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Listen to the murder diaries wherever

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you get your podcasts. Oh sorry, Kalmo!

0:59

Jean Kalmo! Who is a Frenchman. Hence

1:01

my attempt at a French accent. Which,

1:04

I mean, of all accents, I think

1:06

my French is pretty good. It's not,

1:08

is it? I just said it, and

1:10

it's bad. Welcome to the show! I

1:12

would say one of my writers, in

1:14

this case Katie, has written me a

1:17

script. It's all about the oldest person

1:19

who ever lived, and it's possibly not

1:21

the oldest person who ever lived, because

1:23

they're a fake. A dirty, a dirty,

1:25

dirty, dirty, straight from a Chinese, I don't know,

1:27

probably not, she wasn't made in a Chinese factory.

1:29

But as far as I know, she did claim

1:31

to be born at some point, but there was

1:33

just no birth certificate or anything, so no one

1:36

really knows. Let's jump in! I

1:41

once had a story that really stuck in my

1:43

mind and as the years went by I

1:45

would periodically remember it, but as I got

1:47

older and more cynical I started to think

1:49

that maybe it was exaggerated. Here's what I

1:51

read in something like Reader's Digest or Crazy

1:53

Facts book many moons ago. And man met

1:55

an elderly lady who had some sort of

1:57

amazing apartment in Paris, as she was very

1:59

old and... had no close family to pass

2:01

it on to his struck a deal.

2:03

He would make, I've heard the story,

2:06

he'd make payments until her death, at

2:08

which time she would leave the apartment

2:10

to him in her will. She could

2:12

continue living in the apartment the whole

2:14

time, so it sounded like a great

2:17

deal for all concerned. The only thing

2:19

was, the woman kept on living. She

2:21

lived so long, in fact, that not

2:23

only did she become the oldest woman

2:25

in France, she became the oldest person

2:27

to have ever lived. The man died

2:30

before she did before she did. Having

2:32

bade over twice what the apartment was

2:34

worth. I recently remembered this story, so

2:36

I looked into it and I found

2:38

out that not only was it 100%

2:40

true, it was just a small part

2:43

of the story of Jean Carmel, one

2:45

of the world's oldest people. Her story

2:47

is so interesting in fact, that we're

2:49

making a whole episode about her. Indeed

2:51

we are right now, you're watching it,

2:54

or listening to it if you're on

2:56

podcasts. Hello there, podcast fans. But what's

2:58

the decoding part, you might ask? Well,

3:00

all might not be quite as it

3:02

seems in the murky world of extreme

3:04

longevity. But we'll get to that. First

3:07

of all, let's have a brief jaunt

3:09

through the life of who Guinness World

3:11

Records calls the oldest person ever. But

3:13

as we all know, Guinness World Records,

3:15

in my humble opinion, absolutely not a

3:17

statement of fact, is a crock of

3:20

shit. Because Guinness records, allegedly, in my

3:22

opinion. I've also heard they're litigious, allegedly,

3:24

in my opinion. Was that Guinness? It

3:26

was someone. I mean, it was someone

3:28

who's litigious. There are litigious people out

3:31

there? Simon? What? The oldest person ever?

3:33

Jean-Louis Camille was born in February 1875,

3:35

the same year that Gallium was discovered.

3:37

The Civil Rights Act was passed in

3:39

the US. For all the good that

3:41

did, and the UK said hello to

3:44

its first funicular lift that was open

3:46

to passengers. Oh, that's like a lift

3:48

that goes up a lift that goes

3:50

up a hill that goes up a

3:52

hill, that's cool. He says in the

3:54

same line where the Civil Rights Act

3:57

was passed. Could also say that was

3:59

pretty cool. That's the one that ends

4:01

slavery, right? I mean, Katie says for

4:03

all the good that did. Wait, that

4:05

was the one that ended slave. And

4:08

look, I know obviously there's all sorts

4:10

of problems still, but at least there's

4:12

not slavery in America, yay? Come on

4:14

was born in Arle, a city in

4:16

southern France and spent her entire life

4:18

there, handily for researchers into her life.

4:21

She never changed her surname, because she

4:23

married her cousin, Ferdinand Comor. It was

4:25

the past, though, 1800s. There are people

4:27

still marrying their cousins and shit. I

4:29

heard, I'm not sure if this is

4:31

like an urban legend, but it also

4:34

is probably 100% true, that throughout all

4:36

of history, half of marriages have been

4:38

between cousins because it used to be

4:40

so common. For some reason, family trees

4:42

do a number on my brain, and

4:45

I got all confused, but get this,

4:47

their paternal grandfathers were brothers. Oh my

4:49

God, that's so complicated. Okay, so far,

4:51

so fine. But their paternal grandmothers were

4:53

sisters. So I think that means a

4:55

pair of sisters married two generations up

4:58

Calmont brothers. I get confused after that

5:00

personally. I'm not familiar with anyone and

5:02

my grandparent siblings, but basically this means

5:04

that Jean Ferdinand were what were called

5:06

double-second cousins because they shared cousins from

5:08

both sides of their family. I think,

5:11

still a bit close for my liking,

5:13

but hey, it all panned out all

5:15

right for Jean. According to statista.com, the

5:17

average life expectancy for a French person

5:19

in 1875 was 40.29 years. Good God

5:22

we've come a long way in a

5:24

very short amount of time. That must

5:26

not be accounting for immortality though, surely.

5:28

But come on, ended up blowing that

5:30

out of the water, though I'm more

5:32

than tripling it. I'm more than tripling

5:35

it. and into middle age, you're like,

5:37

your chances of living to be old

5:39

were pretty good. Like, you think back

5:41

at all those, like, philosophers and shit,

5:43

they were all old. I mean, for

5:45

the most part, you think of their

5:48

statues and shit, they were like old.

5:50

Ferdinand's side of the family was pretty

5:52

well to do and owned a large

5:54

store in Arle where, with two apartments

5:56

above it, for them to live in,

5:59

it's variously referred to as a dry

6:01

good store or a draper. Ramagasand Novotez.

6:03

Uh, okay, going on around it, meaking

6:05

at a department store as opposed to

6:07

a small shop. Jean didn't have to

6:09

work and spent her time doing such

6:12

diverse activities as playing music with friends,

6:14

hunting wild boar, roller skating and mountaineering.

6:16

So you live a long time when

6:18

you just live a life of leisure.

6:20

She had Ferdinand had a daughter, Yvonne,

6:22

who was born in 1898, when Jean

6:25

was 23. Yvonne married a man named

6:27

Joseph Below, who going against tradition does

6:29

not appear to be a relation. That's

6:31

nice. A little bit of genetic diversity

6:33

in there. And they had one son,

6:36

Frederick, who was Jean's only grandchild. Unfortunately,

6:38

Yvonne died young in 1934 after suffering

6:40

from tuberculosis and actually died on her

6:42

36th birthday. It's always weird when someone

6:44

dies who's younger than me, because I'm

6:46

like, I've lived a year longer than

6:49

that. Yeah, that'd be weird. As a

6:51

result, Jean and Ferdinand became closer to

6:53

their son-in-law, Joseph, and their young grandson,

6:55

Frederick. In 1942, Jean and her husband

6:57

Fernand, went to a friend's house for

6:59

dinner, where they were cherries for dessert.

7:02

Oh no, someone's going to choke on

7:04

them or something. While Jean ate a

7:06

few, Fernand, ate a lot. The cherries

7:08

had some kind of chemical or pesticide

7:10

on them, and Fernand ended up dying

7:13

from poisoning. Oh my God, the past.

7:15

At this point, Jean was 67. Her

7:17

son-in-law Joseph moved into the apartment next

7:19

door, and her grandson also lived nearby

7:21

with his wife. More tragedy struck Jean

7:23

in 1963, when her first son Joseph

7:26

died following a long illness, then Frederick

7:28

was killed in a car accident. Her

7:30

older brother, having died the year before,

7:32

Jean, was basically left with no family.

7:34

She was now 88. with three and

7:36

a half decades left in the tank.

