October 24, 2025 • 66 mins
You've probably heard of the Atlantis before, but have you heard the legends of another lost city, somewhere out in the endless sands of the Arabian Peninsula's Rub' al Khali (or "Empty Quarter")? Tales of this city, known as Ubar or Iram of the Pillars, surface in countries throughout the region. The city is even mentioned in the Quran. And, like Atlantis, over the centuries numerous people have tried to find it -- but there's one important difference between Iram and Atlantis... it appears someone actually found Iram. Tune in to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow conspiracy realist. This is a classic bit of hidden history.
For a long time, we have been obsessed with lost civilizations,
lost cities, and there's one everybody knows about, Atlantis, right,
but there's one that I think a lot of people
in the West never really heard about until the video
(00:22):
game series Uncharted or the Magic Card?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Oh, which one are we talking about this episode that
we're doing today.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Ubar, the Lost City of Ubar. Isn't that an MPTG card?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Maybe I don't remember, but you would know.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
You're my expert on this side.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I don't know all the magic cards. There's been so
many sets.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Didn't cut that part out. No, we'll keep it. We'll
keep it. We actually paused for a second because I'm
probably incorrect about this. Matt. You are my resident expert
for all things MTG, so I will take your word
on this as our expert. But you remember, man back
in Gosh was twenty twenty when we started looking into
(01:06):
the story of the so called Atlantis of the Sands.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I seem to recall something about this, but I am
blanking on most of the details, which means there's still
stuff to discover in here.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Also known as a Ram of the Pillars. This city
has long been rumored to exist somewhere in the endless
stretch of desert called the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia
or the Arabian Peninsula. This city's even mentioned in the
Koran like Atlantis. Over centuries and centuries, people have been
(01:42):
constantly trying to find this place. But as we learned
in this classic episode, somebody might have actually found Ubar.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Amazing. I think the card you might be thinking about
this called City of Brass. Maybe, dude, that's it. Okay,
that's an amazing magic card.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Thank you. I feel much better. Wait, what does what
does it do?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
It deals damage to you when you add mana to
your manipol. But I believe you could add any mana
you want, so like any color. But it's still going
to ping you for one damage every time you use it. Yeah,
that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
That's a real FASTI em parkin. All right, here's our episode.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
From UFOs to Psychic Powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Hello, Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Our friend Noel is on adventures today. They called me Ben.
We're joined as always with our super producer, Paul Mission
Control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Quick check in, Matty, my dear dear friend over these
(03:09):
many years, how are you today?
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Well, let me tell you. I know, I'm great. I'm
gonna get to play some magic later tonight with my
buddy Charlie, who lives in upstate New York and I
haven't talked to him in forever, and he finally agreed
to just you know, to let me be my middle
(03:34):
school self again and play some magic with him. And
I'm very excited about that. You and I are gonna
have a game together pretty soon.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
That's right, That's right, Matt. Yeah, I've got to go
back to the office and pick up one of my
favorite gifts I ever received, a deck of magic cards
that I suppose are vintage nowadays that you and Tyler
made for me many moons ago. I'm quite excited. I'm
gonna I'm probably gonna scoop those up this weekend and
(04:01):
spend some time doing what I did pretty often as
a child playing multiplayer games with myself. Shout out to
my one D and D campaign just to make sure
I know what's going on there.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Yeah, and for other listeners just who are interested here,
there is a reason that we don't have to talk
about on air here, that you and Nolan and I
may have to be at least somewhat close to each
other in proximity. Very soon. I'm thinking about bringing a
deck for Nol and forcing him to play a game
with us, because I don't know that he's ever played
Magic before. We'll see if it works out.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
I imagine he'll be delighted. I am Magic, He'll be delighted.
So before we get into today's episode, we do have
one on air correction that a couple of listeners caught,
and I just wanted to get this out here because
it's important. Specifically, earlier in our episode Operation Infection with
(05:01):
a K, we had a couple of times referred to
AIDS as standing for auto immunodeficiency syndrome. That is incorrect.
I misspoke there. I think probably I'm the most egregious
person with this one. It is actually acquired immuno deficiency syndrome.
(05:23):
So maybe a small difference in terms of speech, but
it's a big difference in terms of what it stands for,
and of course it affects a great many people. If
you don't know what we're talking about, please check out
Operation Infection, where we do, in fact uncover a proven
conspiracy about HIV and AIDS.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yes, and specifically some meddling that occurred from from Russian actors.
Let's say, there we go.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
When we say Russian actors, we don't mean the stars
of screen and stage right, we mean the other actors. Yeah,
today we're I'm super excited about this one. Maybe a
way to segue into this is the world of games,
specifically video games. Now, I'm you know, Matt, you and
(06:19):
I have talked at length over more than a decade
now that we've been hanging out about video games of
all sorts and all stripes. You remember Uncharted three?
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I do Uncharted as a fabulous franchise. The fourth iteration
recently was available on PS Plus or PlayStation Plus. If
anybody subscribes to that, hopefully you've played it. Great treasure
Hunter series. And in the third version, the third iteration,
(06:53):
oh boy, you get into a lost city? Is it
Lomurria Lemuria that is featured in that one, or is
it Atlantis.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
It is a lost city in the wild desert of
the Middle East, a city that was rumored to be
home to Jin, a city that was rumored to have
untold wealth before it was cursed by the divine. We
won't spoil it too much. I believe you can still
(07:24):
get at least Uncharted one through three for free on
PlayStation's special looking Out for You during the Quarantine deal.
So I recently replayed this. It's a fantastic game if
you're a fan of Indiana Jones. If you're not really
a fan of video games, but you do like film
(07:46):
and films like Indiana Jones, then think of that almost
as at times, it's more like an interactive movie, you
know what I mean. It's a journey, and you could
set the if you're particularly unmotivated for video game stuff,
you can set the levels low enough such that you're
just kind of sitting through a movie where you occasionally
(08:08):
push buttons. Well, you know, it's like, what was that
Dragon's lair? That's another old old one. But you're right, Matt,
Lost cities they play a big part and Uncharted because
lost cities play a huge part in human civilization. Like typically,
right when you hear people talk about ancient lost cities,
(08:29):
Let's say you're flipping through television and you're flipping through
your books and you come across that phrase lost city,
lost civilization. In the modern day, we tend to dismiss
that concept like right out. You know, places like you
mentioned Lemuria or it's the Beatles to its Rolling Stone,
(08:50):
Atlantis and so on. These are all kind of thought
to be legends, right, and we've done stories on those
in the past. I think we actually to a pretty
surprisingly solid answer on the mystery of Atlantis a while back.
But lost cities, lost civilizations, the amazing and disturbing thing
(09:13):
about this is they're not that crazy. It turns out
our species, as you said before, we're cartoonishly good at
losing things, whether we're talking about car keys, passwords, technologies, cities,
entire civilizations. The vast span of human history is this
like long running joke about us making stuff and then
(09:34):
completely forgetting about it, or at least mostly forgetting about it.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Uh yeah, I mean you can look at almost every
major civilization space, so a place where a civilization began,
you can look even if it's a city. Now, let's
say in a place like Atlanta, just as an example,
there are versions of Atlanta that exist below it, that
(10:01):
were built on top of you know, for cities to exist.
London is a really good example of that, New York,
where there's a version of that place of history that
literally went away or went underground essentially. And you can
think about all kinds of things that we've lost over time,
you know, entire technologies that have come and gone, you know,
(10:24):
even just an entire civilization, a whole place where humanity
grew and thrived for a while and just went away
for one reason or another.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
And sometimes even when we know the location of a
lost place quote unquote lost, even when we know where
the ruins are, we still can run into mysteries about
why tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people one
day just left. Right, there are a lot of questions
(10:57):
that remain unanswered because history is alive. Right in today's episode,
we're exploring a city that some people may not have
heard of, but a city that occupies a unique place
in folklore and in science here in the modern date.
In fact, we call this a lost city. But it
(11:20):
may have already been found. And where better to start
with this story than with a legend. So here are
the facts.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
There was once, according to legend, a place known as
Iram of the Pillars. It was also known as Ubar
or Ubar for short. We're going to be calling it
a Ubar in this in this story, but it was
also known as Wubar with a w irem rum. Sometimes
it was just known as the city of the Pillars.
(11:50):
It was this legendary place. It was, or it has
been over the course of history, taken as this indisputable
fact that there was a true place a thing that
existed by one of these names, generally by people who
follow in the faith of Islam. It's explicitly mentioned by
the way in the Quran, which is a good thing
(12:11):
to know for the rest of this story. Here the
specific phrase, by the way that's found there is Iram
dot al Imad, and it's sometimes translated to you know,
maybe a less prestigious sounding phrase called Iram of the
tent poles, eh, not so not so cool. Sounds much
(12:32):
better when it's al imad. But the English translation of
its meant but we've got it. Actually here, we've got
the English translation of it's mentioned in the Quran.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Right, Yeah, here's how the explicit mention in the Koran
reads in English. Quote, and we're because of the differences
between English and Arabic, there are good there's gonna be
some slippage here. There are some words or pieces of
sentence structure that don't white translate. But we'll give you
(13:01):
the gist. Quote. Have you not considered how your Lord
dealt with Aram, who had lofty pillars, the likes of
whom had never been created in the lands, And with
the mood who carved out the rocks in the valley,
and with Pharaoh, owner of the stakes, all of whom
oppressed within the lands and increased therein the corruption. So
(13:23):
your Lord poured upon them a scourge of punishment. Indeed,
your Lord is in observation. That's the words of the
prophet right in the Qur'an. That's the story of the
story of this kind of warning to the reader. It's like, Hey,
(13:45):
think about what happened to this place, Think about what
happened to this guy. And that last line comes off
I think a little bit mild where it says indeed
your Lord is an observation. Maybe a more direct way
to say that in American English today would be you know,
watch out, God is watching you.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
You know, yeah, it always feels like somebody's watching me,
because it has been stated here that he she it is. Indeed,
there's another version of this, by the way, where or
I guess, of the story of the legend, where Ubar
was this center of trade, of wealth of society. It
(14:26):
was located along this really lucrative trade route that existed
at the time, in which it was a place that
was you know, thriving, and it's you know, it's where
merchants would transport all kinds of things, or of this
this trade route is where merchants would trade all kinds
of things, and Ubar was a major stop there and
one of the big things that they traded was frankinsense.
(14:48):
And this is has been mentioned a lot, or at
least is a major point of this one version of
the legend.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Yeah. Oh, they were balling out. They were making so
much money off this frankencense trade, which included murr. You
know for people who people.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Were fans of the three the three wise men.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Then then you'll notice that franken sense and MRR, which
are not super big commodities to a lot of people
today were profoundly impressive gifts. Back then, they were you know,
they were status symbols. They were associated with things that
were holy, and so being a part of this trade,
the people of Ubar made a lot of money. They
(15:35):
obtained many riches, jewels, et cetera. And this story follows,
you know, the kind of Pixar version. Once upon a time,
as you said, matt Ubar was the center of the
trade and Franken sense, and every day they got wealthier
and wealthier, wealthier, until one day a prophet arrives, and
(15:56):
this is a pre Islamic prophet, by the way. In
this legend, a prophet around and foretells that the city
and the entire civilization of Ubar would be destroyed by
God as punishment for their wicked, wicked ways. The king,
who was not aware that he was to be the
last king of Ubar, ignored the prophet, and a short
(16:16):
while later the city disappeared from the historical record. It
was buried under the shifting sands of the empty quarter
in Arabia. They called it then, but Saudi Arabia we
call it now.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
And it's a It feels maybe at first glance or
first listen as a similar parable that has existed in
a couple of different holy books and a couple of
different societies and kind of historical records, where there's this
place that became so wealthy, they just were bored in
(16:51):
some ways because they had so much time on their hands,
and they started to do the things that idle hands do,
which is generally considered, you know, the devil's work or
the bad things, the wicked, evil things. And then it
gets destroyed because a force of good. In this case,
God comes through and says no. But and you know,
(17:14):
but if you continue along the legend, even though it
was destroyed, it, you know, if it, if it was real,
then it would still exist out there somewhere, right at
least according to legend.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Right somewhere out there in the dry ocean of the desert,
one may still discover the ruins of ancient Ubar, all
the riches within, and possibly all the all the curses
and consequences you would run into for uh, for violating
the wishes of the divine and you know.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
I'm man, yeah, but but mostly mostly all those all
those vases full of that dank frankincense.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Dank and sense that would be the dame of the company.
