August 27, 2025 • 48 mins
Let's be honest, oh mortals: history proves time and time again that one civilization's angels may become another civilization's demons. In Chapter Two of this three-part series on the Anunnaki, "Ben," Matt, and Noel explore the cultural and spiritual evolution of mysterious entities blamed for everything from the original discovery of fire to the provenance of original sin.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the
Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
You are here.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Previously,
on Stuff they don't want you to know, we dove
deep into one of histories enduring mysteries, the idea of
something called the Anu Naki. What did we walk away
with in chapter one of that exploration.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Well, we came away with a lot of the myths
that were surrounding this part of the world at a
very specific time. And we were talking far far, far bce.
Do we have a time frame for when the Anunaki
Sumerian gods were roman around.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Yeah, it was like before numbers were a concept, Yes.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Exactly, precisely, a long, long, long, long time ago where
these kinds of stories were you know, originally told, right,
And that's how a lot of these stories go and then,
as we've said before about all these kinds of myths
and ancient concepts, a lot of it is passed down
orally before it becomes finally written down and maybe finds
(01:43):
its way into a great tale of some sort, like
an epic.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
Perhaps m yes, a narrative, a myth, a shared story.
We mentioned a lot of this in our first chapter
of our exploration of the Anunaki, and look, if we're
gonna be honest, folks, the Annaki went through a lot
of what studio execs these days would call rebranding, right,
(02:12):
you know, the Samerian civilization had one pitch, the Akkadian
civilization had another. The Assyrians walked up and said, Ah,
you guys are wrong. Here's our thing.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
And yeah, is it Enki? Is it? Marduke? Who? What
is it? Who is it? Where is it?
Speaker 4 (02:31):
What? Yeah? And this battern is not stopped in the
modern day. Honestly, we could argue that older civilization's tremendous
habit of constantly ret conning exactly what the Anunaki are
and how they interact with mortals created the modern opportunities
(02:52):
for rethinking the Anunaki today. Cough cough, Aliens cough cough.
So this was such a ride, the first one because
we explored the relatively sparse proven historical references to Anunaki earlier.
And then, as we recall, we ended by asking what
(03:14):
the heck were or are these things in the first place?
Are they angels? Are they demons? Shout out Dan Brown?
Are they gods? Are they monsters? Teachers, tormentors? Something?
Speaker 3 (03:27):
All of you? All of you.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
All we know for sure is that they're nine feet
tall or something like that.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Are they Are they Star Wars canon?
Speaker 4 (03:37):
You know?
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Unclear? Sorry, I just I can't get off that Aaki
just maybe I'm thinking Anakin, but it just sounds very
Star Wars coded.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
Yeah, And what we're going to see in chapter two
here of this series is the answer to all of
those questions, including the George Lucas mythology there Noel kind
of depends on where you stand, which civilization you place
the most trust in, and who you're listening to. So
(04:07):
here's where it gets crazy. Maybe we start with the
divinity stuff. We talked about Mesopotamia, a little bit geographical
region southwest Asia. Most of us in the West are
going to call this roughly the Middle East, which is
kind of a Do you guys ever think about that name?
(04:28):
The Middle East is kind of misleading, I think.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
I mean, I've never understood that, nor have I understood
Middle Earth.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
So well, yeah, well, I guess, okay, so far east.
If you're going to say that phrase, you'd be talking
about everything from Japan and then moving westward towards where
we would say the Middle is I suppose of like
Europe would be. Then on the west, that's the West East.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
I guess you know, we're still in this modern civilization.
We still suffer from Greenwich meantime, right, like yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
No, But but so theoretically from what we've talked about
the origin of the term the West, when Western countries
and the west that is more European like Western European
hunters and that stuff. Yeah, and oh gosh, I don't
even like thinking about this, but it is. It is.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
World is round the Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
I mean, the idea of Western culture is also so
heavily biased and kind of weighted in the favor of
it's like the better, the better part of the world.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
Literally, nobody in ancient civilizations in Asia, in Eastern Asia.
There we go again, none of them ever said, oh
the far west.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yeah, you know, but it does make it does make
sense a little bit. Where we're talking about this area
between the two rivers Tigers and Euphrates, and this area.
If you imagine originating in this area, or you know
where the Onunaki myths come from. If you head if
you head west, that is the western area, and if
(06:14):
you head east, that is the eastern area. So I
don't know, maybe it is it does make sense if
this is where we centralize our location.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
Yeah, no one walked far enough, guys, Get out there.
Just exercise, you know, take a.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Stroll, just see where, see where the path leads you like,
came from Kung Fu.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
The legend continues. The term we're using for Mesopotamia just
as a quick just as a quick example here, folks,
that is not a term that those civilizations created. It
came from the much later Greek civilization, even before they
got ripped off by the Romans. Mesopotamia is literally like
(06:57):
the Greek word or portmanteau for between rivers, as you
were saying, Matt, the Tigris and the Euphrates. So the Greek,
the great Greek minds, which we don't want to disrespect
too much. Just yet that'll be a different episode. It's
(07:17):
all the way.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
We're gonna throw some serious shade at the great minds
of ancient Greece.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yes, do you think they had ferns on either side?
You know?
Speaker 3 (07:28):
I understand?
Speaker 4 (07:29):
Yeah, I mean Paul Rudd was there from day one,
right original and Unaki that guy?
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Where was Paul Bunyan? And how does he figure into
this mythology?
Speaker 4 (07:40):
That's a great question. Came around a little bit later
due to occult research into the Lesser Key of Solomon
solid Babel, as it pronounced, were.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Throwing down some big Friday energy here. But why don't
we jump back into the y.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
And we've returned, we'll do it one more time. Here's
where it gets crazy. The actions of these earlier civilizations
in Mesopotamia they informed a ton of later civilizations, pretty
much all of the Middle East, pretty much all of
(08:29):
the Indus Valley. Also therefore North Africa, Egypt, the Mediterranean. Eventually,
the gods and demons and myths and folklore of these
areas between the Tigris and the Euphrates informed every human
(08:49):
civilization that was not separated by vast abyssal oceans.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Well, that's a really good point. So as as other
civilizasations come through as battles or fought and wars are
won and that kind of thing, these gods end up
morphing a little bit, but the essence of them sticks
around for quite a while.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
Yeah that's nice. Yeah, I like that because that means that,
depending on how you felt about a civilization that you
learn from, especially when literacy is a relatively small demographic
of a human population, you're still inheriting the seeds princely perhaps,
(09:33):
or the DNA of these stories.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
The Anunaki may be good, they might be bad. Their
upper middle management of heaven or the nether world, their demons,
their angels, they might be a third thing somewhere between
demonic and divine, not quite human, not quite mundane, not
quite quintessence. It's like the pre Islamic myths that in
(09:59):
form ormed no offense, folks, the belief in jin.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Ah, the smokeless fire beings, coach.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Yeah, I'm kidding him. Yeah, No, it's interesting. And didn't
didn't you ep a real cool podcast about jin Was
it called Hidden gen something like that?
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yes, it was. Check it out as grimm and mild slate.
Very good.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
Please, do we. I think we all found that impressive
because in Islamic spiritual belief, uh, the jin are a
third thing wrought by God as a smokeless fire, right,
the green fire without smoke, which created a new thing
(10:48):
that was very much similar to man with certain superpowers.
If we're going to be marvel or dc about it,
back before the people of the book, back before Judaism, Christianity,
Islam at the time these myths and cosmologies are created
(11:11):
in Mesopotamia, conspiracy theories and scientific method as concepts, they're
not really a thing religion, science, politics, they are inseparable.
They're all the one thing based on the very small
amount of the population that is capable of literacy.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yep. And as we know, all these anonachi end up
representing different things, the way a lot of civilizations that
go with the many gods structure end up having. Right
where there is a god of water, but there's also
another god that's really specific about irrigation, and I'm just
giving that as an example, but that goes across the
(11:54):
board here, and depending on what you're doing in your town,
what your town specialized is in your town may be
a very specific Anunaki god town that worships specifically that god.
And then you just go a little ways down right,
and you've got another town that is the I don't
know what. What would they be making there?
