburn and pukin. They'll thank you.
And as I told you, they have to stay on out of the shipping lanes. So that's their big fight, right. So they're worried about supertankers while they're floating along, so they're like they're heads over the side, they're puking and looking for supertankers. Those are the first two days on sex raft.
Sounds great.
Now for the bathroom, mind you, they have this little area where you can kind of like.
I wondered about that, but I'm so gross.
It's like kind of like you know, like the front like the prows of some boats. They'll have like the little area where you can stand as like a U. So they have like that, but it's off the side of the raft, and it's in that little U there they have like a platform and you could sit on the platform and do your business. And then for like menstruating women, they get a little worried about the sharks in the water because like I'm just sitting up here, a bloody target just dripping a trail for these people.
Oh my god.
Oh yeah. So the women, they have to do that three months, so that's three cycles they're going through at least, right, none of them. Yeah, anyway, that was the wait.
So they're worried about there. You know what, I don't want to hear it. Keep going.
Now you may be wondering, Saren, but what about all the sex on the sex raft. No, it was are they hitting it? Zarin Elizabeth. I'm glad you asked, yes they are hitting it, but like yes, but where do like one, two, three people go to have sex on a sex raft. You know it's twenty one feet by thirty six feet, right, and they got ten ten people with them at all times. So where do you go? Well, you can wait till nightfall and you go on top of that little like rooftop on the cabin start you can hear you banging away up top. Or you can go like hang out by a look on the walls and pretend like you're vomiting or they're vomiting and you're holding their hair. The other one is that you can if you're the helmsman, if you have the rudder and you're alone at night, you can like you got one hand on the rudder and the other hand on your lover. And then they make that one work. In fact, Edna of the Israeli doctors, she tells the story. She says, quote for me, it was not about the love, it was about friendship. It was complicated to have sex on the raft because other people could always see you. Well, maybe if two people were on guard together and you were a little quick, then maybe it was possible, but it was tricky because you had to use one hand for steering. So she was out there hit and while she.
Was starting on the old ss urinary tractor section.
So following all these sexy tropes of the day, men all agreed that the French woman was the sexiest, and the women all agreed that the Uruguayan scientist he was the hottest man aboard. So there was this consensus on who, if they were, who they'd want to be knocking boots with, which made some problems as well. So Santiago knows all of this because he's asked them who would you want to sleep with on the questionnaire. So he's going to start poking at that scene if he can, like prime things to get things going now. Meanwhile, as this raft is drifting across the sea, the captain begins to hate Santiago, like just literally despise him, right, and this is not lost on Santiago. He records in his notes and I quote today during dinner, Captain Maria asked me, in front of the whole group, what I really want to achieve with the experiment. Everyone got silent and waited for my answer. I told her that I want to find a way to create peace on earth. She just rolled her eyes and looked away. Yes, yes, but he does also start to get what he wants because now violence is starting to rear its ugly head. So this all happens when a the folks on the raft they pull something out of the ocean that changes who all of the humans are and in relationship to each other the kraken. After this little break, I'll tell tell you what they pulled from the sea and how this crazy sex raft journey comes to a wild colony.
Oh boy, so Elizabeth Sarens, you got free of the sex raft.
Thank god.
Everyone else is still on the boat, rocking their way across the Atlantic, and now they've dropped their line into the sea that will change everything. So what happened is one of the dudes was fishing and he caught a shark, and he pulls his shark aboard. This trigger is like a bloodlust because he decides he needs to beat the shark to death, which is often what happens when you have a shark on board. You get a wooden club, you hit him in the head, a few times. But he does this and then it gets a little extra and then the other people they all also get a little keyed up. Right, and I quote from Santiago's notes, Okay, look he said the heart is still beating. It was like turning on a switch. Suddenly everyone wanted to feel the flesh that was still warm with life. Finally here it was the violent behavior that I've been waiting for. But to my surprise, it didn't come from sexual jealousy or from conflicts between the participants. Instead, we witness a clear example of crowd frenzy, where people no longer act as individuals, but as part of a dangerous collective.
That's some Lord of the Flies exaction there.
Yeah, Piggy's about to get it. So so this though, is the only flash of violence that he really gets to see on his boat.
Really, that was it.
They get their own little flash, They get a blood lust up. He gets to see the potential for the group violence dynamic. And then everything just settles down. And now they're like, you know, almost halfway across the sea, and he's like, oh man, what am I going to do? So Santiago's he's getting disappointed with these people He's like, they're frustrating my expen. They're trying to doom me. He gets yes, so he says, and I quote, they clearally don't understand what I'm trying to do. Instead of supporting me, they behave like a bunch of children, and they are getting lazy. No one seems to remember that we are out here trying to find an answer to the most important question of our time. Can we do without war? So he instigates violence.
