February 2, 2021 • 38 mins
From hidden catacombs to wild rumors about a hollow earth, the world is full of subterranean stories. But which are total bunk, and which have the ring of truth? Tune in to learn more with Ben and Matt in this week's Classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So unless you are listening to this in an airplane,
your feet are resting on something, and that is rested
on something, and eventually it's all resting on the planet Earth.
Thanks gravity. You're you're pretty dependable, if somewhat mysterious. This
classic episode is about all the stuff under the surface
(00:23):
of the planet. Uh, there's there's a lot going on.
There's a weird stuff there. There really is. And you
get bonus points if you listen to this episode without
headphones inside a cave of some sort. So just keep
that in mind, maybe hold off, you can pause right now,
find yourself a cave, and then play it again. You'll
get those bonus points. Just soaking that natural reverb. Love
(00:45):
a good catacomb. Here it is from UFOs two Ghosts
and Government cover ups. History is writted with unexplained events.
You can turn back now or learn the stuff they
don't want me to now. Hello, welcome back to the show.
My name is Matt and I am then and today
(01:07):
we're going deep. Yes, we're going deep literally, figuratively, metaphorically,
and I'm sure a couple of elites that I've forgot
to mention the big question here To start us off,
Matt is, can we be happy underground? Not the bend
Fold song, but the honest question. Sure, I think we
(01:31):
can be happy underground. There are lots of different people
who have been happy underground. You know, we hide in
our homes. We build these structures so it feels like
we're somewhat underground. We lived in caves. Humans lived in
caves for a very long time because we need shelter,
and what better shelter than the thing that's right beneath
(01:52):
you and closed and closed. In this episode, we are
going to talk about the world beneath your feet now, Matt,
you and I have are are midway through our series
this week, which is on catacombs primarily, but then on
also other other ancient hidden things. I think we brought
(02:14):
our classics Crystal skull episode back. Yeah, Crystal skulls. It's
that's a polarizing episode. Oh yeah, no kidding people, people
are mad at us. One of my favorite things about that,
as a side note, um is how many people felt
so strongly about the video or that they didn't watch,
(02:35):
that they saw the title and ran directly to the
comments to say, you guys are full of b s.
These things are not actual alien artifacts, which is pretty
much what we say in the video. But you know,
you'd have to watch it, you know, And I'm and
I'm always like, well, did you see Indiana Jones three four?
I mean, I don't know whichever one that came out, Yeah,
(03:00):
with the Indiana Jones the uh. But but all of
that aside um and you know, I'm I'm just joshing
a little bit with the YouTube commanders. I know, people
get heated, but all of that aside, It did bring
up some really interesting topics that we had touched on before. Now,
this is a little bit close to our episode on
(03:21):
deep underground military bases, but it's much bigger. It's more
of a grab bag. So first to understand if we
can really be happy underground, we have to understand what
underground is, which means we need a quick recap of
Earth's structure. And luckily it's pretty simple, right and thankfully,
there's this thing called geology that looks at rocks and
(03:44):
you know, what are we on but one giant rock
that has a multi middle. So we live, all of us,
you listening right now, We live on the surface of
the Earth, and then directly below that surface there's the
crust and sexy name. Oh yeah, that rusty crust, and
where it comes out of the mouth. Strangely, it's three
(04:05):
to six miles thick, and that's that's underneath the ocean.
And then it's around two forty some forty miles underneath
the surface of the land. And that's that's really thin
when you think about it. If you think about how
large the Earth actually is very thin. So imagine an apple. Okay,
(04:25):
it's kind of the skin. Think about the skin in
that tiny little layer that is the crust. Uh, And
under the skin in this apple comparison, we have the
mushy insides known as the mantle. The mantle is the
largest part of earth earth structure. It's really really hot,
(04:46):
which might be counterintuitive to some people because you know,
we know that people live in caves for a while
because it holds a cold temperature better in an arid environment.
But once you get down to where the pressure is increasing, Uh,
it's a whole differ from ball games. So the mantle,
even though it's hot, and it's hot enough that parts
of it would melt, it stays solid, primarily because the
(05:10):
pressure deep inside the planet is too great to permit melting. However,
when it does melt, you know, in a plate shifts
or something like that, boom, magma makes its way to
the outer crust. Sorry, Pompeii, that's just how it goes.
So then you keep going down and you get to
the core. Now the core has two different parts. There's
(05:31):
there's an inner core and an outer core. The outer
one is it's liquid. I mean, it's the kind of
the the magma stuff, but it's just underneath the earth.
That's just kind of pressure, super pressure, like Ben was saying,
with the mantle. And then you've got if you keep
going down all the way, you get to the very center,
(05:51):
which is theorized right to be solid. Yes, but it's
basically and this thing is crazy hot. It's it's almost
it's not as hot as the sun. It's almost as
hot as the sun right right, and again according to
the estimations, because no human being that we know of
has uh gotten remotely close to it. However, this is
(06:13):
interesting because you know, when we were talking about the
hollow earth theories, there were people who said, well, of
course the core appears to be as hot as the
sudden because there is a mini tour sun within the
core of the Earth. Neither you nor I really bought
just do due to what we understand about the magnetosphere
(06:34):
and the physics involved right in gravitational pull and stuff,
it seems very difficult to explain how that could that
sort of condition could be true. But but a fascinating story.
Fascinating story, and it is true that we know diad
lee about the core of the Earth. Really we we
(06:54):
make these guesses. You know, it's really hot, that's not
tough to guess. And oh it's maybe it's a nickel
alloy of some sort of you know, hopefully we'll find out.
But if we dig in and we say that, all right,
everything that people are doing, as far as the science goes,
everything that people are doing inside Earth so far is
(07:16):
just going to different areas of the crust. People do
live in cave homes, right, People go to ground all
the time. They live in caves um and have as
you mentioned Matt for for right, Oh yeah, yeah, they're
their cave homes all over Australia, um and throughout the world.
There are cave homes, ancient ancient cave sure structures where
(07:41):
people would live ale a little. They look like cities
almost you've seen these canyon settlements in the United States,
and there are there are a lot of reasons that
a human group would go there. There's temperature regulation. Um,
there's all kinds of escaping dangerous environments, maybe even dangerous animals, predators. Um, yes,
(08:02):
I'm safety was a huge issue. Different to have a
group moving towards a cave or at least underground. I
remember we've seen some older settlements, you know, ancient semblents
like those two that we always mispronounce, go both of us, Uh,
go go back lea tepe and kaya hilke is how
(08:23):
it's spelled. Yeah, I'm just gonna let you do that.
But one thing you do have to deal with now
that you're living basically underneath a large piece of rock
or underneath a cave, inside of a cave, and it's
the you gotta worry, worry about the earth itself kind
of fighting against your Yeah. So if there's any kind
of earthquakes shifts, bad news, right absolutely. And this means that,
(08:50):
of course, you could be in a cave in if
you dig too deep. Hobbit holes are real thing. Uh.
There's the idea of building a house sort of on
a structures, so it's not actually cave, it's not in bedrock,
it's just covered with dirt. Um. There are also these
ongoing plans to build massive permanent living areas underground. One
(09:13):
of the one of the most science fiction type ones
is this thing called Alice City, which already sounds like
it's an autom a right uh in Japan, And it's
these two domes and these shafts that go way deep
into the ground. And there are all sorts of plans
to try to make it okay to live in there.
