July 17, 2015 • 55 mins
Antarctica is one of the most mysterious places on the planet. If the ice melted, what would we find beneath?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups. History is
whirled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Welcome
back to the show. My name is Matt, I'm Ben,
and we are here as always with our super producer,
Noel the Iceman Brown. Hey, Noel, So everybody just on
(00:22):
the top here. I just wanted to let you know
I got a vaccine, a T DEAP. What's a T
depth specifically it it's is supposed to help you out
with tetanus, diphtheria, and whooping cough. And there's a specific
reason that you need to get this vaccine that is
happening in my life. It's pretty awesome. And anyway, I
(00:45):
it seemed to be having some kind of reaction that
is not usually what's supposed to happen when you get
this vaccine. I had a fever of a hundred and
one point seven and uh, just been sweating my up
butt off, kind of out of it. Feel like your
brain is sort of wrap in cotton a bit. Yeah.
So yeah, I remember you were telling me that about
(01:05):
one in one hundred people have a reaction that you're having. Well, okay,
I can't. I can't say with authority that that is true.
I was told by a gentleman on the elevator of
this building yesterday after I was because he happened to
get on the elevator while I was moving my arm
around because the injection site is on your upper arm
(01:27):
and it's very, very sore, and there's about a twenty
four hour period where your arm is supposed to hurt,
and you know, I was awkwardly moving my arm around
when he got on the elevator and he was like, oh,
what'd you get a vaccine? Like I said, yes, it
really hurts. He's like, what kind told him? It was
a TTAPP And he's like, oh, man, you know there's
about a one and one chance that you're going to
(01:48):
get a fever like I did. And I was like,
what got home? Guess what it manifested. I don't know
if that dude cursed me. Maybe he did. Maybe yeah,
maybe he in set did you somehow? I don't know. Well,
this guy Mett if you were described were to describe
him to someone, would you describe him as a doctor.
(02:10):
I couldn't say. Okay, I believe he lives in this building,
But you know, who knows. They're all kinds of different
and amazing people that live here and some that aren't
so amazing. This building is huge. Yes, there are people
that no one else knows lives here, right in the nooks,
the crannies, the unexplored areas of the of this Gargantlan thing.
(02:31):
And today we're talking about unexplored Gargantlan things. No, guys,
we hope that you appreciate this show because Matt has
pushed himself a little bit closer and closer to that
death's door. Dast so it is so dangerous for me
to do this right now. Well, at first I thought
that was a single tear coming out of your eye,
(02:52):
but appears to be blood. It's blood and sweat and
maybe it's here. So oh man, that's you know, that's
that's kind cool, like respect that cool. So we're we're
gonna get through this episode to tell you some exciting
stuff before hopefully uh my co host and producer, Matt
Madman Frederick it's your nickname for today, uh passes away
(03:16):
into the great beyond. Oh man, alright, cool, let's get
through this, no pressure. Let's just make this the best
one so um by way of an introduction, and and
that I'm joking right, you'll be fine. I don't know.
I thought I would be over much faster than us.
So maybe I'm just on a downward spiral. We'll find out.
(03:37):
What's cool. Man. A little delirium always helps his show.
That time I didn't sleep that was great. That was
my favorite episode. We've made some more. Really alright, well
this is gonna be the new favorite. Okay. So there's
this book that I really enjoy called The Atlas of
Remote Islands and who and for everyone who is a
(03:58):
book lover in the audience. And there's nothing wrong with
not being a book lover because a lot of books
are terrible. Let's face it, there are so many out
there now. I mean, we're not paid to be someone's
English teacher. We don't have to pretend that every book
is amazing. The world is just lousy with books that
you know are not going to be your favorites. That
doesn't mean that they themselves are objectively bad, just means
(04:20):
they're not for you. And every so often you run
into something on the other side of the spectrum, a
book that is so amazing that you can't even hold
onto it because you continually give it to other people saying,
I want to please check this out. This reminds me
of you, or whatever you say, but it kind of
becomes a part of your worldview almost. Yeah. And the
(04:44):
Atlas of Remote Islands, which is more of a travel
log than an actual atlas. It's it's just this book
of fifty different, very small islands and a small one
to two paragraph story about their history. And while I
was reading this book, uh, at least the first time,
(05:08):
what I became really captivated by, were the islands in
the Southern Hemisphere, not just you know, the the scattering, uh,
sparsely populated tiny islands in uh, the oceanic area, but also,
and even more so, the inhospitable barren places. The closer
(05:30):
you get to Antarctica, the more it seems as though
the natural world is telling you turn back, you know.
And that's what we're talking about today. We were talking
about Antarctica, the most mysterious continent. Let's get to some
of the facts. So Antarctica is the fifth largest continent
(05:51):
in the world. It's roughly twice the size of Australia, which,
you know, Australia is pretty big everybody, So that's a
lot of ice covered lands. It's home to the world's
freshwater supply and of the world's freshwater ice. And this
place is really cool. It's currently the coldest and the
(06:12):
windiest continent. It also possession possesses the highest average elevation
of any continent, which is crazy. That just means it's
full of those mountains. Yeah, that's another that's another interesting thing. Yeah,
because of the land mass of Antarctica is covered with ice.
And if it didn't have the highest average elevation, if
(06:33):
it did not have those mountains, then it would probably
be a covered with ice. Well maybe ninety nine or something.
But just because there's still be some land on the
coast in some places, Matt, this ice is three miles
thick cheese. So, to paraphrase so many horror movies, what
(06:54):
lay beneath? We know relatively little about this, and this
week we looked what people might find beneath the ice
if it all melted away. The ice in Antarctica comes
in two large categories. There's the Western sheet, is the
Eastern sheet. It extends all across the land like some
curse in a medieval fairy tale, and also into the
(07:16):
surrounding ocean. So what we'd like to do is talk
a little bit about some of the fringe theories and
some of the concepts that you will here related to Antarctica,
and it touches on so many other things, some of
which we've covered before and a couple of which I
would consider our greatest hits. Are some of my favorite stories. Yes,
(07:39):
and one of those is climate change. This is one
that really gets our audience riled up one way or
the other. And you know what, I'm in a state
at this point, Ben, I'm just gonna say it. Climate
change is real. This stuff is getting out of hand
and we're all gonna die. Well, of course, climate change
is real because climates change over time. I think what
(08:02):
a man made climate change is our fault. And yeah,
the Anthropocene right, Uh, the it's it's an interesting thing
you can always I don't know. I think it's so
clever what people do in the sorts of televised debate
debates where it's uh, they do the thought terminating clichef
(08:24):
let's call it climate change. Uh. Like now as we're
recording this this week, one of the big things are
the big things in international affairs would be uh, the
Iranian nuclear deal, and everyone's like nuclear deal, nuclear deal,
nuclear deal. But you have to dig yourself to find
the exact details. You have to you have to go
(08:45):
onto the internet and search. The mainstream news is not
really say, telling the details of stuff. And you know
what else just while wama rant here and this is
just gonna be so brief. Look, I understand when people
get very very emotional and angry about their their opinion
(09:09):
or what they see as the facts. Right when someone
because we get letters all the time, when someone says, well,
climate change, you know again another buzzword, right, because what
we're talking about is much more intricate, much more widespread,
specific things that are occurring right exactly, Uh, ocean acidification,
(09:32):
stuff like that, things that have been proven right, right,
and people were really arguing over the degree of it
and the cause of it. But just throwing buzzwords at people,
um kind of hacks the brain to get past the
cognitive ability and straight into the primitive reptile brain stuff
(09:52):
where all of a sudden, the person who believes climate
changes um not man made or believes you know that, uh,
some great lizard Messiah is going to emerge from a
volcano beneath the ocean. Whatever I'm saying, it doesn't matter
what people believe. It matters how you believe, and now
(10:14):
you support that belief. And it makes me, It makes
me just somewhere between um derisively, amused, and uh, incredibly
sad when I see people get super super emotional about
a thing and think that, you know, if I yell
at this person enough, if I am just angry enough,
(10:37):
then it don't matter. And then at that point you
have to ask yourself, are you trying to persuade that
person or you just trying to like get caught up
in a pitchfork party? Yeah? Or are you trying to
express your belief hard enough or reinforce your belief by yelling?
Oh yeah, yeah, Yeah, that's we should look at those,
uh psychological phenomenon to you know. That's when uh a
(10:59):
little bit inside baseball here. That's one show that I
pitched for brain Stuff. It's another show I do, and
they after we discussed it with the production team and stuff,
they didn't want me to do this episode, but it
was why you can't win an argument on the Internet,
And that's a great episode. Thanks, why don't we do it? Yeah?
(11:21):
But but okay, so aside from that that rant there, uh,
the forces of climate change clearly have impacted the planet
and are continuing apace. And we'll talk a little bit
now about the thing you were about to bring up,
because you can't talk about Antarctica without talking about ice,
(11:42):
and you can't talk about large amounts of ice without
talking about climate change. Right, yeah, So so with climate change,
we're we're talking about several things that really are happening.
Like I kind of mentioned earlier, sea levels really are rising,
and they're going to rise more in the future, or
at least they are projected to do so. Now, you
might also hear people claiming that Antarctica loses ice at
(12:05):
sometimes and then it gains it back at other times.
But there's a little bit of a discrepancy there. So
the whole thing, this whole idea hinges on a bit
of a misunderstanding. I think think of ice in Antarctica
as coming in two different types. So you've got your
land ice and you've got your sea ice. Now, the
(12:25):
sea ice itself is seasonal. It grows in the winter
as it gets colder, then it recedes just a little
bit in as it gets warmer. Or I mean it
can disappear almost completely over summer, but it's still it's
still always there. It just uh, it's kind of like
a if I make a bad comparison. Uh, it's kind
(12:47):
of like a person who maybe gains and loses weight
very easily. They have variations of weight. Yeah, there's a range.
There's essentially a range of weight. Yeah, and ice that
Antarctica takes on during the winder an't already gets some
water weight. Okay with that, Yeah, but like you were saying,
there's a there's a different kind of ice, right, Yeah,
(13:09):
the land the land ice is is very different. This stuff.