Speaker 4 (12:17):
Oh, they would probably be making things out of metal,
so they very worship someone who creates stuff from metal
or versus a fisher.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
God, some sort of budget god.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, I got it, definitely.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Well.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
The other thing is, often, you know, it's so weird
with humans town by town. Sometimes we just don't get
along and we want things and we you know, we
we get real territorial and greedy about stuff. We often
do that for some reason. In the cases with these Ananaki,
you would have towns that would literally be engaged in
(12:58):
the unpleasantness with each other there and the you know,
you would basically have God versus God in a representational
format with actual fights and stuff.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
I love this. You're so good at this. Yes, Because
you could go to one town that absolutely adored a
particular Annunaki, right statues for days in this one town,
and then you go across the valley or down the
Euphrates or the Tigris, and there's another town that beat
me here Dylan and hates that an Noaki in particular.
(13:32):
They don't just not respect it, they're angry about it existing.
You could, like, you could see people arguing about it,
but it would be a lot less like how you
tune into international news today and you see Pundit's doing there.
What was that one show that used to be on Crossfire? Yeah,
(13:54):
until John Stewart absolutely waxed everybody.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Oh yeah for sure. Well let's keep in mind because
the myths surrounding a lot of these gods, they're doing creepy,
messed up things to each other, to humans. They're well
you can imagine if you're a big fan of one
of these gods, you're almost like taking the side in
a reality TV show that person that's the right person.
Now they were in the right, but they were equally
(14:19):
pretty wrong too, But you gotta choose sides.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
Yeah, but what is our guy? Say? The people?
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Exactly? And speaking of the people, this reminds me of
the conflicts between Japanese god deities, the Yokai and this
idea of like Yokai wars. There's actually a Takeshimiki film
called The Great Yokai War, and apparently that comes from
a manga and also then from mythology, so you know,
back to the whole parallel thinking, a religious syncretism aspect
(14:48):
of all of this stuff.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
I don't want anything about that that sounds really interesting.
Can you say the name of it one more time?
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Just well, Ben might be able to speak too a
little more. But Yokai are these Japanese supernatural beings that
are somewhat god like. And then the film is called
The Great Yokai War, which is actually kind of a
children's movie by our really gnarly Japanese director named Takashimike,
who's much more known for his ultra violent films like
Ichi the Killer and Audition. Nice.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
We have to take a short break here because Ben,
you just chugged something awesome looking. I don't know what
it was. I hope it's coffee. It looks like a
teeny tiny, little awesome coffee. Oh nice, Yeah, of course nice.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
It is that is that Sentory coffee.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
It is not Sentori coffee. It is coffee.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
It is a uh.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
It is brought to you by our favorite co hosts
on stuff they don't want you to know and ridiculous history,
energy drinks, coffee caffeinated. Oh, Matt's got a jar are
you drinking coffee now?
Speaker 2 (15:49):
I got coffee in a Mason jar. Baby.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
Oh my guy, we we shouted you out, Matt recently
on on an episode of Ridiculous History about the ridiculous
history of energy drinks.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Yeah, we referenced to your ridiculous energy drink fortitude. Give
me much respect.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
With great affection. Oh man, I hope you listen to it. Look,
we're saying that there would be a common precedent that
continues today and started in ancient civilizations. So these folks
back then, right, who have chosen their patron saints are
(16:31):
their favorite divine sports team. They're not having realistic, nuanced debates.
It's a lot more like the leaders of one town
saying again, beat me here, Dylan, those other guys down
this part of the Tigris. We said X. They said why,
(16:51):
and we want that arable land. So our God just
by the way told us that land belongs to us.
Let's go. And that's sort of the story of human
history starting in the Middle East.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Oh yeah, absolutely, Because you can now pit the beliefs
of your followers or your town, your city versus the
beliefs of the neighbors. Right, and by.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Sports team rivalries, no question about it.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Absolutely, or political ideologies or you know anything. Think about
the way we think about how money is exchanged and
how economics work. You can pit those ideologies against each
other and have a war that lasts for all, I
don't know, hundred years, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
The forever war. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
Oh. Also think let's think of, with great respect and affection,
our heavy metal snobs in the audience, shout out to
the Atlanta legend Brent Hint, who unfortunately passed away. Uh yeah, yeah,
phenomenal guitarist for Mastodon, So we want to put that
(18:06):
in as Atlanta boys. The issue here is just like
you're saying, there's this idea that discourse is unattainable, right,
that these people must stand divided, and this is arguably
where we see the first bad patterns emerge. We had
(18:31):
a really interesting conversation in a recent I believe it
was a listener mail or Strange News program about how
learning good habits is just as important as not learning
bad habits. I'm specifically thinking of how you were talking
about your kids learning karate right. You've got to learn
(18:55):
good habits right, otherwise you can set a precedent. I
would argue here that we see human civilization learning bad
habits that lead to the origin of things like the
concept of being a heretic, or the concept of blasphemy
or all those other spiritual rationalizations for harming other people
(19:19):
in real life, often innocent people.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Absolutely. So, tying back into this concept of being able
to control populations, one of the ways you do that
is to control the information they have access to and
the way they think about themselves specifically, which then you know,
alters the way you maybe think about others. And this
(19:44):
goes all the way, like to the deepest beliefs, including
gods and religion and that kind of thing. If you can,
if you can at least influence heavily or mandate what
people say and believe in public, then you can perhaps
get them to wield a weapon right for you. The
leader who was also the spiritual you know, political, spiritual
(20:07):
everything leader.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
Yeah, oh that's dangerous. Ooh, it's got some evil umami
on it.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Yeah. Well yeah, and we just it's so it's kind
of messed up because we pretend like it's something that
just happened then, you know, right, like ooh, just look
closely at some things for a long time in this country,
especially in the eighties. I would say, like late seventies, eighties,
that's when you really see it start to seep in
(20:36):
in this country where religion and politics and economics and
all this stuff really goes together to control what we're
supposed to say and do in public.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
Oh you mean nineteen seventies, yes, yes, okay, okay.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
My bad, my bad, but yes, agreed.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
Also seventeen eighties also oh yeah, well, uh, we're to
pickle here as we're talking about human civilizations. We know
then as as you're saying that, it's what's that line
from talking heads, same as it ever was.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Yes, that's still one.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yeah. Oh, you're abolutely right because with that control, Ben,
I think where you're going here is that you can
put propaganda out into the world that then causes your
enemies to get upset. Right, you can you can make
up rumors about some of the other gods that your
town's not into.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
M Yeah, And it's like, know, you're referencing that sports
analogy from earlier. Right. The first conspiracies about Anu Naki
follow this rough path of what they didn't call conspiracy theories.
They didn't even call them alternative explanations. Instead they said,
(21:54):
you know those absolute what what's a fun u when
aal archic and salt you know those uh jabbronis those
near dwells and so those old so and sos perfect
from down the Tigris. Uh. Well, it turns out that
they're they're worshiping a thing that's not really a god.
(22:16):
It's a demon before the word demon existed.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Well, you know, one person's god's another person's demon, depending
on what's the side of the aisle you stand on.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
M Well, that's kind of the point, right exactly, because
you can, you can divide everybody, you can make you can. Again,
these rumors get told and then maybe somebody writes it
down and if you discover, well, I don't know, a
clay tablet that has one of these rumors mentioned on it,
and then imagining modern humans discovering that from like twelve
(22:49):
hundred BCE, and you're like, oh, well, obviously they thought
this god was this Like no, unfortunately that was just
a rumor.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Right.
Speaker 4 (22:58):
We're like, we're maybe as a civilization, we are maybe
five thousand years away from some future anthropologist discovering stuff
about the New York Yankees and the New York Mets
and calling the man Unaki. That's what we need to remember, right,
(23:21):
and well I look forward to that personally. Yeah, in
our lifetime, we're gonna get there. I think the podcasting
is working out for all of us. So direct agents
of damnation, that's what you would call the other folks,
the great them, and anyone who adored or agreed with
them was kind of tupac shakor rules. If you ride
(23:45):
with them, you too. No one needed proof, and at
this point we should also while we're talking about proof,
we should acknowledge there was no what the modern world
would consider phenomenological proof that things like the Anunaki ever
(24:06):
actually existed. Instead people worshiping it would worship a carving,
a statue, an idol, a physical representation, and to them
at that time, there was no symbolism. It wasn't like
an ancestral shrine or something. It was us being in
(24:28):
the presence of that God. When we encounter that carving,
we get the tingly goose bumpy knee that we described earlier.