Um because, as we're about to see, many people love
(09:35):
to visit underground, but uh not a lot of people
want to live there. And that way, it's kind of
similar to Orlando. Yeah, I've been there a couple of times.
I enjoyed. I enjoyed my time while I was there. Briefly,
this is the part met where during our show, somebody's
listening right now, and um, yes, it's true. We can
(09:56):
hear your thoughts just a little bit. We know that
you're thinking, Hey, people already have these massive underground living complexes. Governments, right,
private entities have have something like that. But we're not
talking about the doomsday bunkers. Uh, those things are contingency plants.
They're not people living in those twenty four hours a day.
(10:18):
Right now, we're talking about a commercial thing in underground city, um.
Much more than an apartment complex where you could be
born and die and never go to the surface world.
We're talking about that more people type stuff, right. That's
a great scenario. So okay, so let's talk a little
bit about how deep we've actually gone we Okay, you know,
(10:40):
no one's gone too deep into the mantle, um. But
let's just talk about the deepest hole that's ever been
at least thus far. It's it's called the Kola Super
Deep Borehole and that's it's where Russia basically reached a
depth of seven and a half miles And it's the
deep this man made hole on the planet currently and
(11:02):
it's probably gonna stay that way for a while, just
given the crazy temperatures involved with the process of trying
to get that deep. What do you mean, Well, it's crazy, hot, man.
And think about if you've got boring technology, just a
massive metal drill and you're just going down and down
and down. Eventually you're gonna hit a point where your
(11:23):
equipment is going to just fail and it's not going
to be able to function. Um. And then what if
you get into kind of the more liquid e molten areas, Oh,
where the where the pressure makes the rock behave more
like a plastic Yeah, and then what do you do
It gets all gunked up on your drill. You're trying
to get it out. If you get if you get
a little bit out, there's gonna be just more fills
(11:45):
it in, like like you would if you hit a
pool of water. Yeah. Yeah, And uh. The thing that
taught me about this, because I remember us talking about
this before, was one of the most surprising things scientists found,
other than that it's really difficult to drill a hole
that deep, is that they found signs of ancient life
(12:06):
or micro fossils. Um in this rock was two billion
years old. These were single celled plants, so plankton. Basically
that freaks me out, man. Yeah, that's that's intense. Just
you know what, maybe the world there's only six thousand
years old been oh wait, probably not. Well, you know,
(12:27):
those rocks might have come from somewhere else. That's what happened.
That's what happened. We're doing the rock theory, not the wrestling.
So this idea that there are signs of life, that
there are extreme of files that live under the surface
of Earth, and these remote, inaccessible areas. All of this
naturally makes human beings some of the most narcissistic of
(12:48):
Earth's creatures. Wonder why don't we live underground right now? Well,
it's because we've evolved to live above ground evolution. Sorry,
but yes, but truly it's me it's because of that.
If you think about your circadian rhythms, the way your
body releases chemicals when it thinks it's time to go
(13:08):
to bed, it's directly related with night, which means you're
probably on the surface, so that during the day when
the sun's out, you know, not only are you, are
you able to use the sun to figure out where
the heck you're walking around here? Um, But it's absence
causes the chemicals released. Now it's time for bed, right, Yeah,
we're diurnal, that's the that's the fancy word for it,
(13:32):
right and we um. We also have this weird relationship
with this thing called vitamin D, which I'm whare of
internet slang. It's not that vitamin D, I'm sorry read it,
but it's the actual vitamin that prevents rickets keeps your
immune system pimp and strong. And it's also, weirdly enough,
(13:55):
the only vitamin that we don't get from food or
flint Stone's chewables. We actually create a vitamin D. Get
this folks through photosynthesis. Yeah, plants like plants. No, I
think I think you're You're wrong. No, well I'm I'm
not the one pedlin evolution. So uh So, the thing
(14:15):
is that, weirdly enough, the ultra violet radiation coming from
sunlight causes this photosynthesis that produces vitamin D in our cells.
So no sunlight, no vitamin D q rickets cheese. And
that's not the only thing that sunlight kind of allows
us to produce. Um. We produce seratonin also through sunlight.
(14:39):
Without sunlight, we basically get that thing that you've heard
it before, seasonal effective disorder where you're just feeling down
and depressed and oh man, when is when is the
sun coming back? And they say never, we're north of
the Arctic circle. Oh gosh, And then you're like, oh man,
I can't sleep right, can't sleep at all. Let me
just point out for anyone who didn't catch there, hasn't
(15:01):
heard of this, Matt, what was the name of that
disorder again, Seasonal effective disorder, which makes the acronym SAD,
which I still think it's funny. So it's it's just
a note on this one. You've probably seen this before
to Matt, where they've they've got these programs in some
um northern countries, countries that are closer and closer to
(15:23):
the Arctic circle, where they expose children to ultra violet light. Right,
these are school kids and they're being exposed to that
UV light we talked about earlier to help with the
assistance vitamin D and serotonin and to prevent them from
coming becoming s A D uh acquiring s A D,
(15:43):
acquiring SAD, acquiring SAD. I'm sorry, I'm no, we're making
light of it, but it's a real thing, and it
isn't it's I mean, it's pretty serious. It can lead
to you two bad things internally, no joke. Um. So, okay, Ben,
we need some light, We've we've we figured that out.
What else do we need? Oh we need air? Oh yeah,
(16:07):
that's that's important. Got to be able to breathe. You
gotta be able to send oxygen to all of yourselves.
So most humans have evolved. Oh, here we go. I'm
just gonna go with this. So most of us, um
using the word again, have evolved to accept the mixture
of a couple of different things in the air. You've
got nitrogen, you've got oxygen are gone even and c
(16:31):
O two and at sea level the atmospheric pressure. Um,
it's that's where we need it. We need it to
be at the pressure of sea level or you know,
in a varying range. That's the sweet spot we evolved
to exactly. Okay, uh yeah, And that's you know, not
counting Tibetans and and Ian's who over um multiple generations
(16:53):
living in these high out tuo places. They got a
little weird with it and they are better at um
getting oxygen from a thin environment. Right. Um. But yeah,
so in general we've evolved to live in this area
on land, breathing just the the tap water version of air. Right.
(17:14):
So what happens, What what does this have to do
with us being underground? Well, it's atmospheric pressure. So it's
the opposite of going way up into the Indian mountains, right,
So if you go deep, deep into the ground, the
pressure is going to increase, uh, like crazy and so
if you spend too much time, you know, too far
(17:36):
below sea level, it makes the components of the air
separate from our blood. And this is the thing that
you've probably heard before called the bends, where if you're
diving deep um under the ocean, and you can't come
up very fast because if you do, all of the
all of the molecules separate, So you would have to
(17:58):
That's why you have to decompress. Right, you have to
go up more slowly, you will, you go up really slowly.
Then usually have to spend time in a decompression chamber
just to make sure everything stays the way it should.
And miners have to do the same decompression staging two
right if they go too deep. Okay, so here's the
here's the next question I have then, Um, for you, Matt,
(18:19):
and for everybody listening, will we eventually have to live
undergrounds evolutionarily uh disadvantaged as we may be for that?
Oh man, you're gonna make me bring up another subject
that everyone gets really happy about or really mad about.