It acres slowly over time and it here's the problem,
is disappearing. Now you have to imagine that the land,
the ice that's on land, as it is melting, it's
increasing the amount of water, of liquid water that's in
(13:31):
the seas, right, because the amount of frozen water already
in the sea is part of the volume of the
ocean the sea were talking about. So let's let's advance
this further because there are probably some people who already
saying no, no, no, you totally don't get it. Well,
we have a we have a plot twist here that
(13:53):
a lot of people might not be aware of. This
change in land ice cannot be attributed solely to a
changing climate. For instance, look at Waite's Glacier. It's this large,
rapidly changing outlet of the West Antarctic ice sheet, and
it's it's being eroded by the ocean, sure, of course,
(14:16):
but it's also being melted by a different, uh different thing, yeah,
from below, from the geothermal heat that's being forced up
through it. And that that to me, Ben presents a
whole another issue. Yeah, whole, another whole other uh box
carve badgers, Yes, the box car badgers that are heating
(14:37):
up the earth from the inside. What's going on? Been
a whole another boot of birds, bag of yeah, uh,
can of chinchilla's. I could do this all day, Okay,
So yeah that you can check out the study by
researchers at the Institute for Geophysics at the University of
Texas at Austin or U T I G for those
(14:58):
of you who love an acronym, and that is in
a journal called the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
So they found they found that despite the popular debate,
as usually happens, there are other factors at play, and
it's not just a yes or no thing. It turns
out that geo thermal energy is our geo thermal heat
(15:22):
rather is changing the nature of the continent. And one
thing we should say about Antarctica, the history of Antarctica
that's just amazing is um it. It's only been an
ice covered continent for about thirty five million years, which
sounds a bit long in the tooth for us, but
in the grand scheme of things, that's like that's a
(15:44):
bad weekend, right and uh, and it could totally come back.
It used to be a subtropical thing that looked a
lot like the modern day of Pacific Northwest for anyone
who's been there, cool beautiful place. People still aren't sure
what happened thirty million years ago, because apparently, just in
the scheme of things, the way this ice across the
(16:07):
land and covered the place happened very quickly. So we
don't know. We don't know what happened, and we don't
know exactly how Antarctica works. For lack of a better phrase,
we're not for lack of trying, though we've set up
we the human species has set up research facilities across
the land in a couple of places. You know. One
(16:30):
of the things that I found really interesting was who
owns Antarctica? Yes, yes, yes, And when you look online
you can find the maps of the segments that Antarctic
the way it's split up, because it goes from the
South Pole or the UM. I think it's the actual
I don't. I can't remember if it's the actual South
Pole or the magnetics. Yeah, I think it's the ceremonial
(16:53):
South Pole. You're talking about the Antarctic Treaty right, Yes,
signed in Washington on in December of nineteen fifty nine
by twelve countries who the people who signed it were
just the twelve countries whose scientists have been futs and
around down there. They were. They were active during what's
called the International Geophysical Year of fifty seven and fifty eight.
(17:17):
So it but it's really cool. Looks like a PI
pie chart. Yeah, yeah, yeah, with all the flags arranged
around it. Yeah. The treaty itself is something that UM
we can talk about in detail. Do you want to
do it now or do you want to do it later?
We can do it, we can do it, Let's do
it later. Either way, I'm sorry. I just kept thinking
imagining who actually gets to study which parts, and and
(17:41):
if you're going to get different research on the northeastern side,
that's very different from the research you get on the southwest.
Even if there's there's like a good neighborhood of Antarctico.
Maybe I don't know. I imagine if you're a biologist,
that answers absolutely true. Um, I guess it depends on
your field of study. Right. Sure. You know a while
(18:01):
ago there was an expedition that you and I talked
about a few years back. Um, actually we should get
into that later later. Sorry spoiler alert anyway, just to
sew it up. Geo thermal energy, If human beings build
permanent settlements on the continent of Antarctica and get rid
of the ice and yes, yes, before the emails come in.
(18:23):
By permanent settlement, I mean like a nation state or colony.
I don't mean a research center, which is a beautiful thing,
but does not a country make. And uh, the but
if if people ended up actually living an Antarctica, the
if we're gonna be nationalistic the U s A A yes, wait,
(18:45):
I think that's already an insurance. Yeah, USA just buys Antarctica,
UM or some other large corporation Google owns Antarctica. So anyway,
these people could easily end up powering their society by
geo thermal energy, which sounds like science fiction, but it's
totally possible. I am now imagining the a country that
(19:09):
goes through and just burrows through the three miles of ice,
makes giant walls to keep the ice away, and has
a civilization that's kind of surrounded by these ice walls.
Oh right, living inside the walls of the canyon, similar
to um the similar to the Native American groups. Yeah,
(19:29):
so the thing is, it's not science fiction. It's happening now,
just in a different country. Oh, Iceland is not the
big ice walls, but Iceland. Iceland derives the majority of
its power from geothermal energy. So it's so it's completely possible.
But it's also true that the nuances of anti the
(19:51):
Antarctic climates or the long term effects are still largely there.
There's still some quite to answer, just because this geothermal
stuff is relatively recent at least our understanding of it
and the effects of this, the long term effects kind
of anybody's guess. We we still don't exactly know, you
(20:14):
know what happened thirty five million years ago. We're catching up.
We're like people who started watching Seinfeld today. Oh no kidding,
Oh but there there's so much to learn though, at
least and and being there's so much to enjoy. Yeah,
okay that in that case, the comparison holds. I'm just
a little bit sour about it because you know, I
(20:34):
had never really watched a lot of a lot of
that stuff, and then I ended up I just started
watching it. I'm still in that moment where I realized
that all four of the main characters problems could be
solved by having a cell phone. Oh wow, that's true,
if they were able to just communicate immediately, if they well,
(20:56):
it's it seems like a lot of the things are
based on yeah, uh yeah, Harold structure and improv or something.
Oh that's why. Oh my gosh, Ben, I never thought
about that before. That's huge, is it. I'm sure that
somebody else's I'm sure, I'm sure, but thank you. I
went to uh, I went to New York and saw
(21:17):
the not not for this thing, but you know, I
was traveling and as as you know, Matt, we we
saw the Seinfeld apartment. Uh, And it was just something
that it's just something that TV company made too as
a recreation. But I always startled that so many people
(21:38):
like the show. There are people around the block, down
the street to a different street. It is very crazy.
I don't know if it was just the neighborhood or
if it's that popular. It was a big deal. My
my parents liked it a lot. I'm gonna feel strange
if I ever have to meet uh Uh Seinfeld, Jerry
Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, if I ever have to meet them,
(22:00):
because I don't know. I don't know. I guess I
just like, hey, guys, Uh, I understand your show is
quite popular, and I don't think we're ever gonna meet
the congratulations. Who knows they might be listening now anyway. Anyhow,
tangents abound in this episode. Let's move to one of
the Let's let's cut straight to the chase, one of
the episodes we did early on in our career together.
(22:24):
Nazis in the Hollow Earth. Yes, the idea of that perhaps,
or there is the idea that there is a civilization
that exists below the crust of the earth. And as
crazy as it sounds that there is some type of
inner star that powers the civilization beneath us, and there's
(22:45):
a powerful civilization that can that the Nazis at least
thought perhaps a small group of the Nazis, Yeah, I
thought could come up, come out from the bowels of
the earth and help them win their battles. Because as
the National Socialists, these factions of National Socialist ak Nazis today, um,
(23:06):
as they new with a strange and mystic religious certitude,
these uh, these denizens of the inner world were also
totally totally arian, Yeah, yeah, totally and down for the
cause right right, and cared about what was happening between
(23:28):
in these political political maneuvers. So well we did find
with that, and you can check out our video on
the topic, is that, uh, it is true. You know
that that stuff you see on the History Channel can
be often disingenuous, but it is true that factions of
the Nazi Party had an intense belief in the occult,
(23:52):
which we've talked about with Zaan nimberbt right, yeah, and uh,
the belief in real and trying to reconstruct this new mythology.
And there really were um, there really were government financed
quests to find things like these hidden mystical lands like
(24:13):
Shambala cheng La and or in the case of Antarctica
and entrance to the underworld. Yes, yeah, and there was
um there was actually a plan to colonize part of
Antarctica as a means of expanding the German wailing industry
(24:36):
at the time. And that leads to at least supposedly, yeah,
right in new Swabia. But as we as we learned,
and as you can see if if you look into
some of the historical documents available, uh, no one, no
one found any entrance. And that's not to say there's
(24:59):
not an extensive, if possible, cave system in Antarctica. I
would say they're most definitely is just because of the
ice over time and then refreezing, the melting and refreezing
the way caves form. Oh yeah, yeah, So there might
be something there, but we have at this point we
have little evidence of We we know a little bit
(25:22):
about what kind of life might be there, but we
know very little about it. We do also have another
thing that we should bring up, and I think we
did an episode on this to Matt, this belief in
the the National Socialist Nazi Party exploring and attempting to
take over Antarctica ties in with a little known story
(25:44):
in US history as well. Right, ah, Operation high Jump? Yes?
Are we we chased them? Or we we at least
followed the Nazis down towards Antarctica? Let's do well, let's
do the movie version of that. How would you how
would you say them? If you were if you were
pitching the movie version of Operation to High Jump? How
(26:06):
would you? How would you pitch it to me? Okay,
like we're in the elevator. We I've got five seconds
before we get to next Yeah, I'll help you pitch
to Let's say Noel Is. Uh, Noel Is, who's a
good director. Who's the director that you would other than nol?
He has to be someone else. Oh, and he has
to be someone else. Let's go with Michael Bay. No.
(26:29):
I mean I could see him being able to sell
this movie though. Oh god, yeah, let's do Bay. He
could sell this. Okay. So if we're pitching Operation High
Jump to Michael Bay, what will we say? All right,
this is how we go? All right, sub Bay? So
check this out. I got this idea for a movie,
I think, Uh. United States Military Navy giant ships. Right
(26:53):
then you've got Nazi ships too, right, so there there
this one section Nazi ships, United States and other ships
heading towards Antarctica. Right then they get into these battles.