You shiver in the presence because when you see that
carven idol, that is the god, that is the Annaki.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
In the same way the bread is the body right.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
Just soon, Yes, yeah, it's it's similar to like, lest
we sound as though we are casting stones or aspersion
on these earlier human civilizations, we have to remember this
literalism continues in a very real way for millennia. The
(25:16):
Christian literalism occurs in early American colonies. There's not a
separation between literal truth and symbolism. I think we all
remember that infamous sermon Sinners in the hands of an
angry God, you know, Banker seventeen forty one. This kin
(25:36):
named Jonathan Edwards is spitting hot fire to his congregation
out there in what we call Connecticut today. And while
he's while he's delivering this sermon, which is very mean,
by the way, it's a very like you are in
trouble kind of sermon. While he's spitting this hell fire
(26:00):
and brimstone, a snake goes into the physical room, the
structure where the parishioners are gathered. And then our buddy,
old pastor Edwards sees the snake. While he's being all
you know, holy hands pentecostal, yelling at people. He sees
(26:22):
the snake mid speech, he runs over and he stamps
on the snake. And for the people in the crowd,
this is not symbolism. The snake isn't there by accident,
It is the genuine devil. Our buddy Edwards is therefore
the actual servant of God, and he is stamping out
(26:45):
an actual infernal threat.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
That's how it works, out there doing God's work.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Shut out to Northampton, mass anybody listening to this in Massachusetts.
Speaker 4 (26:55):
You got this, Yeah, you got this.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
One's for you.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Well, I just say and find them snakes, stamp them out.
Let's go some.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
God fearing snake stamping folks out there in Hampton, mass
That's what I heard.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
That's what we always say. And this is brought to
you by the Tourism Board of trans City. So this literalism,
we were a bit discursive there, but the literalism was
just as common in ancient Mesopotamia. What we're saying is
metaphor wasn't really a thing truth as you or the
(27:30):
authorities of your day portrayed it. It was absolute. There
was no middle ground. You couldn't really sit down and
have a chat.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Yeah, either it was or it was not, And if
it was not, then we are all wrong, right, And
if we are all wrong. What the hell are we
doing here, guys? So we can't be wrong, or else
we can't progress in some weird way because again, the
ways of thinking, as you described earlier, been of having
a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis, figuring out what is actually real.
(28:06):
It's not around quite yet, and you have to think
about that's a mode of thinking. That's not like it's
an invention or a technology in a lot of ways,
it's just it's not there.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
Yeah, And there's not really Uh, there's not really any
opportunity for the people from you know, one town by
the river and another town up or down the river
to sit and just chop it up, you know what
I mean. They're not they're not having a nice meal
(28:40):
and chatting about nuanced opinions of religion.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
No one, almost no one without violence changed their minds
about metaphysical concepts. Very few people also asked for what
we would can or concrete proof. It's part of the
reason folks destroy statues in the modern day. I'm looking
at you, Afghanistan. So there's a vibe. And it didn't
(29:11):
help that so many subsequent religions kept cribbing notes off
each other, and despite the fact that these civilizations often
hated one another, they kept stealing from one another, right,
They cribbed the same stories and told them over and
(29:31):
over again Joseph Campbell's style, and just put their own
spit on it. Which takes us to one of our
favorite examples. I think the story of the flood.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah, the story of flood. You've heard that as a
Sudra Oh wait, Noah? Noah, Yeah, that's the one.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
I mean, yeah, exactly exactly. But I guess, you know,
we should start with our maybe earliest point of reference, Matt,
which would I think be Noah. Most folks in the
Western there, it is a gang world, are definitely familiar,
likely familiar with the you know, the broadstrokes of the story.
(30:09):
The version that we're talking about here, Noah the Flood
would be considered an Abrahamic interpretation of the flood myth.
In this story, Noah, who is a very sharp godly fellow,
follows the commandments of the Lord, and unfortunately is living
during a time where other people are not following his
as good example. And God is not pleased about the
(30:31):
state of pretty much everyone on the earth, but he
looks at Noah as being a good boy and bestows
upon him a grand responsibility.
Speaker 4 (30:42):
Yeah, he goes to Noah. Hu Chem goes to Noah
and says, look, I'm gonna do what studio execs in
twenty twenty five are gonna call a hard reboot. And
Noah is like, what is twenty twenty five? And he's like,
it's a different calendar. Don't worry about it. I need
you to build a big ass boat. And Noah goes,
(31:02):
all right, you're God, so I kind of have to
go along with this. And God says, we could only
imagine tight. Here are some very specific instructions about a
very big boat. Yep.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
And to your point, Ben, God does not necessarily supply
any assistance with the labor. There's no levitation going on
or anything like that. He does have to build it
by hand with his family. God does our supply some
pretty specific instructions for the construction of this massive boat.
I don't know if that includes blueprints or that it's
expected him to know how it's how to get it done.
(31:37):
But it is important that they bring aboard breeding pairs
of all of the animals, all of them Soli's. You know,
this is where you start seeing the stuff don't think
we can fit them on an arc. No matter the size.
The flood comes God's great retribution, his great reset on
the sin riddled world, and everyone dies except Noah and
(32:00):
all the animals who ride out the flood in the
boat make it to dry land, and the waters then received.
God sends a magical rainbow. Is a bit of an
atta boy, and it is up to Noah and all
of these, this livestock and his family to recede civilization
as we know it.
Speaker 4 (32:19):
And before we continue, we do want to give a
shout out to an excellent, a phenomenal graphic novel series
called Dark Arc by the awesome writer Culin Bunn, which
is all about an alternate arc not approved by God,
by the unnameable. It's the Rival Arc. Yeah, Rival Arc.
(32:43):
It's cool story, no spoilers. I'll check it out. Yeah,
please do. I can. I can just toss them to
you next time we hang out. The idea as you
described it, Noel, is perfect. You're absolutely right. They ride
out the flood. It's part of the reason in the
West even today people say alive branch as an offering
(33:08):
of peace, because Noah sends sends out a bird and
a bird comes back and shows you there's dry land,
which is obviously the precedent for amazing masterpieces like water
World or Police Academy five.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Percent, which are both very there actually exists within the
same extended universe water World in Police Academy five very
few people know that.
Speaker 4 (33:36):
Keep my tittering in.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
It's a fun thing to consider. How would that cross
over work? Let us know.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
There is a lot more to the flood story, but
these are the basics, right. This is the IKEA instruction
manual for this story. The big twist here is that
the story of Noah as we understand stand it today
is only one of many versions of this tale, and
(34:07):
it's not the first. Multiple other versions far pre date Noah,
with the first being found in he Guessed It Folks,
Samarian text.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Oh yeah, So, if you imagine the Noah version, God
is making the decision to flood the entire planet for
reason X, for reasons I'm gonna flood the whole planet,
kill everything, everything. But in that tale, the only way
Noah finds out about the flood is because God told him.
(34:39):
It's a little I mean, it's like, whoa, what are
you doing here? Man? Okay, you just want to you
want a great reset, a real great reset. That's what
you're doing. But if you go back to the story
of Zasudra, who is another person who just happens to
gain the favor of one of the gods, not God,
(35:00):
but one of the gods in this case anche E Nki.
If you look at the Akkadian versions, it's a lot
like Greek and Roman. So one version is going to
be Anky, the other version in Akadian is going to
be Ea Ea. And as you go through some of
these myths, you'll find that is very troublingly confusing at
(35:23):
first at least where you're like, wait, I thought that
was that god or there was this god. But in
this case, all the gods got together and decided as
a group, as a committee, that they were going to
flood the entire planet because humans not great. Let's try
this again, and Ankie one of the gods, my gosh,
(35:43):
I want to say, he's the god of wind and
maybe atmosphere or something like that. He is the one
that comes down to Zusudra and says, hey, turn that
house thing you've got into a boat. Then you got
to get animals breeding pairs of animals get them on
that because this place is getting flooded.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
Yeah, he was like, He's like, hey man, you were
always cool to me earlier. Don't be at school tomorrow.
