S2Ep9 What 'Ripley' Can Tell Us About MH370 [audio]

MH370 is a mystery, but more specifically, it’s a murder mystery. It was an action carried out with a perpetrator with nefarious intent. That’s a lens that we can use to gain perspective on what happened.

As you know this is a podcast all about trying to understand aviation’s most perplexing mystery. We not only talk about the evidence of the case in great detail with the help of leading experts, but we also try to find new ways to frame what we know, to see if by looking at the facts from a different viewpoint we can gain new insight.

In Episode 28 of Season 1 we looked at the case from the lens of stage magic, which uses a practical understanding of applied psychology to get inside the audience’s perceptual feedback loop in order to fool them.

In today’s episode we’re going to look at the case from a similar but somewhat different perspective, that of the criminal deceiver, who like the magician is always probing his targets for perceptual weaknesses, hoping to find or widen a gap between reality and what the subject thinks is real.

Because one thing about MH370 is crystal clear: the perpetrators, whoever they were, outwitted the officials who set out to figure out their deed.

It might not surprise you to learn that I’m always thinking about MH370, and I find relevant tidbits everywhere I look. Recently I was watching the Netflix series “Ripley,” which is a retelling of the story of the con artist and murderer Tom Ripley written by Patricia Highsmith in the 1950s.

The new show stars Andrew Scott as Tom Ripley, and I found the show wonderfully stylish and entertaining. If you’ve already seen the 1999 movie with Matt Damon you’ll already know the plot but I don’t think will spoil the fun. All the same if you haven’t seen the new show and would like to, you might want to pause the podcast now and then come back to it afterwards because a lot of spoliers lie ahead.

Anyway, as I was watching and enjoying the show I was really overwhelmed by the parallels between the web of deception Tom Ripley weaves and the strange set of clues that we have in the case of MH370.

I wanted to talk about this with someone who is an expert in the genre of murder mysteries, so I reached out to Jackie Raimondi, the co-host of a delightful podcast called Killer Fun, in which Jackie and her co-host Christy Norman watch and break down crime shows. Jackie agreed to come on the show and talk to me about Ripley and the art of weaving a web. Jackie is also a psychologist and brought a wealth of insight about real-world human behavior.

I had a lot of fun talking with her and I think that you will enjoy the conversation, too.

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