At 7:45am every Thursday morning, Matthew phones in his thoughts on the conspiracy theory of the week to Zac and the audience of bFM’s Breakfast Show.
I’m currently on placement/section/practicum (depending on who you talk to), and one of the downsides to being on placement/section/practicum is that you get to encounter and “enjoy” the many childhood diseases that run rampant amongst the nation’s younger members. Last week, for example, I had a bout of laryngitis, which rendered me literally speechless for the weekend and made recording a segment for the radio somewhat problematic. Luckily, Ben Curran and Rachel Rayner volunteered (via Twitter) to team up with my good old friend, Robo-voice, to help produce the segment. You can listen to their dulcet tones (and my raspy voice) discuss Flight MH370 in the segment below.
One thing which didn’t get discussed in the segment was this Wired article that the most likely explanation for the disappearance of Flight MH370 was that an electrical fire killed the pilots. I’m no aviation expert, so my endorsement here means nothing, but I think the author makes a very good case for this being the best explanation for the event; I’ve thus far considered, based upon the available evidence, the whole kidnapping or terrorism theses to be rather dubious. I have sometimes wondered whether the prevalence of these particular explanations in the media’s discussion of the disappearance of Flight MH370 is more that these theories a) render it possible that the crew and passengers onboard the flight are alive (which is a salve for some of us) and b) make the tragedy something we can pin on some individual or group? Whilst I know certain agencies are actively pursuing the hijacking theory, I am curious to just how likely they think that hypothesis is, compared to it being an accident.
Hmmm… As I was writing I was pointed towards this article, which suggests some rum doings in re mysterious people contacting the pilot just before takeoff. Make of it what you will.
Finally, the original version of last week’s segment was almost entirely Robo-voice, but my producer thought seven minutes of it was a bit too much. If you’d like to hear the synthetic voice version of the segment, listen below:
Side-note: It’s a bit weird how the synthetic voice takes in breath at the start of each sentence, isn’t it?