So they can do without it. He can't the.
One, He's the one who brings the violence into it. He's like, I gotta go with what I know and what I love. So he takes that big button marked emotional distress and he just twists it as hard as he can. He calls for a ship's meeting and he informs everybody got to come to the ship's meeting. They'll get there and he's like, look, things are going to change. Like what do you mean what things are going to change? You kick somebody off the boat and he's like, no, no, but you know your questionnaires. Okay, We're gonna play a little game today called the game of truth. And I quote, I began by saying that Edna has written that she wants to have sex with jose Maria, but jose Maria has written that he thinks Edna is the most annoying woman he has ever met because she talks all the time. These feelings can't be hidden anymore. They have to stop being so afraid of confrontation and be open about what they really feel about each other. So that I can finally get some material to study. He read their diary diaries like this is now one of the most unethical experiments ever she does.
It's like mean girls on a raft like this it Stanford Prison experiment with mean girls on a boat.
And he's not done so more controversy. He goes after the youngest member of the crew, the black woman from America Fee. He calls her a quote, a primitive and a thief and lazy in order to see if calling her black stereotypes will set her off. He just does it. No, of course not she She didn't go for that. She's like, man, you think that this, I'm from America. You need to try a little harder. That's all you're gonna throw at me, right So, but he's still desperate for results. His racism doesn't work, So he's like, what can I do? So he just keeps reading their diaries. He's just doing anything he can to foment like anger, intension, and aggression. Meanwhile, back in civilization, his colleagues have taken to the newspapers and they have denounced him as a total quack. And so they have written a letter and it has been published in the press around the world. And he eventually hears about this over the ship's runway.
And apseiagal comes and drops the newspaper.
Oh, you know, exactly right. So during the weekly call, he and mind you and ee can hear the radio so everybody else, but they're all going to get the fact that he gets unmasked though, and I quote from Santiago. One of the articles is a statement signed by some of my colleagues at the university where I've been working for over twenty years. They write that the publicity about the sex raft is bad for the reputation of the university and from now on they don't want to have anything to do with me or my expedition. He's risted all for this, and he's become basically a failure in his career, a total like you know, outcast. And also now he's the emotional dictator on a sex.
Raft, so let's look good on LinkedIn.
Oh totally. Now at this bround this point, the radio goes silent, and he wasn't He didn't like break the radio. It just happened to go silent, right, So they end up getting lost and they drift out of radio contact for four days, and so people have to wonder did the sex raft sink somewhere in the Atlantic. Planes are sent up in the sky to try to find sex Raft multiple days past. Finally, on July eighteenth, the search plane spots, Hey, that's sex raft. So the crew is okay, the people wave. Everyone's like, yeah, we're still here naked on ship. No, not really hip, but they're safe and they're about to enter the Caribbean sea right And I say they're safe, I mean in that moment because right behind them is a hurricane that's forming in the warm waters of the Atlantic.
Are you kidding?
Because Captain Maria knew about this. She's like, look, we're leaping too late or season if if we drift too long we get blown off shore, we could have it. She's like, don't worry, I'm from this area. So she's like, Okay, I don't know anyway. Santiago, when he hears about this coming storm, he's stoked. He's totally thrilled. He's like, yes, this is what could be the necessary bit to push my experiments over the top. Pure survival. Man versus nature, humanity versus the sea, Captain Ahab versus the great white whale. He sees it, all right, and he's just counting all with Captain Maria. She's like, look, I'm taking the sex raft and I'm parking it in a Caribbean island, the closest one that we can get to. He's like no, She's like, what are you talking about? No, I'm the captain.
What's he going to do to her?
Oh? He says, I quote from Santiago. If the group comes in contact with civilization, it will contaminate the experiment. We need to keep ourselves isolated and stay at sea. For the sake of science. We must continue, no matter what everyone else is like, don't matter what is my life? Mother?
Right? I would just if I'm the captain, I just say I'm the captain now, and then I just all right, So I go and I park the boat. I be be back in gonna do dude.
So Captain Maria, she's got these ten people counting on it. This is exactly what her boyfriend Olaf warned her about. She was thinking about sex. Now He's like, oh, met my life, right.
So yeah, but now I'm with Olaf exactly.
You're cool. You and Olaf are starting your new life together.
Exactly.
Both of you are like being like logistical and safe.
Reading all the sign prints.