We start Dank and sense, Uh, yeah, we'll find something
for MRR as well, because Murr is still very much
of the game in this part of the story. But
you're right, so the details of the disaster are naturally
vague the idea, you know, at the time this story
(18:16):
takes place, when it's traced to antiquity, Usually natural disasters
are always seen as happening for some sort of reason.
No one is ever saying, hey, we have famine because
we couldn't grow crops because of the drought. They say, oh,
we are encountering famine because we have crops because of
(18:38):
the drought. Because God is super po'd at us, you know,
because we didn't make the right sacrifices or you didn't
propitiate the right prayers at the right time in the calendar,
et cetera. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's just
the human mind, because humans have always been you know,
these are still homo sapient. They're very much like us.
(18:59):
There's still trying to categorize and frame and understand the world.
So when you hear details about Ubar's demise, you might.
You'll hear people say, you know, well it was God
that struck them down, and then we'll hear other people say, oh,
it's God who struck them down. But God did it
this way, right through an earthquake maybe, or through a
sandstorm that never stopped. It's kind of like Atlantis, right,
(19:24):
that's another example, or Sodom and Gomorrah.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
It's a it's a that's a good example.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Yeah, yeah, because it has the wickedness right, and it's
and it's still you know, it's a story that's common
to what they call people of the book, right Jedeo
Christian Islamic belief systems. But Ubar has a couple of
things and it's legend that make it different. First, speculation
(19:49):
about Ubar has continued, you know, since the writing of
the Qur'an, which really popularized it, because that is that
is a book that is fundamental to many civilizations. And
then some other lost city legends just by contrast, they
(20:10):
claim that there are ancient origins to them, but they
end up being examples of embellishment maybe or outright hoaxes.
This is not the case here. I mean aram Ubar
was popularized in the West in the thirties and really
picked up some modern shine and PRTLC in the nineteen nineties.
(20:32):
But again, it's been known in the Middle East. The
West alone is not the world. It was known in
the Middle East since the Kuran. Since before then. It
assumed its more modern interpretation way back during the aggregation
and dissemination of the anthology we know of as one
thousand and one Nights, fantastic book that was composed over
(20:56):
centuries during the Islamic Golden Age. We still don't know
to be completely clear, how that book was formed. It's
a mystery of its own. But that's not the only
reason Ubar is unique.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, there are some some pretty old maps that actually
placed a physical location of Ubar On these maps, there
was there's one where it's depicted as Omanum Emporium there
and that's on Ptolemy's lap P. T O. L. E.
M Y his map of the world. This guy, Claudius Ptolemy,
(21:30):
he was born in Greece, lived in Egypt, and this
is around one hundred and ten to one hundred and
seventy a d. So that's some time ago. Let's say.
It's also mentioned by several other Islamic commentators throughout the years,
the centuries that have existed as possibly existing in one
place or another and in multiple versions of it, essentially
(21:53):
of the legend. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah, the primary evidence, which you know, we're very thankful
for a lot of the primary evidence comes from religious
or religious affiliated text. So there's going to be this
ongoing debate about translation, you know, and then about like
you said, Matt, is this literally a city? Is this
literally a civilization? Is this a metaphor you know, is
(22:17):
this like a larger version of all those stories that
even today kids here like, don't do act A, B
or C or else you'll have consequence X, Y or z.
What if it wasn't a city at all? What if
it was a region instead? So instead of you know,
like what if or whenever the US falls and you
(22:40):
fast forward a couple of millennia or something, what if
no one remembers the city of Atlanta and they talk
about the Lost City of Georgia. It's located somewhere on
this continent and everybody but everybody's got weird ideas about it.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
It would be the Lost City of coming.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
There we go. That stuff happens all the time. And
then the name we get distorted and telephoned and it
would be like Kuminkh or Kumang or something like that. Yeah,
that happens constantly, constantly. So maybe it wasn't even a region,
Maybe it was not geographical. Maybe it was a name
for a people, which also happens pretty often, right, because
(23:21):
we know that in ancient times and even now, groups
of people, communities and tribes, the names that outsiders use
refer to the place where those people are found, right,
and the places where they live get named after them. Israelites,
Israel you know what I mean. Especially the Middle East
(23:43):
is full of this stuff. So Ubar has long been
associated with a group of people called the Ud, spelled
like apostrophe Ad but pronounced more like Uld. And back
in the eleventh century was a a commentary named Nashwan
bin said Himyari, who said, quote, Ubar is the name
(24:06):
of the land which belonged to Ud in the eastern
part of Yemen. Today it's an untrodded desert owing to
the dying up of its water. There are to be
found in it great buildings which the wind is smothered
in sand. Doesn't really mention God, just mentions these people
built some stuff, and they're no longer in the game.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
How intriguing is that though, I mean again like bring
back Indiana Jones. Just some of these concepts that at
least I as a child and then growing up were
so fascinating of you know, finding being able to one
day maybe chase down some historical place like this, or
discovering a lost place, a lost people that existed somewhere.
(24:47):
It's it's just such fuel for the imagination. And you know,
it really just depends on where you look, who you ask,
who you just want to believe, I guess, on how
you think about Ubar, where it could be, what it
could be, who the actual people were and what occurred
(25:09):
there or And it also depends on your faith honestly,
depending on you know, the books you grew up with,
as in the important pillars of your faith and your
understanding of the world. But it's really cool that this
place has all of this potential built within it. You know, you.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
May have grown up most familiar with that description in
the Kloran. You may have you may have been a
fan of Te Lawrence, the famous and very strange explorer
and military officer. He's the one who I think popularized
calling it the Atlantis of the Sands. But the most
(25:52):
important thing about the Atlantis of the Sands is that
we're pretty sure someone found it. What are we talking about.
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. Here's
(26:15):
where it gets crazy, Matt. We gotta we gotta talk
about these searches. You know. It's oh yeah, people are
out here changing the world.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Man.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
One time I fell asleep trying to put on a
pair of pants, like this is this This is a
great examination of human ingenuity, if nothing else.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
The other day I fell asleep. I stuck my head
into my son's rocket ship tent and I was playing
with him really actively, and I totally passed out right there.
So I feel you ben just saying, uh, maybe maybe
we should stop falling asleep on our various jobs such
as pants putting on. But other people have not been
(26:55):
sitting around getting drowsy. They've been out there searching the
desert for stuff, which is really really cool. There are
several individuals who believe they have uncovered this place that
was mentioned in the Koran, and you know, there's there's
debate on who's right who actually found it. And we're
(27:17):
gonna go through all that stuff right now. But you
really can find people who have claimed at least to
have found this legendary place Ubar or Iran that was
mentioned in the Qoran, that specific version of it, and
they think they found it in the Middle East, in
places from Oman to Yemen to Jordan. Places in Jordan
(27:41):
the place called the Wadi Room, and the Wadi Room.
This is, oh, the infamous what has this been? I
don't know this, the infamous Rube al Khali.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah, that's right, the Rube al Khalai. We should or
the Empty Quarter. We should note that, as far as
we know, neither of us are Arabic speakers, unless we
had a wild weekend and forgot about it. The Empty
Quarter is a vast stretch of immensely inhospitable land. And
(28:11):
we'll we'll talk about in a little bit. But I noticed, Matt,
you pointed out Waldi Room, Wadi Room. Let's let's let's
talk about this a little bit. So it's in Jordan.
It's it's name translates or it's called the Valley of
the Moon. And this looks otherworldly. It's a desert landscape picture,
(28:33):
a lot of flat, sandy valley beds, Wadi is Arabic
for valley, and they're bordered by these enormous red sandstone cliffs.
It's the largest valley in Jordan. And it also carries
the signs of ancient human occupation. We've got inscriptions, petroglyphs,
(28:54):
ruins of temples, graffiti, stuff that dates back as far
as twelve thousand years. People have been there for a
long long time.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Yeah, and it's one of those places that the glory of,
you know, the natural surroundings in this you know, the
somewhat starkness of it as well, wasn't really known by
the West until some guy walked through there who happened
to be British, a man named T. E. Lawrence. He
was a British military officer. He really brought it to
(29:27):
the West's attention who was passing through there during the
Arab Revolt which occurred between nineteen sixteen and nineteen eighteen.
And he he, you know, was moved by the experience
of going through that area, and he wrote a book
about his experience called Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
And then we get into a weird circumstance here, a
little bit of a pr move because there's a formation
at Waldi room called the Seven Pillars of Wi that's
what it's called today. It's great for tourism. That's not
its original name. Its original name was like Jabal al Mamzar,
(30:08):
the Mountain of the plague, and so.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Ooh yeah, nobody wants to visit the Mountain of the plague.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
I mean, I'm down, but you know, I'm sure there's
another mountain of a plague somewhere. So this was this
was renamed even though the formation that's mentioned has nothing
to do with the Seven Pillars actually mentioned in Lawrence's book.
Even in like later editions, it is all about tourism there.
(30:36):
It is a hugely popular tourist destination, and it's of
course an enormously important side of human civilization. It's also
something that you fellow conspiracy realists, have probably seen before.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
You just didn't know it.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
You might have thought it was Planet Mars in the
Martian You might have thought it was any number number
of backdrops for film set in the Middle East or
on our red neighbor, just just to plan it away.
It's also in it's in some famous ones.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Oh yeah, there's a Star Wars movie, Rogue one that
used it. The Transformers. Revenge of the Fallen featured this
and my favorite one, even though it wasn't my favorite movie,
but my favorite version of it is seen in Prometheus.
I really liked the way it was treated there, at
least on camera.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Yeah. Also, of course it's in the Aladdin reboot, the
live action.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
I forgot about that one.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
I never asked you, you know, I forgot to ask
your opinion that I know that we both love that
film growing up, and I still think it holds up.
But what did you see the.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Remake hot take? I suffered through it until Will Smith's
like tenth line, and then I turned it off. All right,
I didn't turn it off. My son and my wife
continued to watch a little bit, but I left the room.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
They handle it in silent protest.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
No, it wasn't. It wasn't very silent. It was definitely
like then left.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Yeah, Robin Williams left some big shoes to fill. And
I don't think it's I mean, it's funny because I
really liked I really enjoyed all the other actors in there.
I thought they nailed it. And for some reason, again
this is just one person's opinion. We'll have to get
Paul's about this off air too. It just felt like
(32:34):
they were trying to make it will Smith plays will
Smith as a genie. I mean, to be fair, That's
that's what Robin Williams was doing too. I just I
liked the earlier songs.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yeah, me too. It's a real Mountain of the plague
seven Pillars of Wisdom scenario. You know, the translation just
story to change up, just didn't didn't play as in
this case, didn't play as well.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Yeah, yeah, true. But again visually, you know there there's
stunning scenes in there, and and again, I think the
vast majority of the actors nailed it. So I don't
want to be unfair. I just I just I think
I figured out how I like my culturally appropriated idea
of Gin in Disney films, because it's not like it's
(33:29):
not like the Robin Williams genie is in any way
accurate to begin with. Uh indeed, But if.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
You're gonna if you're gonna make a scary version, like
the scariest version of a Gin, which is the one
that this genie is supposed to inhabit, and you're gonna
make them like a family friend friendly g version, then
you know, go all the way with it, just make
them super happy and transforming into all kinds of different
(33:57):
Western characters from pop culture.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
That's right. So I'm going to watch that later. As
long as we don't get disappeared, I think we can
close the book though. On the wa Do Room. It's
definitely an historically significant site, but it is probably not
the Atlantis of the Sands, as T. Lawrence called it.