What's that climate change. Depending on what happens on the
(18:41):
surface of the Earth, we may be forced to at
least spend some more time underground, and we've got all
kinds of technologies now that can assist us in living underground.
Um it won't be easy though. You know, in Alice
City they were talking about simulating weather patterns. You know,
So would it be easier to always live underground if
(19:02):
you felt that there was a window which you know
is fake intellectually, but this window shows your sunlight, nighttime
rain on the glass. I think it would make things easier.
But it'd be cool if you could program it, program
your own room or your maybe your level or something
that of a hollow deck. Oh man, one day, one day.
(19:23):
So billions of people are spreading across the planet right
and space is already at a ridiculous premium in some places. Um.
San Francisco, I think is one of the most expensive
in the United States. But that has nothing on Hong Kong,
nothing on Tokyo. And these are incredibly, incredibly dense areas.
(19:45):
So people started building up and down because you can't
build out anymore. Horizontal don't work. Um. So there are
all kinds of people who have proposed these ideas of
massive underground cities, but honestly, at this point, the closest
thing we've got are the dumbs that we talked about,
the deep underground military basis and you know bunkers that
(20:07):
some people have made. There are a couple of missile
silos that are being changed into a you know in
case s hits the fan scenarios there's they're like really
nice vertical mansions. Um, you can find you can find
these occasionally for sale on the internet. Um, dude, and
if I if I hit the lottery or something, Yeah,
(20:30):
I guess what this guy is getting one of those?
Can I can I rent a spot from? Oh? Yeah,
everybody gets to join. If you know me, we're going
you just made a lot of friends. That's okay, We're
gonna start a whole new world together deep underground. So
if we do start this whole new world together deep underground,
then it's more of a comeback than it is an
(20:51):
innovation because we have delved into Earth forever and that
brings us to something a little bit different. We'll talk
about one of our ancient Earth delving experiments, the catacomb.
So what is a catacomb. Well, a catacomb is it
can really be described as any underground passage way that
was you could say it was typically used for burial
(21:14):
in the beginning, in the beginning at least, But now
there are a lot of things described as catacombs that aren't.
You know that in my head, I wouldn't have viewed
them as catacombs back in the day. Oh yeah, because
they are really old, like the first places that we
know of that we're called catacombs or these underground tumbs
in uh the Appian Way in the Empire of Rome,
(21:35):
and that's um, that's something I think we mentioned our vlog.
The Appian Way is really interesting. I was watching a
Rick Steves. I know he's a competitor I guess in
some weird way with us, but Rick Steves with his
I think his PBS show. Yeah, Rick Steves is awesome.
I would have him on our show. I really enjoy
his show. But anyway, he did a whole thing on
(21:56):
the catacombs in Rome in the Appian Way, and I
put a tiny little I been there and I watched
the whole thing. It was awesome. I would highly recommend
you watching it. And this that parts the part of
the Apping Ways uh so old that it has been
rumored the apostles Paul and Peter were buried in there. Yeah,
(22:19):
that's I mean that goes all the way back to
the Common Era, like early days of the Common Era.
That's that's old now by the eighteen hundreds, I think
that's when that shift occurred that you and I were
talking about, where the word catacomb can refer to any
structure that was underground held the dead in mass graves
(22:42):
and this was more um. This, this enlargement of the
term was something that we find happens pretty often just
in English. Yeah, and you'll find these catacombs all over
the world, but probably the one you've heard of the
most are the catacombs in Paris. We've had a couple
of people talk to us about visiting the categories are um.
(23:06):
We actually we need to thank give a big thanks
to our listener heather S, who wrote to us with
a fantastic, h very dense like email with all these
facts and then set up set up some pictures that
we could use and stuff. So thank you very much, Heather.
(23:29):
That was really really cool. Um and I think we
wrote back thanking her. Oh yeah, and I will be
making use of some of those images in the video
coming up this week. That's a that's an official special
thanks that we should probably have show up in the video. Yeah,
you're right, though, I wish we could show you a
sign right now that just said thanks Heather. We can't
(23:50):
do it. I don't know how to get that information
to you. If only everybody at synaesthesia you know what
I mean. Anyway, Yes, So back to catechy homes. Um,
I think, as we alluded to earlier, most catacombs have
been used for multiple things. Right, It's not all just
mass graves, but that's that's sort of the main thing. Yeah,
(24:13):
and well after once a catacomb has been around for
a while, if it ever goes into disuse or maybe
there aren't a lot of there's not a lot of
foot traffic in there anymore, you'll find people like squatters
hanging out there. Um, you'll even find this is my
favorite underground political movements, uh, like gatherings of rebels would
(24:37):
use a catacomb because it's one of the most secret
places you could go and meet if you didn't want
anybody on the surface knowing what's going on, if you
don't want the guys on the surface getting get in
a little too too keen on your business. Which what's
weird is that this sort of this sort of structure
offers such an enormous opportunity as a hideout that there
(25:01):
were times in your during World War Two when the
French Resistance was working on stuff during one part of
the war, or in one area of the city of Paris,
and then the Nazis also had their catacomb base. It's clear,
you know, we had some tough times trying to find
(25:22):
some information on squatter communities in the catacombs currently around
the world. But I would say almost certainly, especially in
very dense, expensive cities, they're almost certainly squatters. Oh yeah.
So if you look at a city like New York
that has such an extensive underground part to it, there
are subway systems. Yeah, there there were areas I don't know.
(25:44):
Oh man, what the heck was it called New York's
Abandoned subway Station. There were jeez, there was a great
documentary that I saw on Netflix ages ago about this
one abandoned subway station that was being used and it
was basically a whole city of people living in there
and they all get kicked out for some reason. But man,
(26:05):
it was awesome. Dark days. I think maybe something like that,
I don't know, that's absolutely right, Matt and uh, listeners,
ladies and gentlemen, we know that some of you maybe
listening to this show under the influence of chemicals. If
you are, we don't want you to be freaked out
by thinking of the invisible world that runs beneath your feet.
(26:31):
Think of the forgotten subway stations, think of the underground bunkers.
The next time you're in a crowded city and you
walk by one of those greats, look down, how far
do you think it goes? And where do you think
it goes? But yeah, but don't worry. Don't worry about
that too. To bring it the pay no attention to
(26:55):
the people behind the sewer grade. Yeah, that makes me
think pennywise. Okay, before we move on, I know we're
moving on. I just I want to say how excited
I am. E Three was going on, and maybe it's
still going on. I was watching videos from it. Did
you see the New Assassin's Creed? No, I have not.
The New Assassin's Creed is based around the French Revolution
(27:19):
in Paris, and I cannot wait to see if they
make use of any of the catacombs or I don't know,
maybe well, just that let alone the catacombs just that
time period. I'm so excited to play it, and everybody
knows I'm a huge gamer. I'm sorry, but it's great. Oh.
One thing also that we should mention. I hope they
(27:41):
do make use of the catacombs. One thing we should
mention is that catacombs in the in the world the
way that we're talking now, using of course, that in
enlarge definition, which includes things which are not necessarily from
the Roman Empire. Uh well, it's a heck of a
run on sentence. Colon point being cool and uh These
(28:02):
catacombs are surprisingly accessible, at least small parts of them.