You're right, they're working on that. It's creating that hig Swedish life, all coziness. So their lives are in the hands of Captain Maria, right, And she's like, Okay, I understand what I have to do now. Santiago he as I said earlier, He's like no, emphatically no. And so I quote once again from Santiago. Maria said she can't take that responsibility as a captain. I told her. In that case, she is no longer the captain of the raft. From now on, I am the captain. So you were close the captain, real close. But this is the poet the story where the feces hits the fans, right, So the science experiment is totally off the rails. The sex raft is about to lose all of their lives to a hurricane. So what do they do. They batten down the hatches. They steal up through the sex Raft is best they can. Now keep in mind they are on a metal square in the middle of a herd. Yes so important to Santiago, most important and more important than anyone's lives on the thing is his notes and the camera equipment recording the experiment. So he gets those all put in plastic bags and then he's like, okay, now we are good. Lock the doors in the raft.
So are there pictures of this rat Yeah, they're pictures of the raft.
I'll put them up, thank.
You, because I need to see.
Yes, because in case this raft sinks, he wants his experiments to move on because the dancers of world peace. All right, So the hurricane is about it hit Sex Raft. The skies are growing dark, the rains have come, the seas begin to pitch and roll. The storm strikes, and they all sit there in silence, wondering what's going to come of the rest of their tiny little lives in this vast, vast ocean, locked in the metal box with a madman, and the hurricane luckily passes over them. They don't get the eye of the storm. They get the backside of the you know, coming from the south. The back side is not terrible.
Yeah, on sex raft, the backside is not danger. Why do you set these things up? Okay?
Because I like you?
Thank you.
Santiago records in his notes that quote, the hurricane must have changed directions and only brushed us by the tail. I looked at Maria, but she did not look back. So Maria is still does not giving him. I almost notice. Now at this point, Santiago's mutiny is officially changed everything because the crisis he had hoped for, that all the dreams of violence and aggression had come to pass, and he's the source of all the dreams of aggression envirolence. So he becomes the crew's whole focus of their ultra violet fantasies. And they're sitting there and they've decided that Santiago is a threat to them. In the words of a Tom Clancy novel, he is a clear and present danger. So they decide, we may have to kill him. We're like, we're weeks from the shore, but we may have to kill him. So they have a meeting about it. Now three of them get on top of the roof of the boat and late at night they talk about explainable accidents and like how a person could fall off a boat, and like what would happen if during the next storm somebody just fell over, like one quick and dirty accident, We're all suddenly safe, alright, So like another one face. She's like, well, what about if we just took all the ship's medicine and we just gave him all of it? And I was like oh, They're like yeah, so this is by the way. This is Mary the white American, Fae the Black American, and Asuki the Japanese guy. They are the three plotters trying to decide to kill him, and they all agree that.
This is a sky only speaks Japanese and Spanish.
Yeah, they're doing like hand gestures of the kill kills, like hot shuts. He take the needle in. They are load it up again. She's like quoting from the Murder on the Orient Express is like the dream of like we put all of our hands on the plunger and we all pushed down together, so we're all culpable and they're like yeah, I love it.
Wow.
They finally decide we'll just toss them into the sea. That'll be the easiest thing to explain. Nobody no murder, right, So I'm like, okay, they're pretty much set on this plan. But then they decide, you know what, we still have our humanity, consider we are not these people. And then they kind of fall back from their plan, and then times change and then their murderous desire melts away, like you know, like that done a sand.
In the displayed impulse control.
Yes, exactly, very important. Santiago never learns about his near death by his science experiment because they don't put this in the questionnaire, but they.
Just added it at the bottom, like.
Wanted to kill Santiago desperate to kill you. So he does, though, mind you end up having a panic attack while he's on the boat because he's starting to realize that he's the problem. So I and I quote if I was a boy, I learned that men never cry. We control ourselves. But suddenly I couldn't anymore. Out on the deck, I thought about the experiment. I'd realize that the only one who has actually shown any kind of aggression or violence on the raft is me, the man trying to control everyone else, including himself, and so he just freaks out. He breaks down. He has this total like cascading, emotional like avalanche. And at the same time they find out at night this run the same time, they've accidentally drifted into the shipping lane. And so while he's happy his crisis, they see that a supertanker is headed right at them. And so it's the middle of the dark of night, I got a supertanker that can't see them, and their captain, who is self declared he's having an emotional crisis.
He should have been working through this stuff back home, but instead he draws all these people. Okay, keep going his ten sexy strangers. He's making me get angry, and I'm not an angry person.
So what do you think he does in the face of this emergency.
Something stupid.
Well, he's not at all calm in the face of emergency. Instead, he just starts screaming and runs around the deck of the rapt yelling, O, I swear to God, that's what the that's what everyone says that he did. He just starts around a giant supertanker chasing them down, and he just screamed. He's just screaming, running around head, like.
I really, I would have just kicked him right into the ocean.