Were well, we're gonna make them get into battles because
we need explosions, right right, bay, Okay, so what else? Oh?
This was? Yeah, this is good. I think that. I
(27:14):
think he would go, um, all right, it'stop you have
any explosions and naval ships. Now can these ships transform? Yeah?
I didn't. The battleship I don't remember who did. Battleship
was Oliver Stone? Oh god, I don't think. All right, yeah,
it's it's if we were doing that in a world
(27:35):
kind of kind of intro, we could tell some great
stories about high Operational High Jump. The thing is they
would not be the truth. Wicked Leaks has been involved
in in bringing up bringing up some documents related to
the activities at the time. So first let's talk about
what Operation High Jump actually was supposed to be. It
(27:59):
was led by I named Richard E. Byrd. He was
a rear admiral of the U. S. Navy, and their
mission was to establish a research base. Their official mission
with the charming name of Little America for I don't know,
Little America for that that's gonna be look look interesting
(28:20):
on a postcard, right, And so, according to the official
Navy Naval Report, at least they had objectives. They had
six objectives. The second of those was this idea of
consolidating and extending severnty over as much of Antarctic as
they could make sense. That's what we do, That's what Yeah,
(28:40):
that's what people in general seemed to be quite fond of.
But the the Wicked Leaks reports seemed to seem to
prove that the underlying motivation for this was not so
much the uh National Socialist Party but the Soviet Party.
(29:05):
The the USS are because Operation high Jump occurred in
forty six and forty seven, so that would be after
World War right after World War two, has concluded. And
the reason the theory that we've we've often heard is
that while uh Nazis regrouped to a secret place in
(29:26):
your Swabia and Operation high Jump was part of a
secret war, a secret atomic war or something. But what
it seems to be more of is more evidence that
immediately after World War Two, the Cold War began, even
before it ended right right even before it ended, and
(29:49):
they're they're different. Um, there are different interpretations of that.
I'll probably go on to Facebook and Twitter where you
can follow us a conspiracy stuff. Yeah, and UH dropped
the links for anybody who wants to check out more
at least of what Wicked Leaks has to say regarding
Operation High Jump. Now we get to one of the
(30:11):
most exciting things, the most exciting thing about this stuff.
People found fossils into Antarctica. So I smelts, what else
are we gonna find? What other kind of life is
going to be there, like living life or just more fossils. Well,
(30:31):
we know that all the fossils that have been found
so far, at least all the big ones. When you're
thinking of you know, large flora and fauna, Uh, dinosaurs,
I'll just say it. Dinosaurs is kind of weird. Dinosaurs
are we gonna find and maybe we'll find a dinosaur civilization. Uh.
All the fossils we found so far, the majority are
(30:53):
from margins of coastal islands, exposed mountain rock places. Um,
because those are a few places that don't have like
miles of ice over them. Uh. And because the continent
was not always so cold because it was a subtropical
climate for so long, we know that there had to
be uh an abundance of life. Sure, I was looking
(31:18):
for the right word that didn't have a curseword in it.
So during the Cretaceous period it did enjoy a warmer,
lusher climate. And that Cretaceous period started a hundred forty
four million years ago, it ended sixty five million years ago,
And those fossils are are pretty exciting. Just a few
things we've seen on and scientists have identified a handful
(31:42):
of dinosaur species that they think are you know, if
not uniquely Antarctic, have been identified at least as as
something that would have lived in the Antarctic and not
just like single animal, but that indicates larger population. However,
what you said just then was by far the most
(32:03):
exciting thing. What we might not just be looking for
relics of life gone by. We may find living things
life in action. Yet, Yeah, and who knows the size
of these things. It would probably be much smaller micro
level like micro level life or even bacteria. Maybe a
(32:25):
little bit larger than that, because there are other places
that we can kind of point to that are somewhat
like Antarctica. And there is this one place in particular
that we know of might hold these things or these keys,
and it's already been looked at a bit. It's this
place that you may have heard of called Lake Vostok.
(32:46):
It's this pristine freshwater lake that's buried two and a
half miles below solid ice. That's three point seven kilometers
by the way, for everyone outside of Namibia and the
US and mean mar the countries. It's about the size
of Lake Ontario, one of the great lakes here in
the US, and it's the largest of the more than
(33:10):
two hundred liquid lakes that are strewn across Antarctica. Right. Yes,
beneath that ice there is more than simply stone and
fossils and dead things mountains. Yeah, there's there's lakes man
freshwater lakes that are liquid. And what we've learned is
(33:31):
that these lakes are created when again the geothermal heat,
the energy from Earth's core, melts the bottom of the
ice sheet. Uh. This is maybe counterintuitive to some folks,
but the thick blanket of ice on top access insulation.
These lakes don't get out much. No, they don't. They
(33:51):
just kind of they I don't know they're they're happy.
They like the quiet life, and that's perhaps why they've
been isolated for hundreds of thousands, two millions of years.
That and and when something's isolated that long, if you're
familiar with the evolution to creepy, in my opinion, the
(34:11):
creepy evolution of cave dwelling creatures, then you know that
hundreds of thousands, well more millions of years gives creatures
space to adapt. And so you know, as you can assume,
scientists are really excited to get into these lakes like
Lake voll Stark and really do as much research as possible,
(34:35):
go as deep as you can into the lake, and
just explore it as much as possible can Can you
imagine being a scientist and discovering perhaps even a new
type of life at the bottom of one of these lakes. Yeah, yeah,
I'd be like the academic version of Kanye West. You
could drop all the mics of yelling at people at
(34:55):
meet ups for readings. I would interrupt people's find present
I would interrupt people's presentations on their findings. Even if
you found microbial life, right, but what if you found
something bigger? Yes? So here, Yeah, so scientists have raced
to collect water samples from Lake Vostok, and and this
(35:19):
was relatively controversial because what we are essentially doing when
we do something like that is that we are breaking
the seal on something ancient, right, and going through here.
What the scientists found was they found life. They found
(35:40):
living things in there, and to me, that's, um, that's
kind of well, it's it's beautiful. I choose to interpret
it as beautiful rather than ominous. But you're right, Matt,
they found bacteria, but they found more than that too. Yeah.
They they found over one hundred multicellular species, which is
(36:03):
that's huge. That they even found some species that are
generally associated with mollusks and fish. And there was even
one researcher who I think said, well, with all these findings,
we might even have fish in there somewhere, And then
he very quickly was like, okay, well maybe not fish,
all right, right, because it's so difficult to uh, it's
(36:24):
so difficult to present scientific findings to the you know,
general Well, I would say it's not it's not difficult
to present this stuff to general public, because there's this
great there's this great error that people often make about
quote unquote the general public. The quote Titian the common man,
(36:45):
and that is to say that a single individual is smart,
but a group is stupid. Now, as as convenient as
that might be, as fun as it might be to
read on like a very negative Hallmark card, Uh, I've
never seen that before. The fact of the matter is
that people are that that people are intelligent, and you know,
(37:08):
cognitively people are similar to the old story about goldfish.
Our our intelligence grows to the size of its container.
So who makes the container? Who frames the debate? It's
not it's not that it's not that scientists will report
something and everybody in the world is all of a
(37:31):
sudden just dumb about it. No, it's that they report something,
but then it is uh condensed and twisted into something
that can be told in two minutes and thirty seconds
before shifting to a picture of like a cat that
accidentally sneezed while it farted, which I would watch. But
(37:53):
so I I don't think like I don't. I think
it's just a huge error to say that he had
to he had to withdraw that might have fish thing
because people wouldn't understand it. But what he was probably
more concerned with was someone who wants a really good headline,
grabbing it and running with it and saying, and I'm
sure they did. Fish. I don't remember seeing the headline,
(38:15):
but I'm sure it existed. And so so we do know, though,
that this is exciting, right, there's there's a great lead here,
there's evidence that compels us because this is one of
how many Lakes said, I've already found some evidence. We
already know there's gonna be something down there, Bend. That's
gonna be Oh, I don't know. I cannot There's gonna
(38:39):
be a dinosaur. Yeah, I cannot wait, ancient civilization, alien life,
a pyramid, Let me a pyramid. Are you kidding me?
That would be great. I don't know if it will be.
You know it will happen, No, probably not, probably not.
I'm gonna keep hoping. And well, I was gonna say praying,
but well, we we live. That's the thing. Though we live.
(39:00):
Really don't know. It's it's such an it's such an
exciting thing. And often we as a species think about space,
deep space, as as the vast unexplored territory. But this
is vast unexplored territory that you know, and the cosmically
in in a cosmic sense or cosmic scale, is right
(39:23):
next to us. We're all be there, and I'm interested
to see. I'm very interested in the future of Antarctica,
and I know you are too. As a matter of fact,
this is one of the things that we talked about
off air that would be uh, one of the most
important coming developments, and that is who owns it precisely,
(39:46):
who will own Antarctica in the future, right, Yes, So
we talked about that treaty, the Antarctic Treaty. The It
started out with twelve countries and now there are five
d two because they would start signing the terms of
it so they could send scientists down do some research.
(40:06):
It has a couple of very big provisions. The first
one is that ANTARCTICUS shall be used for peaceful purposes only,
So no nuclear bases, guys, no submarine reups, none of that.
I feel like that's a tough thing to enforce, but
well it's not. It's not impossible. I'm I'm sure it's
(40:32):
a pain in the vibe. Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean,
just to even get a ship down there. Well, other
other islands in the area that are owned by various
countries as research islands may not have those same stipulations.
So for instance, um, if you're you know, like Queen
(40:55):
maud Islands or excuse me, Queen maud Land is part
of Antarctica, but what about the islands off of that?
Do they also qualify? And these are things that are
answered in the treaties, but the answers may differ at
certain points in time or in in territorial reckoning. Another
(41:18):
thing is that freedom of scientific investigation Antarctic and cooperation
towards that end should continue. So if your scientists from
the US and knowles scientists from Finland, and I'm a
scientist from Azerbaijan or whatever, it doesn't matter, then no
(41:40):
matter what's really going on with our countries, we should
be able to cooperate as academics and scientific observation and
results from Antarctica shall be made freely available. Snow keeping secrets.