And this is that's evil in terms of the reference,
but it is accurate. Zeudra is the last king of
Sumer before the Great flood, per the Akkadian myth, and
(36:25):
Zisudra has all the beats just like you're describing there,
all the beats of the Noah story that comes way after,
by the way, and Zasudra. One of the differences is
Zisudra is polytheistic. Yes, so is Issudra has to asked
(36:46):
multiple gods to save him and his arc and those gods,
as far as history knows, are an Unaki. He brought
it back, we did it anak episode on.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
And Anneal and then well obviously anky, these are the Annaki.
So it goes this flood story goes back real far
and it's kind of the same story when you look
at it, it is it is play by play, the
same dang thing.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
I think a flood happened, for sure. I think multiple
floods occurred, because you know, there's another myth like this
in discivilization, another myth in ancient Chinese civilization, another myth
in in South American meso American civilization. Meso American especially
(37:42):
of interest as there is no there is no clear
way provable way that these civilizations could have communicated with
one another.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Well, yeah, and remember when we're talking about very specific
places where all of this information comes from. A great
flood could just be a regional flood, but a large
regional flood, right, So there could be large regional floods,
and then this is kind of the story that floats around.
We don't know. There could be one where the ice
(38:15):
caps melted for a while. We just we don't know exactly.
But the scientists are going through aren't finding proof of
that real thing. But that is why we get this.
What is what are the terms antidiluvian?
Speaker 4 (38:28):
Yes, before the flood.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
Okay, and and then deluvian? No is it that?
Speaker 4 (38:37):
Yeah? No, it nailed it, anti deluvian. We also need
to flood this feed with an ad break and we
have returned. Really appreciate your mention of religious syncretism. No,
(38:57):
it's a it's a concept we see over and over again.
We can argue effectively that the move toward Monotheism by
what we call the People of the Book is kind
of an exercise and consolidation so many stories of a
singular god from Judaism, Christianity, Islam. These stories have their
(39:22):
narrative roots in previously uncollected, distinct tales that were previously
assigned to individual annaki. And it's crazy that we have
to think about it that way. Because that's why, I
would argue, that's why the Western world in particular is
(39:44):
chock full of bizarre recent claims linking the Anunaki to
any number of supernatural analogs of our modern evenings. Just
picture this. Here's a bit, guys. What if we did
a show on the History Channel that was about aliens
(40:07):
but like ancient.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Oh yes, I would watch that and twist. I did
watch that. I watched the crap out of that because
it's it's so compelling. Because humanity still doesn't know exactly
how Homo sapiens arrived. We know there's little bits and pieces.
If you're going with evolutionary models, we know that there's
(40:30):
some big jumps, especially if you're looking back at DNA
right and DNA that we can actually test, and then
ancient aliens comes along. With some concepts that may provide answers,
but proving those to be true is a whole other thing.
They're fun ideas, but oh, I mean they're compelling ideas.
(40:52):
Is they're ideas that will glue you to a television,
at least in my case. But then you start looking
a little bit deeper into each one individually and you find,
oh man, there are cracks in this clay tablet.
Speaker 4 (41:06):
Oh those well done. Oh man, they're starting to spread. Yeah,
ancient aliens the newest twist, the hot new bop it
in the game of figuring out civilization and history. It's
the idea that all of human civilization was created influenced,
(41:27):
dare we say, bootstrapped by the intervention of some sort
of pre existing more spiritually or technologically accomplished society. Right, usually,
seeing as non homo sapiens and genres of this belief
are what we would call old beings. In the recent past,
(41:49):
these beliefs were way more overtly racist, Like European explorers
would stumble upon some ancient non European marvel like those
old towers out in western China, or the Pyramids or
the Sphinx, and and they would say Oh, folks even
(42:09):
whiter than us must have been here first for how
cool these known fight people have created such a thing.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
Yeah, man, you went like five different directions with that accent.
Speaker 4 (42:22):
I love it, thank you, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Well, while that is that is absolutely true, right, it's
a lot of it is rooted in that stuff, and
especially back then, there there are things that are objectively
puzzling when it comes to the historical record of things
like tools and stuff that was have been recovered from areas. Right,
So it's it is both what we're talking about here,
(42:46):
this perhaps racist underpinning of some of these original concepts,
but then also the puzzling nature of what's been what's
been found and proven to be there. So then you
you end up kind of weighing the things. But it
does go back to that, and it's an unfortunate thing
when you're watching that show and you're a big fan
of it, and then you start to see like, ah, gosh,
(43:08):
I remember when we first had that revelation when we
were making videos back in the day, like realizing just
how rampant some of those beliefs were.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
Yeah, and you're raising a great point about what we
would call anachronistic artifacts like the antikathera mechanism back that battery,
Damascus steel technology that was created and lost.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Yes, and specific structures usually like carvings and the interiors
of structures that are underground that are discovered with just perfect,
perfectly cut stones, and just trying to imagine how one
would do that with the tools available that we have. Again,
the tools we've recovered around that area, that would lead
(43:56):
anthropologistic believe that's what they used to cut that stone,
but again we don't know what we can't see or
can't didn't recover. Does that make sense.
Speaker 4 (44:06):
One hundred percent? It's like, uh, Noel, Matt and Ben
are working for Lord von Herringbone, Dylan Fagan, right, and
we have to go over to go Beckley Tepe and
uh and Lord von Herringbone, no offense. Dylan is just yelling,
how Dylan, could you yell? How real quick in like
(44:29):
the fanciest accent.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
How.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Dear well done, Dylan.
Speaker 4 (44:36):
We're asking these questions. If we're Lord von Herringbone, we're saying, Okay,
from our civilization's perspective, this must have been built by
an older race of humans we're not present now, or
maybe lizard people or maybe gods or maybe folks harnessing
(44:57):
the power of rill or whatever. Va r I L.
Look it up. Have a great afternoon on that one.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
If you're looking to get in some Nazi territory.
Speaker 4 (45:08):
Right right, And in these stories, in von Herringbone and
other stories, these jokers, right, these culprits, these kaiser soursays
of human civilization are responsible for literally all the beginning stuff, agriculture,
the taming of fire, the wheel writing, all the things
(45:31):
that stood the test of time. The argument goes, were
made by someone else, and all present civilization is simply
sort of the remedial kids in the class.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
Yeah, well, because a lot of that stuff came out
of Mesopotamia, came out of this area where the Innunaki,
you know, for a time reigned amongst the minds of
the human beings. And it's pretty pretty cool we got
that stuff from that area. Thanks y'all for putting in
the hard work of you know, doing things like harnessing
fire and inventing writing cuneiform or earlier cuneiform and all
(46:10):
that stuff.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
Well done.
Speaker 4 (46:12):
Yeah, real, and folks, while we are, while we are bullied,
our long suffering super producer von Herringbone Onto the Air,
Maravon Herringbone, could you give us your understanding of the
NOSCA lines, just for an example.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
I'm quite sure extra terrestrials created these lines.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
Indeed, the baron, we have to agree with him. He's
our employer.
Speaker 4 (46:41):
Yeah, he's gonna fire us. So if we gotta, we
gotta stay the course. And folks, hold your wings, hold
your ox horned hats. We have so much more to
get to about the Anunaki.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
We have been.
Speaker 4 (46:58):
Teasing the striterrestrial or extra dimensional connection for a while now,
and we can't wait for you to join us in
the third part of this series, the Anunaki. We're calling
it a future in the sky.
Speaker 3 (47:14):
That's right in the meantime. Find us on the Internet
at the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist, on Facebook
with our Facebook group Here's where it gets crazy, on xfka, Twitter,
and on YouTube where you can watch all the videos
that's your heart desires. On Instagram and TikTok or Conspiracy
Stuff Show.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
We have a phone number. It is one eight three
three std WYTK. Easy to remember. Turn those letters into numbers,
then call it when you call in. It's a voicemail
system you got three minutes, give yourself a cool nickname
and let us know within the message if we can
use your name and message on the air. If you'd
like to send us an email, we are the.
Speaker 4 (47:50):
Entities that read each piece of correspondence we receive. Be
well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void writes back. Please
give us a lead on an episode. Do you think
your fellow conspiracy realist will enjoy? Please ask us for
a random fact, Because, oh, friends and neighbors, we have
so many for you. All you have to do is
(48:10):
walk a little further and join us out here in
the dark conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the
Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
You are here.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Previously,
on Stuff they don't want you to know, we dove
deep into one of histories enduring mysteries, the idea of
something called the Anu Naki. What did we walk away
with in chapter one of that exploration.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Well, we came away with a lot of the myths
that were surrounding this part of the world at a
very specific time. And we were talking far far, far bce.