7:39

That's so sad, like, I don't want

7:41

to be old and have all my

7:43

family die. That'd be really sad. A

7:45

few years later, fucking obvious statement of

7:47

the century, I don't want to die

7:50

old and alone. In the apartment that

7:52

someone else owns, although I would feel

7:54

good about getting my money's worth. A

7:56

few years later is where my story

7:58

from the start comes in. Here's the

8:00

verified verse. from a piece by Lauren

8:03

Collins on the New Yorker website. When

8:05

Kamen was 94 in 1969 her notary

8:07

bought her apartment the purchase was made

8:09

under the French all-via-gier system in which

8:11

the buyer agrees to make regular payments

8:13

on a property that the seller continues

8:16

to live in. In such an arrangement,

8:18

the buyer essentially wages on how quickly

8:20

the seller will die. It's all very

8:22

morbid, isn't it? The Kalmar apartment proved

8:24

to be an epically terrible investment. By

8:27

the time the notary died in 1995,

8:29

it spent nearly $200,000, more than twice

8:31

the value of the place, without ever

8:33

taking occupancy. Didn't we say this was

8:35

an apartment in Paris? $1,000. Please. The

8:37

death of the notary aside, I was

8:40

quite delighted to find that the story

8:42

had been true, and Vertard remembered it

8:44

so well, apart from thinking it had

8:46

been in Paris when Carmor had spent

8:48

her whole life living in Arle. Oh,

8:50

okay. So it's not Paris. But still,

8:53

I don't know anything about Arle. It

8:55

could be terrible and cheap. She actually

8:57

stayed in that same apartment, above what

8:59

had been the Carmor family store until

9:01

she was 110. And then she moved

9:04

into a nursing home. It wasn't because

9:06

she was extremely decrepit or anything, far

9:08

from it in fact. She'd been staying

9:10

that place so long, she'd gotten used

9:12

to having a few modern conveniences like

9:14

central heating, so one day it was

9:17

really cold and she decided to unfreeze

9:19

the boiler by climbing up onto a

9:21

table and using a candle to warm

9:23

it up. I don't know about you,

9:25

but I'm not even half the age

9:27

that she was, and I still find

9:30

it a bit dicey if I have

9:32

to clamber up on anything that requires

9:34

a step stall or a chair to

9:36

reach it. Yeah, me too, but that's

9:38

not because I'm old. It's just because

9:41

I have epically terrible balance. I work

9:43

out with a trainer in the gym

9:45

these days, and I'll be like doing

9:47

lunges. And I'll just be falling over

9:49

and he'll be like, dude, do you

9:51

want to hold on to my hands?

9:54

Or like, do you want a stick

9:56

to support yourself? And I'm like, yeah,

9:58

it's probably for the best, isn't it?

10:00

And he's like, you should work on

10:02

your balance. And I'm like, dude, it's

10:04

not working on my balance. My balance

10:07

is just shit. Anyway, she didn't fall

10:09

off and hurt herself, but she could

10:11

apparently start a small fire. So she

10:13

agreed to move somewhere with a few

10:15

more creature. and in 1991 at the

10:18

age of 116, she became the oldest

10:20

verified person to have ever lived. Here

10:22

later, she came on smoking. Well, she

10:24

is French. On the 4th of August

10:26

1997, she died at the age of

10:28

122 years and 164 days. Because she

10:31

made it past 110, Kamo is what's

10:33

known as a super-centenarian. So far, the

10:35

next oldest verified living person has been

10:37

a measly 119 years old. A distant

10:39

second place in gerontology terms. Gerontology being

10:41

the study of various factors involved in

10:44

aging. In fact, Kalmon lives so much

10:46

longer than any other supercentarium that she

10:48

is habitually referred to as an outlier

10:50

in the data. So, was she just

10:52

a one-off a combination of good fortune

10:55

and some shared DNA? Was it the

10:57

incest and the smoking that led her

10:59

a long healthy life? I don't know,

11:01

like the British royal family live a

11:03

long-ass time, and they're pretty incestuous, or

11:05

at least they used to be, right?

11:08

Why, with greater knowledge of diet and

11:10

exercises and advances in science and medicine

11:12

over the past 30-odd years, haven't we

11:14

seen anyone else get close to her

11:16

record? Here's an exer from Lauren Collins's

11:18

piece in the New Yorker again. The

11:21

passage of time often quell's controversy, often

11:23

quelles, quelles controversy, but in Quelles, but

11:25

in Quelles, but in Quelles, but in

11:27

Quelles, but, quelles, but, quelles, but, in

11:29

Quelles, quelles, quelles, in quelles, in quelles,

11:32

quelles, in quelles, quelles, in quelles, As

11:34

the world's population continued to grow, the

11:36

cohort of people living to the age

11:38

of 122 did not. More than two

11:40

decades after Carmel's death, her record still

11:42

stood, making her a more conspicuous outlier

11:45

with every year that went by. Either

11:47

she had lived longer than any human

11:49

being ever, or she had executed an

11:51

audacious fraud. As one observer wrote, both

11:53

are highly unlikely life stories, but one

11:55

is true. A fraud, you say? Well,

11:58

let's, shall we, yes, let's, Katie. Suspicions

12:00

of Carmont. Suspicions about Jean Carmont popped

12:02

up in the 1990s and 2000, some

12:04

of which pointed to a cover-up by

12:06

French authorities, but none of which convinced

12:08

society at large that the world's oldest

12:11

person had been a fraud. It wasn't

12:13

until quite recently, late 2018, in fact,

12:15

that the fraud train started to gather

12:17

a little... The main people out in

12:19

Kamen were Valerie Novoselov, a Russian geriatrician

12:22

who is someone specializing in older adult

12:24

health care and fellow Russian Nikolai Zak,

12:26

mathematician. The hypothesis was that Jean Kamen

12:28

hadn't died in 1997 at the ripe

12:30

old age of 122. She had actually

12:32

died in 1934 at the age of

12:35

59 and the person crowned the oddest

12:37

human to ever live was in fact

12:39

her daughter Yvonne who was in reality

12:41

a mere whipper snapper at a hundred

12:43

and ninety nine years of age. Wait,

12:45

so she just took her mom's identity.

12:48

This is the thing. I recently made

12:50

a video about how to like get

12:52

a new identity for another channel ID,

12:54

and I was like, how do you

12:56

show? It was pretty easy in the

12:59

past. They do have some good points.

13:01

The chances of a person living to

13:03

past 120 are practically nil. Sure, increasing

13:05

numbers of people are hitting 100 all

13:07

the time, but in the whole of

13:09

human history, only one woman, Jean-Cermont has

13:12

ever confirmed to have done it. I

13:14

expect the number of supercentarians will increase

13:16

in the future, but seeing as in

13:18

the past records weren't necessarily the best

13:20

capped or most accurate, it's been difficult

13:22

to check an older person's age with

13:25

a hundred percent accuracy. Use that new

13:27

chat cheaply BT thing. A chatty BT

13:29

research, I find this out. It'll be

13:31

like, I found some French records. Like,

13:33

yeah, you did. To quote, Norris MacWertler.

13:36

Okay, whose name sounds made up. Yep,

13:38

but it was actually the co-founder of

13:40

Guinness World Records, quote, no single subject

13:42

is more obscured by vanity, deceit, falsehood,

13:44

and deliberate fraud than the extremes of

13:46

human longevity. I don't know, I'd say

13:49

finance is pretty obscured by vanity, deceit,

13:51

falsehood, and deliberate fraud. You see going

13:53

back a few decades anyone could say

13:55

that they were really old and most

13:57

people would just believe them Especially if

13:59

they were from remote areas That is

14:02

why I come on with so special

14:04

because her life was documented But as

14:06

we know things can be touched mistakes

14:08

can be made and things can fall

14:10

through the cracks even in so-called modern

14:13

systems We know that people commit social

14:15

security or pension fraud claiming money for

14:17

relatives who've already died, but eventually the

14:19

government catches up with them. Well they

14:21

should anyway. According to an article on

14:23

the BBC that was fact-checking, some of

14:26

a certain carmaker billionaires claims recently, quote,

14:28

there is a 2023 report by the

14:30

Social Security Inspector General which identified 19

14:32

million people born in 1920 or earlier

14:34

who didn't have any death data on

14:36

file. 144,000 of them who were still

14:39

receiving social benefits. Oh, okay. I'm so

14:41

confused about what this got to do

14:43

with Elon Musk, but it's because he's

14:45

doing that efficiency thing, isn't he? 19

14:47

million people with no death date? Well,

14:50

that's a lot of people. And there

14:52

are apparently over 100,000 people over the

14:54

age of 100 in the US, so

14:56

there should be a lot more of

14:58

them receiving social security. I don't really

15:00

understand the numbers here, and it's not

15:03

that relevant to our story, but it

15:05

gave recent stats, so I thought it

15:07

was worth putting it was worth putting

15:09

in. was interested in the numbers, though,

15:11

and being a mathematician, I guess that's

15:13

kind of his jam. Well, it would

15:16

be, wouldn't it? In February 2019, he

15:18

published an article evidence that Jean-Carmon died

15:20

in 1934, not 1997, a refreshingly straightforward

15:22

title with no weird subtitle, totally unlike

15:24

usual reading fair on decoding the unknown.

15:27

Indeed, whether it's some like crazy book

15:29

that some crackpots written or really, you

15:31

know, an academic journal piece, they always

15:33

have crazy titles. And in the academic

15:35

journal, I'll just be crazy long, and

15:37

for the crackpot stuff, just crazy. His

15:40

first point is one of probability. Off

15:42

a set of French supercentarians, i.e. people

15:44

living past 110 years, Jean-Carmon, has lived

15:46

the longest and was also the oldest,

15:48

i.e. first identified of the set. Nobody

15:50

born later, has lived longer. Zach estimated

15:53

the plausibility of the longest living person

15:55

having set the record by 1998 by

15:57

1998 98, is approximately 0.0114 percent. I

15:59

think that's his conclusion. Anyway, it was

16:01

at the end of an equation that

16:04

I didn't understand. Basically, he found it

16:06

very unlikely. That's the main takeaway here.

16:08

He also did a Monte Carlo simulation

16:10

of the equation that I didn't understand.