Now saying we've discovered the ruins of an ancient alien civilization,
no one tell Greg you know what. I actually we
(42:02):
probably shouldn't tell Gregg. He's just gonna get so excited,
you know how he is. He's gonna start telling everybody
that he found it. He is. I wish he never
started that tumbler. Look what I found dot tumbler dot com. Yeah.
But so all right, so right now there is this
(42:22):
there is this agreement that holds. But this agreement, this
treaty uh is going to come under some increasing pressure
as as Antarctica becomes increasingly accessible, right and important? Once
the ice melts? What what kind of mineral deposits are
(42:43):
looking out at under there? You know? Yeah, who's gonna
be here's the crazy thing. Who's gonna be worried about
Antarctica when all this ice is melting? But well, you know, actually,
now that I think about a little bit more, if
the land ice really starts melting at an increase rate
to a point where this land is livable, we're gonna
(43:04):
have to find new places for humans to live. Maybe
this is the answer. Wow, I don't Yeah, I know,
these coastal cities, I can't live there anymore. Yeah, but
what's the span of time for that too? That's a
large span of time. But eventually Antarctica might be the answer.
It might Eventually it might be the new neighborhood for
(43:27):
people for a few million years until the next nine stage. Maybe. Yeah,
And that depends on Oh, we shall also talk about
the polls next. But the so yeah, so Antarctica is
has the potential to become a hot spot for international competition,
similar to the North Pole, where uh soon probably if
(43:49):
if you're listening, it's probably within your lifetime. Uh. The
there will be parts of the gear where the ice
at the North Pole melts to the point where ships
can navigate across, which would be tremendous for international shipping
and also very dangerous for very dangerous for the countries
(44:14):
involved as they negotiate peace. You know. Uh, we're talking
about this software too. Once upon a time, Uh, once
upon a time, Alaska was called McKinley's folly because he
spent so much money on it. How would you buy
all this? Right? And you know, listeners who are not
based in the US. I was thinking from this perspective
(44:36):
when I looked at a map of the fifty U.
S States recently, and I thought, man, yeah, Alaska looks weird.
Alaska looks like how did you call that? What happened? Uh? So? Uh?
The but the idea of these poles of the world
becoming becoming new regional hot spots or new global hotspots
(44:57):
is not as strange as it might sounds. And I
know that it can be tremendously controversial for people to
talk about that stuff, but um, it's the fact is
it's happening. People are just talking about why it's happening
and what the timeline is. But the to to paraphrase
(45:20):
the old opera quote, the lady has sang saying this
is this is happening. There's not There's not much people
could do to bring back the ice. Right, Eventually it
will eventually, at least in the in the North Pole. Uh,
it will it will be uh navigable by water because
(45:42):
it won't be that ice there all the year. But again,
also I should probably hedge my bets there because I said,
in your lifetime, but we're not sure. Yeah, we're not
sure how old you are either. Listener. Yeah, that's a
very good point. So I'd like anybody who is who
studies the climate professionally and to let me know your estimates,
would love to read them on air. Oh and speaking corrections,
(46:04):
we do have another one. I messed this up. I
slipped when we were talking um in in our earlier
episodes on on World War Three. It was Nikita Krushchev
who gifted Crimea to Ukraine in ninet, not Stalin. Yeah,
(46:28):
it was Skruschev. So the uh, the last last thing
we talked about here is uh the pole shifting. Oh yes,
which came up recently on our social media. Right. Uh,
here's the long story short. All the evidence indicates that
every so often the magnetic poles of Earth shift. So
(46:56):
what this means is, essentially, the north pole becomes a
south pole, south pole becomes north pole. Most times it
happens gradually the poles start to slowly shift away from
their part, and then the north that your compass points
to is not the geographical north right. And this, I mean,
this is something people know if you use a compass.
(47:18):
But other times it's just flipped like like fresh, like
the life of the Fresh Prince of val Air and
his theme song just gets flipped turned upside down. And
this but this, uh, you know, I just bring this
up because they're talking about the polls. Every so often
(47:39):
you hear people worrying about this. This is another thing
where we know that historically we're overdue for it. But uh,
when when does that date actually come? Do? No one
knows really how to calculate it well, and the effects
of a of a polar versal like that. It's because
(47:59):
we're talking about the magnet the magneto sphere and you know,
the inner mechanics of the magnetic nature of Earth. Um.
I don't have all that information Ben about how what
it's going to do exactly when it happens. But it
seems like the effects aren't going to be massive. No, No, well,
(48:21):
I think the effects will be probably the effects probably
be massive for certain migratory species that depend on that reckoning,
uh to navigate the world, so to understand which way
is north? You know? Uh? And oh and no, speaking
of north. As we sow this up, guys, I know
(48:44):
we didn't get to everything. We're a little over our time.
I just saw my buddy Kristen and stuff. Mom never
told you walked by. Well we well, first thing we
have to do, Ben really fast stock miss Okay, No, yes, man,
I just I just had to talk to you that.
(49:04):
I just need to hear your voice. I was feeling scared. No,
if you know, looks good. You kind of you kind
of unhinged. Sorry, I'm really sorry. It's I've just never
seen you like this, man. Worry, it's very strange because
I'm freezing right now, but I know my internal temperature
is very hot, and I've got my hoodie on. It's
a horrible it's kind of hot water bottle nestles underneath
(49:26):
his chin like that. It's the blood like your face. Yeah,
it's so funny. I was watching Mr Robot last night
and this isn't really a spoiler alert, but I just okay,
So he is kicking a habit. One of the characters
is kicking a habit, and he's having the night sweats
(49:50):
and going through all that stuff, and I was watching it,
identifying so hard with his character at that moment. Holy crap,
you like in the show? Oh yeah, I watched the
first episode. I really enjoyed. I need to. I can't
speak highly enough about it. The cinematography of this past episode.
I can't place that guy. I feel like I've seen
(50:11):
him in something that I like, but I cannot, for
the life of me, figure out what it was. I'm
not positive either now. I just seen him as that character,
all right, Ben? Sorry, no, no, no, did this uh
this antarctic discussion at least cool you down? Are you
gonna are you gonna do? Are you gonna put in
Did you just put in like a drum roll? Yeah?
(50:32):
I did it with my mind. Okay, well we'll hear
it in post. Looks like Antarctic of my ice is
melting rapidly. Well, it's time to trundle you off to
a sick bed. So well, uh, no, I have to
I have to ask you. I have to ask both
of you guys, would you, given the chance, take a
trip to Antarctica? Don't they do like cruises or something. Yeah,
(50:53):
I got very close to us sneaking aboard. I mean
not as a stowaway. I get very what do my
friends family? She was, uh, she was going with them
because her parents had, I don't know, retired or was
the anniversary or something. And they said, oh, we're gonna
go to Antarctica. And it was like a punishment. It's
more affordable if more people go with us, and so
(51:17):
you know, I'm here cheap skate, So I said, how
affordable is what do you mean? You know? I might
have different ideas, but I was all set to go
and then apparently, and I can only tell this story
on the air because I'm not going to use the names,
but apparently turned out it was more the dad's thing,
and the wife eventually put her foot down and said,
(51:39):
you know, this is my anniversary too. Why the hell
are we going to Antarctica? What are you trying to
say about our marriage? Which is which was a which
is a nice little But that was my one chance
to go. And there was another expedition where these guys
were going to send people out to find an entrance
to the Hollow Earth and yeah, and you could sign
(52:01):
up online to submit your qualifications and this was, um
we were working together. So remember I never heard back
from him. So, guys, if you're checking out the show,
let me know how it went. We'll go on the
next one if you're If you let us, I don't know.
Maybe their WiFi is not good being in the hollow
Earth and all. Uh so, no, what do you what
(52:22):
do you think about the episode before we close out anything? No,
I don't know how anything in particular. I think you
guys were thorough as usual. Um, I think there's some
interesting things to think about. I don't think we were
a man. I think there's so much more we could do.
I want to go to Antarctica, sign up on a
research station, put my two years in or whatever, and uh,
(52:42):
I want to find the thing. You want to find
the thing, you know, I think it's down there. I
think there's a possibility too that we talked about it, like,
could you accidentally dig too deep and resurrect some contagion
or pathogens? The thing was, by the way, what is
the thing? The thing was an alien life form that landed. Yeah,
(53:05):
but it's so it's hard to say exactly what it
is because you don't really see its natural shape. It's
the ambiguous type for a while. Yeah, but yeah, we know.
I mean, you didn't even talk about that a possible
contagion or a viral life form that lives there. We
should get to. We should do that in a future
(53:25):
episode about a disease wiping out the earth, which is
one of the one of historically one of the most
dangerous disasters, right, even more so than an earthquake. Quick
trivia question. Yes, we can cut this if you want.
It was a trivia question the other week when I
was playing, Um, do you know the names of the
two types of plague that made up the black plague?
(53:52):
And then there's the other one, uh, Gregg's plague. I've
already forgotten what it us. You've already forgotten what us.
I think it was like Numonic christianneumonic plague. That's what
it was exactly. It was the bubonic plaguneumonic place. It
sounds like a fun plague that it helps you remember
(54:14):
the mubonic plague. Ye, well, well, plates are well plagued.
On that note, we're we better get out of here
before Kristen Kristy comes back for revenge. Uh. So we
hope that you did enjoy this episode. Again, there's a
(54:35):
lot of stuff we didn't get to h but we
would like to hear from you with your thoughts on
the future of Antarctic up any of the things we've
discussed before, and any ideas you have for an upcoming episode. Additionally,
if you want to take a page from some of
the folks who have been tweeting us and writing to us, uh,
such as Cheryl and Sean and recommending some places that
(54:59):
we should check out or people we should talk to
while we are in the district of Columbia before we
get disappeared or arrested, and go ahead and let us
know directly. Our email is Conspiracy at how stuff works
dot com. From more on this topic, another unexplained phenomenon.