It's probably not a lost city. There are some ancient
(34:24):
temples there, but the fact is there's so much tourism
there now that if there were an ancient empire or
gigantic city, it would have been found like the I mean,
people travel from around the world to visit and film there.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
I would say that just going with the name the
Mountain of the Plague may make you think if you
put yourself in the shoes of maybe someone exploring the
area who isn't fully familiar with it, may make you
think that, well, you know, this place was named the
Mountain of the Plague. Perhaps there was something that happened
here or a long time ago that we don't fully understand.
(35:04):
I can imagine that scenario, or at least that thought.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Process totally, totally and I agree. I mean, you know,
when you get to a place that has had human
beings for that long, I'm sure there were several plagues,
you know what I mean. I'm yeah, I don't think
somebody probably didn't make that name up for fun. I
didn't think it was cool. They remembered when people died
of the plague in the area, and they were like,
(35:28):
don't even get to where you can frigging see that mountain, bro,
it's messed up. Yeah, I could totally see that. History
is filled with ghosts.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
We gonn shoot all our movies there, and.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Now we shoot movies there. Now we shoot movies there.
So there are also a lot of films shot around
the area of the Empty Quarter the Rulebuck Cully. If
you're going just off the oral traditions and the legends,
it makes a lot of sense to think that a
(36:01):
city might have been there and vanished, because it feels
like the easiest place for human beings to vanish. It's vast,
it's a sand desert. It covers most of the southern
third of the Arabian Peninsula, and it is huge. It's
(36:22):
like two hundred and fifty thousand square miles. It means
it goes across Saudi Arabia, goes across the United Arab Emirates,
goes across Aman Yemen, and today it's a rough neighborhood
for humans. It's actually rougher for humans now than it
was in ancient times. And even then it was no
walk in the park. It rains like or sorry, not
(36:44):
even rain. The precipitation is like maybe one point four
inches on a good year. The temperatures can reach as
high as fifty one degrees celsius.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
For everyone in the well fifty one. That's not bad, right, for.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Everyone in the States, it's one hundred and twenty four
degrees fahreadheit and then and it gets cold af at night.
It's like one of those places in the world where,
if you look at it objectively, are humans supposed to
be here? Are we really do we need to go
out here? You know, like I don't know, man, I
(37:19):
really don't know.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Well maybe not anymore. But back before the intense desertification,
desertification that's been occurring out there, and you know, on
a continual level and increasing, it was a pretty cool
place to be, a good place to at least travel through.
In a lot of the areas of it because guess what.
(37:41):
Guess what they did. They traded things in caravans like
frankincense and mer and mer and mer.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
I don't know why, it feels like it feels like
there's a Simon and Garfunkl thing going on with frank
and sense of mirror. Or maybe it's like if we
were selling a box of frankensense and would say, like,
franko sense now with mer.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Dude, No, I'll tell you a better one.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
Yeah, it's it's.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Hall and oats.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Oh wow, because.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
It feels so healthy. It's or something like extra. They
don't need you just want the hall.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
So yes, I get it. You know. It's like it's
like people will eat the uh eat the oats, but yeah,
we're here for the halls. That makes that makes a
lot of sense, Like so maybe that's it. Maybe that's it,
but your point is right. Desert desertification, the process of
becoming more desert like, has increased over time to the
(38:43):
present level today. Before then, it was still very much wasteland,
but caravans, often on camelback, would would be able to
traverse established roots here to get that sweet sweet Franken
sense and r and it to move it to more
densely populated areas where it would fetch a great premium
(39:06):
as much as for its rarity as for its smell.
And this trade occurred till around and estimated like three
hundred a d people were doing this. But the problem
with the empty quarter is the same thing that made
people think that's where Aram could be or who Bar
could be. It's that is it is huge. In the
(39:28):
days before satellite observation, it would be really difficult for
early explorers, especially as you said, the British guys, the Aristos,
who are walking in and quote unquote discovering all this stuff.
It would be really tough for them to systematically comb
the desert without without dying of thirst starvation when they
(39:50):
got lost. Now, the native people, the Bedouin, knew their
way around, right, But.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
Yeah, exactly, Well, especially if you're trying to do it,
you know Spaceball's style and combing the desert like that,
that'd be a rough gig.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
It's a rough gig. It takes a lot of people
in a lot of time. So yeah, there could be
an ancient oasis in the area. We know there are
oases all around the edges of the empty quarter. That's
what defines the empty quarter. It's the empty part and
the stuff around the edges has stuff there. But if
(40:26):
you were gonna find something, if you're gonna find an
ancient city, where would you start looking? How would you
find it? This leads us to the various attempts to
discover it. So we've nailed down that it's probably not
in the empty Quarter, at least so far as we know,
it's unlikely that it would be. And then it's probably
(40:47):
not in uh waddie room in Jordan. But we got
a bunch of pretty moneyed British explorers who have nothing,
who have no other goals other than to make some
money off the native cultures and later brag to their
(41:08):
friends at the Royal Geographic Society, and they were all
about this.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
And we also have satellite technology now and other you
advanced technology. So that's a bit of a spoiler, and
we'll tell you about the potential discovery after a word
from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
We're back. So let's start in nineteen thirty there is
an explorer named Bertram Thomas. Bertram Thomas has the goal
of being the first European, in his opinion, to officially
cross the sands of the Empty Quarter. He's at the
southern edge of the area. And I'd just say in
(41:55):
his opinion, because I take issue. I take issue with
the idea of him being the first person ever from
Europe to do that, because this is nineteen thirty and
there was a lot of stuff that happened before he
got this idea. Anyway, So he starts this journey, and
he's ready, and he gets camels, guys, entourage and stuff.
(42:17):
People who are native to the land, and some members
of his Bedouin entourage tell him about the story of
this lost city and he says, all right, well, I'm
gonna find that. That's gonna be something I can rag
to the rest of my lads about back home. He
didn't find it, but he did tell te Lawrence about it.
(42:40):
T Lawrence is the guy who popularized the phrase the
Atlantis of the Sands. He didn't just tell him about it.
He said, roy a old chap and he marked a
map for Lawrence with the supposed location. Lawrence again, very weird, dude.
I don't want a kink shame anyone. I don't want
to yuck anyone's youum as Chuck would say, But Lawrence
(43:05):
was a smart dude, and he immediately knew what we
had just talked about, the vast difficulties of finding this
needle of civilization in this haystack of the wild. So
we said, you know, the only way we're going to
be able to find this is if we somehow get
in the air. We searched by airship, by a blimp,
but he never followed through with it. You know, again,
(43:27):
it's the nineteen thirties, nineteen forties, a lot of stuff's
going down in the Middle Eastern Europe. But these statements
that he made and that other explorers made cemented the
idea of this lost Arab city in the Western zeitgeist,
so people were obsessed with it.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Yeah, and remember T Lawrence that we spoke about earlier,
is the Seven Pillars of Wisdom guy in the Waddie
room that we talked about, same dude, same British military officer,
who tended to write a lot about these kinds of things.
So that's why it makes sense that it kind of
expanded out there in the minds of people in the West,
but it didn't stop there. Everybody. Let's jump forward sixteen
(44:08):
years to nineteen forty six. And to another English explorer,
a Iritish fellow named named Wilfrid Thesiga. Actually will maybe
it's Wilfrid the seizure. I don't know how to say. Wow,
it's it's English messager.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Maybe put a little right, pull a little British Polish
on it. I think he nailed it. It could be the
Seeger we'll call We'll call it Wilfrid Thesiger.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Well, so, uh, he's hanging out in a place called Schisser.
It's in southern Oman. He's hanging out by this well,
that's that's over there, just in an area that's an
undefined area. And he notes that he's seeing some kinds
of crude stone, some kind of ruins, maybe from a fort.
(45:01):
You's see him on this rocky Eminence. That's a quote
there about the Eminence and some of the things that
he finds there, let's call them shards, some of the
things he finds in the area. Maybe in his opinion,
they may be early Islamic. And you know, he tells
the Royal Geographic Society this, but nothing you know, official
(45:24):
comes out of it. There's no like exploration in the
moment because of this guy, Wilfred Thesiger's experience.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
But people remember, right, people be blay keeping note. Just
two years later, nineteen forty eight, a party of Bedouins
and oil company employees are traveling there. They're surveying no
far province. This is of course, part of Western Europe's
(45:54):
state sponsored push to divide up the territories for resource acquisition.
And they first see this place, Shesrah or also called
ashis here. They're approaching it from the south and the
first thing they see is this white cliff in the distance.
As they get closer, they say, hey, this cliff is
(46:16):
not just a cliff. It's man made. It's the wall
of a ruined fort, and it's built above this large cave,
and there's an entrance to this cave, but it's obscured
by a sand dune. I mean, I'm just I am picturing.
I don't know about you guys, but I'm picturing like
this crazy Indiana Jones music in my head. They found
(46:38):
the fort had been built from the same white rock
as that cliff, and this gave them. This to them,
seemed to indicate that this whole thing was a single structure.
One of the geologists said, you know, there are no
houses or tents or people here. There's just this tumble
down ruin Islamic for it, wompwomp. Because the geologists didn't
(47:03):
have modern satellites, we're throwing so many spoilers in this.
They didn't have archaeological equipment. They were unimpressed by the ruin.
They were like, there's not even oil here.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
Bro.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
In fact, their guides and them, they all referred to
it as quote difficult water because it was the only
watering hole for miles and miles and miles around, and
they had to spend three days trying to get water
from this dying well for their camels. So it's like
(47:37):
they they stopped in a place because it had one
thing that they needed they barely had that. They wrote
down a one star review of it in their Yelp
travel journal, and then they dipped out. But all of
those things that happened were still on a record. Fast
(47:58):
forward to the eighties and nineteen nineties.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Yeah, that's right, zero Michelin stars for Schisser before that.
Now jump in nineteen ninety one, same area. There's a
just before we get into this, there is a fantastic
New York Times Old school article from ninety two. I
(48:22):
think that was written about this that we recommend you
go check out. The title of it is on the
Trail from the Sky Rhodes point to a Lost City.
So if before we talk about it, if you want
to read it, hey, good stuff in there. So there's
a filmmaker from Los Angeles named Nicholas Clapp. Really really
(48:43):
cool spelling, by the way. I don't know if he
spells it that way because of a screenwriter's guild thing,
but Clapp is his last name. You know, he's one
of those guys. It's the nineties. This guy has grown
up with a fascination of you know, the the romantic
mystery that exists out there in ancient you know, Arabia
(49:05):
and the sands as well as you know this the
concept of these huge caravanning frankincense trade that's occurring, right,
And he goes out to that same area she sir,
And really what he wants to do is use that
new technology that has been developed since people have been
(49:26):
looking at this place, and he wants to you know,
he really just wants to discover this place, right, and
he ends up finding things things that have never been
found out there before.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
Yeah, So he assembles this this crew of specialists, as
you said, to investigate. They include financial backers, they also
include scientists from JPL jet propulsion laboratories. And then he
also gets with Randolph, who, yes, is related to the
(50:02):
actor Ralph Finds, who plays Voldemore. I thought you would
enjoy that, Paul. He also plays the antagonist in Red
Dragon in the Silence of the Lambs franchise. Anyhow, he
has his relative Randolph Finds. He's a well to do
European and he is also affiliated with the Sultan of Oman,
(50:25):
so he's kind of their fixer on the ground. So
they get together and they're reviewing this footage from the satellites.