16:12

No idea what that is. takes random

16:14

sampling to predict possible outcomes, and this

16:17

produced a graph showing survival rates for

16:19

people after the age of 105. Zach

16:21

made the sample 5,000 people, even though

16:23

that many people have never been confirmed

16:25

to have reached 110. Anyway, once again,

16:27

when her data was added, Calmore was

16:30

a massive outlier. Zach had got to

16:32

the story via gerontologist Valerie Novoselov, a

16:34

fellow Russian, who had seen some photos

16:36

of late-life Carmon, and thanks to his

16:38

expertise at treating the elderly, was extremely

16:41

suspicious as to the age of the

16:43

alleged oldest person to have ever lived.

16:45

According to Novoselov, he didn't see someone

16:47

who was 110, as Jean was in

16:49

the picture at the time, he saw

16:51

a strong lady a little younger than

16:54

90. This also tracks in the Yvon

16:56

is Jean idea as if their identities

16:58

have been switched when the person in

17:00

question died around 12 years later Yvonne

17:02

would have been 99. Novosselov couldn't seem

17:04

to get over what good Nick Jean

17:07

was in for an extremely old person.

17:09

She was still walking independently until she

17:11

was 115. She could sit up straight

17:13

without help and smoked basically her entire

17:15

life. In an article in Novoselov titled

17:18

The Consequences of the Professional Geriatric Evaluation

17:20

of the oldest human, he also points

17:22

out, quote, The prevalence of dementia syndrome

17:24

in women at the age of 90

17:26

years is 27% and decreases to 70%

17:28

in the age group of 99 years.

17:31

Thus, the absence of pronounced cognitive impairment

17:33

on the level of dementia in a

17:35

woman over 115 years old could not

17:37

help but raise questions among scientists who

17:39

validated a rage. But we do not

17:41

see them. Basically, she was just too

17:44

with it and in too fine a

17:46

physical health for his liking. And I

17:48

mean, fair enough, he's treated a lot

17:50

of really old people. He's got a

17:52

really good base knowledge of old people

17:55

getting kind of fucked up as they

17:57

get older. Apart from just the sheer

17:59

likelihood of Jean's age, what else did

18:01

the detractors have? In 1934, Yvonne supposedly

18:03

died due to complications of having tuberculosis

18:05

and... seen pluracy and pneumonia given as

18:08

causes of death. Her death certificate was

18:10

not signed by a doctor or medical

18:12

expert, but rather a woman in her

18:14

70s who was listed as being unemployed.

18:16

Nikolize acts here rise that Jean also

18:18

had TB, whether contracted from Yvonne or

18:21

elsewhere, and because it was seen as

18:23

something of a shameful disease at the

18:25

time, Jean withdrew from public view and

18:27

Yvonne eventually recovered. With Jean hiding away,

18:29

you've all started using her ID for

18:32

various administrative and legal tasks, so when

18:34

Jean died, she just carried on the

18:36

pretense in order to avoid inheritance tax.

18:38

The Kalmans owned a farm, and at

18:40

least one other property aside from the

18:42

building housing their store and apartments. According

18:45

to Zach's paper tax rates for child

18:47

heirs were about 35% in the mid-1930s,

18:49

meaning that the remaining Kalmans might be

18:51

on the hook for a pretty benny

18:53

in the event of Jean's death. It's

18:55

not like that's never happened. The Kalmo

18:58

sold this store. Weren't they keeping that

19:00

guy alive? They're like, it wasn't Samsung,

19:02

was it? Some big Japanese company. A

19:04

Korean company? I don't remember. It was

19:06

some big Asian company. And the guy

19:09

who started it, he was like old,

19:11

like real old, like in a coma

19:13

and stuff. And they were just keeping

19:15

him alive, like on machines, so that

19:17

he wouldn't be legally dead, and the

19:19

insurance, and the inheritance tax wouldn't like

19:22

screw up the entire operation. We had

19:24

to, I don't know if he's still

19:26

alive, maybe he is, just keeping alive

19:28

on a machine, so they don't, just,

19:30

just pumping those lungs lungs. The Carmons

19:32

sold their store in 1937, meaning that

19:35

if they were in some financial difficulties

19:37

then, there would probably have been evidence

19:39

in 1934. Because of the convoluted tax

19:41

issues in France at the time, the

19:43

Carmons may have been worse off than

19:46

we realized, especially as both branches of

19:48

Jean-Affenade's family tree, or closer than average.

19:50

Jean-Jean's parents had died in 1934 and

19:52

Jean's mother also died in 1931. As

19:54

she would have been the owner of

19:56

the store, this would have kick-started some

19:59

inheritance tax issues for Jean Atenand, as

20:01

per an article by longevity biotech entrepreneur

20:03

Yuri Diegen, quote, in France, inheritance laws

20:05

are quite peculiar even today and they

20:07

were considerably more so in the 1930s.

20:09

Even inheritance between spouses was taxed. Wait,

20:12

isn't that, that's not taxed? I didn't

20:14

even know that. The rule was only

20:16

abolished in 2007. Moreover, the surviving husband

20:18

had the same rights to the property

20:20

of his deceased wife or even to

20:23

half of their joint property as her

20:25

children and even cousins. All right. Therefore,

20:27

if it was Jean who died in

20:29

1934, the financial impact on her family

20:31

could have been quite severe. Her husband

20:33

would have to pay considerable tax on

20:36

his large store. Moreover, he already did

20:38

so just recently, as his own mother

20:40

passed away in 1931, and she most

20:42

likely was the original heiress to the

20:44

store. That sucks! Wait! So someone inherits

20:46

something. They pay the tax on it,

20:49

and then they die, and the next

20:51

person inheritors just immediately has to pay

20:53

more tax on it. He'd be like...

20:55

Never thought about that. That's really unfortunate.

20:57

Dagon also points out that if Jean

21:00

had been slowly dying from the effects

21:02

of tuberculosis, this would have given her

21:04

family, particularly her husband Fern, and time

21:06

to put the switch idea into place.

21:08

Neither Jean or Yvonne are listed in

21:10

the building in the 31 census, although

21:13

Jean's husband and Yvonne's husband are both

21:15

on there as well as Yvonne's son,

21:17

a couple of servants, and Fernandine's mother,

21:19

i. Is this really the best way

21:21

to avoid inheritance tax? that you're your

21:23

own mum? I feel like this must

21:26

be a better way than living your

21:28

whole life as a different person. Yvonne's

21:30

funeral was a big event in all,

21:32

but the casket was closed and Jean

21:34

was in mourning. Zach posits, that a

21:37

switch had occurred before, and therefore death

21:39

from such a severe infection could have

21:41

also been an excuse to keep the

21:43

dead woman caskets closed and to justify

21:45

the living woman wearing a heavy veil.

21:47

Is it also not like open caskets,

21:50

just not like in the UK? We

21:52

just don't do that. I watch that

21:54

TV show six feet under and they're

21:56

all like making the broadie bodies beautiful

21:58

and stuffs people can look at them

22:00

and it's like we don't do that

22:03

we just have a coffin and it's

22:05

closed like I don't even think they

22:07

can open it's just we don't like

22:09

at dead people. It is a bit

22:11

weird to be honest. It's like you

22:14

want to say goodbye to a dead

22:16

person? He also notes, unlike her mothers,

22:18

sons, and husband's names, Yvonne's name is

22:20

not present on the tombstone of the

22:22

familial grave. Suspicious, no? Valerie Novoselov noticed

22:24

more obvious evidence of a switch when

22:27

he started examining photos of Jean and

22:29

her daughter. In a verified photo of

22:31

Yvonne she appears to have a small

22:33

fibroma or growth on the end of

22:35

her nose. In a photo of Jean,

22:37

114, the same or similar growth can

22:40

be seen, although it's not apparent in

22:42

later photos, meaning it could have been

22:44

removed. It does not appear in photos

22:46

of Jean at a much younger age.

22:48

Another tell is that Jean's eye color

22:51

mysteriously changed. In the 1930s, her eye

22:53

color was given as black on an

22:55

identity card, but then was given as

22:57

gray when she died. Zach contends that

22:59

they were actually green. Height is also

23:01

another suspicious factor for the two Russian

23:04

naysayers. The 1930s ID card had a

23:06

height at 152 centimetres just shy of

23:08

five feet tall, or topping Dani DeVito

23:10

by nearly two inches. That's really small.

23:12

Five foot nine? Four foot nine? As

23:14

we age, we shrink. So presumably after

23:17

living for 122 years, Jean would have

23:19

been even tinier when she was at

23:21

a peak. But no, by the age

23:23

of 114, she was basically still the

23:25

same at 150 centimeters mocking Danny DeVito

23:28

from her lofty perch. Other things popped

23:30

up throughout her lighter life too. Her

23:32

signature changed significantly. She flew under the

23:34

radar until she moved into the nursing

23:36

home at 110 and while there she

23:38

had a distant relative. Destroy her personal

23:41

documents. Suspicious, nah! There were also issues

23:43

with Jean's retelling of her life story.

23:45

While she did have specific recollections of

23:47

people, places, and events from her youth

23:49

that turned out to be correct, Nikolizak

23:51

was still not convinced. If she really

23:54

was Yvon, she could have easily been

23:56

coached on various issues on various issues.