(55:22):
Visit YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also
get in touch on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy stuff.
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups. History is
whirled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Welcome
back to the show. My name is Matt, I'm Ben,
and we are here as always with our super producer,
Noel the Iceman Brown. Hey, Noel, So everybody just on
(00:22):
the top here. I just wanted to let you know
I got a vaccine, a T DEAP. What's a T
depth specifically it it's is supposed to help you out
with tetanus, diphtheria, and whooping cough. And there's a specific
reason that you need to get this vaccine that is
happening in my life. It's pretty awesome. And anyway, I
(00:45):
it seemed to be having some kind of reaction that
is not usually what's supposed to happen when you get
this vaccine. I had a fever of a hundred and
one point seven and uh, just been sweating my up
butt off, kind of out of it. Feel like your
brain is sort of wrap in cotton a bit. Yeah.
So yeah, I remember you were telling me that about
(01:05):
one in one hundred people have a reaction that you're having. Well, okay,
I can't. I can't say with authority that that is true.
I was told by a gentleman on the elevator of
this building yesterday after I was because he happened to
get on the elevator while I was moving my arm
around because the injection site is on your upper arm
(01:27):
and it's very, very sore, and there's about a twenty
four hour period where your arm is supposed to hurt,
and you know, I was awkwardly moving my arm around
when he got on the elevator and he was like, oh,
what'd you get a vaccine? Like I said, yes, it
really hurts. He's like, what kind told him? It was
a TTAPP And he's like, oh, man, you know there's
about a one and one chance that you're going to
(01:48):
get a fever like I did. And I was like,
what got home? Guess what it manifested. I don't know
if that dude cursed me. Maybe he did. Maybe yeah,
maybe he in set did you somehow? I don't know. Well,
this guy Mett if you were described were to describe
him to someone, would you describe him as a doctor.
(02:10):
I couldn't say. Okay, I believe he lives in this building,
But you know, who knows. They're all kinds of different
and amazing people that live here and some that aren't
so amazing. This building is huge. Yes, there are people
that no one else knows lives here, right in the nooks,
the crannies, the unexplored areas of the of this Gargantlan thing.
(02:31):
And today we're talking about unexplored Gargantlan things. No, guys,
we hope that you appreciate this show because Matt has
pushed himself a little bit closer and closer to that
death's door. Dast so it is so dangerous for me
to do this right now. Well, at first I thought
that was a single tear coming out of your eye,
(02:52):
but appears to be blood. It's blood and sweat and
maybe it's here. So oh man, that's you know, that's
that's kind cool, like respect that cool. So we're we're
gonna get through this episode to tell you some exciting
stuff before hopefully uh my co host and producer, Matt
Madman Frederick it's your nickname for today, uh passes away
(03:16):
into the great beyond. Oh man, alright, cool, let's get
through this, no pressure. Let's just make this the best
one so um by way of an introduction, and and
that I'm joking right, you'll be fine. I don't know.
I thought I would be over much faster than us.
So maybe I'm just on a downward spiral. We'll find out.
(03:37):
What's cool. Man. A little delirium always helps his show.
That time I didn't sleep that was great. That was
my favorite episode. We've made some more. Really alright, well
this is gonna be the new favorite. Okay. So there's
this book that I really enjoy called The Atlas of
Remote Islands and who and for everyone who is a
(03:58):
book lover in the audience. And there's nothing wrong with
not being a book lover because a lot of books
are terrible. Let's face it, there are so many out
there now. I mean, we're not paid to be someone's
English teacher. We don't have to pretend that every book
is amazing. The world is just lousy with books that
you know are not going to be your favorites. That
doesn't mean that they themselves are objectively bad, just means
(04:20):
they're not for you. And every so often you run
into something on the other side of the spectrum, a
book that is so amazing that you can't even hold
onto it because you continually give it to other people saying,
I want to please check this out. This reminds me
of you, or whatever you say, but it kind of
becomes a part of your worldview almost. Yeah. And the
(04:44):
Atlas of Remote Islands, which is more of a travel
log than an actual atlas. It's it's just this book
of fifty different, very small islands and a small one
to two paragraph story about their history. And while I
was reading this book, uh, at least the first time,
(05:08):
what I became really captivated by, were the islands in
the Southern Hemisphere, not just you know, the the scattering, uh,
sparsely populated tiny islands in uh, the oceanic area, but also,
and even more so, the inhospitable barren places. The closer
(05:30):
you get to Antarctica, the more it seems as though
the natural world is telling you turn back, you know.
And that's what we're talking about today. We were talking
about Antarctica, the most mysterious continent. Let's get to some
of the facts. So Antarctica is the fifth largest continent
(05:51):
in the world. It's roughly twice the size of Australia, which,
you know, Australia is pretty big everybody, So that's a
lot of ice covered lands. It's home to the world's
freshwater supply and of the world's freshwater ice. And this
place is really cool. It's currently the coldest and the
(06:12):
windiest continent. It also possession possesses the highest average elevation
of any continent, which is crazy. That just means it's
full of those mountains. Yeah, that's another that's another interesting thing. Yeah,
because of the land mass of Antarctica is covered with ice.
And if it didn't have the highest average elevation, if
(06:33):
it did not have those mountains, then it would probably
be a covered with ice. Well maybe ninety nine or something.
But just because there's still be some land on the
coast in some places, Matt, this ice is three miles
thick cheese. So, to paraphrase so many horror movies, what
(06:54):
lay beneath? We know relatively little about this, and this
week we looked what people might find beneath the ice
if it all melted away. The ice in Antarctica comes
in two large categories. There's the Western sheet, is the
Eastern sheet. It extends all across the land like some
curse in a medieval fairy tale, and also into the
(07:16):
surrounding ocean. So what we'd like to do is talk
a little bit about some of the fringe theories and
some of the concepts that you will here related to Antarctica,
and it touches on so many other things, some of
which we've covered before and a couple of which I
would consider our greatest hits. Are some of my favorite stories. Yes,
(07:39):
and one of those is climate change. This is one
that really gets our audience riled up one way or
the other. And you know what, I'm in a state
at this point, Ben, I'm just gonna say it. Climate
change is real. This stuff is getting out of hand
and we're all gonna die. Well, of course, climate change
is real because climates change over time. I think what
(08:02):
a man made climate change is our fault. And yeah,
the Anthropocene right, Uh, the it's it's an interesting thing
you can always I don't know. I think it's so
clever what people do in the sorts of televised debate
debates where it's uh, they do the thought terminating clichef
(08:24):
let's call it climate change. Uh. Like now as we're
recording this this week, one of the big things are
the big things in international affairs would be uh, the
Iranian nuclear deal, and everyone's like nuclear deal, nuclear deal,
nuclear deal. But you have to dig yourself to find
the exact details. You have to you have to go
(08:45):
onto the internet and search. The mainstream news is not
really say, telling the details of stuff. And you know
what else just while wama rant here and this is
just gonna be so brief. Look, I understand when people
get very very emotional and angry about their their opinion
(09:09):
or what they see as the facts. Right when someone
because we get letters all the time, when someone says, well,
climate change, you know again another buzzword, right, because what
we're talking about is much more intricate, much more widespread,
specific things that are occurring right exactly, Uh, ocean acidification,
(09:32):
stuff like that, things that have been proven right, right,
and people were really arguing over the degree of it
and the cause of it. But just throwing buzzwords at people,
um kind of hacks the brain to get past the
cognitive ability and straight into the primitive reptile brain stuff
(09:52):
where all of a sudden, the person who believes climate
changes um not man made or believes you know that, uh,
some great lizard Messiah is going to emerge from a
volcano beneath the ocean. Whatever I'm saying, it doesn't matter
what people believe. It matters how you believe, and now
(10:14):
you support that belief. And it makes me, It makes
me just somewhere between um derisively, amused, and uh, incredibly
sad when I see people get super super emotional about
a thing and think that, you know, if I yell
at this person enough, if I am just angry enough,
(10:37):
then it don't matter. And then at that point you
have to ask yourself, are you trying to persuade that
person or you just trying to like get caught up
in a pitchfork party? Yeah? Or are you trying to
express your belief hard enough or reinforce your belief by yelling?
Oh yeah, yeah, Yeah, that's we should look at those,
uh psychological phenomenon to you know. That's when uh a
(10:59):
little bit inside baseball here. That's one show that I
pitched for brain Stuff. It's another show I do, and
they after we discussed it with the production team and stuff,
they didn't want me to do this episode, but it
was why you can't win an argument on the Internet,
And that's a great episode. Thanks, why don't we do it? Yeah?
(11:21):
But but okay, so aside from that that rant there, uh,
the forces of climate change clearly have impacted the planet
and are continuing apace. And we'll talk a little bit
now about the thing you were about to bring up,
because you can't talk about Antarctica without talking about ice,
(11:42):
and you can't talk about large amounts of ice without
talking about climate change. Right, yeah, So so with climate change,
we're we're talking about several things that really are happening.
Like I kind of mentioned earlier, sea levels really are rising,
and they're going to rise more in the future, or
at least they are projected to do so. Now, you
might also hear people claiming that Antarctica loses ice at
(12:05):
sometimes and then it gains it back at other times.
But there's a little bit of a discrepancy there. So
the whole thing, this whole idea hinges on a bit
of a misunderstanding. I think think of ice in Antarctica
as coming in two different types. So you've got your
land ice and you've got your sea ice. Now, the
(12:25):
sea ice itself is seasonal. It grows in the winter
as it gets colder, then it recedes just a little
bit in as it gets warmer. Or I mean it
can disappear almost completely over summer, but it's still it's
still always there. It just uh, it's kind of like
a if I make a bad comparison. Uh, it's kind
(12:47):
of like a person who maybe gains and loses weight
very easily. They have variations of weight. Yeah, there's a range.
There's essentially a range of weight. Yeah, and ice that
Antarctica takes on during the winder an't already gets some
water weight. Okay with that, Yeah, but like you were saying,
there's a there's a different kind of ice, right, Yeah,
(13:09):
the land the land ice is is very different. This stuff.