And again there's the very early days of this. This
is before you know, widespread use of a lot of
other technologies that people have today. But they see things
that you wouldn't see if you're walking on the ground.
One of the most important things they find is a
(50:47):
network of ancient camel tracks caravan roots that seem to
converge on a couple of different places, one of them
is our in Oman. And this like they you know,
they do all the ground, they do all the mental
legwork they can before they go there because it's a
(51:07):
bit of a journey. So their first ground exploration takes
place in nineteen ninety one. They learn so much stuff,
and that's where we get to that that breathless, like
old school NYT headline on the Trail from the Sky
Road points to a lost city. And then it begins
with this beautiful quotation. It's the first sentence, is just
(51:29):
is just solid gold? Matt Dov do you have maybe
like a I must hate to ask, do you have
a Transatlantic voice for this one?
Speaker 2 (51:37):
Yeah? Okay, I'll do it. Guided by ancient maps and
shop eyed surveys from space, archaeologists and explorers have discovered
a lost city deep in the sands of Arabia. They
are virtually sure it is Ubar, the fabled entropo of
the Rich frankensense trade thousands of years ago. And it continues.
Speaker 1 (52:01):
Yes, and now doesn't seem to be much question that
we have discovered or mono membarium, says doctor Jorisaradas, the
expedition's chief archaeologist. At that sight, he has is very rich,
no doubt about it. So is this the real Ubar?
Speaker 2 (52:18):
You know?
Speaker 1 (52:19):
Under the direction of Doctors Errands, the team starts digging.
They excavate the walls and towers this fortress. They're working fast.
They find a site that dates back more than two
thousand years. How can they work that fast? You know,
archaeological digs are a huge issue in the Middle East,
and because there's so many ancient civilizations, and because there
(52:41):
are so many modern civilizations of war over history right now,
they're able to do this again because Ranald finds his
buddy buddy with the sultan. What he says goes. So
doctor Zarns doesn't just find this this ancient site. He
also find is able to trace its demise a little bit.
(53:04):
And he says, look, the site has this huge sinkhole
kind of bisecting it if you look at the pictures,
and he says it fell sometime between AD three hundred
and AD five hundred, And if you recall earlier at
the top of the show, we said AD three hundred
is about when the frankincense trade is suspected to have declined.
Speaker 2 (53:27):
Interesting, right, And you know, when you keep thinking about
it in this way, if there was some kind of
cataclysm or a huge earthquake or a big sinkhole that
formed and sucked in everything pretty quickly over the course
of you know, even a couple of years. You can
imagine how perhaps that would have been blamed on an
(53:49):
act of God of some sort.
Speaker 1 (53:53):
And he says specifically, it's like, look, you know, there
was fossil water here. Fossil water is something we talked
about a little bit in our work on Libya years ago.
Fossil water is a non renewable source of potable or
drinkable water. And so it's kind of how this oasis
(54:13):
was working. But it was also built over limestone, and
so as more and more people and animals and agriculture
because they had irrigation schemes, more and more things started
draining more and more water. It probably contributed to an earthquake,
or maybe it was the primary cause of this collapse.
(54:34):
So the thing fell, the center could not hold. However,
doctor Zarns himself is quick to point out that there
might be a chicken and egg thing because if Franken
sense trade, if the Frankin Sense trade was still you know,
doing Gangbusters, then there would have been enough finance, right,
there would have been enough political will to rebuild this
(54:59):
lost place. And that all depends on whether our modern
idea of Ubar existed at all, because you see doc
Z is not convinced.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
He's not. And by the way, it also depends on
whether or not they could actually get water. If if
that you know that fossil water was actually the reason
that caused the collapse. But let's talk about doctors errands
and why he was unsure. Because there was this great
interview with him from Nova. If you haven't watched a
lot of Nova and you're listening to this, I highly
(55:33):
recommend you do. It's really great. They're not a sponsor,
but I very much enjoy the programming with the stuff
they put out there. But they were speaking with him
about Ubar, and we've got a quote from him. He says,
there's a lot of confusion about that word talking about Ubar.
If you look at the classical texts and the Arab
historical sources, Ubar refers to a region and a group
(55:56):
of people, not to a specific town. People all always
overlook that. It's very clear. On Ptolemy's second century map
of the area it says in big letters law Bitarite,
and in his text that accompanies the maps, he's very
clear about that. It was only the late medieval version
of the one thousand and one Nights in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries that romanticized Ubar and turned it into
(56:20):
a city rather than a region or a people.
Speaker 1 (56:23):
Instead, he says Shser, the site they found is one
of maybe three or four major trade and civilization centers
of the Uberite at a time when this tribal group,
the Uberites, thrived along the edges of the empty quarter.
So he's saying that they didn't discover the mythical city,
(56:45):
but in a way that they discovered something more important.
They discovered the truth that inspired the myth. We have
to remember that when people saw this city, they were
seeing it after seven eight days journey through utter desolation,
no food, no water. We also have to understand that
(57:06):
when they saw it, like when you see it now.
You can see photographs of the ruins today, along with
artist depictions of how the actual fortress looked at its time, right,
and the fortress itself, especially after you've heard all these myths,
it looks a little underwhelming, honestly, but you have to
consider that many of the people who are living there,
(57:28):
who were populating it, even on a permanent basis, they
weren't living in this relatively small fortress. They were living
outside around it. They were living in large tents that
you could open up to catch a breeze and things
like that. They would probably only be in the fortress
if there were some sort of siege or attack. It
reminds me like it doesn't okay, it doesn't look like
(57:51):
a shining city of pillars and the pictures of the
ruins or even in the artistic depictions. But you know,
then again, for anyone who's seeing the Tower of London,
stuff doesn't look like a skyscraper, right, We have very
different definitions of towers hundreds of years ago, you know
what I mean, anything over two three floors that's a tower.
Speaker 2 (58:11):
Oh absolutely, And I really like your point there of
just to reach that area, no matter for what reason
you're traveling through or you know, to get there, you
would have been on a perilous journey. This is a
weird kind of way of think about it. But you
shot a picture into my head, been of a day
that I worked a full day, like let's say, eight
(58:33):
nine hours, then immediately after that shot a film festival
forty eight hours thing immediately following a full day of work,
and I hadn't eaten food in like thirty hours or something,
and somebody suggested getting Popeyes. I didn't know what that was.
I tried it for the first time with my wife,
(58:54):
and it was the best piece of chicken I had
ever eaten in my life. Now is that because it
was actually the best piece of chicken or is it
because I was starved or I felt starving and you know,
was so hungry that this just became a prized thing
in that moment. I wonder if that experience is correct.
And that's it's a really great point.
Speaker 1 (59:15):
Ben, that's I mean, you're making a really great point too.
And not to date you there, Matt, but that is
before the famous chicken sandwich that was just like you
got a two or a three piece right with a biscuit.
Speaker 2 (59:27):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (59:28):
Yeah, I mean, I still I stand by Popeyes. This
is not an advertisement for Popeyes, but I think, at
least here in Atlanta, one thing we love about Popeyes
is you can tell how good the chicken's going to
be by like how abrasive. The people who work there
are the best, the probably some of the best Popeyes
here at our our neck of the Global Woods is
(59:50):
right down the street from our office where famously, I
don't know about you, I went there for lunch one day.
I was just trying to pick up some d Is
it a hurry? And what I pulled up at the
drive through? The person on the other end said, what.
Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
It's a one to one ratio? How good the chicken
is going to be? And how much grief you get?
Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
But I think you make a really great point about
the psychology of people there, because you know, you are
going into a place that a looked much more impressive
when it was in its glory days before it collapsed,
back when there were hundreds of people there, there was
irrigation and stuff. It looked much better and people were
(01:00:36):
much more appreciative because some of them probably came pretty
close to dying while they were risking their lives and
their fortunes in the frankinsonse trade. So there really was
there an ubar of myth? Probably not. Was there a
real place upon which ubar is based? Yes, and we
probably found it. This is a real life case of
(01:00:58):
a lost city that was like the Lost City of Troy.
And you know, if it looks disappointing and the Tower
of London, example, is maybe a little disappointing. To let's
be further disappointing. The pyramids used to look way better.
Those things used to be painted like you know, I
wish people would point that out more. They used to
(01:01:19):
be more colorful. Anyway. This fortress was surrounded by smaller
villages that stretched out as far as six miles.
Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
It was.
Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
It's an example kind of of a what's called a caravan,
Sarah that because you know, a roadhouse, a stop on
the road, you know, like the same kind of thing
that made Samarkans in Zbekistan a huge global force, regional
force it was. It's it's like, imagine if the only
(01:01:51):
gas station for hundreds and hundreds of miles became a town.
That's that's another way to look at it. And I
don't think I don't think that's pejorative or dismissive at all.
It's amazing. So maybe in conclusion, maybe the game of
telephone strikes again. I know that's disappointing to some people.
(01:02:13):
That's amazing to me. I love it. And you know
what it makes me think, Matt, I don't know about you.
I just wonder what else is out there. It's gotta
be more.
Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
That's exactly what I was gonna say. Just because we
found this one doesn't mean other stuff isn't out there.
We haven't fully lied oar to that desert yet, at
least I'm pretty sure we haven't, because it would take
a lot of ldar to go through that desert. But
I'm just telling you, like my excitement for possibilities out
(01:02:41):
there in the Shifting sands, it remains peaked, and it
will stay that way for a good time.
Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
Yeah, And it'll probably have to stay a sense of
excitement and anticipation for a while because you know, so
much of that part of the world is embroiled in
political and stability. There are war zones, you know, in
seats of ancient human civilization, and we're really being destroyed
right right, And we're really faced with We're faced with
(01:03:12):
a powerful dilemma, which is, you know, will our species
be able to come together and save its past. It's
collective past, make no mistake, you know, the ancient history
of the Middle East. If you're listening to this, it
is part of your history too. You trace yourself back
(01:03:33):
far enough, it's part of your history somehow. So it's
our collective responsibility to try to keep it around for
those who come after. We're just as we said in
the very very beginning, we're very very good at losing things.
Let's hope we get a little bit better at rediscovering
and preserving them. Let us know what you think about
(01:03:54):
today's episode. We've run a little long, but we hope
you enjoyed it. You can find us on Facebook. You
can find us on Instagram. You can find us on Twitter.
We're conspiracy Stuff on Facebook and Twitter. We're Conspiracy Stuff
show on Instagram. But personally, if you're a Facebook person,
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(01:04:16):
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and the best part of this show you are fellow listeners.
Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
Yes, please do if you are a Facebook user. If
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mobile phone or a landline, you can call the number
one eight three three std WYTK and you can leave
us a message that Ben and I will certainly hear.
Nol likely will as well. Paul refuses to listen to
(01:04:43):
your messages on account of principle that his ears can
only be used for a certain number of hours every day,
and he's generally producing or having to listen to us.
But we do look forward to hearing from you your
thoughts on this episode or on future episodes, or just
chatting with us, or you know, talking to us about
your favorite Magic the Gathering cards or how Thomas middle
(01:05:06):
Dish on the New Special talks about it in episode
two A lot and it made me smile. Oh, just
all day long. Thank you about Thomas middle Dish playing
Magic the Gathering.
Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
On their improv special. Yeah, yeah, that's really good. No, yeah,
do check that out. And also if none of that
quite bags your badgers, or if you are more comfortable
with a little bit more anonymity, please remember you can
always contact us to talk about lost civilizations, Magic the Gathering,
(01:05:38):
Harry Potter, Popeye's Chicken, whatever crosses your mind. We would
love to hear from you, and we have an easy
way for you to do it. It'll be on as
long as we have this show around. It's our good
old fashioned email address.