23:58

he reasoned, and if she made some

24:00

mistakes, she could just put it down

24:02

to forgetfulness. She could also have unintentionally

24:05

been given the answers to some questions

24:07

by the people who spent many hours

24:09

interviewing her about details of her life

24:11

in order to validate her age claims.

24:13

Some examples in particular stuck out to

24:15

Zach. One of them involved Vincent Van

24:18

Goff, who had moved to Arles in

24:20

1888. In interviews in the film, Vincent

24:22

and me, where she briefly appears as

24:24

herself, Kamel said that Vangoff would stop

24:26

by her father's store to buy canvas

24:28

for his paintings. She didn't like him,

24:31

calling in things like rough, rude, and

24:33

uglier sin had a vile temper and

24:35

smelled of booze. All right, calm down

24:37

Jean. Their timelines did definitely cross, however,

24:39

if you recall, Jean Camille married into

24:42

the Camels that owned the store. Her

24:44

own father was a shipwright. If she

24:46

saw Van Goff in there when she

24:48

was a child, it wouldn't even have

24:50

been her father-in-law's store yet as she

24:52

hadn't married Fernand. If the identity switch

24:55

occurred, however, and Jean was actually Yvonne,

24:57

then yes, it would have been a

24:59

father's store. This is extremely suspicious. I

25:01

think she's the mother. And also just

25:03

like, and also just like... just like...

25:05

just like... This stuff, this sounds like

25:08

a typical mistake that someone would make,

25:10

and it's very hard to walk that

25:12

back with an excuse. There are several

25:14

more examples that Zank gives where Jean

25:16

names people who couldn't quite possibly have

25:18

done what she said at the time,

25:21

such as a nanny who walked out

25:23

of school. When Zak cross-checked the name

25:25

stated in her biography, the only possible

25:27

person who could have taken her to

25:29

school at that time was somebody who

25:32

was 10 years her junior. Again, if

25:34

Jean really was actually Yvonne, this Nanny

25:36

definitely could have walked with her. The

25:38

same thing happened with a named piano

25:40

teacher. When Zach checked, the only matching

25:42

name was 14 at the time that

25:45

Jean said she was taking lessons at

25:47

the age of seven. The same person

25:49

was actually listed as a piano teacher

25:51

in the census by the time Yvonne

25:53

was seven though. This is her, this

25:55

is, this is her, this is, Zach

25:58

dude, is completely crazy. There was also

26:00

the omission of information about the cholera

26:02

epidemic which hit Arls in 1884. Apparently,

26:04

epidemics and other disease outbreaks are handy

26:06

for research purposes as they can be

26:09

used to pinpoint dates and locations more

26:11

easily, but Calmore didn't mention this in

26:13

her interviews. She also changed details about

26:15

where she was born and said she

26:17

had only lived in one place before

26:19

getting married, when in reality the family

26:22

had moved, when she was 13. There

26:24

would be a sure far way to

26:26

settle the dispute. Kamel donated some blood

26:28

to a Parisian study called Project Cronos,

26:30

which maps genes of people over 100

26:33

years old, to get a better understanding

26:35

of aging. Because of her parents' slightly

26:37

incestuous marriage, Yvonne would only have had

26:39

12 great-grandparents, whereas most people, including Jean,

26:42

would have had 16 distinct great-grant. great-great-grandparents.

26:44

This blood, however, and the secrets it

26:46

holds, does not appear to be up

26:48

for grabs. Yeah, I guess, because it's

26:51

like privacy and stuff, but we should

26:53

really test that. One of the strongest

26:55

pieces of evidence against Kalmore is the

26:57

age she lived to itself, so let's

27:00

find out a bit more about that

27:02

before we get into the debunking of

27:04

the debunking. For yes, for every accusation,

27:06

there is, of course, a defender. of

27:09

Jean's record. In fact, as soon as

27:11

Nikolai's act started sounding the fraud alarm,

27:13

some people formed a Facebook group called,

27:16

when translated from French, counter-investigation of the

27:18

Jean-Kalmon investigation. All right, basically some people

27:20

from Arle took extreme umbrage with a

27:22

random Russian bloke, besmirching the name of

27:25

one of their most celebrated residents. The

27:27

group grew to over 1,500 members, and

27:29

along with Jean's age validators, who

27:31

spent many hours interviewing her, these

27:34

citizen detectives dug into Kalmont stories

27:36

to try and prove once and

27:38

for all that Jean's extraordinary longevity

27:40

was not a hoax. You shouldn't do that.

27:42

You shouldn't go into something trying to prove

27:45

something to seek the truth. And I think

27:47

the zak bloke, he seems to be like

27:49

an academic. He probably just looked into it

27:51

to seek the truth. And if he'd have

27:54

found something else, he'd be like, wow, 122,

27:56

huh? Longevity corner. Yes, we know that Jean's

27:58

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copyright copyright copyright. copyright 2025.

35:00

by Bank of America Corporation copyright 2025.

35:02

Zach also presented his argument at an

35:04

anti-aging conference in Berlin sponsored by the Sens

35:07

Foundation. I think this just indicates that

35:09

the Sens Foundation is... very much interested

35:11

in science and reality, rather than being

35:13

like, oh my god, look, this person lived

35:15

to 122, we can do it too,

35:17

this supports our message, which it would,

35:19

but because they seem to be actual scientists

35:21

and a decent journal, that's not what

35:23

they're doing. De Grey has publicly stated

35:25

that he's not 100% convinced by the identity

35:28

switch idea, but has made several calls

35:30

for the blood sample to be released.

35:32

Yeah, I'm not 100% convinced by it.

35:34

I think it takes a lot to be

35:36

100% convinced by it, but I am

35:38

fairly convinced by it. I'm not going

35:40

to believe it until I see some proof

35:42

of it, because I like not believing

35:44

things until I see proof, because that

35:46

just seems like the sensible way of

35:48

doing things. It's not on this Zach guy

35:51

and De Gray to prove a negative.

35:53

He even explicitly appealed his wish to

35:55

Michel Allard and Jean-Marie... have been two of

35:57

the three-person team who originally validated Kamen's

35:59

age along with another doctor, although they

36:01

have so far ignored him. He also

36:03

directly asks Lauren Collins, the journalist, for the

36:05

article. He thinks he has the sway

36:07

to get famous French biologist Yvonne Christian

36:09

involved. I believe it falls to the people

36:12

like you, Kristen. The single best thing

36:14

you could do to save lives, to

36:16

hasten the defeat of aging, is to

36:18

get Kristen and get him to see that

36:20

he has the capacity to go to

36:22

Desai and get them to release that

36:24

sample. Yeah, release the bloody sample. Come on,

36:26

we've got a sample of her blood.

36:28

Let's just test that shit. She didn't

36:30

have any relatives. No one's gonna care.

36:32

The only people are going to care of

36:35

the people who are like championing her

36:37

cause for no cause for no reason.

36:39

Way to put the pressure on someone else

36:41

to Gray. He had a similar mission

36:43

in mind when he spoke to Phil

36:45

Hode for a piece in the Guardian

36:47

in 2019. I think, wait, I'm not sure

36:49

if this is if Katie's being sarcasticated,

36:51

but I think this is a great

36:53

way to put pressure on this issue. Because

36:56

you could go on the podcast and

36:58

say it's really important that someone gets

37:00

this sample released. But if you call

37:02

someone else, I'll do it. He's like being

37:04

you. You can do it. You get

37:06

it done. I think it's quite effective.

37:08

He had a similar mission when he spoke

37:10

to Phil Hode for a piece in

37:12

the Guardian in 2019. When asked about

37:14

the potential release of the sample, he

37:16

said, in the interests of saving lives, finding

37:18

out more about aging to eventually postpone

37:20

aging, then that's actually quite important. See?

37:22

No mention of denouncing the oldest person in

37:25

the world story, which he sort of

37:27

hitched his wagon too with his relationship

37:29

with Nikol Zak, who is definitely in

37:31

it for the fraud angle. Yeah, but he's

37:33

got nothing to gain. It's a big

37:35

no-no anyway from the foundation, d'orsei, that

37:37

holds the sample. The sample was given on

37:39

the assumption of anonymity and was only

37:41

intended to be used for a certain

37:43

set of things, so they just say

37:45

their hands are tied. I mean, fair play,

37:48

though. If you've got a reason why

37:50

you can't, you can't. As time goes

37:52

all by, it doesn't seem likely that they'll

37:54

finally relent, so I guess we'll just

37:56

have to decode this the old-fashioned way

37:58

without the use. of cutting-edge science. Luckily, it's

38:00

not as hard as all that, debunking

38:02

the suspicions. According to her Guinness World

38:04

Records page, the record holder credited her

38:06

long life to a healthy diet with plenty

38:09

of olive oil, which she also rubbed

38:11

into her skin. However, she also indulged

38:13

in chocolate from time to time and smoked

38:15

from the age of 21 until she

38:17

was 117. Jesus Christ, that must be

38:19

like, I don't know if she smoked

38:21

heavily, she's French, so probably. But like, that

38:23

must be an extraordinary number of cigarettes.