You can easily visit as a tourist, as long as
you stay within the areas that the authorities have marked
as safe, their primary concerns, of course, being things like cavens,
because a lot of these are very old safety concerns
(28:24):
about unexpected drops, you know, satanic cult areas they don't
want you to go. That's the question. Yeah, safety is it? Safety?
What else is? What else is out there? You know? Um,
I'm sorry, I was just joking. Hopefully no one was
taking me serious. Oh yeah, I was, because there there
wouldn't be anywhere yeah, okay, Okay, we'll move on. Uh So,
(28:51):
let's bracket Catacombs for a second, because we do need
to go back to that exploration. Okay, Ben, are you
referring to the Hollow Earth exploration? You know, I love
that you brought this up. This has been one of
my favorite conspiracy theories since the very beginning of our show, Matt.
They just lay it on me, man, Hollow Earth, what's up?
(29:14):
What's going on? Well, there's so many different parts too.
I guess we'll start with there were some explorations by
the Nazis to Antarctica. Yes, to found New Swabia. Yes
to found New Schwabia, because you know, it's more land.
We're we're an empire of sorts. We need to control
as much as we can. Well, here's nobody's over here.
(29:35):
Let's might as well take that piece. But there could
have been more to it than that. What if they
thought that there was some sort of entrance into the
Earth that led to the whole other underside of the Earth,
where there's a whole another race of humanoids, human beings
of sorts, which are are somehow acceptable and cool to
(29:58):
the incredibly racist Nazis. Yeah, well, I'm just gonna just
gonna point that out. That always bugged me. They just
welcome them in salute, and yeah, maybe they were just waving,
but levity aside that, that is one of the biggest
conspiracy theories, and that's when we tackled in one of
our very very early episodes, um and the Hollow Earth
(30:20):
is this group of conspiracy theories, some of which say
that the world is completely hollow and there's a hidden
universe or excuse me, a hidden civilization. There are only
another Earth essentially, Yeah, that's exactly a yeah, another uh
an inverse version of Earth. And aside from all of
(30:42):
the scientific reasons that that seems impossible. Aside that, right, yeah,
which we I think we do list in our episode
on that there's there's this weird thing that um we
there there are these weird things that we stumble on
that could be the grains of truth, right, and that
(31:03):
later become the basis of these theories. So it is true,
as you say that Germany did intend to found a
place called New Swabia on Antarctica. Um, whether or not
that would have been a wise decision is is anybody's guests,
(31:23):
just because of how inhospitable it is to live in Antarctica.
Even with technology today, it's extremely difficult to maintain bases there.
I think they're only a handful. Yeah, and their research stations. Yeah. Um,
you can travel to Antarctica on tour, which is something
that I wanted to do for a while. Funny story
(31:45):
met when you and I were uh first doing that episode.
Remember we found the We found this group of guys
on the internet who were getting ready to take an
expedition to Antarctica to find whether or not there was
an entrance into Um, they didn't say a hollow earth necessarily.
(32:06):
They said more like a large cave system where something
might be living. And um, yes, sign me up. I
want to watch, I want to go. I'll take a camera,
let's do it. Yeah. I sent an application in but
got no response, so I I checked before we went
on air, and I couldn't find any updates on it.
(32:27):
But um, what's what's weird about that is that that
leads us to all of the stuff we don't know
about this surface, which is why when we hear people
talking about you know, secret underground even cities and stuff
like that, we can say probably not, but we can't
(32:48):
completely say no way. I mean, it's just just with okay,
just with UM. One of the longest known cave systems,
Mammoth Cave System in Kentucky. We don't really know what
goes on in Mamoth Cave system. We know it's big,
and we know it spreads out way further than it should. Yeah. Well,
(33:12):
I love that their technology, their technologies now that we
can use to begin mapping that stuff. Yeah. Have you've
seen the little drone guys, well, miniature drones that Yeah, man,
it's so cool it It feels to me like I
don't know how many of you are been. Did you
see Prometheus. Yes, the little little drones they send out,
(33:33):
they go down the systems we're getting. We're not there,
but we're getting close to their, right, We do. We
do have more and more technology that allows us to
explore things UM in a much safer way than we
would have been able to previously. But even to go
back to our discussion about catacombs and minds and stuff,
in Odessa, that's one of the world's largest structures of
(33:57):
this sort. They have an entire thing, entire network of
tunnels and caverns that are you know, roped off to
the public lack of better word, that's K to nine
and no one is sure yet. Uh, in the absence
of one of these cave drones, exactly how far ktree
nine goes or where it goes and is most the
(34:21):
vast majority of this is man made. They may have
perhaps found, uh, you know, some natural caves, but I
don't think so. I think these are all man made.
So whomever made them forgot or because it's you know,
it's mining. So about once every five years, uh, some
unlucky tour guide or cataphile, uh finds another body because
(34:45):
people it's so big that people get lost, and it's
The Parisian catacombs are really nice in that they have
these signs that tell you where you're at, you know. Uh,
not so in Odessa. It's just a long dark somebody
needs to get on that start mapping it out, and
some drones. They're even places in Vietnam, the San Dum Cave. Yeah, yeah,
(35:12):
it's another one of the largest cave systems in the world.
It's five and a half miles long and it's crazy.
There's an inside of it. Get this, there's a jungle.
Oh in the part of it that's like open air, right. Yeah,
there's also you've got a river inside of it as well,
(35:32):
because you know, as we know, a lot of the
cave systems were formed by water, it would make sense.
But this one has a nice big river. And this
is crazy. You could fit a forty story skyscraper inside
of this thing, like vertically or horizontally. Well, I would
do it kind of on it's on an angle. Yeah, Um,
(35:55):
that's that's interesting. So we have these These are just
a few examples of the fact that will disturb some
people and excite others um listeners. If you remember, in
the old days of exploration, cartographers would often put here
be serpents or terry and cognita for monsters, the unknown
(36:17):
stuff at the edge of the map. Exactly that unknown
stuff still exists. There really are edges of maps with
no end or no knowable end, and uh, some of
them are in these gigantic cave systems, which makes it
just possible enough that we could say there's something there
(36:40):
that we don't know about or something. You know, I'd
be very surprised if there was something they don't want
you to know, but um, maybe maybe there is. It's
there's probably not. I'm gonna say that there's probably not
uh some some big secret, but if there is, it
would be on the edges of those maps. And we
(37:03):
know that it's worth learning because as recently as two
thousand and twelve scientists were discovering new forms of life
within caves. So after a certain points, we really don't
have in an idea what's down there? You know? And
so here is to encouraging young people to explore caves
(37:26):
and become scientists. Yeah, go cave diving, I mean, come back,
but cave diving is an incredibly dangerous pursuit. But underwater caves,
of course, are even more enigmatic in a lot of ways.
So again the I guess the emphasis here is that
(37:48):
all the evidence we're finding does not tell us the
earth is hollow, but all the evidence we're finding also
tells us that there is a lot more underneath our
feet than than we're aware. Yet, that's right. So what
do you think? Are there any places near you that
are maybe not as explored underground places? Uh, go ahead
(38:10):
and write to us on Facebook. We're conspiracy stuff there.
We are at conspiracy stuff on Twitter. Um, really, just
just talk to us if you have anything you want
us to cover in the future, let us know, and
that's the end of this classic episode. If you have
any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get
(38:30):
into contact with us in a number of different ways.