Speaker 2 (01:05:51):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff they don't
(01:06:14):
want you to know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Fellow conspiracy realist. This is a classic bit of hidden history.
For a long time, we have been obsessed with lost civilizations,
lost cities, and there's one everybody knows about, Atlantis, right,
but there's one that I think a lot of people
in the West never really heard about until the video
(00:22):
game series Uncharted or the Magic Card?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Oh, which one are we talking about this episode that
we're doing today.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Ubar, the Lost City of Ubar. Isn't that an MPTG card?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Maybe I don't remember, but you would know.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
You're my expert on this side.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I don't know all the magic cards. There's been so
many sets.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Didn't cut that part out. No, we'll keep it. We'll
keep it. We actually paused for a second because I'm
probably incorrect about this. Matt. You are my resident expert
for all things MTG, so I will take your word
on this as our expert. But you remember, man back
in Gosh was twenty twenty when we started looking into
(01:06):
the story of the so called Atlantis of the Sands.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I seem to recall something about this, but I am
blanking on most of the details, which means there's still
stuff to discover in here.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Also known as a Ram of the Pillars. This city
has long been rumored to exist somewhere in the endless
stretch of desert called the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia
or the Arabian Peninsula. This city's even mentioned in the
Koran like Atlantis. Over centuries and centuries, people have been
(01:42):
constantly trying to find this place. But as we learned
in this classic episode, somebody might have actually found Ubar.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Amazing. I think the card you might be thinking about
this called City of Brass. Maybe, dude, that's it. Okay,
that's an amazing magic card.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Thank you. I feel much better. Wait, what does what
does it do?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
It deals damage to you when you add mana to
your manipol. But I believe you could add any mana
you want, so like any color. But it's still going
to ping you for one damage every time you use it. Yeah,
that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
That's a real FASTI em parkin. All right, here's our episode.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
From UFOs to Psychic Powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Hello, Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Our friend Noel is on adventures today. They called me Ben.
We're joined as always with our super producer, Paul Mission
Control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Quick check in, Matty, my dear dear friend over these
(03:09):
many years, how are you today?
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Well, let me tell you. I know, I'm great. I'm
gonna get to play some magic later tonight with my
buddy Charlie, who lives in upstate New York and I
haven't talked to him in forever, and he finally agreed
to just you know, to let me be my middle
(03:34):
school self again and play some magic with him. And
I'm very excited about that. You and I are gonna
have a game together pretty soon.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
That's right, That's right, Matt. Yeah, I've got to go
back to the office and pick up one of my
favorite gifts I ever received, a deck of magic cards
that I suppose are vintage nowadays that you and Tyler
made for me many moons ago. I'm quite excited. I'm
gonna I'm probably gonna scoop those up this weekend and
(04:01):
spend some time doing what I did pretty often as
a child playing multiplayer games with myself. Shout out to
my one D and D campaign just to make sure
I know what's going on there.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Yeah, and for other listeners just who are interested here,
there is a reason that we don't have to talk
about on air here, that you and Nolan and I
may have to be at least somewhat close to each
other in proximity. Very soon. I'm thinking about bringing a
deck for Nol and forcing him to play a game
with us, because I don't know that he's ever played
Magic before. We'll see if it works out.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
I imagine he'll be delighted. I am Magic, He'll be delighted.
So before we get into today's episode, we do have
one on air correction that a couple of listeners caught,
and I just wanted to get this out here because
it's important. Specifically, earlier in our episode Operation Infection with
(05:01):
a K, we had a couple of times referred to
AIDS as standing for auto immunodeficiency syndrome. That is incorrect.
I misspoke there. I think probably I'm the most egregious
person with this one. It is actually acquired immuno deficiency syndrome.
(05:23):
So maybe a small difference in terms of speech, but
it's a big difference in terms of what it stands for,
and of course it affects a great many people. If
you don't know what we're talking about, please check out
Operation Infection, where we do, in fact uncover a proven
conspiracy about HIV and AIDS.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yes, and specifically some meddling that occurred from from Russian actors.
Let's say, there we go.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
When we say Russian actors, we don't mean the stars
of screen and stage right, we mean the other actors. Yeah,
today we're I'm super excited about this one. Maybe a
way to segue into this is the world of games,
specifically video games. Now, I'm you know, Matt, you and
(06:19):
I have talked at length over more than a decade
now that we've been hanging out about video games of
all sorts and all stripes. You remember Uncharted three?
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I do Uncharted as a fabulous franchise. The fourth iteration
recently was available on PS Plus or PlayStation Plus. If
anybody subscribes to that, hopefully you've played it. Great treasure
Hunter series. And in the third version, the third iteration,
(06:53):
oh boy, you get into a lost city? Is it
Lomurria Lemuria that is featured in that one, or is
it Atlantis.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
It is a lost city in the wild desert of
the Middle East, a city that was rumored to be
home to Jin, a city that was rumored to have
untold wealth before it was cursed by the divine. We
won't spoil it too much. I believe you can still
(07:24):
get at least Uncharted one through three for free on
PlayStation's special looking Out for You during the Quarantine deal.
So I recently replayed this. It's a fantastic game if
you're a fan of Indiana Jones. If you're not really
a fan of video games, but you do like film
(07:46):
and films like Indiana Jones, then think of that almost
as at times, it's more like an interactive movie, you
know what I mean. It's a journey, and you could
set the if you're particularly unmotivated for video game stuff,
you can set the levels low enough such that you're
just kind of sitting through a movie where you occasionally
(08:08):
push buttons. Well, you know, it's like, what was that
Dragon's lair? That's another old old one. But you're right, Matt,
Lost cities they play a big part and Uncharted because
lost cities play a huge part in human civilization. Like typically,
right when you hear people talk about ancient lost cities,
(08:29):
Let's say you're flipping through television and you're flipping through
your books and you come across that phrase lost city,
lost civilization. In the modern day, we tend to dismiss
that concept like right out. You know, places like you
mentioned Lemuria or it's the Beatles to its Rolling Stone,
(08:50):
Atlantis and so on. These are all kind of thought
to be legends, right, and we've done stories on those
in the past. I think we actually to a pretty
surprisingly solid answer on the mystery of Atlantis a while back.
But lost cities, lost civilizations, the amazing and disturbing thing
(09:13):
about this is they're not that crazy. It turns out
our species, as you said before, we're cartoonishly good at
losing things, whether we're talking about car keys, passwords, technologies, cities,
entire civilizations. The vast span of human history is this
like long running joke about us making stuff and then
(09:34):
completely forgetting about it, or at least mostly forgetting about it.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Uh yeah, I mean you can look at almost every
major civilization space, so a place where a civilization began,
you can look even if it's a city. Now, let's
say in a place like Atlanta, just as an example,
there are versions of Atlanta that exist below it, that
(10:01):
were built on top of you know, for cities to exist.
London is a really good example of that, New York,
where there's a version of that place of history that
literally went away or went underground essentially. And you can
think about all kinds of things that we've lost over time,
you know, entire technologies that have come and gone, you know,
(10:24):
even just an entire civilization, a whole place where humanity
grew and thrived for a while and just went away
for one reason or another.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
And sometimes even when we know the location of a
lost place quote unquote lost, even when we know where
the ruins are, we still can run into mysteries about
why tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people one
day just left. Right, there are a lot of questions
(10:57):
that remain unanswered because history is alive. Right in today's episode,
we're exploring a city that some people may not have
heard of, but a city that occupies a unique place
in folklore and in science here in the modern date.
In fact, we call this a lost city. But it
(11:20):
may have already been found. And where better to start
with this story than with a legend. So here are
the facts.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
There was once, according to legend, a place known as
Iram of the Pillars. It was also known as Ubar
or Ubar for short. We're going to be calling it
a Ubar in this in this story, but it was
also known as Wubar with a w irem rum. Sometimes
it was just known as the city of the Pillars.
(11:50):
It was this legendary place. It was, or it has
been over the course of history, taken as this indisputable
fact that there was a true place a thing that
existed by one of these names, generally by people who
follow in the faith of Islam. It's explicitly mentioned by
the way in the Quran, which is a good thing
(12:11):
to know for the rest of this story. Here the
specific phrase, by the way that's found there is Iram
dot al Imad, and it's sometimes translated to you know,
maybe a less prestigious sounding phrase called Iram of the
tent poles, eh, not so not so cool. Sounds much
(12:32):
better when it's al imad. But the English translation of
its meant but we've got it. Actually here, we've got
the English translation of it's mentioned in the Quran.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Right, Yeah, here's how the explicit mention in the Koran
reads in English. Quote, and we're because of the differences
between English and Arabic, there are good there's gonna be
some slippage here. There are some words or pieces of
sentence structure that don't white translate. But we'll give you
(13:01):
the gist. Quote. Have you not considered how your Lord
dealt with Aram, who had lofty pillars, the likes of
whom had never been created in the lands, And with
the mood who carved out the rocks in the valley,
and with Pharaoh, owner of the stakes, all of whom
oppressed within the lands and increased therein the corruption. So
(13:23):
your Lord poured upon them a scourge of punishment. Indeed,
your Lord is in observation. That's the words of the
prophet right in the Qur'an. That's the story of the
story of this kind of warning to the reader. It's like, Hey,
(13:45):
think about what happened to this place, Think about what
happened to this guy. And that last line comes off
I think a little bit mild where it says indeed
your Lord is an observation. Maybe a more direct way
to say that in American English today would be you know,
watch out, God is watching you.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
You know, yeah, it always feels like somebody's watching me,
because it has been stated here that he she it is. Indeed,
there's another version of this, by the way, where or
I guess, of the story of the legend, where Ubar
was this center of trade, of wealth of society. It
(14:26):
was located along this really lucrative trade route that existed
at the time, in which it was a place that
was you know, thriving, and it's you know, it's where
merchants would transport all kinds of things, or of this
this trade route is where merchants would trade all kinds
of things, and Ubar was a major stop there and
one of the big things that they traded was frankinsense.
(14:48):
And this is has been mentioned a lot, or at
least is a major point of this one version of
the legend.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Yeah. Oh, they were balling out. They were making so
much money off this frankencense trade, which included murr. You
know for people who people.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Were fans of the three the three wise men.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Then then you'll notice that franken sense and MRR, which
are not super big commodities to a lot of people
today were profoundly impressive gifts. Back then, they were you know,
they were status symbols. They were associated with things that
were holy, and so being a part of this trade,
the people of Ubar made a lot of money. They
(15:35):
obtained many riches, jewels, et cetera. And this story follows,
you know, the kind of Pixar version. Once upon a time,
as you said, matt Ubar was the center of the
trade and Franken sense, and every day they got wealthier
and wealthier, wealthier, until one day a prophet arrives, and
(15:56):
this is a pre Islamic prophet, by the way. In
this legend, a prophet around and foretells that the city
and the entire civilization of Ubar would be destroyed by
God as punishment for their wicked, wicked ways. The king,
who was not aware that he was to be the
last king of Ubar, ignored the prophet, and a short
(16:16):
while later the city disappeared from the historical record. It
was buried under the shifting sands of the empty quarter
in Arabia. They called it then, but Saudi Arabia we
call it now.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
And it's a It feels maybe at first glance or
first listen as a similar parable that has existed in
a couple of different holy books and a couple of
different societies and kind of historical records, where there's this
place that became so wealthy, they just were bored in
(16:51):
some ways because they had so much time on their hands,
and they started to do the things that idle hands do,
which is generally considered, you know, the devil's work or
the bad things, the wicked, evil things. And then it
gets destroyed because a force of good. In this case,
God comes through and says no. But and you know,
(17:14):
but if you continue along the legend, even though it
was destroyed, it, you know, if it, if it was real,
then it would still exist out there somewhere, right at
least according to legend.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Right somewhere out there in the dry ocean of the desert,
one may still discover the ruins of ancient Ubar, all
the riches within, and possibly all the all the curses
and consequences you would run into for uh, for violating
the wishes of the divine and you know.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
I'm man, yeah, but but mostly mostly all those all
those vases full of that dank frankincense.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Dank and sense that would be the dame of the company.