38:25

Indulged in chocolate from time to time,

38:27

eh? Well, according to other articles, I read,

38:30

Jean ate two pounds, or just over

38:32

a kilo of the good stuff every

38:34

week. Now that's the darn that I

38:36

can get behind. I mean, that's a lot

38:38

of chocolate. And I don't really eat

38:40

chocolate, I'm on a health kick, but

38:42

I could definitely eat a kilogram, a chocolate,

38:44

a chocolate, a week. Like 100 grams

38:46

of chocolate is like a big milker

38:48

bar or a big dairy milk or

38:50

whatever Americans have. It's like a big, big

38:53

bar of chocolate. Not crazy big, just

38:55

a big bar. Like the bigger bar

38:57

in the stores. The one they say is

38:59

for sharing, but because you're a greedy

39:01

fuck, you eat it all yourself. Like,

39:03

that would be one and a half

39:05

of those a day, basically. If I wasn't

39:07

worried about my health, I would, I

39:09

could crush that with zero trouble. We

39:11

mentioned them briefly earlier, but Jean, a team

39:13

of three people doing various things to

39:15

validate her age claim while she was

39:18

still alive. These people were Michelle Allard,

39:20

a gerontologist or aging an older adult specialist,

39:22

Jean-Marie Babin, a demographer who specializes in

39:24

human population statistics, and her doctor, Victor

39:26

Leibre. Through many hours of conversations and checking

39:28

of historical data, they were confident that

39:30

Jean Comer was indeed the world's oldest

39:32

person. It wasn't until Nikolizak and Valerie

39:34

Novosolov came along in 2018 that they really

39:36

had to... their position at all, or

39:38

two of them did, Victor Lebret already

39:40

died. So let's check back in with Nova

39:43

Sullivan's acts claims and see if there

39:45

really is anything to them. We'll start

39:47

with the smallest enough regarding the identity

39:49

switch hypothesis. A lot of this so-called evidence

39:51

rests on comparing photos of Yvonne and

39:53

Jean at various ages. There aren't that

39:55

many photos of Yvon, personal photography, not really

39:57

being the huge... thing in the early

39:59

20th century, or at least not many

40:01

photos that people have been able to

40:03

find. There is only one photo that has

40:06

come to light which shows the two

40:08

come-on ladies together as adults. It's a

40:10

black and white shot if Yvonne perched on

40:12

a bench or a chair with her

40:14

mother Jean filling with some flowers that

40:16

are on a table. Jean is looking

40:18

down and Yvonne is looking at the camera

40:20

so it's difficult to even compare the

40:22

two in the same shot as... As

40:24

you can't see Jean's face in that much

40:27

detail. They're dressed alike in what looks

40:29

like blouses, cardigans and skirts, but they

40:31

have different hairstyles and Jean seems smaller than

40:33

you want, even though you want sitting

40:35

down. Yeah, the face and stuff is

40:37

not the stuff that I find more

40:39

compelling. It's the fact that she's still super

40:41

the same height as when she was

40:43

younger. The fact that, oh, what else

40:45

was there? It was a whole bunch of

40:48

stuff and I was like, this just

40:50

seems extremely suspicious, extremely suspicious. Research that

40:52

Nikolai Zach has done into other photos

40:54

of the two show what has been called

40:56

a fibroma on a known photo of

40:58

Yvonne. It's a little bump on the

41:00

end of her nose. In a photo of

41:02

Jean later in life, the bump is

41:04

there again. This evidence, however, is just

41:06

a weak source. Yes, Jean has a

41:08

bump in that photo, but doesn't have it

41:11

in others. So how can this prove

41:13

anything apart from her and a direct

41:15

biological relation might both be prone to getting

41:17

spots on their noses? In his paper,

41:19

Zach says, quote, in one of the

41:21

few photographs of the young Yvonne that

41:23

exist, one can see a small fibroma on

41:25

the nose. It could be a scan

41:27

defect, but it's also visible on different

41:29

scans. A similar fibroma could be seen fibroma.

41:31

Interestingly, it is absent from her later

41:33

photos indicating that it was removed. If

41:35

Yvonne removed it more than once, that

41:37

could explain its slightly different locations, and also

41:40

the fact that the fibroma appears smaller

41:42

in the older woman, even though fibromas

41:44

grow over time. So I was assuming they

41:46

can grow back, so you have it

41:48

removed, and then it grows again? I'm

41:50

not even entirely sure what a fibroma

41:52

is. Is that just like that thick skin

41:54

you can sometimes get? Pardon me for

41:56

sounding rude, Mr. Zach, but aren't you

41:58

just proving the counterargument as you go along?

42:01

Zach is saying that fibromas grow over

42:03

time, but weirdly, if ons get smaller.

42:05

Maybe that's because it's not the same

42:07

person nor the... same fibromy. Either one or

42:09

both women then had it removed or

42:11

that just or it just disappeared over

42:13

time naturally and came back every once in

42:15

a while. That's not a compelling evidence

42:17

for an identity switch. Jean's eye color

42:19

changing is also not compelling evidence for

42:21

an identity switch. No, I agree with that.

42:24

I don't think that's particularly compelling. It's

42:26

like people's eye color can change or

42:28

just not really change, but it can appear

42:30

different. And certainly if you get older,

42:32

your eyes can get more like cloudy,

42:34

you get that, what's that thing? Is

42:36

it cataracts when your eyes go cloudy and

42:38

change color a little bit? While it

42:40

was given as black on her official

42:42

ID, it's more likely to have been dark

42:45

brown. Her eyes do look more gray

42:47

in later photos, but you could argue

42:49

that they are greenish and in some

42:51

way they still look quite dark. So who's

42:53

to say that the color green in

42:55

the 1930s is the most accurate one.

42:57

I'm not sure what color Yvonne's eyes were.

42:59

There have also been comparisons of a

43:01

younger Jean to an older Jean and

43:03

people have found discrepancies with ears, noses,

43:05

and jaw lines, etc. But this is not

43:08

exact science as people's ears and noses

43:10

can change quite significantly over the course

43:12

of their life, including all throughout adulthood, thanks

43:14

to a loss of collagen, the breaking

43:16

down of cartilage, and general gravity-induced sagging.

43:18

Yay! So much fun stuff to look forward

43:20

to. Is it an urban legend or

43:22

whatever that your nose and ears continue

43:24

to grow throughout your whole life? But

43:26

I mean old people have massive noses and

43:29

ears and ears! Anyway, if you compare

43:31

any two photos of a person as

43:33

a young adult and a very old adult,

43:35

they're going to look very different. I

43:37

mean, Jesus Christ, look at a photo

43:39

of me from 10 years ago. Could

43:41

a different young adult who looks similar actually

43:43

be that older adult? Maybe, but in

43:45

this case, it's not strong enough to

43:47

project how Yvonne might have looked at age

43:49

100 plus, and compare it to photos

43:51

of old agent agent. From existing photos

43:53

of young agent Jean, there's nothing that

43:55

can disprove that the old lady is her.

43:58

How about the height discrepancy? She was

44:00

supposedly 150 centimetres at 114 years old,

44:02

just 2 centimetres shorter than she had been

44:04

in the 1930s. Does this indicate that

44:06

she was, in fact, taller than Yvonne?

44:08

Well, I'm not really sure where the

44:10

150 centimetre number came from, as according to

44:12

Lauren Collins from the New Yorker article,

44:14

Jean was actually 143 when she died,

44:16

centimetre, sorry, when she died, or a rather

44:19

teeny four-foot seven inches, which means that

44:21

this is in line with what you'd

44:23

expect to lose, as you and Danny

44:25

DeVito got the last laugh after all. I

44:27

also saw an even smaller number of

44:29

137 attributed to her validating team, which

44:31

means that that 150 number is just way

44:33

off. Okay, so one of the most

44:35

convincing elements is seemingly debunked. Okay, that's

44:37

the physical side of things. What about

44:39

the other stuff? Yvonne wasn't listed as living

44:42

in the large Carmont apartment store apartments

44:44

in 1931 and neither was Jean, although

44:46

the rest of the family are. There's no

44:48

real issue here, according to Allard and

44:50

Robin. 931 was the first year that

44:52

the censors in France were tight Britain

44:54

and there were titles galore. Jean is not

44:56

named, however. Marie Clamont-Jean's mother-in-law is named

44:58

twice, listed once a spouse with an

45:00

1847 birth date erased, and once a mother

45:03

with a birth date of 1847. So

45:05

I think it's pretty clear that the

45:07

first Maria is actually supposed to be

45:09

Jean, and it's just a mistake. If you're

45:11

Michael Isaac, however, you might say something

45:13

like this in your argument. An alternative

45:15

interpretation is that Jean's health was by then

45:17

in decline, and the family was already

45:19

in the early steps of devising an

45:21

ID switch plan, leading them to provide

45:23

obfuscating information. I suppose that's plausible, but is

45:26

it likely? Not really. And if you're

45:28

wondering why Yvonne is not mentioned at

45:30

all, it's because she was in Switzerland getting

45:32

treatment for her tuberculosis. The Facebook group

45:34

of Jean supporters managed to figure this

45:36

out by finding a photo of Yvonne

45:38

as a young adult and deducing the location

45:40

of her photo as being a sanatorium

45:42

in Lace in Switzerland. The photograph was

45:44

dated to August 1931. They also found letters

45:46

confirming that Yvonne's health had been so

45:48

bad that her husband had requested a

45:51

five-year leave of absence from the military, starting

45:53

in 1928. Top look after her, and

45:55

he requested another absence in 1933. Basically,

45:57

all the information pointing to Yvonne, having

45:59

been very ill, when there is no... such

46:01

information to be found about Jean. Zag

46:03

points to Yvonne's death certificate as having

46:05

been signed by a seemingly random old lady

46:07

with no medical expertise or particular knowledge

46:09

of the family hinting that she wouldn't

46:11

have known if the bodies of Yvonne

46:13

and Jean had been switched. The thing is,

46:16

in 1934, death stuccots didn't have to

46:18

be signed by a medical professional. According

46:20

to Eric LaBorg writing for medicinal sciences, quote,

46:22

for this act, the declarant may be

46:24

a relative but not necessarily, and it

46:26

is often nowadays a funeral worker. The

46:28

witness does not need to know the

46:30

deceased to declare the death in

46:32

City Hall. Additionally, only one witness

46:34

is required. Yvonne's death certificate is

46:36

perfectly commonplace. So, this wasn't really

46:39

that suspicious after rule. I still think one

46:41

of the big things is just how much

46:43

of an outlier she is. Like, no one

46:45

has ever been able to do this, except

46:47

for her. And there's these suspicions around her.