One of the best is to give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three st d w
y t K. If you don't want to do that,
you can send us a good old fashioned email. We
are conspiracy at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff they
Don't Want You to Know is a production of I
Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
(38:52):
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
So unless you are listening to this in an airplane,
your feet are resting on something, and that is rested
on something, and eventually it's all resting on the planet Earth.
Thanks gravity. You're you're pretty dependable, if somewhat mysterious. This
classic episode is about all the stuff under the surface
(00:23):
of the planet. Uh, there's there's a lot going on.
There's a weird stuff there. There really is. And you
get bonus points if you listen to this episode without
headphones inside a cave of some sort. So just keep
that in mind, maybe hold off, you can pause right now,
find yourself a cave, and then play it again. You'll
get those bonus points. Just soaking that natural reverb. Love
(00:45):
a good catacomb. Here it is from UFOs two Ghosts
and Government cover ups. History is writted with unexplained events.
You can turn back now or learn the stuff they
don't want me to now. Hello, welcome back to the show.
My name is Matt and I am then and today
(01:07):
we're going deep. Yes, we're going deep literally, figuratively, metaphorically,
and I'm sure a couple of elites that I've forgot
to mention the big question here To start us off,
Matt is, can we be happy underground? Not the bend
Fold song, but the honest question. Sure, I think we
(01:31):
can be happy underground. There are lots of different people
who have been happy underground. You know, we hide in
our homes. We build these structures so it feels like
we're somewhat underground. We lived in caves. Humans lived in
caves for a very long time because we need shelter,
and what better shelter than the thing that's right beneath
(01:52):
you and closed and closed. In this episode, we are
going to talk about the world beneath your feet now, Matt,
you and I have are are midway through our series
this week, which is on catacombs primarily, but then on
also other other ancient hidden things. I think we brought
(02:14):
our classics Crystal skull episode back. Yeah, Crystal skulls. It's
that's a polarizing episode. Oh yeah, no kidding people, people
are mad at us. One of my favorite things about that,
as a side note, um is how many people felt
so strongly about the video or that they didn't watch,
(02:35):
that they saw the title and ran directly to the
comments to say, you guys are full of b s.
These things are not actual alien artifacts, which is pretty
much what we say in the video. But you know,
you'd have to watch it, you know, And I'm and
I'm always like, well, did you see Indiana Jones three four?
I mean, I don't know whichever one that came out, Yeah,
(03:00):
with the Indiana Jones the uh. But but all of
that aside um and you know, I'm I'm just joshing
a little bit with the YouTube commanders. I know, people
get heated, but all of that aside, It did bring
up some really interesting topics that we had touched on before. Now,
this is a little bit close to our episode on
(03:21):
deep underground military bases, but it's much bigger. It's more
of a grab bag. So first to understand if we
can really be happy underground, we have to understand what
underground is, which means we need a quick recap of
Earth's structure. And luckily it's pretty simple, right and thankfully,
there's this thing called geology that looks at rocks and
(03:44):
you know, what are we on but one giant rock
that has a multi middle. So we live, all of us,
you listening right now, We live on the surface of
the Earth, and then directly below that surface there's the
crust and sexy name. Oh yeah, that rusty crust, and
where it comes out of the mouth. Strangely, it's three
(04:05):
to six miles thick, and that's that's underneath the ocean.
And then it's around two forty some forty miles underneath
the surface of the land. And that's that's really thin
when you think about it. If you think about how
large the Earth actually is very thin. So imagine an apple. Okay,
(04:25):
it's kind of the skin. Think about the skin in
that tiny little layer that is the crust. Uh, And
under the skin in this apple comparison, we have the
mushy insides known as the mantle. The mantle is the
largest part of earth earth structure. It's really really hot,
(04:46):
which might be counterintuitive to some people because you know,
we know that people live in caves for a while
because it holds a cold temperature better in an arid environment.
But once you get down to where the pressure is increasing, Uh,
it's a whole differ from ball games. So the mantle,
even though it's hot, and it's hot enough that parts
of it would melt, it stays solid, primarily because the
(05:10):
pressure deep inside the planet is too great to permit melting. However,
when it does melt, you know, in a plate shifts
or something like that, boom, magma makes its way to
the outer crust. Sorry, Pompeii, that's just how it goes.
So then you keep going down and you get to
the core. Now the core has two different parts. There's
(05:31):
there's an inner core and an outer core. The outer
one is it's liquid. I mean, it's the kind of
the the magma stuff, but it's just underneath the earth.
That's just kind of pressure, super pressure, like Ben was saying,
with the mantle. And then you've got if you keep
going down all the way, you get to the very center,
(05:51):
which is theorized right to be solid. Yes, but it's
basically and this thing is crazy hot. It's it's almost
it's not as hot as the sun. It's almost as
hot as the sun right right, and again according to
the estimations, because no human being that we know of
has uh gotten remotely close to it. However, this is
(06:13):
interesting because you know, when we were talking about the
hollow earth theories, there were people who said, well, of
course the core appears to be as hot as the
sudden because there is a mini tour sun within the
core of the Earth. Neither you nor I really bought
just do due to what we understand about the magnetosphere
(06:34):
and the physics involved right in gravitational pull and stuff,
it seems very difficult to explain how that could that
sort of condition could be true. But but a fascinating story.
Fascinating story, and it is true that we know diad
lee about the core of the Earth. Really we we
(06:54):
make these guesses. You know, it's really hot, that's not
tough to guess. And oh it's maybe it's a nickel
alloy of some sort of you know, hopefully we'll find out.
But if we dig in and we say that, all right,
everything that people are doing, as far as the science goes,
everything that people are doing inside Earth so far is
(07:16):
just going to different areas of the crust. People do
live in cave homes, right, People go to ground all
the time. They live in caves um and have as
you mentioned Matt for for right, Oh yeah, yeah, they're
their cave homes all over Australia, um and throughout the world.
There are cave homes, ancient ancient cave sure structures where
(07:41):
people would live ale a little. They look like cities
almost you've seen these canyon settlements in the United States,
and there are there are a lot of reasons that
a human group would go there. There's temperature regulation. Um,
there's all kinds of escaping dangerous environments, maybe even dangerous animals, predators. Um, yes,
(08:02):
I'm safety was a huge issue. Different to have a
group moving towards a cave or at least underground. I
remember we've seen some older settlements, you know, ancient semblents
like those two that we always mispronounce, go both of us, Uh,
go go back lea tepe and kaya hilke is how
(08:23):
it's spelled. Yeah, I'm just gonna let you do that.
But one thing you do have to deal with now
that you're living basically underneath a large piece of rock
or underneath a cave, inside of a cave, and it's
the you gotta worry, worry about the earth itself kind
of fighting against your Yeah. So if there's any kind
of earthquakes shifts, bad news, right absolutely. And this means that,
(08:50):
of course, you could be in a cave in if
you dig too deep. Hobbit holes are real thing. Uh.
There's the idea of building a house sort of on
a structures, so it's not actually cave, it's not in bedrock,
it's just covered with dirt. Um. There are also these
ongoing plans to build massive permanent living areas underground. One
(09:13):
of the one of the most science fiction type ones
is this thing called Alice City, which already sounds like
it's an autom a right uh in Japan, And it's
these two domes and these shafts that go way deep
into the ground. And there are all sorts of plans
to try to make it okay to live in there.