We start Dank and sense, Uh, yeah, we'll find something
for MRR as well, because Murr is still very much
of the game in this part of the story. But
you're right, so the details of the disaster are naturally
vague the idea, you know, at the time this story
(18:16):
takes place, when it's traced to antiquity, Usually natural disasters
are always seen as happening for some sort of reason.
No one is ever saying, hey, we have famine because
we couldn't grow crops because of the drought. They say, oh,
we are encountering famine because we have crops because of
(18:38):
the drought. Because God is super po'd at us, you know,
because we didn't make the right sacrifices or you didn't
propitiate the right prayers at the right time in the calendar,
et cetera. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's just
the human mind, because humans have always been you know,
these are still homo sapient. They're very much like us.
(18:59):
There's still trying to categorize and frame and understand the world.
So when you hear details about Ubar's demise, you might.
You'll hear people say, you know, well it was God
that struck them down, and then we'll hear other people say, oh,
it's God who struck them down. But God did it
this way, right through an earthquake maybe, or through a
sandstorm that never stopped. It's kind of like Atlantis, right,
(19:24):
that's another example, or Sodom and Gomorrah.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
It's a it's a that's a good example.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Yeah, yeah, because it has the wickedness right, and it's
and it's still you know, it's a story that's common
to what they call people of the book, right Jedeo
Christian Islamic belief systems. But Ubar has a couple of
things and it's legend that make it different. First, speculation
(19:49):
about Ubar has continued, you know, since the writing of
the Qur'an, which really popularized it, because that is that
is a book that is fundamental to many civilizations. And
then some other lost city legends just by contrast, they
(20:10):
claim that there are ancient origins to them, but they
end up being examples of embellishment maybe or outright hoaxes.
This is not the case here. I mean aram Ubar
was popularized in the West in the thirties and really
picked up some modern shine and PRTLC in the nineteen nineties.
(20:32):
But again, it's been known in the Middle East. The
West alone is not the world. It was known in
the Middle East since the Kuran. Since before then. It
assumed its more modern interpretation way back during the aggregation
and dissemination of the anthology we know of as one
thousand and one Nights, fantastic book that was composed over
(20:56):
centuries during the Islamic Golden Age. We still don't know
to be completely clear, how that book was formed. It's
a mystery of its own. But that's not the only
reason Ubar is unique.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, there are some some pretty old maps that actually
placed a physical location of Ubar On these maps, there
was there's one where it's depicted as Omanum Emporium there
and that's on Ptolemy's lap P. T O. L. E.
M Y his map of the world. This guy, Claudius Ptolemy,
(21:30):
he was born in Greece, lived in Egypt, and this
is around one hundred and ten to one hundred and
seventy a d. So that's some time ago. Let's say.
It's also mentioned by several other Islamic commentators throughout the years,
the centuries that have existed as possibly existing in one
place or another and in multiple versions of it, essentially
(21:53):
of the legend. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah, the primary evidence, which you know, we're very thankful
for a lot of the primary evidence comes from religious
or religious affiliated text. So there's going to be this
ongoing debate about translation, you know, and then about like
you said, Matt, is this literally a city? Is this
literally a civilization? Is this a metaphor you know, is
(22:17):
this like a larger version of all those stories that
even today kids here like, don't do act A, B
or C or else you'll have consequence X, Y or z.
What if it wasn't a city at all? What if
it was a region instead? So instead of you know,
like what if or whenever the US falls and you
(22:40):
fast forward a couple of millennia or something, what if
no one remembers the city of Atlanta and they talk
about the Lost City of Georgia. It's located somewhere on
this continent and everybody but everybody's got weird ideas about it.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
It would be the Lost City of coming.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
There we go. That stuff happens all the time. And
then the name we get distorted and telephoned and it
would be like Kuminkh or Kumang or something like that. Yeah,
that happens constantly, constantly. So maybe it wasn't even a region,
Maybe it was not geographical. Maybe it was a name
for a people, which also happens pretty often, right, because
(23:21):
we know that in ancient times and even now, groups
of people, communities and tribes, the names that outsiders use
refer to the place where those people are found, right,
and the places where they live get named after them. Israelites,
Israel you know what I mean. Especially the Middle East
(23:43):
is full of this stuff. So Ubar has long been
associated with a group of people called the Ud, spelled
like apostrophe Ad but pronounced more like Uld. And back
in the eleventh century was a a commentary named Nashwan
bin said Himyari, who said, quote, Ubar is the name
(24:06):
of the land which belonged to Ud in the eastern
part of Yemen. Today it's an untrodded desert owing to
the dying up of its water. There are to be
found in it great buildings which the wind is smothered
in sand. Doesn't really mention God, just mentions these people
built some stuff, and they're no longer in the game.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
How intriguing is that though, I mean again like bring
back Indiana Jones. Just some of these concepts that at
least I as a child and then growing up were
so fascinating of you know, finding being able to one
day maybe chase down some historical place like this, or
discovering a lost place, a lost people that existed somewhere.
(24:47):
It's it's just such fuel for the imagination. And you know,
it really just depends on where you look, who you ask,
who you just want to believe, I guess, on how
you think about Ubar, where it could be, what it
could be, who the actual people were and what occurred
(25:09):
there or And it also depends on your faith honestly,
depending on you know, the books you grew up with,
as in the important pillars of your faith and your
understanding of the world. But it's really cool that this
place has all of this potential built within it. You know, you.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
May have grown up most familiar with that description in
the Kloran. You may have you may have been a
fan of Te Lawrence, the famous and very strange explorer
and military officer. He's the one who I think popularized
calling it the Atlantis of the Sands. But the most
(25:52):
important thing about the Atlantis of the Sands is that
we're pretty sure someone found it. What are we talking about.
We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. Here's
(26:15):
where it gets crazy, Matt. We gotta we gotta talk
about these searches. You know. It's oh yeah, people are
out here changing the world.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Man.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
One time I fell asleep trying to put on a
pair of pants, like this is this This is a
great examination of human ingenuity, if nothing else.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
The other day I fell asleep. I stuck my head
into my son's rocket ship tent and I was playing
with him really actively, and I totally passed out right there.
So I feel you ben just saying, uh, maybe maybe
we should stop falling asleep on our various jobs such
as pants putting on. But other people have not been
(26:55):
sitting around getting drowsy. They've been out there searching the
desert for stuff, which is really really cool. There are
several individuals who believe they have uncovered this place that
was mentioned in the Koran, and you know, there's there's
debate on who's right who actually found it. And we're
(27:17):
gonna go through all that stuff right now. But you
really can find people who have claimed at least to
have found this legendary place Ubar or Iran that was
mentioned in the Qoran, that specific version of it, and
they think they found it in the Middle East, in
places from Oman to Yemen to Jordan. Places in Jordan
(27:41):
the place called the Wadi Room, and the Wadi Room.
This is, oh, the infamous what has this been? I
don't know this, the infamous Rube al Khali.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah, that's right, the Rube al Khalai. We should or
the Empty Quarter. We should note that, as far as
we know, neither of us are Arabic speakers, unless we
had a wild weekend and forgot about it. The Empty
Quarter is a vast stretch of immensely inhospitable land. And
(28:11):
we'll we'll talk about in a little bit. But I noticed, Matt,
you pointed out Waldi Room, Wadi Room. Let's let's let's
talk about this a little bit. So it's in Jordan.
It's it's name translates or it's called the Valley of
the Moon. And this looks otherworldly. It's a desert landscape picture,
(28:33):
a lot of flat, sandy valley beds, Wadi is Arabic
for valley, and they're bordered by these enormous red sandstone cliffs.
It's the largest valley in Jordan. And it also carries
the signs of ancient human occupation. We've got inscriptions, petroglyphs,
(28:54):
ruins of temples, graffiti, stuff that dates back as far
as twelve thousand years. People have been there for a
long long time.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Yeah, and it's one of those places that the glory of,
you know, the natural surroundings in this you know, the
somewhat starkness of it as well, wasn't really known by
the West until some guy walked through there who happened
to be British, a man named T. E. Lawrence. He
was a British military officer. He really brought it to
(29:27):
the West's attention who was passing through there during the
Arab Revolt which occurred between nineteen sixteen and nineteen eighteen.
And he he, you know, was moved by the experience
of going through that area, and he wrote a book
about his experience called Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
And then we get into a weird circumstance here, a
little bit of a pr move because there's a formation
at Waldi room called the Seven Pillars of Wi that's
what it's called today. It's great for tourism. That's not
its original name. Its original name was like Jabal al Mamzar,
(30:08):
the Mountain of the plague, and so.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Ooh yeah, nobody wants to visit the Mountain of the plague.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
I mean, I'm down, but you know, I'm sure there's
another mountain of a plague somewhere. So this was this
was renamed even though the formation that's mentioned has nothing
to do with the Seven Pillars actually mentioned in Lawrence's book.
Even in like later editions, it is all about tourism there.
(30:36):
It is a hugely popular tourist destination, and it's of
course an enormously important side of human civilization. It's also
something that you fellow conspiracy realists, have probably seen before.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
You just didn't know it.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
You might have thought it was Planet Mars in the
Martian You might have thought it was any number number
of backdrops for film set in the Middle East or
on our red neighbor, just just to plan it away.
It's also in it's in some famous ones.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Oh yeah, there's a Star Wars movie, Rogue one that
used it. The Transformers. Revenge of the Fallen featured this
and my favorite one, even though it wasn't my favorite movie,
but my favorite version of it is seen in Prometheus.
I really liked the way it was treated there, at
least on camera.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Yeah. Also, of course it's in the Aladdin reboot, the
live action.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
I forgot about that one.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
I never asked you, you know, I forgot to ask
your opinion that I know that we both love that
film growing up, and I still think it holds up.
But what did you see the.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Remake hot take? I suffered through it until Will Smith's
like tenth line, and then I turned it off. All right,
I didn't turn it off. My son and my wife
continued to watch a little bit, but I left the room.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
They handle it in silent protest.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
No, it wasn't. It wasn't very silent. It was definitely
like then left.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Yeah, Robin Williams left some big shoes to fill. And
I don't think it's I mean, it's funny because I
really liked I really enjoyed all the other actors in there.
I thought they nailed it. And for some reason, again
this is just one person's opinion. We'll have to get
Paul's about this off air too. It just felt like
(32:34):
they were trying to make it will Smith plays will
Smith as a genie. I mean, to be fair, That's
that's what Robin Williams was doing too. I just I
liked the earlier songs.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yeah, me too. It's a real Mountain of the plague
seven Pillars of Wisdom scenario. You know, the translation just
story to change up, just didn't didn't play as in
this case, didn't play as well.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Yeah, yeah, true. But again visually, you know there there's
stunning scenes in there, and and again, I think the
vast majority of the actors nailed it. So I don't
want to be unfair. I just I just I think
I figured out how I like my culturally appropriated idea
of Gin in Disney films, because it's not like it's
(33:29):
not like the Robin Williams genie is in any way
accurate to begin with. Uh indeed, But if.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
You're gonna if you're gonna make a scary version, like
the scariest version of a Gin, which is the one
that this genie is supposed to inhabit, and you're gonna
make them like a family friend friendly g version, then
you know, go all the way with it, just make
them super happy and transforming into all kinds of different
(33:57):
Western characters from pop culture.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
That's right. So I'm going to watch that later. As
long as we don't get disappeared, I think we can
close the book though. On the wa Do Room. It's
definitely an historically significant site, but it is probably not
the Atlantis of the Sands, as T. Lawrence called it.