46:49

And what about Yvonne's name not being on

46:51

the family tomb? Is that because she was

46:53

actually still alive and had accidentally forgotten that

46:55

she was supposed to be dead? It's kind

46:58

of surprising when you can clearly see the

47:00

names of her husband and son there together,

47:02

but no mention of Yvonne. The tomb itself

47:04

is made of black granite with the surnames

47:06

Jil Kalmon below on one end. On a

47:08

raised bit in the middle is what

47:10

looks like an open book with Jean

47:12

Kalmon and her dates on one side,

47:14

La Doyen Delleumanen Delaumanidee on the other.

47:16

At the back is another piece, sorry

47:18

I'm not familiar with tomb vernacular, with

47:20

a cross and Joseph and Frederick below

47:22

his names engraved on it. You might

47:24

also notice that while there are three

47:26

family names on the tomb, only three

47:28

individuals are actually mentioned on it. There's

47:30

no fern hands or his relatives, there's

47:32

no sure reps either, whoever they are.

47:34

So really, it's not that weird that

47:36

Yvonne didn't make the cut. Also, she

47:38

died a lot earlier than her husband

47:40

and son, predezing them by almost 30

47:42

years. According to the Facebook sleuths again,

47:44

this tomb was restored in the 1960s,

47:46

so only people who died after that,

47:48

i.e. Joseph Frederick and Jean, were specifically

47:51

engraved onto it. Everyone else, is just

47:53

implied. Let's talk about the inconsistent memories

47:55

and life facts now. I think we'd

47:57

all agree that nobody's memory is going

47:59

to be a... 100% accurate at 100 plus

48:01

years of age, unless they're one of those supercomputer

48:03

memories, which Jean didn't. The fact that she said

48:05

things like her father owned the store instead of

48:07

her husband isn't really a smoking gun as far

48:10

as I'm concerned. It's not like she said, my

48:12

father, Fernand, she never named anyone. When commenting on

48:14

Van Goff visiting the store, Jean was detached to

48:16

it yet, because she was a girl and hadn't

48:18

yet married Fernand. So saying that it was either

48:21

her father or her father or husband's store would

48:23

have been wrong at the time at the time

48:25

anyway. it would have belonged to her future father-in-law,

48:27

but who can be bothered to keep saying that

48:30

all the time when people are interested in

48:32

the Van Goff X aspect of the anecdote,

48:34

not how you were or weren't related to

48:36

the store's owner. Yeah, that's fair enough. That's

48:38

definitely fair enough. Other discrepancies with age and

48:40

names can't just be put down to things

48:42

getting mixed up. It's easy to do. Come

48:44

on, gave names that weren't necessarily correct, so

48:46

people had to guess who she might have

48:49

meant. Her speech later in life was hard

48:51

to understand, clearly, adding another layer of difficulty

48:53

to figuring out who she meant. It was

48:55

clear that she knew things that only Jean,

48:57

not her daughter, could have known, though. She

48:59

sometimes used words that were so

49:01

old-fashioned her interviewers had to look

49:04

them up. She remembered things like

49:06

the company who had made her

49:08

wedding cutlery and who her math

49:10

teacher was. This wasn't necessarily enough

49:13

for Nikolai Zach, though, who thought

49:15

that Yvonne could have learned these

49:17

details herself and wouldn't have needed

49:19

first-hand knowledge of them. Talking

49:21

to Lauren Collins, he says, I'm

49:23

younger than my father by 34 years

49:26

and I'm not very close with him,

49:28

but I know the name of his

49:30

math teacher. That's not true. I could

49:32

at least name some. But I don't

49:34

know the name of my dad's teachers.

49:36

Why would I? Good for you, Nikolai,

49:38

but I think you are a tiny

49:40

minority here. I know the name of

49:42

one school my dad went to, but

49:44

as for teachers he had, forget about

49:46

it. I didn't even know that. And this

49:49

is kind of embarrassing to admit that

49:51

I had to ask my mom what

49:53

city she was born in the other

49:55

day, so count me out for an

49:58

identity switch scam in the future. I

50:00

don't think Jean's signature changing is much of

50:02

a red flag either. Who hasn't experimented with

50:04

how they write their name? Sure, maybe you

50:07

stick to a certain style in adulthood, but

50:09

I started signing my name differently on a

50:11

touch screen than I do with a pen,

50:13

and I'm considering changing my handwriting signature as

50:16

the way it comes out with my finger

50:18

actually looks cooler. I probably won't end up

50:20

doing this. I'm just making the point that

50:22

a changing letter in a signature doesn't necessarily

50:25

mean anything. No, it definitely doesn't. Like I

50:27

recently got a new passport and I looked

50:29

at my signature from my passport which was

50:31

like a decade ago and my signature used

50:34

to be way neater and now it's just

50:36

a mess. Because there's an ad like you

50:38

got to sign so much more shit. It's

50:40

like, just signing things all the time. Nikolai

50:42

Zak also thinks a couple of important omissions

50:44

in Jean's interviews of her life story point

50:47

to an identity switch, namely a house move

50:49

she made as a teen, and that she

50:51

never mentioned the cholera outbreak in R. With

50:53

the house move, I mean, who really cares?

50:55

My daughter isn't 13, and has lived at

50:58

least seven different addresses, but probably couldn't even

51:00

remember or named three of them, although

51:02

most of the moving occurred when she

51:04

was very young. When digging deeper into

51:07

historical records, Alard and Robin... did come

51:09

across some information about this move, but

51:11

again it hardly blew the conspiracy case

51:13

wide open. In an article called The

51:16

Real Fact supporting Jean-Calmont as the oldest

51:18

human ever, they say, Indeed, we did

51:20

not learn about this move during our

51:23

interviews with JCP. But we have since

51:25

determined that the move was only 150

51:27

meters away in the same neighborhood. In

51:30

1884 or 1885 when JCP was 9 or

51:32

10, not 13 years old, we do not

51:34

feel it is remarkable that a minor move

51:36

such as... this at the age of 10

51:38

would not be mentioned. Exactly. And with the

51:40

color epidemic, I looked it up and it

51:42

hardly ran rampant through the streets of ours.

51:44

Six people died within 24 hours, but that's

51:46

the only death toll I could find. So

51:49

as a nine-year-old at the time, I doubt

51:51

Jean would have really worried that much about

51:53

it or even knew what was happening. Wow,

51:55

this is really, Zach, I'm sorry, I was

51:57

really on your side. But this kind of

51:59

arguments... been dismantled is your arguments are

52:01

being pretty pretty pretty well dismantled my

52:04

dude. I still think the thing about

52:06

the statistic thing about her just being

52:08

such an outlier is definitely weird but

52:10

I'm kind of coming back around so

52:12

maybe she maybe this is real. Zach

52:15

also found it suspicious that Jean didn't

52:17

really become that well-known until she moved

52:19

into a nursing home at the age

52:21

of 110, but that's the thing about

52:23

long life. Nobody knows about you until

52:26

you really start getting up there. Who

52:28

cares about some 105-year-old when there are

52:30

people 10 years older knocking about? A

52:32

well-preserved 110-year-old, though. Now we're talking. And

52:34

of course, as she persisted, so her

52:37

pain grew. If you've been wondering at

52:39

all about the insurance aspect of the

52:41

insurance aspect of the story, While it

52:43

did seem as though, oh I think

52:45

Katie must mean inheritance, while it did

52:48

seem as though the Calmonts had been

52:50

hammered over inheritance taxes and what not,

52:52

it might not have been as bad

52:54

as we originally thought. In this paper,

52:56

Zach speculates, perhaps the Calmore family suffered

52:59

from taxation after the death of Maria

53:01

Felix. If I can like that, I

53:03

suffer from taxation. Widow of the founder

53:05

of the store, Jacques Carmont, and especially

53:07

after the death of Jean's father, Nicola

53:10

Carmont, the owner of the land and

53:12

real estate in the surrounding villages in

53:14

1931. The inheritance for the farm in

53:16

San Martin de Crowell would amount to

53:19

hundreds of thousands of dollars in modern

53:21

money. It's not hard to imagine that

53:23

the family had neither desire nor ability

53:25

to pay the tax, especially twice in

53:27

a row. Here... One should recall that

53:30

Jean hated socialists. Allah and Rabin to

53:32

the rescue once more. In their rebuttal,

53:34

they point out that Zach handily ignores

53:36

key details of the Kalmo financial setup,

53:38

which have been in place for years,

53:41

even before Yvonne's death. They say, Zach

53:43

is negligent in not noting that Nikola

53:45

Kalmo had given... NC had given all

53:47

his property to his children on March

53:49

15th 1926 in exchange for an annual

53:52

annuity of 5,000 francs that his children

53:54

had to pay him until his death.