Um because, as we're about to see, many people love
(09:35):
to visit underground, but uh not a lot of people
want to live there. And that way, it's kind of
similar to Orlando. Yeah, I've been there a couple of times.
I enjoyed. I enjoyed my time while I was there. Briefly,
this is the part met where during our show, somebody's
listening right now, and um, yes, it's true. We can
(09:56):
hear your thoughts just a little bit. We know that
you're thinking, Hey, people already have these massive underground living complexes. Governments, right,
private entities have have something like that. But we're not
talking about the doomsday bunkers. Uh, those things are contingency plants.
They're not people living in those twenty four hours a day.
(10:18):
Right now, we're talking about a commercial thing in underground city, um.
Much more than an apartment complex where you could be
born and die and never go to the surface world.
We're talking about that more people type stuff, right. That's
a great scenario. So okay, so let's talk a little
bit about how deep we've actually gone we Okay, you know,
(10:40):
no one's gone too deep into the mantle, um. But
let's just talk about the deepest hole that's ever been
at least thus far. It's it's called the Kola Super
Deep Borehole and that's it's where Russia basically reached a
depth of seven and a half miles And it's the
deep this man made hole on the planet currently and
(11:02):
it's probably gonna stay that way for a while, just
given the crazy temperatures involved with the process of trying
to get that deep. What do you mean, Well, it's crazy, hot, man.
And think about if you've got boring technology, just a
massive metal drill and you're just going down and down
and down. Eventually you're gonna hit a point where your
(11:23):
equipment is going to just fail and it's not going
to be able to function. Um. And then what if
you get into kind of the more liquid e molten areas, Oh,
where the where the pressure makes the rock behave more
like a plastic Yeah, and then what do you do
It gets all gunked up on your drill. You're trying
to get it out. If you get if you get
a little bit out, there's gonna be just more fills
(11:45):
it in, like like you would if you hit a
pool of water. Yeah. Yeah, And uh. The thing that
taught me about this, because I remember us talking about
this before, was one of the most surprising things scientists found,
other than that it's really difficult to drill a hole
that deep, is that they found signs of ancient life
(12:06):
or micro fossils. Um in this rock was two billion
years old. These were single celled plants, so plankton. Basically
that freaks me out, man. Yeah, that's that's intense. Just
you know what, maybe the world there's only six thousand
years old been oh wait, probably not. Well, you know,
(12:27):
those rocks might have come from somewhere else. That's what happened.
That's what happened. We're doing the rock theory, not the wrestling.
So this idea that there are signs of life, that
there are extreme of files that live under the surface
of Earth, and these remote, inaccessible areas. All of this
naturally makes human beings some of the most narcissistic of
(12:48):
Earth's creatures. Wonder why don't we live underground right now? Well,
it's because we've evolved to live above ground evolution. Sorry,
but yes, but truly it's me it's because of that.
If you think about your circadian rhythms, the way your
body releases chemicals when it thinks it's time to go
(13:08):
to bed, it's directly related with night, which means you're
probably on the surface, so that during the day when
the sun's out, you know, not only are you, are
you able to use the sun to figure out where
the heck you're walking around here? Um, But it's absence
causes the chemicals released. Now it's time for bed, right, Yeah,
we're diurnal, that's the that's the fancy word for it,
(13:32):
right and we um. We also have this weird relationship
with this thing called vitamin D, which I'm whare of
internet slang. It's not that vitamin D, I'm sorry read it,
but it's the actual vitamin that prevents rickets keeps your
immune system pimp and strong. And it's also, weirdly enough,
(13:55):
the only vitamin that we don't get from food or
flint Stone's chewables. We actually create a vitamin D. Get
this folks through photosynthesis. Yeah, plants like plants. No, I
think I think you're You're wrong. No, well I'm I'm
not the one pedlin evolution. So uh So, the thing
(14:15):
is that, weirdly enough, the ultra violet radiation coming from
sunlight causes this photosynthesis that produces vitamin D in our cells.
So no sunlight, no vitamin D q rickets cheese. And
that's not the only thing that sunlight kind of allows
us to produce. Um. We produce seratonin also through sunlight.
(14:39):
Without sunlight, we basically get that thing that you've heard
it before, seasonal effective disorder where you're just feeling down
and depressed and oh man, when is when is the
sun coming back? And they say never, we're north of
the Arctic circle. Oh gosh, And then you're like, oh man,
I can't sleep right, can't sleep at all. Let me
just point out for anyone who didn't catch there, hasn't
(15:01):
heard of this, Matt, what was the name of that
disorder again, Seasonal effective disorder, which makes the acronym SAD,
which I still think it's funny. So it's it's just
a note on this one. You've probably seen this before
to Matt, where they've they've got these programs in some
um northern countries, countries that are closer and closer to
(15:23):
the Arctic circle, where they expose children to ultra violet light. Right,
these are school kids and they're being exposed to that
UV light we talked about earlier to help with the
assistance vitamin D and serotonin and to prevent them from
coming becoming s A D uh acquiring s A D,
(15:43):
acquiring SAD, acquiring SAD. I'm sorry, I'm no, we're making
light of it, but it's a real thing, and it
isn't it's I mean, it's pretty serious. It can lead
to you two bad things internally, no joke. Um. So, okay, Ben,
we need some light, We've we've we figured that out.
What else do we need? Oh we need air? Oh yeah,
(16:07):
that's that's important. Got to be able to breathe. You
gotta be able to send oxygen to all of yourselves.
So most humans have evolved. Oh, here we go. I'm
just gonna go with this. So most of us, um
using the word again, have evolved to accept the mixture
of a couple of different things in the air. You've
got nitrogen, you've got oxygen are gone even and c
(16:31):
O two and at sea level the atmospheric pressure. Um,
it's that's where we need it. We need it to
be at the pressure of sea level or you know,
in a varying range. That's the sweet spot we evolved
to exactly. Okay, uh yeah, And that's you know, not
counting Tibetans and and Ian's who over um multiple generations
(16:53):
living in these high out tuo places. They got a
little weird with it and they are better at um
getting oxygen from a thin environment. Right. Um. But yeah,
so in general we've evolved to live in this area
on land, breathing just the the tap water version of air. Right.
(17:14):
So what happens, What what does this have to do
with us being underground? Well, it's atmospheric pressure. So it's
the opposite of going way up into the Indian mountains, right,
So if you go deep, deep into the ground, the
pressure is going to increase, uh, like crazy and so
if you spend too much time, you know, too far
(17:36):
below sea level, it makes the components of the air
separate from our blood. And this is the thing that
you've probably heard before called the bends, where if you're
diving deep um under the ocean, and you can't come
up very fast because if you do, all of the
all of the molecules separate, So you would have to
(17:58):
That's why you have to decompress. Right, you have to
go up more slowly, you will, you go up really slowly.
Then usually have to spend time in a decompression chamber
just to make sure everything stays the way it should.
And miners have to do the same decompression staging two
right if they go too deep. Okay, so here's the
here's the next question I have then, Um, for you, Matt,
(18:19):
and for everybody listening, will we eventually have to live
undergrounds evolutionarily uh disadvantaged as we may be for that?
Oh man, you're gonna make me bring up another subject
that everyone gets really happy about or really mad about.
What's that climate change. Depending on what happens on the
(18:41):
surface of the Earth, we may be forced to at
least spend some more time underground, and we've got all
kinds of technologies now that can assist us in living underground.