Yeah, hey the black American. She runs gets on the radio and she tries to calm the supertanker. The supertanker is no response, right, Captain Maria steps in. She's like, all right, g it's a time. She's totally implacably calm, just the exact opposite Santiago. She tells the crew get to road flares. They start waving road flares over their heads. The super tanker sees the road flares and goes into evasive actions, barely misses them, basically pushes them off into the wake of its giant Yes exactly, but they live. So she's the hero. She's the captain now, so everybody recognizes this, even Santiago. So what does he do? He decides, like a former cult leader, to fall inside of himself and collapse.
Sure. Yeah.
Then decides, no more note taking, no more meetings, no more games, no more any questionnaires. I'm just going to grow my beard, look on my saltwater tan. So he retreats to bed. He starts complaining about an infection. People are like, yeah, whatever, you got an infection. Doctor's like, no, he really has an infection, so he like wills an infection upon himself and peace returns to the raft. Everyone now is calm, they're dancing, they're singing, they're happy. They're making meals again because they have a common enemy, the shunned exile who's brought them all together and they're giving them a group dynamic. So he's pushed them into this in group out group dynamic that is so key to human society. He finds the thing and he did it non violently, but anyway, the sex Raft finally arrives in Mexico after one hundred and one days at sea. Oh boy, it's a strange moment. They finally made it to the other side. They all like, are so glad to be back on dry land. They get off the sex Raft, they spend the night on shore. The next day they come back to the sex Raft now because they want to go back on an they don't need to get their stuff and meet and say like, let's let's have some you know, resolution for what we just went through. He's like, oh, thank you guys all for coming back to the sex Raft. Thank you for doing this. By the way, I have one lass questionnaire for you no. So then in like an hour's long hangout session, he has them failed the questionnaires. They filed the questionnaires. He apologizes to Maria. He's apparently very calm and very kind, and everyone's impressed by it. He asked them, what did you think of my experiment? And they're like, it was a total failure. This was the worst thing I've ever done. And everyone, I guess not everyone. Three people say it's a total failure. Ultimately, though the majority of them say it's a success because they learned things about themselves, they learned things about humanity, so forth and Fay, she says it's a huge success, which surprises everyone because he was picking on her and they all saw it right. And she says, and I quote, it was always them and us. We started out as them and us, and we became us. And then she pointed out something that Santiago had missed, and she said, and they quote, I think Santiago's experiment was a huge success, but I think he missed it because we could talk to one another with sophistication and depth and understanding and love, and isn't that the answer to violence? So boom, there you go. Sex raft gonna make your sex sex.
I think Maria won sex raft.
Oh yeah, she definitely wants She's like the reality show Big Winner and then fan favorite his fee and let's say the rest. Like I have a soft spot for Edna because she was having sex while piloting a boat and I'm just into that. I'm like, that's cool.
Oh my goodness.
So I asked, what's all ridiculous takeaway?
My ridiculous takeaways? Be careful to kind of want as you respond to. And also, this is just there were so many red flash. I think there's a way to get the answer that they got without being on a sex raft for three.
Months, risking the lives of p Yeah. Yeah, I think the thing I was thinking about when I was reading all these different stories reading on the newspaper accounts is that it was so obvious on the face of it, both that it would fail and that no lessons would be learn because people would just be hung up on the sex raft part of it. They wouldn't never really go like, oh, what did you learn? What did you find? Tell us about your observations. Some people would buy the book, but they would not be buying the book because they wanted to read his science. They wanted to read the drama, the emotion, the sex. So the thing is is that human beings ultimately are rather simple, and that Fee got it right with our group dynamics are pretty consistent. There's in group behavior, there's outgroup behavior. There's wanting to punish the exiles and the outcast. We have been doing this for millennia. So if you take that dynamic as your starting point as opposed to women's ovulation is the key to world peace or whatever his starting point was, and you actually look at the observables of humanity as opposed to these like ineffables that he's going for, like men want to fight over the smell of a woman's ovulation, whatever the hell science he came up with, then you can actually get to something meaningful and which is what Fee did I And I'm glad they made the documentary because that is where you get that quote. So out of all this stuff, it is the observation by one of the participants forty three years later that really gives value to sex raft.
A lot of value in the sex raft.
Gotta make you way like, well, thank you for joining us. I'm Zeron Burnett, I'm a sex raft over there is Elizabeth Dutton sex raft. You can find online a Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram. You gotta tip for us about a ridiculous crime you'd like to hear about let us know about it. You want to confess a ridiculous crime, hit us up email. Is that ridiculous crime at gmail dot com. Thanks for listening. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaron Burnett, produced and edited by Captain of this sex free Raft, Dave Houston. Research is by our Frogman Extraordinaire Marissa Brown. Our theme song is by Finnished chiropractor of the Soul Thomas Lee and Oakland's finest radio operator, Travis Dutton. Executive producers are Ben Boone, Teeky Bowlin and No Free Bedroom Apartment on the Water.
Brown, Ridicus Cui say it one More time? Gus Crime.
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts. My Heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