It's probably not a lost city. There are some ancient
(34:24):
temples there, but the fact is there's so much tourism
there now that if there were an ancient empire or
gigantic city, it would have been found like the I mean,
people travel from around the world to visit and film there.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
I would say that just going with the name the
Mountain of the Plague may make you think if you
put yourself in the shoes of maybe someone exploring the
area who isn't fully familiar with it, may make you
think that, well, you know, this place was named the
Mountain of the Plague. Perhaps there was something that happened
here or a long time ago that we don't fully understand.
(35:04):
I can imagine that scenario, or at least that thought.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Process totally, totally and I agree. I mean, you know,
when you get to a place that has had human
beings for that long, I'm sure there were several plagues,
you know what I mean. I'm yeah, I don't think
somebody probably didn't make that name up for fun. I
didn't think it was cool. They remembered when people died
of the plague in the area, and they were like,
(35:28):
don't even get to where you can frigging see that mountain, bro,
it's messed up. Yeah, I could totally see that. History
is filled with ghosts.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
We gonn shoot all our movies there, and.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Now we shoot movies there. Now we shoot movies there.
So there are also a lot of films shot around
the area of the Empty Quarter the Rulebuck Cully. If
you're going just off the oral traditions and the legends,
it makes a lot of sense to think that a
(36:01):
city might have been there and vanished, because it feels
like the easiest place for human beings to vanish. It's vast,
it's a sand desert. It covers most of the southern
third of the Arabian Peninsula, and it is huge. It's
(36:22):
like two hundred and fifty thousand square miles. It means
it goes across Saudi Arabia, goes across the United Arab Emirates,
goes across Aman Yemen, and today it's a rough neighborhood
for humans. It's actually rougher for humans now than it
was in ancient times. And even then it was no
walk in the park. It rains like or sorry, not
(36:44):
even rain. The precipitation is like maybe one point four
inches on a good year. The temperatures can reach as
high as fifty one degrees celsius.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
For everyone in the well fifty one. That's not bad, right, for.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Everyone in the States, it's one hundred and twenty four
degrees fahreadheit and then and it gets cold af at night.
It's like one of those places in the world where,
if you look at it objectively, are humans supposed to
be here? Are we really do we need to go
out here? You know, like I don't know, man, I
(37:19):
really don't know.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Well maybe not anymore. But back before the intense desertification,
desertification that's been occurring out there, and you know, on
a continual level and increasing, it was a pretty cool
place to be, a good place to at least travel through.
In a lot of the areas of it because guess what.
(37:41):
Guess what they did. They traded things in caravans like
frankincense and mer and mer and mer.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
I don't know why, it feels like it feels like
there's a Simon and Garfunkl thing going on with frank
and sense of mirror. Or maybe it's like if we
were selling a box of frankensense and would say, like,
franko sense now with mer.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Dude, No, I'll tell you a better one.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
Yeah, it's it's.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Hall and oats.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Oh wow, because.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
It feels so healthy. It's or something like extra. They
don't need you just want the hall.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
So yes, I get it. You know. It's like it's
like people will eat the uh eat the oats, but yeah,
we're here for the halls. That makes that makes a
lot of sense, Like so maybe that's it. Maybe that's it,
but your point is right. Desert desertification, the process of
becoming more desert like, has increased over time to the
(38:43):
present level today. Before then, it was still very much wasteland,
but caravans, often on camelback, would would be able to
traverse established roots here to get that sweet sweet Franken
sense and r and it to move it to more
densely populated areas where it would fetch a great premium
(39:06):
as much as for its rarity as for its smell.
And this trade occurred till around and estimated like three
hundred a d people were doing this. But the problem
with the empty quarter is the same thing that made
people think that's where Aram could be or who Bar
could be. It's that is it is huge. In the
(39:28):
days before satellite observation, it would be really difficult for
early explorers, especially as you said, the British guys, the Aristos,
who are walking in and quote unquote discovering all this stuff.
It would be really tough for them to systematically comb
the desert without without dying of thirst starvation when they
(39:50):
got lost. Now, the native people, the Bedouin, knew their
way around, right, But.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
Yeah, exactly, Well, especially if you're trying to do it,
you know Spaceball's style and combing the desert like that,
that'd be a rough gig.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
It's a rough gig. It takes a lot of people
in a lot of time. So yeah, there could be
an ancient oasis in the area. We know there are
oases all around the edges of the empty quarter. That's
what defines the empty quarter. It's the empty part and
the stuff around the edges has stuff there. But if
(40:26):
you were gonna find something, if you're gonna find an
ancient city, where would you start looking? How would you
find it? This leads us to the various attempts to
discover it. So we've nailed down that it's probably not
in the empty Quarter, at least so far as we know,
it's unlikely that it would be. And then it's probably
(40:47):
not in uh waddie room in Jordan. But we got
a bunch of pretty moneyed British explorers who have nothing,
who have no other goals other than to make some
money off the native cultures and later brag to their
(41:08):
friends at the Royal Geographic Society, and they were all
about this.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
And we also have satellite technology now and other you
advanced technology. So that's a bit of a spoiler, and
we'll tell you about the potential discovery after a word
from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
We're back. So let's start in nineteen thirty there is
an explorer named Bertram Thomas. Bertram Thomas has the goal
of being the first European, in his opinion, to officially
cross the sands of the Empty Quarter. He's at the
southern edge of the area. And I'd just say in
(41:55):
his opinion, because I take issue. I take issue with
the idea of him being the first person ever from
Europe to do that, because this is nineteen thirty and
there was a lot of stuff that happened before he
got this idea. Anyway, So he starts this journey, and
he's ready, and he gets camels, guys, entourage and stuff.
(42:17):
People who are native to the land, and some members
of his Bedouin entourage tell him about the story of
this lost city and he says, all right, well, I'm
gonna find that. That's gonna be something I can rag
to the rest of my lads about back home. He
didn't find it, but he did tell te Lawrence about it.
(42:40):
T Lawrence is the guy who popularized the phrase the
Atlantis of the Sands. He didn't just tell him about it.
He said, roy a old chap and he marked a
map for Lawrence with the supposed location. Lawrence again, very weird, dude.
I don't want a kink shame anyone. I don't want
to yuck anyone's youum as Chuck would say, But Lawrence
(43:05):
was a smart dude, and he immediately knew what we
had just talked about, the vast difficulties of finding this
needle of civilization in this haystack of the wild. So
we said, you know, the only way we're going to
be able to find this is if we somehow get
in the air. We searched by airship, by a blimp,
but he never followed through with it. You know, again,
(43:27):
it's the nineteen thirties, nineteen forties, a lot of stuff's
going down in the Middle Eastern Europe. But these statements
that he made and that other explorers made cemented the
idea of this lost Arab city in the Western zeitgeist,
so people were obsessed with it.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Yeah, and remember T Lawrence that we spoke about earlier,
is the Seven Pillars of Wisdom guy in the Waddie
room that we talked about, same dude, same British military officer,
who tended to write a lot about these kinds of things.
So that's why it makes sense that it kind of
expanded out there in the minds of people in the West,
but it didn't stop there. Everybody. Let's jump forward sixteen
(44:08):
years to nineteen forty six. And to another English explorer,
a Iritish fellow named named Wilfrid Thesiga. Actually will maybe
it's Wilfrid the seizure. I don't know how to say. Wow,
it's it's English messager.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Maybe put a little right, pull a little British Polish
on it. I think he nailed it. It could be the
Seeger we'll call We'll call it Wilfrid Thesiger.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Well, so, uh, he's hanging out in a place called Schisser.
It's in southern Oman. He's hanging out by this well,
that's that's over there, just in an area that's an
undefined area. And he notes that he's seeing some kinds
of crude stone, some kind of ruins, maybe from a fort.
(45:01):
You's see him on this rocky Eminence. That's a quote
there about the Eminence and some of the things that
he finds there, let's call them shards, some of the
things he finds in the area. Maybe in his opinion,
they may be early Islamic. And you know, he tells
the Royal Geographic Society this, but nothing you know, official
(45:24):
comes out of it. There's no like exploration in the
moment because of this guy, Wilfred Thesiger's experience.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
But people remember, right, people be blay keeping note. Just
two years later, nineteen forty eight, a party of Bedouins
and oil company employees are traveling there. They're surveying no
far province. This is of course, part of Western Europe's
(45:54):
state sponsored push to divide up the territories for resource acquisition.
And they first see this place, Shesrah or also called
ashis here. They're approaching it from the south and the
first thing they see is this white cliff in the distance.
As they get closer, they say, hey, this cliff is
(46:16):
not just a cliff. It's man made. It's the wall
of a ruined fort, and it's built above this large cave,
and there's an entrance to this cave, but it's obscured
by a sand dune. I mean, I'm just I am picturing.
I don't know about you guys, but I'm picturing like
this crazy Indiana Jones music in my head. They found
(46:38):
the fort had been built from the same white rock
as that cliff, and this gave them. This to them,
seemed to indicate that this whole thing was a single structure.
One of the geologists said, you know, there are no
houses or tents or people here. There's just this tumble
down ruin Islamic for it, wompwomp. Because the geologists didn't
(47:03):
have modern satellites, we're throwing so many spoilers in this.
They didn't have archaeological equipment. They were unimpressed by the ruin.
They were like, there's not even oil here.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
Bro.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
In fact, their guides and them, they all referred to
it as quote difficult water because it was the only
watering hole for miles and miles and miles around, and
they had to spend three days trying to get water
from this dying well for their camels. So it's like
(47:37):
they they stopped in a place because it had one
thing that they needed they barely had that. They wrote
down a one star review of it in their Yelp
travel journal, and then they dipped out. But all of
those things that happened were still on a record. Fast
(47:58):
forward to the eighties and nineteen nineties.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Yeah, that's right, zero Michelin stars for Schisser before that.
Now jump in nineteen ninety one, same area. There's a
just before we get into this, there is a fantastic
New York Times Old school article from ninety two. I
(48:22):
think that was written about this that we recommend you
go check out. The title of it is on the
Trail from the Sky Rhodes point to a Lost City.
So if before we talk about it, if you want
to read it, hey, good stuff in there. So there's
a filmmaker from Los Angeles named Nicholas Clapp. Really really
(48:43):
cool spelling, by the way. I don't know if he
spells it that way because of a screenwriter's guild thing,
but Clapp is his last name. You know, he's one
of those guys. It's the nineties. This guy has grown
up with a fascination of you know, the the romantic
mystery that exists out there in ancient you know, Arabia
(49:05):
and the sands as well as you know this the
concept of these huge caravanning frankincense trade that's occurring, right,
And he goes out to that same area she sir,
And really what he wants to do is use that
new technology that has been developed since people have been
(49:26):
looking at this place, and he wants to you know,
he really just wants to discover this place, right, and
he ends up finding things things that have never been
found out there before.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
Yeah, So he assembles this this crew of specialists, as
you said, to investigate. They include financial backers, they also
include scientists from JPL jet propulsion laboratories. And then he
also gets with Randolph, who, yes, is related to the
(50:02):
actor Ralph Finds, who plays Voldemore. I thought you would
enjoy that, Paul. He also plays the antagonist in Red
Dragon in the Silence of the Lambs franchise. Anyhow, he
has his relative Randolph Finds. He's a well to do
European and he is also affiliated with the Sultan of Oman,
(50:25):
so he's kind of their fixer on the ground. So
they get together and they're reviewing this footage from the satellites.
And again there's the very early days of this. This
is before you know, widespread use of a lot of
other technologies that people have today. But they see things
that you wouldn't see if you're walking on the ground.