53:56

The only financial consequence of the death

53:58

of NC in 1931 is the... extinction

54:00

of the life annuity. Okay, so he'd

54:03

given all the property over before, so

54:05

he could avoid the inheritance. I told

54:07

you there was a better way to

54:09

avoid this. They also accessed publicly available

54:11

real estate transactions and deeds, and found

54:14

no evidence of a massive amount of

54:16

inheritance tax ever being due. Another member

54:18

of the Facebook sleuth group also discovered

54:20

that far from being taxed, 30% or

54:23

more if Jean had died in 1934.

54:25

It would have only been about 6%

54:27

of her total assets. They also found

54:29

that she'd inherited a tidy son a

54:31

tidy son from her father when he

54:34

died in 1926. No need to defraud

54:36

anybody. No, I don't know. Yeah, fakey.

54:38

I said earlier, like, living your life

54:40

for someone else is not worth it

54:42

for avoiding 30% in Harrison's tax is

54:45

definitely not worth it to avoid 6%.

54:47

I mean, unless you own like Samsung

54:49

or some shit. Interestingly, Aubrey Dagoine pops

54:51

up again here with another question about

54:53

the finances, which he posted in the,

54:56

I earlier was like, yeah, I'm 90%

54:58

sure or whatever, that, that, um, this

55:00

is fake. But now I've heard all

55:02

the rebuttal, I'm like, shit, I don't

55:04

know, it seems quite legit. But, this

55:07

is the problem. That doesn't seem to

55:09

be a ton of evidence either way.

55:11

Like, there's not a lot of evidence

55:13

to support it. The evidence against it's

55:15

pretty weak, but you don't have to

55:18

prove a negative. Which you posted in

55:20

the Facebook group in March 2019, he

55:22

agrees over the tax argument is weak,

55:24

so queries it from a different angle.

55:26

As we know, and it from a

55:29

different. In the paper it suggested that

55:31

maybe the store closed because of financial

55:33

difficulties. If so, maybe those difficulties were

55:35

already severe in 1934, and if so,

55:38

even a modest saving of tax arising

55:40

from the lower raids that people here

55:42

have identified might have constituted a large

55:44

motive. Yeah, but not large enough to

55:46

live your life as someone else. Conversely,

55:49

if the store closed for other reasons

55:51

not related to financial hardship, then it

55:53

remains likely that the family were financially

55:55

secure throughout that period. The motive arising

55:57

from saving a rather small amount of

56:00

tax is small and therefore not very

56:02

plausible. Therefore, I think the balance of

56:04

evidence for and against the ID switch

56:06

hypothesis would be significantly shifted depending on

56:08

the reason why the store closed. Does

56:11

anyone know anything about that? Oh, Aubrey.

56:13

I think you're asking the best group

56:15

of online detectives on the planet. Of

56:17

course, somebody knew something about that. In

56:19

fact, it was Fraswa Robin Champigneur who

56:22

came up with the best explanation, and

56:24

he has also been the main researcher

56:26

of all the tax stuff, too. He

56:28

basically said that the store had been

56:30

sold not closed not closed in 1938

56:33

in 1938. retire. Finance daughter Yvonne died.

56:35

Her husband Joseph was going back to

56:37

the military and Frederick was only 11

56:39

at the time so couldn't take over

56:41

anyway. Jean herself had never been particularly

56:44

involved in the running of the store,

56:46

so voila, case closed. The only lingering

56:48

suspicious thing really is that Jean asked

56:50

for her personal documents to be destroyed

56:53

when she was in the nursing home.

56:55

Zach writes in his rejuvenation research paper,

56:57

quote, it is somewhat suggestive that Jean

56:59

decided to destroy the photos and other

57:01

documents when she was requested to send

57:04

them to the archives of Arle being

57:06

in the nursing home and not being

57:08

able to destroy the documents herself. Jean

57:10

resorted to the help of a distant

57:12

relative. It is weird, like why would

57:15

you want to destroy all your documents?

57:17

You're going to die who gives a

57:19

shit. So she had multiple motives to

57:21

help perpetrate an ID switch secret. However,

57:23

in the context of the pattern of

57:26

behavior documented here, it becomes plausible that

57:28

this destruction was a result of cold

57:30

calculation and acute necessity instead of an

57:32

emotional act. Yeah, it is weird. Why

57:34

would you want to destroy all your

57:37

documents? You're going to die. Who gives

57:39

a shit? I think we can see

57:41

by now that practically all of Zax's

57:43

ideas are just that, they're just ideas.

57:45

He doesn't present facts, just suppositions. Anyway,

57:48

Lauren Collins also went deep into this

57:50

for the New Yorker article and came

57:52

to the conclusion that a family conflict

57:54

lay at the heart of the decision

57:57

as there was still one living link

57:59

to Jean-Calmo, René below Bonery, the widow

58:01

of Jean's grandson Frederick, after Freddie's death.

58:03

The desire to keep such a conflict

58:05

private could help explain why Calmore chose

58:08

to destroy her personal papers. It could

58:10

also attest to her authenticity. If Calmore

58:12

had been involved in a scam, it's

58:14

conceivable that Barre would have known and

58:16

had been motivated to expose her. I

58:19

sent a letter to Bonery and contacted

58:21

a relative of her who eventually asked

58:23

me to leave them alone. It's probably

58:25

because you're annoying. So I guess that's

58:27

speculation too, but it seems more likely

58:30

than Zach's hypothesis. Jean's character actually didn't

58:32

do her many favors with the people

58:34

saying she was pretty bossy and condescending,

58:36

so if there had been a switch,

58:38

it would have been a lot of

58:41

people just itching to let the cat

58:43

out of the bag, get their own

58:45

back. But it never happened. Going back

58:47

to the original hoax suggestor Valerie Novosolov,

58:49

his whole issue stemmed from the fact

58:52

that Jean just looked too young to

58:54

be so old. He wasn't all in

58:56

on the identity switch hypothesis, but his

58:58

idea was that Jean managed to fudge

59:00

her official age. Unfortunately for him, Jean's

59:03

validating team of Michel Allard and Jean

59:05

Marie Ruben had literal receipts going back

59:07

decades. Oh, okay. If you care to

59:09

look, they published a list of census

59:12

reports dating from 1876 that mentioned Jean,

59:14

apart from one with two Marias that

59:16

we mentioned earlier. documentation such as what

59:18

Allah and Robin used has helped winkle

59:20

out other supposed supercentarians. In the past,

59:23

when it was discovered that a father

59:25

and son had the same name, for

59:27

example, all that dates just didn't match

59:29

up, as they write at the end

59:31

of their presentation, this is not the

59:34

case for Jean-Kammon quoting them. As regards,

59:36

Jean-Louis-Karmon, a centarian, who has been known

59:38

since 1985 when she was 110, and

59:40

who was 122 years old when she

59:42

died, there is a perfect chaining of

59:45

the information on the four generations having

59:47

preceded her. death dates of her two,

59:49

four, eight, and sixteen parents, grandparents, grandparents,

59:51

great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents, covering the time and

59:53

on to January. generations after her, i.e.

59:56

birth and marriage and death dates of

59:58

children and grandchildren covering the 1898 to

1:00:00

1963 period. On the whole, the training

1:00:02

covers seven generations from 1723 to 1963.

1:00:04

With the complementary direct documents, we have,

1:00:07

from her birth to her death, a

1:00:09

perfect training from 1875 to 1997. In

1:00:11

particular, with a perfect training constituted by

1:00:13

14 direct documents from population censuses from

1:00:15

1876 to 1975, the year of 100th

1:00:18

birthday. Well, honestly, that sounds like pretty

1:00:20

locked down, doesn't it? That sounds like

1:00:22

some pretty good evidence. Well, old Zach,

1:00:24

who I used to love and was

1:00:27

kind of in his corner. He's kind

1:00:29

of just guessing. I'd call this a

1:00:31

slam dunk, but Novoselov is still not

1:00:33

totally convinced. In conversation with Lauren Collins,

1:00:35

he showed her a picture of Kaman

1:00:38

around eight years old and said, that

1:00:40

woman is still full of estrogen. She

1:00:42

is just entering the early stages of

1:00:44

menopause. It's clear that, harmonally, she is

1:00:46

still a woman. Because as we all

1:00:49

know, after menopores, women aren't women anymore.