Do we have a time frame for when the Anunaki
Sumerian gods were roman around.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Yeah, it was like before numbers were a concept, Yes.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Exactly, precisely, a long, long, long, long time ago where
these kinds of stories were you know, originally told, right,
And that's how a lot of these stories go and then,
as we've said before about all these kinds of myths
and ancient concepts, a lot of it is passed down
orally before it becomes finally written down and maybe finds
(01:43):
its way into a great tale of some sort, like
an epic.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
Perhaps m yes, a narrative, a myth, a shared story.
We mentioned a lot of this in our first chapter
of our exploration of the Anunaki, and look, if we're
gonna be honest, folks, the Annaki went through a lot
of what studio execs these days would call rebranding, right,
(02:12):
you know, the Samerian civilization had one pitch, the Akkadian
civilization had another. The Assyrians walked up and said, Ah,
you guys are wrong. Here's our thing.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
And yeah, is it Enki? Is it? Marduke? Who? What
is it? Who is it? Where is it?
Speaker 4 (02:31):
What? Yeah? And this battern is not stopped in the
modern day. Honestly, we could argue that older civilization's tremendous
habit of constantly ret conning exactly what the Anunaki are
and how they interact with mortals created the modern opportunities
(02:52):
for rethinking the Anunaki today. Cough cough, Aliens cough cough.
So this was such a ride, the first one because
we explored the relatively sparse proven historical references to Anunaki earlier.
And then, as we recall, we ended by asking what
(03:14):
the heck were or are these things in the first place?
Are they angels? Are they demons? Shout out Dan Brown?
Are they gods? Are they monsters? Teachers, tormentors? Something?
Speaker 3 (03:27):
All of you? All of you.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
All we know for sure is that they're nine feet
tall or something like that.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Are they Are they Star Wars canon?
Speaker 4 (03:37):
You know?
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Unclear? Sorry, I just I can't get off that Aaki
just maybe I'm thinking Anakin, but it just sounds very
Star Wars coded.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
Yeah, And what we're going to see in chapter two
here of this series is the answer to all of
those questions, including the George Lucas mythology there Noel kind
of depends on where you stand, which civilization you place
the most trust in, and who you're listening to. So
(04:07):
here's where it gets crazy. Maybe we start with the
divinity stuff. We talked about Mesopotamia, a little bit geographical
region southwest Asia. Most of us in the West are
going to call this roughly the Middle East, which is
kind of a Do you guys ever think about that name?
(04:28):
The Middle East is kind of misleading, I think.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
I mean, I've never understood that, nor have I understood
Middle Earth.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
So well, yeah, well, I guess, okay, so far east.
If you're going to say that phrase, you'd be talking
about everything from Japan and then moving westward towards where
we would say the Middle is I suppose of like
Europe would be. Then on the west, that's the West East.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
I guess you know, we're still in this modern civilization.
We still suffer from Greenwich meantime, right, like yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
No, But but so theoretically from what we've talked about
the origin of the term the West, when Western countries
and the west that is more European like Western European
hunters and that stuff. Yeah, and oh gosh, I don't
even like thinking about this, but it is. It is.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
World is round the Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
I mean, the idea of Western culture is also so
heavily biased and kind of weighted in the favor of
it's like the better, the better part of the world.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
Literally, nobody in ancient civilizations in Asia, in Eastern Asia.
There we go again, none of them ever said, oh
the far west.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yeah, you know, but it does make it does make
sense a little bit. Where we're talking about this area
between the two rivers Tigers and Euphrates, and this area.
If you imagine originating in this area, or you know
where the Onunaki myths come from. If you head if
you head west, that is the western area, and if
(06:14):
you head east, that is the eastern area. So I
don't know, maybe it is it does make sense if
this is where we centralize our location.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
Yeah, no one walked far enough, guys, Get out there.
Just exercise, you know, take a.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Stroll, just see where, see where the path leads you like,
came from Kung Fu.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
The legend continues. The term we're using for Mesopotamia just
as a quick just as a quick example here, folks,
that is not a term that those civilizations created. It
came from the much later Greek civilization, even before they
got ripped off by the Romans. Mesopotamia is literally like
(06:57):
the Greek word or portmanteau for between rivers, as you
were saying, Matt, the Tigris and the Euphrates. So the Greek,
the great Greek minds, which we don't want to disrespect
too much. Just yet that'll be a different episode. It's
(07:17):
all the way.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
We're gonna throw some serious shade at the great minds
of ancient Greece.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yes, do you think they had ferns on either side?
You know?
Speaker 3 (07:28):
I understand?
Speaker 4 (07:29):
Yeah, I mean Paul Rudd was there from day one,
right original and Unaki that guy?
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Where was Paul Bunyan? And how does he figure into
this mythology?
Speaker 4 (07:40):
That's a great question. Came around a little bit later
due to occult research into the Lesser Key of Solomon
solid Babel, as it pronounced, were.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Throwing down some big Friday energy here. But why don't
we jump back into the y.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
And we've returned, we'll do it one more time. Here's
where it gets crazy. The actions of these earlier civilizations
in Mesopotamia they informed a ton of later civilizations, pretty
much all of the Middle East, pretty much all of
(08:29):
the Indus Valley. Also therefore North Africa, Egypt, the Mediterranean. Eventually,
the gods and demons and myths and folklore of these
areas between the Tigris and the Euphrates informed every human
(08:49):
civilization that was not separated by vast abyssal oceans.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Well, that's a really good point. So as as other
civilizasations come through as battles or fought and wars are
won and that kind of thing, these gods end up
morphing a little bit, but the essence of them sticks
around for quite a while.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
Yeah that's nice. Yeah, I like that because that means that,
depending on how you felt about a civilization that you
learn from, especially when literacy is a relatively small demographic
of a human population, you're still inheriting the seeds princely perhaps,
(09:33):
or the DNA of these stories.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
The Anunaki may be good, they might be bad. Their
upper middle management of heaven or the nether world, their demons,
their angels, they might be a third thing somewhere between
demonic and divine, not quite human, not quite mundane, not
quite quintessence. It's like the pre Islamic myths that in
(09:59):
form ormed no offense, folks, the belief in jin.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Ah, the smokeless fire beings, coach.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Yeah, I'm kidding him. Yeah, No, it's interesting. And didn't
didn't you ep a real cool podcast about jin Was
it called Hidden gen something like that?
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yes, it was. Check it out as grimm and mild slate.
Very good.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
Please, do we. I think we all found that impressive
because in Islamic spiritual belief, uh, the jin are a
third thing wrought by God as a smokeless fire, right,
the green fire without smoke, which created a new thing
(10:48):
that was very much similar to man with certain superpowers.
If we're going to be marvel or dc about it,
back before the people of the book, back before Judaism, Christianity,
Islam at the time these myths and cosmologies are created
(11:11):
in Mesopotamia, conspiracy theories and scientific method as concepts, they're
not really a thing religion, science, politics, they are inseparable.
They're all the one thing based on the very small
amount of the population that is capable of literacy.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yep. And as we know, all these anonachi end up
representing different things, the way a lot of civilizations that
go with the many gods structure end up having. Right
where there is a god of water, but there's also
another god that's really specific about irrigation, and I'm just
giving that as an example, but that goes across the
(11:54):
board here, and depending on what you're doing in your town,
what your town specialized is in your town may be
a very specific Anunaki god town that worships specifically that god.
And then you just go a little ways down right,
and you've got another town that is the I don't
know what. What would they be making there?
Speaker 4 (12:17):
Oh, they would probably be making things out of metal,
so they very worship someone who creates stuff from metal
or versus a fisher.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
God, some sort of budget god.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, I got it, definitely.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Well.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
The other thing is, often, you know, it's so weird
with humans town by town. Sometimes we just don't get
along and we want things and we you know, we
we get real territorial and greedy about stuff. We often
do that for some reason. In the cases with these Ananaki,
you would have towns that would literally be engaged in
(12:58):
the unpleasantness with each other there and the you know,
you would basically have God versus God in a representational
format with actual fights and stuff.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
I love this. You're so good at this. Yes, Because
you could go to one town that absolutely adored a
particular Annunaki, right statues for days in this one town,
and then you go across the valley or down the
Euphrates or the Tigris, and there's another town that beat
me here Dylan and hates that an Noaki in particular.