It acres slowly over time and it here's the problem,
is disappearing. Now you have to imagine that the land,
the ice that's on land, as it is melting, it's
increasing the amount of water, of liquid water that's in
(13:31):
the seas, right, because the amount of frozen water already
in the sea is part of the volume of the
ocean the sea were talking about. So let's let's advance
this further because there are probably some people who already
saying no, no, no, you totally don't get it. Well,
we have a we have a plot twist here that
(13:53):
a lot of people might not be aware of. This
change in land ice cannot be attributed solely to a
changing climate. For instance, look at Waite's Glacier. It's this large,
rapidly changing outlet of the West Antarctic ice sheet, and
it's it's being eroded by the ocean, sure, of course,
(14:16):
but it's also being melted by a different, uh different thing, yeah,
from below, from the geothermal heat that's being forced up
through it. And that that to me, Ben presents a
whole another issue. Yeah, whole, another whole other uh box
carve badgers, Yes, the box car badgers that are heating
(14:37):
up the earth from the inside. What's going on? Been
a whole another boot of birds, bag of yeah, uh,
can of chinchilla's. I could do this all day, Okay,
So yeah that you can check out the study by
researchers at the Institute for Geophysics at the University of
Texas at Austin or U T I G for those
(14:58):
of you who love an acronym, and that is in
a journal called the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
So they found they found that despite the popular debate,
as usually happens, there are other factors at play, and
it's not just a yes or no thing. It turns
out that geo thermal energy is our geo thermal heat
(15:22):
rather is changing the nature of the continent. And one
thing we should say about Antarctica, the history of Antarctica
that's just amazing is um it. It's only been an
ice covered continent for about thirty five million years, which
sounds a bit long in the tooth for us, but
in the grand scheme of things, that's like that's a
(15:44):
bad weekend, right and uh, and it could totally come back.
It used to be a subtropical thing that looked a
lot like the modern day of Pacific Northwest for anyone
who's been there, cool beautiful place. People still aren't sure
what happened thirty million years ago, because apparently, just in
the scheme of things, the way this ice across the
(16:07):
land and covered the place happened very quickly. So we
don't know. We don't know what happened, and we don't
know exactly how Antarctica works. For lack of a better phrase,
we're not for lack of trying, though we've set up
we the human species has set up research facilities across
the land in a couple of places. You know. One
(16:30):
of the things that I found really interesting was who
owns Antarctica? Yes, yes, yes, And when you look online
you can find the maps of the segments that Antarctic
the way it's split up, because it goes from the
South Pole or the UM. I think it's the actual
I don't. I can't remember if it's the actual South
Pole or the magnetics. Yeah, I think it's the ceremonial
(16:53):
South Pole. You're talking about the Antarctic Treaty right, Yes,
signed in Washington on in December of nineteen fifty nine
by twelve countries who the people who signed it were
just the twelve countries whose scientists have been futs and
around down there. They were. They were active during what's
called the International Geophysical Year of fifty seven and fifty eight.
(17:17):
So it but it's really cool. Looks like a PI
pie chart. Yeah, yeah, yeah, with all the flags arranged
around it. Yeah. The treaty itself is something that UM
we can talk about in detail. Do you want to
do it now or do you want to do it later?
We can do it, we can do it, Let's do
it later. Either way, I'm sorry. I just kept thinking
imagining who actually gets to study which parts, and and
(17:41):
if you're going to get different research on the northeastern side,
that's very different from the research you get on the southwest.
Even if there's there's like a good neighborhood of Antarctico.
Maybe I don't know. I imagine if you're a biologist,
that answers absolutely true. Um, I guess it depends on
your field of study. Right. Sure. You know a while
(18:01):
ago there was an expedition that you and I talked
about a few years back. Um, actually we should get
into that later later. Sorry spoiler alert anyway, just to
sew it up. Geo thermal energy, If human beings build
permanent settlements on the continent of Antarctica and get rid
of the ice and yes, yes, before the emails come in.
(18:23):
By permanent settlement, I mean like a nation state or colony.
I don't mean a research center, which is a beautiful thing,
but does not a country make. And uh, the but
if if people ended up actually living an Antarctica, the
if we're gonna be nationalistic the U s A A yes, wait,
(18:45):
I think that's already an insurance. Yeah, USA just buys Antarctica,
UM or some other large corporation Google owns Antarctica. So anyway,
these people could easily end up powering their society by
geo thermal energy, which sounds like science fiction, but it's
totally possible. I am now imagining the a country that
(19:09):
goes through and just burrows through the three miles of ice,
makes giant walls to keep the ice away, and has
a civilization that's kind of surrounded by these ice walls.
Oh right, living inside the walls of the canyon, similar
to um the similar to the Native American groups. Yeah,
(19:29):
so the thing is, it's not science fiction. It's happening now,
just in a different country. Oh, Iceland is not the
big ice walls, but Iceland. Iceland derives the majority of
its power from geothermal energy. So it's so it's completely possible.
But it's also true that the nuances of anti the
(19:51):
Antarctic climates or the long term effects are still largely there.
There's still some quite to answer, just because this geothermal
stuff is relatively recent at least our understanding of it
and the effects of this, the long term effects kind
of anybody's guess. We we still don't exactly know, you
(20:14):
know what happened thirty five million years ago. We're catching up.
We're like people who started watching Seinfeld today. Oh no kidding,
Oh but there there's so much to learn though, at
least and and being there's so much to enjoy. Yeah,
okay that in that case, the comparison holds. I'm just
a little bit sour about it because you know, I
(20:34):
had never really watched a lot of a lot of
that stuff, and then I ended up I just started
watching it. I'm still in that moment where I realized
that all four of the main characters problems could be
solved by having a cell phone. Oh wow, that's true,
if they were able to just communicate immediately, if they well,
(20:56):
it's it seems like a lot of the things are
based on yeah, uh yeah, Harold structure and improv or something.
Oh that's why. Oh my gosh, Ben, I never thought
about that before. That's huge, is it. I'm sure that
somebody else's I'm sure, I'm sure, but thank you. I
went to uh, I went to New York and saw
(21:17):
the not not for this thing, but you know, I
was traveling and as as you know, Matt, we we
saw the Seinfeld apartment. Uh, And it was just something
that it's just something that TV company made too as
a recreation. But I always startled that so many people
(21:38):
like the show. There are people around the block, down
the street to a different street. It is very crazy.
I don't know if it was just the neighborhood or
if it's that popular. It was a big deal. My
my parents liked it a lot. I'm gonna feel strange
if I ever have to meet uh Uh Seinfeld, Jerry
Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, if I ever have to meet them,
(22:00):
because I don't know. I don't know. I guess I
just like, hey, guys, Uh, I understand your show is
quite popular, and I don't think we're ever gonna meet
the congratulations. Who knows they might be listening now anyway. Anyhow,
tangents abound in this episode. Let's move to one of
the Let's let's cut straight to the chase, one of
the episodes we did early on in our career together.
(22:24):
Nazis in the Hollow Earth. Yes, the idea of that perhaps,
or there is the idea that there is a civilization
that exists below the crust of the earth. And as
crazy as it sounds that there is some type of
inner star that powers the civilization beneath us, and there's
(22:45):
a powerful civilization that can that the Nazis at least
thought perhaps a small group of the Nazis, Yeah, I
thought could come up, come out from the bowels of
the earth and help them win their battles. Because as
the National Socialists, these factions of National Socialist ak Nazis today, um,
(23:06):
as they new with a strange and mystic religious certitude,
these uh, these denizens of the inner world were also
totally totally arian, Yeah, yeah, totally and down for the
cause right right, and cared about what was happening between
(23:28):
in these political political maneuvers. So well we did find
with that, and you can check out our video on
the topic, is that, uh, it is true. You know
that that stuff you see on the History Channel can
be often disingenuous, but it is true that factions of
the Nazi Party had an intense belief in the occult,
(23:52):
which we've talked about with Zaan nimberbt right, yeah, and uh,
the belief in real and trying to reconstruct this new mythology.
And there really were um, there really were government financed
quests to find things like these hidden mystical lands like
(24:13):
Shambala cheng La and or in the case of Antarctica
and entrance to the underworld. Yes, yeah, and there was
um there was actually a plan to colonize part of
Antarctica as a means of expanding the German wailing industry
(24:36):
at the time. And that leads to at least supposedly, yeah,
right in new Swabia. But as we as we learned,
and as you can see if if you look into
some of the historical documents available, uh, no one, no
one found any entrance. And that's not to say there's
(24:59):
not an extensive, if possible, cave system in Antarctica. I
would say they're most definitely is just because of the
ice over time and then refreezing, the melting and refreezing
the way caves form. Oh yeah, yeah, So there might
be something there, but we have at this point we
have little evidence of We we know a little bit
(25:22):
about what kind of life might be there, but we
know very little about it. We do also have another
thing that we should bring up, and I think we
did an episode on this to Matt, this belief in
the the National Socialist Nazi Party exploring and attempting to
take over Antarctica ties in with a little known story
(25:44):
in US history as well. Right, ah, Operation high Jump? Yes?
Are we we chased them? Or we we at least
followed the Nazis down towards Antarctica? Let's do well, let's
do the movie version of that. How would you how
would you say them? If you were if you were
pitching the movie version of Operation to High Jump? How
(26:06):
would you? How would you pitch it to me? Okay,
like we're in the elevator. We I've got five seconds
before we get to next Yeah, I'll help you pitch
to Let's say Noel Is. Uh, Noel Is, who's a
good director. Who's the director that you would other than nol?
He has to be someone else. Oh, and he has
to be someone else. Let's go with Michael Bay. No.
(26:29):
I mean I could see him being able to sell
this movie though. Oh god, yeah, let's do Bay. He
could sell this. Okay. So if we're pitching Operation High
Jump to Michael Bay, what will we say? All right,
this is how we go? All right, sub Bay? So
check this out. I got this idea for a movie,
I think, Uh. United States Military Navy giant ships. Right
(26:53):
then you've got Nazi ships too, right, so there there
this one section Nazi ships, United States and other ships
heading towards Antarctica. Right then they get into these battles.