Um it won't be easy though. You know, in Alice
City they were talking about simulating weather patterns. You know,
So would it be easier to always live underground if
(19:02):
you felt that there was a window which you know
is fake intellectually, but this window shows your sunlight, nighttime
rain on the glass. I think it would make things easier.
But it'd be cool if you could program it, program
your own room or your maybe your level or something
that of a hollow deck. Oh man, one day, one day.
(19:23):
So billions of people are spreading across the planet right
and space is already at a ridiculous premium in some places. Um.
San Francisco, I think is one of the most expensive
in the United States. But that has nothing on Hong Kong,
nothing on Tokyo. And these are incredibly, incredibly dense areas.
(19:45):
So people started building up and down because you can't
build out anymore. Horizontal don't work. Um. So there are
all kinds of people who have proposed these ideas of
massive underground cities, but honestly, at this point, the closest
thing we've got are the dumbs that we talked about,
the deep underground military basis and you know bunkers that
(20:07):
some people have made. There are a couple of missile
silos that are being changed into a you know in
case s hits the fan scenarios there's they're like really
nice vertical mansions. Um, you can find you can find
these occasionally for sale on the internet. Um, dude, and
if I if I hit the lottery or something, Yeah,
(20:30):
I guess what this guy is getting one of those?
Can I can I rent a spot from? Oh? Yeah,
everybody gets to join. If you know me, we're going
you just made a lot of friends. That's okay, We're
gonna start a whole new world together deep underground. So
if we do start this whole new world together deep underground,
then it's more of a comeback than it is an
(20:51):
innovation because we have delved into Earth forever and that
brings us to something a little bit different. We'll talk
about one of our ancient Earth delving experiments, the catacomb.
So what is a catacomb. Well, a catacomb is it
can really be described as any underground passage way that
was you could say it was typically used for burial
(21:14):
in the beginning, in the beginning at least, But now
there are a lot of things described as catacombs that aren't.
You know that in my head, I wouldn't have viewed
them as catacombs back in the day. Oh yeah, because
they are really old, like the first places that we
know of that we're called catacombs or these underground tumbs
in uh the Appian Way in the Empire of Rome,
(21:35):
and that's um, that's something I think we mentioned our vlog.
The Appian Way is really interesting. I was watching a
Rick Steves. I know he's a competitor I guess in
some weird way with us, but Rick Steves with his
I think his PBS show. Yeah, Rick Steves is awesome.
I would have him on our show. I really enjoy
his show. But anyway, he did a whole thing on
(21:56):
the catacombs in Rome in the Appian Way, and I
put a tiny little I been there and I watched
the whole thing. It was awesome. I would highly recommend
you watching it. And this that parts the part of
the Apping Ways uh so old that it has been
rumored the apostles Paul and Peter were buried in there. Yeah,
(22:19):
that's I mean that goes all the way back to
the Common Era, like early days of the Common Era.
That's that's old now by the eighteen hundreds, I think
that's when that shift occurred that you and I were
talking about, where the word catacomb can refer to any
structure that was underground held the dead in mass graves
(22:42):
and this was more um. This, this enlargement of the
term was something that we find happens pretty often just
in English. Yeah, and you'll find these catacombs all over
the world, but probably the one you've heard of the
most are the catacombs in Paris. We've had a couple
of people talk to us about visiting the categories are um.
(23:06):
We actually we need to thank give a big thanks
to our listener heather S, who wrote to us with
a fantastic, h very dense like email with all these
facts and then set up set up some pictures that
we could use and stuff. So thank you very much, Heather.
(23:29):
That was really really cool. Um and I think we
wrote back thanking her. Oh yeah, and I will be
making use of some of those images in the video
coming up this week. That's a that's an official special
thanks that we should probably have show up in the video. Yeah,
you're right, though, I wish we could show you a
sign right now that just said thanks Heather. We can't
(23:50):
do it. I don't know how to get that information
to you. If only everybody at synaesthesia you know what
I mean. Anyway, Yes, So back to catechy homes. Um,
I think, as we alluded to earlier, most catacombs have
been used for multiple things. Right, It's not all just
mass graves, but that's that's sort of the main thing. Yeah,
(24:13):
and well after once a catacomb has been around for
a while, if it ever goes into disuse or maybe
there aren't a lot of there's not a lot of
foot traffic in there anymore, you'll find people like squatters
hanging out there. Um, you'll even find this is my
favorite underground political movements, uh, like gatherings of rebels would
(24:37):
use a catacomb because it's one of the most secret
places you could go and meet if you didn't want
anybody on the surface knowing what's going on, if you
don't want the guys on the surface getting get in
a little too too keen on your business. Which what's
weird is that this sort of this sort of structure
offers such an enormous opportunity as a hideout that there
(25:01):
were times in your during World War Two when the
French Resistance was working on stuff during one part of
the war, or in one area of the city of Paris,
and then the Nazis also had their catacomb base. It's clear,
you know, we had some tough times trying to find
(25:22):
some information on squatter communities in the catacombs currently around
the world. But I would say almost certainly, especially in
very dense, expensive cities, they're almost certainly squatters. Oh yeah.
So if you look at a city like New York
that has such an extensive underground part to it, there
are subway systems. Yeah, there there were areas I don't know.
(25:44):
Oh man, what the heck was it called New York's
Abandoned subway Station. There were jeez, there was a great
documentary that I saw on Netflix ages ago about this
one abandoned subway station that was being used and it
was basically a whole city of people living in there
and they all get kicked out for some reason. But man,
(26:05):
it was awesome. Dark days. I think maybe something like that,
I don't know, that's absolutely right, Matt and uh, listeners,
ladies and gentlemen, we know that some of you maybe
listening to this show under the influence of chemicals. If
you are, we don't want you to be freaked out
by thinking of the invisible world that runs beneath your feet.
(26:31):
Think of the forgotten subway stations, think of the underground bunkers.
The next time you're in a crowded city and you
walk by one of those greats, look down, how far
do you think it goes? And where do you think
it goes? But yeah, but don't worry. Don't worry about
that too. To bring it the pay no attention to
(26:55):
the people behind the sewer grade. Yeah, that makes me
think pennywise. Okay, before we move on, I know we're
moving on. I just I want to say how excited
I am. E Three was going on, and maybe it's
still going on. I was watching videos from it. Did
you see the New Assassin's Creed? No, I have not.
The New Assassin's Creed is based around the French Revolution
(27:19):
in Paris, and I cannot wait to see if they
make use of any of the catacombs or I don't know,
maybe well, just that let alone the catacombs just that
time period. I'm so excited to play it, and everybody
knows I'm a huge gamer. I'm sorry, but it's great. Oh.
One thing also that we should mention. I hope they
(27:41):
do make use of the catacombs. One thing we should
mention is that catacombs in the in the world the
way that we're talking now, using of course, that in
enlarge definition, which includes things which are not necessarily from
the Roman Empire. Uh well, it's a heck of a
run on sentence. Colon point being cool and uh These
(28:02):
catacombs are surprisingly accessible, at least small parts of them.
You can easily visit as a tourist, as long as
you stay within the areas that the authorities have marked
as safe, their primary concerns, of course, being things like cavens,
because a lot of these are very old safety concerns
(28:24):
about unexpected drops, you know, satanic cult areas they don't
want you to go. That's the question. Yeah, safety is it? Safety?