(13:32):
They don't just not respect it, they're angry about it existing.
You could, like, you could see people arguing about it,
but it would be a lot less like how you
tune into international news today and you see Pundit's doing there.
What was that one show that used to be on Crossfire? Yeah,
(13:54):
until John Stewart absolutely waxed everybody.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Oh yeah for sure. Well let's keep in mind because
the myths surrounding a lot of these gods, they're doing creepy,
messed up things to each other, to humans. They're well
you can imagine if you're a big fan of one
of these gods, you're almost like taking the side in
a reality TV show that person that's the right person.
Now they were in the right, but they were equally
(14:19):
pretty wrong too, But you gotta choose sides.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
Yeah, but what is our guy? Say? The people?
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Exactly? And speaking of the people, this reminds me of
the conflicts between Japanese god deities, the Yokai and this
idea of like Yokai wars. There's actually a Takeshimiki film
called The Great Yokai War, and apparently that comes from
a manga and also then from mythology, so you know,
back to the whole parallel thinking, a religious syncretism aspect
(14:48):
of all of this stuff.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
I don't want anything about that that sounds really interesting.
Can you say the name of it one more time?
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Just well, Ben might be able to speak too a
little more. But Yokai are these Japanese supernatural beings that
are somewhat god like. And then the film is called
The Great Yokai War, which is actually kind of a
children's movie by our really gnarly Japanese director named Takashimike,
who's much more known for his ultra violent films like
Ichi the Killer and Audition. Nice.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
We have to take a short break here because Ben,
you just chugged something awesome looking. I don't know what
it was. I hope it's coffee. It looks like a
teeny tiny, little awesome coffee. Oh nice, Yeah, of course nice.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
It is that is that Sentory coffee.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
It is not Sentori coffee. It is coffee.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
It is a uh.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
It is brought to you by our favorite co hosts
on stuff they don't want you to know and ridiculous history,
energy drinks, coffee caffeinated. Oh, Matt's got a jar are
you drinking coffee now?
Speaker 2 (15:49):
I got coffee in a Mason jar. Baby.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
Oh my guy, we we shouted you out, Matt recently
on on an episode of Ridiculous History about the ridiculous
history of energy drinks.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Yeah, we referenced to your ridiculous energy drink fortitude. Give
me much respect.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
With great affection. Oh man, I hope you listen to it. Look,
we're saying that there would be a common precedent that
continues today and started in ancient civilizations. So these folks
back then, right, who have chosen their patron saints are
(16:31):
their favorite divine sports team. They're not having realistic, nuanced debates.
It's a lot more like the leaders of one town
saying again, beat me here, Dylan, those other guys down
this part of the Tigris. We said X. They said why,
(16:51):
and we want that arable land. So our God just
by the way told us that land belongs to us.
Let's go. And that's sort of the story of human
history starting in the Middle East.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Oh yeah, absolutely, Because you can now pit the beliefs
of your followers or your town, your city versus the
beliefs of the neighbors. Right, and by.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Sports team rivalries, no question about it.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Absolutely, or political ideologies or you know anything. Think about
the way we think about how money is exchanged and
how economics work. You can pit those ideologies against each
other and have a war that lasts for all, I
don't know, hundred years, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
The forever war. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
Oh. Also think let's think of, with great respect and affection,
our heavy metal snobs in the audience, shout out to
the Atlanta legend Brent Hint, who unfortunately passed away. Uh yeah, yeah,
phenomenal guitarist for Mastodon, So we want to put that
(18:06):
in as Atlanta boys. The issue here is just like
you're saying, there's this idea that discourse is unattainable, right,
that these people must stand divided, and this is arguably
where we see the first bad patterns emerge. We had
(18:31):
a really interesting conversation in a recent I believe it
was a listener mail or Strange News program about how
learning good habits is just as important as not learning
bad habits. I'm specifically thinking of how you were talking
about your kids learning karate right. You've got to learn
(18:55):
good habits right, otherwise you can set a precedent. I
would argue here that we see human civilization learning bad
habits that lead to the origin of things like the
concept of being a heretic, or the concept of blasphemy
or all those other spiritual rationalizations for harming other people
(19:19):
in real life, often innocent people.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Absolutely. So, tying back into this concept of being able
to control populations, one of the ways you do that
is to control the information they have access to and
the way they think about themselves specifically, which then you know,
alters the way you maybe think about others. And this
(19:44):
goes all the way, like to the deepest beliefs, including
gods and religion and that kind of thing. If you can,
if you can at least influence heavily or mandate what
people say and believe in public, then you can perhaps
get them to wield a weapon right for you. The
leader who was also the spiritual you know, political, spiritual
(20:07):
everything leader.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
Yeah, oh that's dangerous. Ooh, it's got some evil umami
on it.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Yeah. Well yeah, and we just it's so it's kind
of messed up because we pretend like it's something that
just happened then, you know, right, like ooh, just look
closely at some things for a long time in this country,
especially in the eighties. I would say, like late seventies, eighties,
that's when you really see it start to seep in
(20:36):
in this country where religion and politics and economics and
all this stuff really goes together to control what we're
supposed to say and do in public.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
Oh you mean nineteen seventies, yes, yes, okay, okay.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
My bad, my bad, but yes, agreed.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
Also seventeen eighties also oh yeah, well, uh, we're to
pickle here as we're talking about human civilizations. We know
then as as you're saying that, it's what's that line
from talking heads, same as it ever was.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Yes, that's still one.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yeah. Oh, you're abolutely right because with that control, Ben,
I think where you're going here is that you can
put propaganda out into the world that then causes your
enemies to get upset. Right, you can you can make
up rumors about some of the other gods that your
town's not into.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
M Yeah, And it's like, know, you're referencing that sports
analogy from earlier. Right. The first conspiracies about Anu Naki
follow this rough path of what they didn't call conspiracy theories.
They didn't even call them alternative explanations. Instead they said,
(21:54):
you know those absolute what what's a fun u when
aal archic and salt you know those uh jabbronis those
near dwells and so those old so and sos perfect
from down the Tigris. Uh. Well, it turns out that
they're they're worshiping a thing that's not really a god.
(22:16):
It's a demon before the word demon existed.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Well, you know, one person's god's another person's demon, depending
on what's the side of the aisle you stand on.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
M Well, that's kind of the point, right exactly, because
you can, you can divide everybody, you can make you can. Again,
these rumors get told and then maybe somebody writes it
down and if you discover, well, I don't know, a
clay tablet that has one of these rumors mentioned on it,
and then imagining modern humans discovering that from like twelve
(22:49):
hundred BCE, and you're like, oh, well, obviously they thought
this god was this Like no, unfortunately that was just
a rumor.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Right.
Speaker 4 (22:58):
We're like, we're maybe as a civilization, we are maybe
five thousand years away from some future anthropologist discovering stuff
about the New York Yankees and the New York Mets
and calling the man Unaki. That's what we need to remember, right,
(23:21):
and well I look forward to that personally. Yeah, in
our lifetime, we're gonna get there. I think the podcasting
is working out for all of us. So direct agents
of damnation, that's what you would call the other folks,
the great them, and anyone who adored or agreed with
them was kind of tupac shakor rules. If you ride
(23:45):
with them, you too. No one needed proof, and at
this point we should also while we're talking about proof,
we should acknowledge there was no what the modern world
would consider phenomenological proof that things like the Anunaki ever
(24:06):
actually existed. Instead people worshiping it would worship a carving,
a statue, an idol, a physical representation, and to them
at that time, there was no symbolism. It wasn't like
an ancestral shrine or something. It was us being in
(24:28):
the presence of that God. When we encounter that carving,
we get the tingly goose bumpy knee that we described earlier.