Were well, we're gonna make them get into battles because
we need explosions, right right, bay, Okay, so what else? Oh?
This was? Yeah, this is good. I think that. I
(27:14):
think he would go, um, all right, it'stop you have
any explosions and naval ships. Now can these ships transform? Yeah?
I didn't. The battleship I don't remember who did. Battleship
was Oliver Stone? Oh god, I don't think. All right, yeah,
it's it's if we were doing that in a world
(27:35):
kind of kind of intro, we could tell some great
stories about high Operational High Jump. The thing is they
would not be the truth. Wicked Leaks has been involved
in in bringing up bringing up some documents related to
the activities at the time. So first let's talk about
what Operation High Jump actually was supposed to be. It
(27:59):
was led by I named Richard E. Byrd. He was
a rear admiral of the U. S. Navy, and their
mission was to establish a research base. Their official mission
with the charming name of Little America for I don't know,
Little America for that that's gonna be look look interesting
(28:20):
on a postcard, right, And so, according to the official
Navy Naval Report, at least they had objectives. They had
six objectives. The second of those was this idea of
consolidating and extending severnty over as much of Antarctic as
they could make sense. That's what we do, That's what Yeah,
(28:40):
that's what people in general seemed to be quite fond of.
But the the Wicked Leaks reports seemed to seem to
prove that the underlying motivation for this was not so
much the uh National Socialist Party but the Soviet Party.
(29:05):
The the USS are because Operation high Jump occurred in
forty six and forty seven, so that would be after
World War right after World War two, has concluded. And
the reason the theory that we've we've often heard is
that while uh Nazis regrouped to a secret place in
(29:26):
your Swabia and Operation high Jump was part of a
secret war, a secret atomic war or something. But what
it seems to be more of is more evidence that
immediately after World War Two, the Cold War began, even
before it ended right right even before it ended, and
(29:49):
they're they're different. Um, there are different interpretations of that.
I'll probably go on to Facebook and Twitter where you
can follow us a conspiracy stuff. Yeah, and UH dropped
the links for anybody who wants to check out more
at least of what Wicked Leaks has to say regarding
Operation High Jump. Now we get to one of the
(30:11):
most exciting things, the most exciting thing about this stuff.
People found fossils into Antarctica. So I smelts, what else
are we gonna find? What other kind of life is
going to be there, like living life or just more fossils. Well,
(30:31):
we know that all the fossils that have been found
so far, at least all the big ones. When you're
thinking of you know, large flora and fauna, Uh, dinosaurs,
I'll just say it. Dinosaurs is kind of weird. Dinosaurs
are we gonna find and maybe we'll find a dinosaur civilization. Uh.
All the fossils we found so far, the majority are
(30:53):
from margins of coastal islands, exposed mountain rock places. Um,
because those are a few places that don't have like
miles of ice over them. Uh. And because the continent
was not always so cold because it was a subtropical
climate for so long, we know that there had to
be uh an abundance of life. Sure, I was looking
(31:18):
for the right word that didn't have a curseword in it.
So during the Cretaceous period it did enjoy a warmer,
lusher climate. And that Cretaceous period started a hundred forty
four million years ago, it ended sixty five million years ago,
And those fossils are are pretty exciting. Just a few
things we've seen on and scientists have identified a handful
(31:42):
of dinosaur species that they think are you know, if
not uniquely Antarctic, have been identified at least as as
something that would have lived in the Antarctic and not
just like single animal, but that indicates larger population. However,
what you said just then was by far the most
(32:03):
exciting thing. What we might not just be looking for
relics of life gone by. We may find living things
life in action. Yet, Yeah, and who knows the size
of these things. It would probably be much smaller micro
level like micro level life or even bacteria. Maybe a
(32:25):
little bit larger than that, because there are other places
that we can kind of point to that are somewhat
like Antarctica. And there is this one place in particular
that we know of might hold these things or these keys,
and it's already been looked at a bit. It's this
place that you may have heard of called Lake Vostok.
(32:46):
It's this pristine freshwater lake that's buried two and a
half miles below solid ice. That's three point seven kilometers
by the way, for everyone outside of Namibia and the
US and mean mar the countries. It's about the size
of Lake Ontario, one of the great lakes here in
the US, and it's the largest of the more than
(33:10):
two hundred liquid lakes that are strewn across Antarctica. Right. Yes,
beneath that ice there is more than simply stone and
fossils and dead things mountains. Yeah, there's there's lakes man
freshwater lakes that are liquid. And what we've learned is
(33:31):
that these lakes are created when again the geothermal heat,
the energy from Earth's core, melts the bottom of the
ice sheet. Uh. This is maybe counterintuitive to some folks,
but the thick blanket of ice on top access insulation.
These lakes don't get out much. No, they don't. They
(33:51):
just kind of they I don't know they're they're happy.
They like the quiet life, and that's perhaps why they've
been isolated for hundreds of thousands, two millions of years.
That and and when something's isolated that long, if you're
familiar with the evolution to creepy, in my opinion, the
(34:11):
creepy evolution of cave dwelling creatures, then you know that
hundreds of thousands, well more millions of years gives creatures
space to adapt. And so you know, as you can assume,
scientists are really excited to get into these lakes like
Lake voll Stark and really do as much research as possible,
(34:35):
go as deep as you can into the lake, and
just explore it as much as possible can Can you
imagine being a scientist and discovering perhaps even a new
type of life at the bottom of one of these lakes. Yeah, yeah,
I'd be like the academic version of Kanye West. You
could drop all the mics of yelling at people at
(34:55):
meet ups for readings. I would interrupt people's find present
I would interrupt people's presentations on their findings. Even if
you found microbial life, right, but what if you found
something bigger? Yes? So here, Yeah, so scientists have raced
to collect water samples from Lake Vostok, and and this
(35:19):
was relatively controversial because what we are essentially doing when
we do something like that is that we are breaking
the seal on something ancient, right, and going through here.
What the scientists found was they found life. They found
(35:40):
living things in there, and to me, that's, um, that's
kind of well, it's it's beautiful. I choose to interpret
it as beautiful rather than ominous. But you're right, Matt,
they found bacteria, but they found more than that too. Yeah.
They they found over one hundred multicellular species, which is
(36:03):
that's huge. That they even found some species that are
generally associated with mollusks and fish. And there was even
one researcher who I think said, well, with all these findings,
we might even have fish in there somewhere, And then
he very quickly was like, okay, well maybe not fish,
all right, right, because it's so difficult to uh, it's
(36:24):
so difficult to present scientific findings to the you know,
general Well, I would say it's not it's not difficult
to present this stuff to general public, because there's this
great there's this great error that people often make about
quote unquote the general public. The quote Titian the common man,
(36:45):
and that is to say that a single individual is smart,
but a group is stupid. Now, as as convenient as
that might be, as fun as it might be to
read on like a very negative Hallmark card, Uh, I've
never seen that before. The fact of the matter is
that people are that that people are intelligent, and you know,
(37:08):
cognitively people are similar to the old story about goldfish.
Our our intelligence grows to the size of its container.
So who makes the container? Who frames the debate? It's
not it's not that it's not that scientists will report
something and everybody in the world is all of a
(37:31):
sudden just dumb about it. No, it's that they report something,
but then it is uh condensed and twisted into something
that can be told in two minutes and thirty seconds
before shifting to a picture of like a cat that
accidentally sneezed while it farted, which I would watch. But
(37:53):
so I I don't think like I don't. I think
it's just a huge error to say that he had
to he had to withdraw that might have fish thing
because people wouldn't understand it. But what he was probably
more concerned with was someone who wants a really good headline,
grabbing it and running with it and saying, and I'm
sure they did. Fish. I don't remember seeing the headline,
(38:15):
but I'm sure it existed. And so so we do know, though,
that this is exciting, right, there's there's a great lead here,
there's evidence that compels us because this is one of
how many Lakes said, I've already found some evidence. We
already know there's gonna be something down there, Bend. That's
gonna be Oh, I don't know. I cannot There's gonna
(38:39):
be a dinosaur. Yeah, I cannot wait, ancient civilization, alien life,
a pyramid, Let me a pyramid. Are you kidding me?
That would be great. I don't know if it will be.
You know it will happen, No, probably not, probably not.
I'm gonna keep hoping. And well, I was gonna say praying,
but well, we we live. That's the thing. Though we live.
(39:00):
Really don't know. It's it's such an it's such an
exciting thing. And often we as a species think about space,
deep space, as as the vast unexplored territory. But this
is vast unexplored territory that you know, and the cosmically
in in a cosmic sense or cosmic scale, is right
(39:23):
next to us. We're all be there, and I'm interested
to see. I'm very interested in the future of Antarctica,
and I know you are too. As a matter of fact,
this is one of the things that we talked about
off air that would be uh, one of the most
important coming developments, and that is who owns it precisely,
(39:46):
who will own Antarctica in the future, right, Yes, So
we talked about that treaty, the Antarctic Treaty. The It
started out with twelve countries and now there are five
d two because they would start signing the terms of
it so they could send scientists down do some research.
(40:06):
It has a couple of very big provisions. The first
one is that ANTARCTICUS shall be used for peaceful purposes only,
So no nuclear bases, guys, no submarine reups, none of that.
I feel like that's a tough thing to enforce, but
well it's not. It's not impossible. I'm I'm sure it's
(40:32):
a pain in the vibe. Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean,
just to even get a ship down there. Well, other
other islands in the area that are owned by various
countries as research islands may not have those same stipulations.
So for instance, um, if you're you know, like Queen
(40:55):
maud Islands or excuse me, Queen maud Land is part
of Antarctica, but what about the islands off of that?
Do they also qualify? And these are things that are
answered in the treaties, but the answers may differ at
certain points in time or in in territorial reckoning. Another
(41:18):
thing is that freedom of scientific investigation Antarctic and cooperation
towards that end should continue. So if your scientists from
the US and knowles scientists from Finland, and I'm a
scientist from Azerbaijan or whatever, it doesn't matter, then no
(41:40):
matter what's really going on with our countries, we should
be able to cooperate as academics and scientific observation and
results from Antarctica shall be made freely available. Snow keeping secrets.