One of the most important things they find is a
(50:47):
network of ancient camel tracks caravan roots that seem to
converge on a couple of different places, one of them
is our in Oman. And this like they you know,
they do all the ground, they do all the mental
legwork they can before they go there because it's a
(51:07):
bit of a journey. So their first ground exploration takes
place in nineteen ninety one. They learn so much stuff,
and that's where we get to that that breathless, like
old school NYT headline on the Trail from the Sky
Road points to a lost city. And then it begins
with this beautiful quotation. It's the first sentence, is just
(51:29):
is just solid gold? Matt Dov do you have maybe
like a I must hate to ask, do you have
a Transatlantic voice for this one?
Speaker 2 (51:37):
Yeah? Okay, I'll do it. Guided by ancient maps and
shop eyed surveys from space, archaeologists and explorers have discovered
a lost city deep in the sands of Arabia. They
are virtually sure it is Ubar, the fabled entropo of
the Rich frankensense trade thousands of years ago. And it continues.
Speaker 1 (52:01):
Yes, and now doesn't seem to be much question that
we have discovered or mono membarium, says doctor Jorisaradas, the
expedition's chief archaeologist. At that sight, he has is very rich,
no doubt about it. So is this the real Ubar?
Speaker 2 (52:18):
You know?
Speaker 1 (52:19):
Under the direction of Doctors Errands, the team starts digging.
They excavate the walls and towers this fortress. They're working fast.
They find a site that dates back more than two
thousand years. How can they work that fast? You know,
archaeological digs are a huge issue in the Middle East,
and because there's so many ancient civilizations, and because there
(52:41):
are so many modern civilizations of war over history right now,
they're able to do this again because Ranald finds his
buddy buddy with the sultan. What he says goes. So
doctor Zarns doesn't just find this this ancient site. He
also find is able to trace its demise a little bit.
(53:04):
And he says, look, the site has this huge sinkhole
kind of bisecting it if you look at the pictures,
and he says it fell sometime between AD three hundred
and AD five hundred, And if you recall earlier at
the top of the show, we said AD three hundred
is about when the frankincense trade is suspected to have declined.
Speaker 2 (53:27):
Interesting, right, And you know, when you keep thinking about
it in this way, if there was some kind of
cataclysm or a huge earthquake or a big sinkhole that
formed and sucked in everything pretty quickly over the course
of you know, even a couple of years. You can
imagine how perhaps that would have been blamed on an
(53:49):
act of God of some sort.
Speaker 1 (53:53):
And he says specifically, it's like, look, you know, there
was fossil water here. Fossil water is something we talked
about a little bit in our work on Libya years ago.
Fossil water is a non renewable source of potable or
drinkable water. And so it's kind of how this oasis
(54:13):
was working. But it was also built over limestone, and
so as more and more people and animals and agriculture
because they had irrigation schemes, more and more things started
draining more and more water. It probably contributed to an earthquake,
or maybe it was the primary cause of this collapse.
(54:34):
So the thing fell, the center could not hold. However,
doctor Zarns himself is quick to point out that there
might be a chicken and egg thing because if Franken
sense trade, if the Frankin Sense trade was still you know,
doing Gangbusters, then there would have been enough finance, right,
there would have been enough political will to rebuild this
(54:59):
lost place. And that all depends on whether our modern
idea of Ubar existed at all, because you see doc
Z is not convinced.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
He's not. And by the way, it also depends on
whether or not they could actually get water. If if
that you know that fossil water was actually the reason
that caused the collapse. But let's talk about doctors errands
and why he was unsure. Because there was this great
interview with him from Nova. If you haven't watched a
lot of Nova and you're listening to this, I highly
(55:33):
recommend you do. It's really great. They're not a sponsor,
but I very much enjoy the programming with the stuff
they put out there. But they were speaking with him
about Ubar, and we've got a quote from him. He says,
there's a lot of confusion about that word talking about Ubar.
If you look at the classical texts and the Arab
historical sources, Ubar refers to a region and a group
(55:56):
of people, not to a specific town. People all always
overlook that. It's very clear. On Ptolemy's second century map
of the area it says in big letters law Bitarite,
and in his text that accompanies the maps, he's very
clear about that. It was only the late medieval version
of the one thousand and one Nights in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries that romanticized Ubar and turned it into
(56:20):
a city rather than a region or a people.
Speaker 1 (56:23):
Instead, he says Shser, the site they found is one
of maybe three or four major trade and civilization centers
of the Uberite at a time when this tribal group,
the Uberites, thrived along the edges of the empty quarter.
So he's saying that they didn't discover the mythical city,
(56:45):
but in a way that they discovered something more important.
They discovered the truth that inspired the myth. We have
to remember that when people saw this city, they were
seeing it after seven eight days journey through utter desolation,
no food, no water. We also have to understand that
(57:06):
when they saw it, like when you see it now.
You can see photographs of the ruins today, along with
artist depictions of how the actual fortress looked at its time, right,
and the fortress itself, especially after you've heard all these myths,
it looks a little underwhelming, honestly, but you have to
consider that many of the people who are living there,
(57:28):
who were populating it, even on a permanent basis, they
weren't living in this relatively small fortress. They were living
outside around it. They were living in large tents that
you could open up to catch a breeze and things
like that. They would probably only be in the fortress
if there were some sort of siege or attack. It
reminds me like it doesn't okay, it doesn't look like
(57:51):
a shining city of pillars and the pictures of the
ruins or even in the artistic depictions. But you know,
then again, for anyone who's seeing the Tower of London,
stuff doesn't look like a skyscraper, right, We have very
different definitions of towers hundreds of years ago, you know
what I mean, anything over two three floors that's a tower.
Speaker 2 (58:11):
Oh absolutely, And I really like your point there of
just to reach that area, no matter for what reason
you're traveling through or you know, to get there, you
would have been on a perilous journey. This is a
weird kind of way of think about it. But you
shot a picture into my head, been of a day
that I worked a full day, like let's say, eight
(58:33):
nine hours, then immediately after that shot a film festival
forty eight hours thing immediately following a full day of work,
and I hadn't eaten food in like thirty hours or something,
and somebody suggested getting Popeyes. I didn't know what that was.
I tried it for the first time with my wife,
(58:54):
and it was the best piece of chicken I had
ever eaten in my life. Now is that because it
was actually the best piece of chicken or is it
because I was starved or I felt starving and you know,
was so hungry that this just became a prized thing
in that moment. I wonder if that experience is correct.
And that's it's a really great point.
Speaker 1 (59:15):
Ben, that's I mean, you're making a really great point too.
And not to date you there, Matt, but that is
before the famous chicken sandwich that was just like you
got a two or a three piece right with a biscuit.
Speaker 2 (59:27):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (59:28):
Yeah, I mean, I still I stand by Popeyes. This
is not an advertisement for Popeyes, but I think, at
least here in Atlanta, one thing we love about Popeyes
is you can tell how good the chicken's going to
be by like how abrasive. The people who work there
are the best, the probably some of the best Popeyes
here at our our neck of the Global Woods is
(59:50):
right down the street from our office where famously, I
don't know about you, I went there for lunch one day.
I was just trying to pick up some d Is
it a hurry? And what I pulled up at the
drive through? The person on the other end said, what.
Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
It's a one to one ratio? How good the chicken
is going to be? And how much grief you get?
Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
But I think you make a really great point about
the psychology of people there, because you know, you are
going into a place that a looked much more impressive
when it was in its glory days before it collapsed,
back when there were hundreds of people there, there was
irrigation and stuff. It looked much better and people were
(01:00:36):
much more appreciative because some of them probably came pretty
close to dying while they were risking their lives and
their fortunes in the frankinsonse trade. So there really was
there an ubar of myth? Probably not. Was there a
real place upon which ubar is based? Yes, and we
probably found it. This is a real life case of
(01:00:58):
a lost city that was like the Lost City of Troy.
And you know, if it looks disappointing and the Tower
of London, example, is maybe a little disappointing. To let's
be further disappointing. The pyramids used to look way better.
Those things used to be painted like you know, I
wish people would point that out more. They used to
(01:01:19):
be more colorful. Anyway. This fortress was surrounded by smaller
villages that stretched out as far as six miles.
Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
It was.
Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
It's an example kind of of a what's called a caravan,
Sarah that because you know, a roadhouse, a stop on
the road, you know, like the same kind of thing
that made Samarkans in Zbekistan a huge global force, regional
force it was. It's it's like, imagine if the only
(01:01:51):
gas station for hundreds and hundreds of miles became a town.
That's that's another way to look at it. And I
don't think I don't think that's pejorative or dismissive at all.
It's amazing. So maybe in conclusion, maybe the game of
telephone strikes again. I know that's disappointing to some people.
(01:02:13):
That's amazing to me. I love it. And you know
what it makes me think, Matt, I don't know about you.
I just wonder what else is out there. It's gotta
be more.
Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
That's exactly what I was gonna say. Just because we
found this one doesn't mean other stuff isn't out there.
We haven't fully lied oar to that desert yet, at
least I'm pretty sure we haven't, because it would take
a lot of ldar to go through that desert. But
I'm just telling you, like my excitement for possibilities out
(01:02:41):
there in the Shifting sands, it remains peaked, and it
will stay that way for a good time.
Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
Yeah, And it'll probably have to stay a sense of
excitement and anticipation for a while because you know, so
much of that part of the world is embroiled in
political and stability. There are war zones, you know, in
seats of ancient human civilization, and we're really being destroyed
right right, And we're really faced with We're faced with
(01:03:12):
a powerful dilemma, which is, you know, will our species
be able to come together and save its past. It's
collective past, make no mistake, you know, the ancient history
of the Middle East. If you're listening to this, it
is part of your history too. You trace yourself back
(01:03:33):
far enough, it's part of your history somehow. So it's
our collective responsibility to try to keep it around for
those who come after. We're just as we said in
the very very beginning, we're very very good at losing things.
Let's hope we get a little bit better at rediscovering
and preserving them. Let us know what you think about
(01:03:54):
today's episode. We've run a little long, but we hope
you enjoyed it. You can find us on Facebook. You
can find us on Instagram. You can find us on Twitter.
We're conspiracy Stuff on Facebook and Twitter. We're Conspiracy Stuff
show on Instagram. But personally, if you're a Facebook person,
do check out our Facebook page. Here's where it gets crazy.
(01:04:16):
You can meet some of the best mods in the business,
and the best part of this show you are fellow listeners.
Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
Yes, please do if you are a Facebook user. If
you're not, and you have a cellular phone or a
mobile phone or a landline, you can call the number
one eight three three std WYTK and you can leave
us a message that Ben and I will certainly hear.
Nol likely will as well. Paul refuses to listen to
(01:04:43):
your messages on account of principle that his ears can
only be used for a certain number of hours every day,
and he's generally producing or having to listen to us.
But we do look forward to hearing from you your
thoughts on this episode or on future episodes, or just
chatting with us, or you know, talking to us about
your favorite Magic the Gathering cards or how Thomas middle
(01:05:06):
Dish on the New Special talks about it in episode
two A lot and it made me smile. Oh, just
all day long. Thank you about Thomas middle Dish playing
Magic the Gathering.
Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
On their improv special. Yeah, yeah, that's really good. No, yeah,
do check that out. And also if none of that
quite bags your badgers, or if you are more comfortable
with a little bit more anonymity, please remember you can
always contact us to talk about lost civilizations, Magic the Gathering,
(01:05:38):
Harry Potter, Popeye's Chicken, whatever crosses your mind. We would
love to hear from you, and we have an easy
way for you to do it. It'll be on as
long as we have this show around. It's our good
old fashioned email address.
Speaker 2 (01:05:51):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff they don't
(01:06:14):
want you to know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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