You shiver in the presence because when you see that
carven idol, that is the god, that is the Annaki.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
In the same way the bread is the body right.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
Just soon, Yes, yeah, it's it's similar to like, lest
we sound as though we are casting stones or aspersion
on these earlier human civilizations, we have to remember this
literalism continues in a very real way for millennia. The
(25:16):
Christian literalism occurs in early American colonies. There's not a
separation between literal truth and symbolism. I think we all
remember that infamous sermon Sinners in the hands of an
angry God, you know, Banker seventeen forty one. This kin
(25:36):
named Jonathan Edwards is spitting hot fire to his congregation
out there in what we call Connecticut today. And while
he's while he's delivering this sermon, which is very mean,
by the way, it's a very like you are in
trouble kind of sermon. While he's spitting this hell fire
(26:00):
and brimstone, a snake goes into the physical room, the
structure where the parishioners are gathered. And then our buddy,
old pastor Edwards sees the snake. While he's being all
you know, holy hands pentecostal, yelling at people. He sees
(26:22):
the snake mid speech, he runs over and he stamps
on the snake. And for the people in the crowd,
this is not symbolism. The snake isn't there by accident,
It is the genuine devil. Our buddy Edwards is therefore
the actual servant of God, and he is stamping out
(26:45):
an actual infernal threat.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
That's how it works, out there doing God's work.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Shut out to Northampton, mass anybody listening to this in Massachusetts.
Speaker 4 (26:55):
You got this, Yeah, you got this.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
One's for you.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Well, I just say and find them snakes, stamp them out.
Let's go some.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
God fearing snake stamping folks out there in Hampton, mass
That's what I heard.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
That's what we always say. And this is brought to
you by the Tourism Board of trans City. So this literalism,
we were a bit discursive there, but the literalism was
just as common in ancient Mesopotamia. What we're saying is
metaphor wasn't really a thing truth as you or the
(27:30):
authorities of your day portrayed it. It was absolute. There
was no middle ground. You couldn't really sit down and
have a chat.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Yeah, either it was or it was not, And if
it was not, then we are all wrong, right, And
if we are all wrong. What the hell are we
doing here, guys? So we can't be wrong, or else
we can't progress in some weird way because again, the
ways of thinking, as you described earlier, been of having
a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis, figuring out what is actually real.
(28:06):
It's not around quite yet, and you have to think
about that's a mode of thinking. That's not like it's
an invention or a technology in a lot of ways,
it's just it's not there.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
Yeah, And there's not really Uh, there's not really any
opportunity for the people from you know, one town by
the river and another town up or down the river
to sit and just chop it up, you know what
I mean. They're not they're not having a nice meal
(28:40):
and chatting about nuanced opinions of religion.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
No one, almost no one without violence changed their minds
about metaphysical concepts. Very few people also asked for what
we would can or concrete proof. It's part of the
reason folks destroy statues in the modern day. I'm looking
at you, Afghanistan. So there's a vibe. And it didn't
(29:11):
help that so many subsequent religions kept cribbing notes off
each other, and despite the fact that these civilizations often
hated one another, they kept stealing from one another, right,
They cribbed the same stories and told them over and
(29:31):
over again Joseph Campbell's style, and just put their own
spit on it. Which takes us to one of our
favorite examples. I think the story of the flood.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah, the story of flood. You've heard that as a
Sudra Oh wait, Noah? Noah, Yeah, that's the one.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
I mean, yeah, exactly exactly. But I guess, you know,
we should start with our maybe earliest point of reference, Matt,
which would I think be Noah. Most folks in the
Western there, it is a gang world, are definitely familiar,
likely familiar with the you know, the broadstrokes of the story.
(30:09):
The version that we're talking about here, Noah the Flood
would be considered an Abrahamic interpretation of the flood myth.
In this story, Noah, who is a very sharp godly fellow,
follows the commandments of the Lord, and unfortunately is living
during a time where other people are not following his
as good example. And God is not pleased about the
(30:31):
state of pretty much everyone on the earth, but he
looks at Noah as being a good boy and bestows
upon him a grand responsibility.
Speaker 4 (30:42):
Yeah, he goes to Noah. Hu Chem goes to Noah
and says, look, I'm gonna do what studio execs in
twenty twenty five are gonna call a hard reboot. And
Noah is like, what is twenty twenty five? And he's like,
it's a different calendar. Don't worry about it. I need
you to build a big ass boat. And Noah goes,
(31:02):
all right, you're God, so I kind of have to
go along with this. And God says, we could only
imagine tight. Here are some very specific instructions about a
very big boat. Yep.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
And to your point, Ben, God does not necessarily supply
any assistance with the labor. There's no levitation going on
or anything like that. He does have to build it
by hand with his family. God does our supply some
pretty specific instructions for the construction of this massive boat.
I don't know if that includes blueprints or that it's
expected him to know how it's how to get it done.
(31:37):
But it is important that they bring aboard breeding pairs
of all of the animals, all of them Soli's. You know,
this is where you start seeing the stuff don't think
we can fit them on an arc. No matter the size.
The flood comes God's great retribution, his great reset on
the sin riddled world, and everyone dies except Noah and
(32:00):
all the animals who ride out the flood in the
boat make it to dry land, and the waters then received.
God sends a magical rainbow. Is a bit of an
atta boy, and it is up to Noah and all
of these, this livestock and his family to recede civilization
as we know it.
Speaker 4 (32:19):
And before we continue, we do want to give a
shout out to an excellent, a phenomenal graphic novel series
called Dark Arc by the awesome writer Culin Bunn, which
is all about an alternate arc not approved by God,
by the unnameable. It's the Rival Arc. Yeah, Rival Arc.
(32:43):
It's cool story, no spoilers. I'll check it out. Yeah,
please do. I can. I can just toss them to
you next time we hang out. The idea as you
described it, Noel, is perfect. You're absolutely right. They ride
out the flood. It's part of the reason in the
West even today people say alive branch as an offering
(33:08):
of peace, because Noah sends sends out a bird and
a bird comes back and shows you there's dry land,
which is obviously the precedent for amazing masterpieces like water
World or Police Academy five.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Percent, which are both very there actually exists within the
same extended universe water World in Police Academy five very
few people know that.
Speaker 4 (33:36):
Keep my tittering in.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
It's a fun thing to consider. How would that cross
over work? Let us know.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
There is a lot more to the flood story, but
these are the basics, right. This is the IKEA instruction
manual for this story. The big twist here is that
the story of Noah as we understand stand it today
is only one of many versions of this tale, and
(34:07):
it's not the first. Multiple other versions far pre date Noah,
with the first being found in he Guessed It Folks,
Samarian text.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Oh yeah, So, if you imagine the Noah version, God
is making the decision to flood the entire planet for
reason X, for reasons I'm gonna flood the whole planet,
kill everything, everything. But in that tale, the only way
Noah finds out about the flood is because God told him.
(34:39):
It's a little I mean, it's like, whoa, what are
you doing here? Man? Okay, you just want to you
want a great reset, a real great reset. That's what
you're doing. But if you go back to the story
of Zasudra, who is another person who just happens to
gain the favor of one of the gods, not God,
(35:00):
but one of the gods in this case anche E Nki.
If you look at the Akkadian versions, it's a lot
like Greek and Roman. So one version is going to
be Anky, the other version in Akadian is going to
be Ea Ea. And as you go through some of
these myths, you'll find that is very troublingly confusing at
(35:23):
first at least where you're like, wait, I thought that
was that god or there was this god. But in
this case, all the gods got together and decided as
a group, as a committee, that they were going to
flood the entire planet because humans not great. Let's try
this again, and Ankie one of the gods, my gosh,
(35:43):
I want to say, he's the god of wind and
maybe atmosphere or something like that. He is the one
that comes down to Zusudra and says, hey, turn that
house thing you've got into a boat. Then you got
to get animals breeding pairs of animals get them on
that because this place is getting flooded.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
Yeah, he was like, He's like, hey man, you were
always cool to me earlier. Don't be at school tomorrow.
And this is that's evil in terms of the reference,
but it is accurate. Zeudra is the last king of
Sumer before the Great flood, per the Akkadian myth, and
(36:25):
Zisudra has all the beats just like you're describing there,
all the beats of the Noah story that comes way after,
by the way, and Zasudra. One of the differences is
Zisudra is polytheistic. Yes, so is Issudra has to asked
(36:46):
multiple gods to save him and his arc and those gods,
as far as history knows, are an Unaki. He brought
it back, we did it anak episode on.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
And Anneal and then well obviously anky, these are the Annaki.