1:00:51

They're just husks! I don't know if

1:00:53

that's an accidentally sexist thing that he

1:00:55

said there, but it sounds really bad.

1:00:57

Okay, one, I take effect. Okay, good.

1:01:00

I take offense with the fact that

1:01:02

this dude thinks women are not homodily

1:01:04

still winning after menopause. Screw you. But

1:01:06

more to the point too, if Jean

1:01:08

is going to live for four decades

1:01:11

from the time the picture was taken,

1:01:13

she's going to be one in seven

1:01:15

billion who just ages slower. If she

1:01:17

aged at the same rate as everyone

1:01:19

else, she couldn't get to, she wouldn't

1:01:22

get to 122 or she'd be an

1:01:24

absolute shriveled walnut. Nobody can say for

1:01:26

sure if come on, didn't hit the

1:01:28

menopause until her 80s. Like, whatever. We

1:01:31

should start, uh, what's it, with the

1:01:33

viruses. Gene therapy, we should gene therapy

1:01:35

ourselves with her genes. I know it

1:01:37

doesn't work like that, but it would

1:01:39

be cool. Yes, we can say that

1:01:42

she smoked and ate chocolate all the

1:01:44

time, but she wasn't a chain smoker.

1:01:46

She'd only have a couple of day

1:01:48

after a meal. She never... had any

1:01:50

serious medical complaints or illnesses and had

1:01:53

led a very active lifestyle mountaineering with

1:01:55

her husband swimming, skating and cycling everywhere.

1:01:57

She was still riding her bike at

1:01:59

the age of 100! Holy shit! Even

1:02:01

110 in the nursing home! Jean was

1:02:04

sticking to a regime that included morning

1:02:06

exercises. In fact, nothing that serious happened

1:02:08

to her until later in life when

1:02:10

she fractured the leg at age 100

1:02:12

and had a mild heart failure at

1:02:15

111. Her jeans were all aiming towards

1:02:17

a life span too, with her older

1:02:19

brother making it to 97, her mother

1:02:21

clocking out at 86, and a father

1:02:23

making it to 93, not bad for

1:02:26

a shipwright born in 1837. Yeah, my

1:02:28

great-grandmother cracked 100. Think she died at

1:02:30

101. And yeah, the rest of them,

1:02:32

well, both my granddads died when they

1:02:34

were like 50, but one had a

1:02:37

disease. and that's like that I don't

1:02:39

have and the other had I don't

1:02:41

know I don't know I don't know

1:02:43

much I don't know much about my

1:02:46

family but let's just hope I got

1:02:48

that 100 year old gene she did

1:02:50

deteriorate fairly rapidly over the last few

1:02:52

years of her life though and while

1:02:54

her mental state was still pretty good

1:02:57

she couldn't really see or hear which

1:02:59

in itself probably contributed to her downfall

1:03:01

as she couldn't carry on with her

1:03:03

daily routines In pictures of her in

1:03:05

the last couple of years of life,

1:03:08

it's definitely caught up with her and

1:03:10

she looks really, really old. I think

1:03:12

we've covered the main debunkings of the

1:03:14

identities which I did, which just leaves

1:03:16

one thing to mention. The sheer improbability

1:03:19

of Yvonne taking on Jean's Jean's identity.

1:03:21

Okay, I suppose that neither of these

1:03:23

things is likely. One, a daughter living

1:03:25

as her mother for 60 years or

1:03:27

two, a woman living to a hundred

1:03:30

and twenty-two and a half, but one

1:03:32

of those that happened, which means the

1:03:34

other, which means the other, did not,

1:03:36

did not, did not, did not, did

1:03:38

not. Think about that. If Yvonne had

1:03:41

taken on the identity of her mother

1:03:43

for financial reasons, that's one thing people

1:03:45

have done to claim pensions and benefits

1:03:47

after their parents have died. But most

1:03:49

of the time, it's on paper. They

1:03:52

don't assume the life and identity of

1:03:54

the dead person in the real world,

1:03:56

or if they do, they do it

1:03:58

not for 60 years, totally undetected. Yvonne

1:04:01

was only 23 years younger than her

1:04:03

mother. but she still would have had

1:04:05

to be pretending to be a 59-year-old

1:04:07

when she was only 36. She had

1:04:09

to pretend to be her own husband's

1:04:12

mother-in-law, her own son's grandmother, and her

1:04:14

own father's wife. Yeah, it's kind of

1:04:16

weird. Can you imagine a seven-year-old being

1:04:18

able to keep that secret? The Carmons

1:04:20

didn't live in an isolated bubble. Their

1:04:23

store was practically an institution. And they

1:04:25

were a member of the French Legion

1:04:27

of honor. which would have meant that

1:04:29

his name at least would have been

1:04:31

well known in certain circles. Yvonne and

1:04:34

Jean... were active in their own social

1:04:36

groups and it would have been pretty

1:04:38

obvious if so-called Jean suddenly started showing

1:04:40

up to a music club looking like

1:04:42

a daughter. Detractors argue that Awn was

1:04:45

a large place but it really wasn't

1:04:47

and as we said the Carmons were

1:04:49

known around and about and both Yvonne

1:04:51

and Jean knew a lot of different

1:04:53

people but this ruse to have worked

1:04:56

it wasn't just census take as an

1:04:58

admin workers who would have to be

1:05:00

fooled. It would have had to be

1:05:02

almost the entire city of Arle. Yvonne's

1:05:04

marriage in 1926 and a note and

1:05:07

a house sale with Jean in 1931

1:05:09

when according to Zach Yvonne had already

1:05:11

started taking over her mother's identity. They

1:05:13

also knew each other socially so it

1:05:16

seems unlikely that he would have been

1:05:18

taken in by Yvonne pretending to be

1:05:20

Jean. A petition always started in 2019

1:05:22

on change.org calling for the exhumations of

1:05:24

Jean and Yvonne in the interests of

1:05:27

science and for the search for truth.

1:05:29

The petition's data calls on Emmanuel Macron

1:05:31

to make the decision to make the

1:05:33

decision. After six years, this petition has

1:05:35

gone at 327 signatures. And no word

1:05:38

from McCran. So, good luck with that.

1:05:40

I don't think they should exume them.

1:05:42

That's fucking weird. Just test that blood.

1:05:44

Before he went down something of a

1:05:46

rabbit hole with his hypotheses, Nicolai Zak

1:05:49

was initially saying that a person living

1:05:51

to 122 was mathematically impossible. But that's

1:05:53

the thing. It was only impossible, because

1:05:55

it hadn't yet been proven to happen.

1:05:57

Now it has. So mathematical... goalposts will

1:06:00

have to shift. Let's just say it's

1:06:02

mathematically improbable, shall we? The current oldest

1:06:04

person in the world is a nun

1:06:06

from Brazil aged a sprightly 116, and

1:06:08

as it stands there are 50 known

1:06:11

people alive in the world right now

1:06:13

that have been validated as being over

1:06:15

112. They're coming for calmore, slowly but

1:06:17

surely, but so far no one's managed

1:06:20

to get near enough to wipe out

1:06:22

that longevity crown. Yeah, and honestly, for

1:06:24

six years difference at that age is

1:06:26

an absolutely massive difference. Come on, live

1:06:28

through two World Wars, 20 French presidents,

1:06:31

as well as being the oldest person

1:06:33

in general. She holds the world record

1:06:35

for oldest actress, for her appearance at

1:06:37

the age of 114, in the aforementioned

1:06:39

Vincent and Me film. She appeared as

1:06:41

herself, though, so I don't know if

1:06:43

that's technically acting. She also released an

1:06:45

EP called Metro de Domp, or Mistress

1:06:48

of Mistress of Time in 1996, a

1:06:50

year before her death. The radio event

1:06:52

of Lefferandeur de Jean is what sounds

1:06:54

like early 90s kids' TV music, with

1:06:56

a child asking her questions and snippets

1:06:58

of Jean's responses. She's barely intelligible, and

1:07:00

I stopped listening after about a minute,

1:07:03

having got the general idea. Wait, wouldn't

1:07:05

it be in French? Do you speak French,

1:07:07

Katie? That's cool. A found-or is a

1:07:09

type of lively dance, in case you

1:07:12

were wondering. There's also a club version

1:07:14

of the same track, but I don't

1:07:16

think it would have packed dance floors

1:07:18

in mid-90s Ibiza. Personally, I'm convinced that

1:07:21

Jean managed what no one else has

1:07:23

done so far and lived to 100,

1:07:25

over 120, but there are those who

1:07:27

won't believe it, no matter how much

1:07:30

data is thrown in their faces. But

1:07:32

as it doesn't look like that's going

1:07:34

to happen any time soon, I think

1:07:36

we'll just have to rely on a

1:07:39

perfect training of historical records, a track

1:07:41

record of long-lived blood relatives, in good

1:07:43

common sense. Yeah, I agree. When

1:07:45

the arguments against it were presented,

1:07:47

I was like, those are pretty

1:07:49

good arguments, but Katie dismantled them.

1:07:51

And now I'm on the team

1:07:53

Jean. I think she probably did

1:07:55

live to be that old. The

1:07:57

historical documentation seemed pretty, pretty, fucking

1:07:59

solid. Obviously. Thanks.