What else is? What else is out there? You know? Um,
I'm sorry, I was just joking. Hopefully no one was
taking me serious. Oh yeah, I was, because there there
wouldn't be anywhere yeah, okay, Okay, we'll move on. Uh So,
(28:51):
let's bracket Catacombs for a second, because we do need
to go back to that exploration. Okay, Ben, are you
referring to the Hollow Earth exploration? You know, I love
that you brought this up. This has been one of
my favorite conspiracy theories since the very beginning of our show, Matt.
They just lay it on me, man, Hollow Earth, what's up?
(29:14):
What's going on? Well, there's so many different parts too.
I guess we'll start with there were some explorations by
the Nazis to Antarctica. Yes, to found New Swabia. Yes
to found New Schwabia, because you know, it's more land.
We're we're an empire of sorts. We need to control
as much as we can. Well, here's nobody's over here.
(29:35):
Let's might as well take that piece. But there could
have been more to it than that. What if they
thought that there was some sort of entrance into the
Earth that led to the whole other underside of the Earth,
where there's a whole another race of humanoids, human beings
of sorts, which are are somehow acceptable and cool to
(29:58):
the incredibly racist Nazis. Yeah, well, I'm just gonna just
gonna point that out. That always bugged me. They just
welcome them in salute, and yeah, maybe they were just waving,
but levity aside that, that is one of the biggest
conspiracy theories, and that's when we tackled in one of
our very very early episodes, um and the Hollow Earth
(30:20):
is this group of conspiracy theories, some of which say
that the world is completely hollow and there's a hidden
universe or excuse me, a hidden civilization. There are only
another Earth essentially, Yeah, that's exactly a yeah, another uh
an inverse version of Earth. And aside from all of
(30:42):
the scientific reasons that that seems impossible. Aside that, right, yeah,
which we I think we do list in our episode
on that there's there's this weird thing that um we
there there are these weird things that we stumble on
that could be the grains of truth, right, and that
(31:03):
later become the basis of these theories. So it is true,
as you say that Germany did intend to found a
place called New Swabia on Antarctica. Um, whether or not
that would have been a wise decision is is anybody's guests,
(31:23):
just because of how inhospitable it is to live in Antarctica.
Even with technology today, it's extremely difficult to maintain bases there.
I think they're only a handful. Yeah, and their research stations. Yeah. Um,
you can travel to Antarctica on tour, which is something
that I wanted to do for a while. Funny story
(31:45):
met when you and I were uh first doing that episode.
Remember we found the We found this group of guys
on the internet who were getting ready to take an
expedition to Antarctica to find whether or not there was
an entrance into Um, they didn't say a hollow earth necessarily.
(32:06):
They said more like a large cave system where something
might be living. And um, yes, sign me up. I
want to watch, I want to go. I'll take a camera,
let's do it. Yeah. I sent an application in but
got no response, so I I checked before we went
on air, and I couldn't find any updates on it.
(32:27):
But um, what's what's weird about that is that that
leads us to all of the stuff we don't know
about this surface, which is why when we hear people
talking about you know, secret underground even cities and stuff
like that, we can say probably not, but we can't
(32:48):
completely say no way. I mean, it's just just with okay,
just with UM. One of the longest known cave systems,
Mammoth Cave System in Kentucky. We don't really know what
goes on in Mamoth Cave system. We know it's big,
and we know it spreads out way further than it should. Yeah. Well,
(33:12):
I love that their technology, their technologies now that we
can use to begin mapping that stuff. Yeah. Have you've
seen the little drone guys, well, miniature drones that Yeah, man,
it's so cool it It feels to me like I
don't know how many of you are been. Did you
see Prometheus. Yes, the little little drones they send out,
(33:33):
they go down the systems we're getting. We're not there,
but we're getting close to their, right, We do. We
do have more and more technology that allows us to
explore things UM in a much safer way than we
would have been able to previously. But even to go
back to our discussion about catacombs and minds and stuff,
in Odessa, that's one of the world's largest structures of
(33:57):
this sort. They have an entire thing, entire network of
tunnels and caverns that are you know, roped off to
the public lack of better word, that's K to nine
and no one is sure yet. Uh, in the absence
of one of these cave drones, exactly how far ktree
nine goes or where it goes and is most the
(34:21):
vast majority of this is man made. They may have
perhaps found, uh, you know, some natural caves, but I
don't think so. I think these are all man made.
So whomever made them forgot or because it's you know,
it's mining. So about once every five years, uh, some
unlucky tour guide or cataphile, uh finds another body because
(34:45):
people it's so big that people get lost, and it's
The Parisian catacombs are really nice in that they have
these signs that tell you where you're at, you know. Uh,
not so in Odessa. It's just a long dark somebody
needs to get on that start mapping it out, and
some drones. They're even places in Vietnam, the San Dum Cave. Yeah, yeah,
(35:12):
it's another one of the largest cave systems in the world.
It's five and a half miles long and it's crazy.
There's an inside of it. Get this, there's a jungle.
Oh in the part of it that's like open air, right. Yeah,
there's also you've got a river inside of it as well,
(35:32):
because you know, as we know, a lot of the
cave systems were formed by water, it would make sense.
But this one has a nice big river. And this
is crazy. You could fit a forty story skyscraper inside
of this thing, like vertically or horizontally. Well, I would
do it kind of on it's on an angle. Yeah, Um,
(35:55):
that's that's interesting. So we have these These are just
a few examples of the fact that will disturb some
people and excite others um listeners. If you remember, in
the old days of exploration, cartographers would often put here
be serpents or terry and cognita for monsters, the unknown
(36:17):
stuff at the edge of the map. Exactly that unknown
stuff still exists. There really are edges of maps with
no end or no knowable end, and uh, some of
them are in these gigantic cave systems, which makes it
just possible enough that we could say there's something there
(36:40):
that we don't know about or something. You know, I'd
be very surprised if there was something they don't want
you to know, but um, maybe maybe there is. It's
there's probably not. I'm gonna say that there's probably not
uh some some big secret, but if there is, it
would be on the edges of those maps. And we
(37:03):
know that it's worth learning because as recently as two
thousand and twelve scientists were discovering new forms of life
within caves. So after a certain points, we really don't
have in an idea what's down there? You know? And
so here is to encouraging young people to explore caves
(37:26):
and become scientists. Yeah, go cave diving, I mean, come back,
but cave diving is an incredibly dangerous pursuit. But underwater caves,
of course, are even more enigmatic in a lot of ways.
So again the I guess the emphasis here is that
(37:48):
all the evidence we're finding does not tell us the
earth is hollow, but all the evidence we're finding also
tells us that there is a lot more underneath our
feet than than we're aware. Yet, that's right. So what
do you think? Are there any places near you that
are maybe not as explored underground places? Uh, go ahead
(38:10):
and write to us on Facebook. We're conspiracy stuff there.
We are at conspiracy stuff on Twitter. Um, really, just
just talk to us if you have anything you want
us to cover in the future, let us know, and
that's the end of this classic episode. If you have
any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get
(38:30):
into contact with us in a number of different ways.
One of the best is to give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three st d w
y t K. If you don't want to do that,
you can send us a good old fashioned email. We
are conspiracy at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff they
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(38:52):
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