So it goes this flood story goes back real far
and it's kind of the same story when you look
at it, it is it is play by play, the
same dang thing.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
I think a flood happened, for sure. I think multiple
floods occurred, because you know, there's another myth like this
in discivilization, another myth in ancient Chinese civilization, another myth
in in South American meso American civilization. Meso American especially
(37:42):
of interest as there is no there is no clear
way provable way that these civilizations could have communicated with
one another.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Well, yeah, and remember when we're talking about very specific
places where all of this information comes from. A great
flood could just be a regional flood, but a large
regional flood, right, So there could be large regional floods,
and then this is kind of the story that floats around.
We don't know. There could be one where the ice
(38:15):
caps melted for a while. We just we don't know exactly.
But the scientists are going through aren't finding proof of
that real thing. But that is why we get this.
What is what are the terms antidiluvian?
Speaker 4 (38:28):
Yes, before the flood.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
Okay, and and then deluvian? No is it that?
Speaker 4 (38:37):
Yeah? No, it nailed it, anti deluvian. We also need
to flood this feed with an ad break and we
have returned. Really appreciate your mention of religious syncretism. No,
(38:57):
it's a it's a concept we see over and over again.
We can argue effectively that the move toward Monotheism by
what we call the People of the Book is kind
of an exercise and consolidation so many stories of a
singular god from Judaism, Christianity, Islam. These stories have their
(39:22):
narrative roots in previously uncollected, distinct tales that were previously
assigned to individual annaki. And it's crazy that we have
to think about it that way. Because that's why, I
would argue, that's why the Western world in particular is
(39:44):
chock full of bizarre recent claims linking the Anunaki to
any number of supernatural analogs of our modern evenings. Just
picture this. Here's a bit, guys. What if we did
a show on the History Channel that was about aliens
(40:07):
but like ancient.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Oh yes, I would watch that and twist. I did
watch that. I watched the crap out of that because
it's it's so compelling. Because humanity still doesn't know exactly
how Homo sapiens arrived. We know there's little bits and pieces.
If you're going with evolutionary models, we know that there's
(40:30):
some big jumps, especially if you're looking back at DNA
right and DNA that we can actually test, and then
ancient aliens comes along. With some concepts that may provide answers,
but proving those to be true is a whole other thing.
They're fun ideas, but oh, I mean they're compelling ideas.
(40:52):
Is they're ideas that will glue you to a television,
at least in my case. But then you start looking
a little bit deeper into each one individually and you find,
oh man, there are cracks in this clay tablet.
Speaker 4 (41:06):
Oh those well done. Oh man, they're starting to spread. Yeah,
ancient aliens the newest twist, the hot new bop it
in the game of figuring out civilization and history. It's
the idea that all of human civilization was created influenced,
(41:27):
dare we say, bootstrapped by the intervention of some sort
of pre existing more spiritually or technologically accomplished society. Right, usually,
seeing as non homo sapiens and genres of this belief
are what we would call old beings. In the recent past,
(41:49):
these beliefs were way more overtly racist, Like European explorers
would stumble upon some ancient non European marvel like those
old towers out in western China, or the Pyramids or
the Sphinx, and and they would say Oh, folks even
(42:09):
whiter than us must have been here first for how
cool these known fight people have created such a thing.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
Yeah, man, you went like five different directions with that accent.
Speaker 4 (42:22):
I love it, thank you, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Well, while that is that is absolutely true, right, it's
a lot of it is rooted in that stuff, and
especially back then, there there are things that are objectively
puzzling when it comes to the historical record of things
like tools and stuff that was have been recovered from areas. Right,
So it's it is both what we're talking about here,
(42:46):
this perhaps racist underpinning of some of these original concepts,
but then also the puzzling nature of what's been what's
been found and proven to be there. So then you
you end up kind of weighing the things. But it
does go back to that, and it's an unfortunate thing
when you're watching that show and you're a big fan
of it, and then you start to see like, ah, gosh,
(43:08):
I remember when we first had that revelation when we
were making videos back in the day, like realizing just
how rampant some of those beliefs were.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
Yeah, and you're raising a great point about what we
would call anachronistic artifacts like the antikathera mechanism back that battery,
Damascus steel technology that was created and lost.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Yes, and specific structures usually like carvings and the interiors
of structures that are underground that are discovered with just perfect,
perfectly cut stones, and just trying to imagine how one
would do that with the tools available that we have. Again,
the tools we've recovered around that area, that would lead
(43:56):
anthropologistic believe that's what they used to cut that stone,
but again we don't know what we can't see or
can't didn't recover. Does that make sense.
Speaker 4 (44:06):
One hundred percent? It's like, uh, Noel, Matt and Ben
are working for Lord von Herringbone, Dylan Fagan, right, and
we have to go over to go Beckley Tepe and
uh and Lord von Herringbone, no offense. Dylan is just yelling,
how Dylan, could you yell? How real quick in like
(44:29):
the fanciest accent.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
How.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Dear well done, Dylan.
Speaker 4 (44:36):
We're asking these questions. If we're Lord von Herringbone, we're saying, Okay,
from our civilization's perspective, this must have been built by
an older race of humans we're not present now, or
maybe lizard people or maybe gods or maybe folks harnessing
(44:57):
the power of rill or whatever. Va r I L.
Look it up. Have a great afternoon on that one.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
If you're looking to get in some Nazi territory.
Speaker 4 (45:08):
Right right, And in these stories, in von Herringbone and
other stories, these jokers, right, these culprits, these kaiser soursays
of human civilization are responsible for literally all the beginning stuff, agriculture,
the taming of fire, the wheel writing, all the things
(45:31):
that stood the test of time. The argument goes, were
made by someone else, and all present civilization is simply
sort of the remedial kids in the class.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
Yeah, well, because a lot of that stuff came out
of Mesopotamia, came out of this area where the Innunaki,
you know, for a time reigned amongst the minds of
the human beings. And it's pretty pretty cool we got
that stuff from that area. Thanks y'all for putting in
the hard work of you know, doing things like harnessing
fire and inventing writing cuneiform or earlier cuneiform and all
(46:10):
that stuff.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
Well done.
Speaker 4 (46:12):
Yeah, real, and folks, while we are, while we are bullied,
our long suffering super producer von Herringbone Onto the Air,
Maravon Herringbone, could you give us your understanding of the
NOSCA lines, just for an example.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
I'm quite sure extra terrestrials created these lines.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
Indeed, the baron, we have to agree with him. He's
our employer.
Speaker 4 (46:41):
Yeah, he's gonna fire us. So if we gotta, we
gotta stay the course. And folks, hold your wings, hold
your ox horned hats. We have so much more to
get to about the Anunaki.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
We have been.
Speaker 4 (46:58):
Teasing the striterrestrial or extra dimensional connection for a while now,
and we can't wait for you to join us in
the third part of this series, the Anunaki. We're calling
it a future in the sky.
Speaker 3 (47:14):
That's right in the meantime. Find us on the Internet
at the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist, on Facebook
with our Facebook group Here's where it gets crazy, on xfka, Twitter,
and on YouTube where you can watch all the videos
that's your heart desires. On Instagram and TikTok or Conspiracy
Stuff Show.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
We have a phone number. It is one eight three
three std WYTK. Easy to remember. Turn those letters into numbers,
then call it when you call in. It's a voicemail
system you got three minutes, give yourself a cool nickname
and let us know within the message if we can
use your name and message on the air. If you'd
like to send us an email, we are the.
Speaker 4 (47:50):
Entities that read each piece of correspondence we receive. Be
well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void writes back. Please
give us a lead on an episode. Do you think
your fellow conspiracy realist will enjoy? Please ask us for
a random fact, Because, oh, friends and neighbors, we have
so many for you. All you have to do is
(48:10):
walk a little further and join us out here in
the dark conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Stuff they Don't 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.
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Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2
Season Two Out Now! Law & Order: Criminal Justice System tells the real stories behind the landmark cases that have shaped how the most dangerous and influential criminals in America are prosecuted. In its second season, the series tackles the threat of terrorism in the United States. From the rise of extremist political groups in the 60s to domestic lone wolves in the modern day, we explore how organizations like the FBI and Joint Terrorism Take Force have evolved to fight back against a multitude of terrorist threats.