Now saying we've discovered the ruins of an ancient alien civilization,
no one tell Greg you know what. I actually we
(42:02):
probably shouldn't tell Gregg. He's just gonna get so excited,
you know how he is. He's gonna start telling everybody
that he found it. He is. I wish he never
started that tumbler. Look what I found dot tumbler dot com. Yeah.
But so all right, so right now there is this
(42:22):
there is this agreement that holds. But this agreement, this
treaty uh is going to come under some increasing pressure
as as Antarctica becomes increasingly accessible, right and important? Once
the ice melts? What what kind of mineral deposits are
(42:43):
looking out at under there? You know? Yeah, who's gonna
be here's the crazy thing. Who's gonna be worried about
Antarctica when all this ice is melting? But well, you know, actually,
now that I think about a little bit more, if
the land ice really starts melting at an increase rate
to a point where this land is livable, we're gonna
(43:04):
have to find new places for humans to live. Maybe
this is the answer. Wow, I don't Yeah, I know,
these coastal cities, I can't live there anymore. Yeah, but
what's the span of time for that too? That's a
large span of time. But eventually Antarctica might be the answer.
It might Eventually it might be the new neighborhood for
(43:27):
people for a few million years until the next nine stage. Maybe. Yeah,
And that depends on Oh, we shall also talk about
the polls next. But the so yeah, so Antarctica is
has the potential to become a hot spot for international competition,
similar to the North Pole, where uh soon probably if
(43:49):
if you're listening, it's probably within your lifetime. Uh. The
there will be parts of the gear where the ice
at the North Pole melts to the point where ships
can navigate across, which would be tremendous for international shipping
and also very dangerous for very dangerous for the countries
(44:14):
involved as they negotiate peace. You know. Uh, we're talking
about this software too. Once upon a time, Uh, once
upon a time, Alaska was called McKinley's folly because he
spent so much money on it. How would you buy
all this? Right? And you know, listeners who are not
based in the US. I was thinking from this perspective
(44:36):
when I looked at a map of the fifty U.
S States recently, and I thought, man, yeah, Alaska looks weird.
Alaska looks like how did you call that? What happened? Uh? So? Uh?
The but the idea of these poles of the world
becoming becoming new regional hot spots or new global hotspots
(44:57):
is not as strange as it might sounds. And I
know that it can be tremendously controversial for people to
talk about that stuff, but um, it's the fact is
it's happening. People are just talking about why it's happening
and what the timeline is. But the to to paraphrase
(45:20):
the old opera quote, the lady has sang saying this
is this is happening. There's not There's not much people
could do to bring back the ice. Right, Eventually it
will eventually, at least in the in the North Pole. Uh,
it will it will be uh navigable by water because
(45:42):
it won't be that ice there all the year. But again,
also I should probably hedge my bets there because I said,
in your lifetime, but we're not sure. Yeah, we're not
sure how old you are either. Listener. Yeah, that's a
very good point. So I'd like anybody who is who
studies the climate professionally and to let me know your estimates,
would love to read them on air. Oh and speaking corrections,
(46:04):
we do have another one. I messed this up. I
slipped when we were talking um in in our earlier
episodes on on World War Three. It was Nikita Krushchev
who gifted Crimea to Ukraine in ninet, not Stalin. Yeah,
(46:28):
it was Skruschev. So the uh, the last last thing
we talked about here is uh the pole shifting. Oh yes,
which came up recently on our social media. Right. Uh,
here's the long story short. All the evidence indicates that
every so often the magnetic poles of Earth shift. So
(46:56):
what this means is, essentially, the north pole becomes a
south pole, south pole becomes north pole. Most times it
happens gradually the poles start to slowly shift away from
their part, and then the north that your compass points
to is not the geographical north right. And this, I mean,
this is something people know if you use a compass.
(47:18):
But other times it's just flipped like like fresh, like
the life of the Fresh Prince of val Air and
his theme song just gets flipped turned upside down. And
this but this, uh, you know, I just bring this
up because they're talking about the polls. Every so often
(47:39):
you hear people worrying about this. This is another thing
where we know that historically we're overdue for it. But uh,
when when does that date actually come? Do? No one
knows really how to calculate it well, and the effects
of a of a polar versal like that. It's because
(47:59):
we're talking about the magnet the magneto sphere and you know,
the inner mechanics of the magnetic nature of Earth. Um.
I don't have all that information Ben about how what
it's going to do exactly when it happens. But it
seems like the effects aren't going to be massive. No, No, well,
(48:21):
I think the effects will be probably the effects probably
be massive for certain migratory species that depend on that reckoning,
uh to navigate the world, so to understand which way
is north? You know? Uh? And oh and no, speaking
of north. As we sow this up, guys, I know
(48:44):
we didn't get to everything. We're a little over our time.
I just saw my buddy Kristen and stuff. Mom never
told you walked by. Well we well, first thing we
have to do, Ben really fast stock miss Okay, No, yes, man,
I just I just had to talk to you that.
(49:04):
I just need to hear your voice. I was feeling scared. No,
if you know, looks good. You kind of you kind
of unhinged. Sorry, I'm really sorry. It's I've just never
seen you like this, man. Worry, it's very strange because
I'm freezing right now, but I know my internal temperature
is very hot, and I've got my hoodie on. It's
a horrible it's kind of hot water bottle nestles underneath
(49:26):
his chin like that. It's the blood like your face. Yeah,
it's so funny. I was watching Mr Robot last night
and this isn't really a spoiler alert, but I just okay,
So he is kicking a habit. One of the characters
is kicking a habit, and he's having the night sweats
(49:50):
and going through all that stuff, and I was watching it,
identifying so hard with his character at that moment. Holy crap,
you like in the show? Oh yeah, I watched the
first episode. I really enjoyed. I need to. I can't
speak highly enough about it. The cinematography of this past episode.
I can't place that guy. I feel like I've seen
(50:11):
him in something that I like, but I cannot, for
the life of me, figure out what it was. I'm
not positive either now. I just seen him as that character,
all right, Ben? Sorry, no, no, no, did this uh
this antarctic discussion at least cool you down? Are you
gonna are you gonna do? Are you gonna put in
Did you just put in like a drum roll? Yeah?
(50:32):
I did it with my mind. Okay, well we'll hear
it in post. Looks like Antarctic of my ice is
melting rapidly. Well, it's time to trundle you off to
a sick bed. So well, uh, no, I have to
I have to ask you. I have to ask both
of you guys, would you, given the chance, take a
trip to Antarctica? Don't they do like cruises or something. Yeah,
(50:53):
I got very close to us sneaking aboard. I mean
not as a stowaway. I get very what do my
friends family? She was, uh, she was going with them
because her parents had, I don't know, retired or was
the anniversary or something. And they said, oh, we're gonna
go to Antarctica. And it was like a punishment. It's
more affordable if more people go with us, and so
(51:17):
you know, I'm here cheap skate, So I said, how
affordable is what do you mean? You know? I might
have different ideas, but I was all set to go
and then apparently, and I can only tell this story
on the air because I'm not going to use the names,
but apparently turned out it was more the dad's thing,
and the wife eventually put her foot down and said,
(51:39):
you know, this is my anniversary too. Why the hell
are we going to Antarctica? What are you trying to
say about our marriage? Which is which was a which
is a nice little But that was my one chance
to go. And there was another expedition where these guys
were going to send people out to find an entrance
to the Hollow Earth and yeah, and you could sign
(52:01):
up online to submit your qualifications and this was, um
we were working together. So remember I never heard back
from him. So, guys, if you're checking out the show,
let me know how it went. We'll go on the
next one if you're If you let us, I don't know.
Maybe their WiFi is not good being in the hollow
Earth and all. Uh so, no, what do you what
(52:22):
do you think about the episode before we close out anything? No,
I don't know how anything in particular. I think you
guys were thorough as usual. Um, I think there's some
interesting things to think about. I don't think we were
a man. I think there's so much more we could do.
I want to go to Antarctica, sign up on a
research station, put my two years in or whatever, and uh,
(52:42):
I want to find the thing. You want to find
the thing, you know, I think it's down there. I
think there's a possibility too that we talked about it, like,
could you accidentally dig too deep and resurrect some contagion
or pathogens? The thing was, by the way, what is
the thing? The thing was an alien life form that landed. Yeah,
(53:05):
but it's so it's hard to say exactly what it
is because you don't really see its natural shape. It's
the ambiguous type for a while. Yeah, but yeah, we know.
I mean, you didn't even talk about that a possible
contagion or a viral life form that lives there. We
should get to. We should do that in a future
(53:25):
episode about a disease wiping out the earth, which is
one of the one of historically one of the most
dangerous disasters, right, even more so than an earthquake. Quick
trivia question. Yes, we can cut this if you want.
It was a trivia question the other week when I
was playing, Um, do you know the names of the
two types of plague that made up the black plague?
(53:52):
And then there's the other one, uh, Gregg's plague. I've
already forgotten what it us. You've already forgotten what us.
I think it was like Numonic christianneumonic plague. That's what
it was exactly. It was the bubonic plaguneumonic place. It
sounds like a fun plague that it helps you remember
(54:14):
the mubonic plague. Ye, well, well, plates are well plagued.
On that note, we're we better get out of here
before Kristen Kristy comes back for revenge. Uh. So we
hope that you did enjoy this episode. Again, there's a
(54:35):
lot of stuff we didn't get to h but we
would like to hear from you with your thoughts on
the future of Antarctic up any of the things we've
discussed before, and any ideas you have for an upcoming episode. Additionally,
if you want to take a page from some of
the folks who have been tweeting us and writing to us, uh,
such as Cheryl and Sean and recommending some places that
(54:59):
we should check out or people we should talk to
while we are in the district of Columbia before we
get disappeared or arrested, and go ahead and let us
know directly. Our email is Conspiracy at how stuff works
dot com. From more on this topic, another unexplained phenomenon.
(55:22):
Visit YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also
get in touch on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy stuff.
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