November 24, 2021 • 56 mins
Antarctica is one of the most mysterious places on the planet. If the ice melted, what would we find beneath? Find out in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So we all love traveling. And I can't remember if
I said this in today's classic episode, but I got
really really close to making it to Antarctica once before
my operation went bust. One day go we'll go there,
hopefully as a group. And in today's classic episode, we
(00:21):
ask what will people find beneath the South Pole? In
what are we talking ancient artifacts of a civilization? Are
we talking a cave system that leads down into the
depths where the others live, Perhaps alien DNA trapped in
ice cores, maybe ancient monuments or pyramids. This is a
(00:45):
question that is fascinating, but it also leads to some
troubling implications. Alright, so travel with us. Here we go
from UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups, histories re
with unexplained and events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Welcome
(01:05):
back to the show. My name is Matt, I'm Ben,
and we are here as always where that our super
producer Noel the iceman Brown, Hey, Noel, So everybody, it
just on the top here. I just wanted to let
you know I got a vaccine a T DEAP. What's
a T depth specifically, it's is supposed to help you
(01:27):
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 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
(01:47):
and one point seven and uh just been sweating up
ut off, kind of out of it. Feel like your
brain is sort of wrapped in cotton a bit. Yeah.
So yeah, I remember you were telling me that about
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.
(02:08):
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
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
(02:31):
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 tetapp and he's like, oh, man, you know there's
about a one and one chance that you're going to
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,
(02:53):
maybe he accepted you somehow. I don't know. Well, this
guy I've met, if you were described were to describe
him to someone, would you describe him as a doctor.
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
(03:14):
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 gargantuan thing.
And today we're talking about unexplored gargantlan things. No, guys,
we hope that you appreciate this show because Matt has
(03:35):
pushed himself a little bit closer and closer to that
death's door. So 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, 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 of cool.
I respect that cool. So we're we're gonna get through
(03:58):
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 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
(04:20):
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 this. So maybe I'm just
on a downward spiral. We'll find out. What's cool Man,
a little delirium always helps his show. At that time,
I didn't sleep. That was great. That was my favorite episode.
We've made some more. Really all right, well this is
(04:41):
going to be the new favorite. Okay. So there's this
book that I really enjoy called The Atlas of Remote Islands,
and and for everyone who is a 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,
(05:01):
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. It doesn't mean that they
themselves are objectively bad, just means 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
(05:22):
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. It kind of becomes a part of
your worldview almost almost, Yeah. And the Atlas of Remote Islands,
which is more of a travel log than an actual atlas.
(05:47):
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, what I became really captivated
by were the islands in the Southern Hemisphere, not just
(06:09):
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 you get to Antarctica,
the more it seems as though the natural world is
(06:31):
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 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
(06:54):
covered lands. It's home to the world's freshwater supply and
nine percent of the world's freshwater ice. And this place
is really cool. It's currently the coldest and the 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,
(07:17):
that's another and 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 it
did not have those mountains, then it would probably be
a h covered with ice. Well maybe ninety nine or something.
But just because there's still be some land on the
(07:37):
coast in some places, Matt, this ice is three miles
thick cheese. So, to paraphrase so many horror movies, what
lay beneath? We know relatively little about this, and this
week we looked at what people might find beneath the
ice if it all melted away. The ice in Antarctica
(07:59):
comes in two large categories. There's the Western sheets Eastern sheet.
It extends all across the land like some curse in
a medieval fairy tale, and also into the surrounding ocean.
So what we'd like to do is talk a little
bit about some of the fringe theories and some of
(08:21):
the concepts that you will hear 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,
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
(08:41):
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
man made climate change? It's our fault. And yeah, the anthropocene, right, Uh,
(09:04):
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 clichefing, 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
(09:26):
would be, uh, the Ironing 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 onto the internet and search. The
mainstream news is not really say, telling the details of stuff.
(09:47):
And you know what else, just while woman rand here
and this is just gonna be so brief. Look, I
understand when people get very very emotional and angry about
their their opinion or what they see as the facts.
Right when someone because we get letters all the time
(10:07):
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, stuff like that, things that have been proven right, right,
(10:31):
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
where all of a sudden, the person who believes climate
changes um not man made, or believes you know that, uh,
(10:57):
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 how
you support that belief. And it makes me, It makes
me just somewhere between UM derisively, amused, and uh incredibly
(11:20):
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,
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
(11:41):
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 one, uh
a little bit of inside baseball here. That's one show
that I pitched for brain Stuff. It's other show I do,
and they, after we discussed with the production team and stuff,
(12:06):
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?
But but okay, so aside from that that rant there, uh,
the forces of climate change clearly have impacted the planet
(12:27):
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,
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,
(12:50):
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
times 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
(13:14):
as coming in two different types. So you've got your
land ice and you've got your sea ice. Now, the
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
(13:37):
a if I make a bad comparison. Uh, it's kind
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 winter, Antarctica gets some water weight. Okay,
(13:58):
that's exactly what Yeah, But like you were saying, there's
a there's a different kind of ice, right, Yeah, 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
(14:20):
increasing the amount of water, of liquid water that's in
the seas, right, because the amount of frozen water already
in the sea is part of the volume of the ocean,
the sea we're talking about. So let's let's advance this
further because there are probably some people who already saying no, no, no,
(14:43):
he totally don't get it. Well, we have a we
have a plot twist here that 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 Waits Glacier. It's this large, rapidly changing outlet
of the West Antarctic ice sheet, and it's it's being
(15:08):
eroded by the ocean, sure, of course, but it's also
being melted by a different, uh, a different thing, yeah,
from below, from the geothermal heat that's being forced uff
through it, and that that to me, Ben presents a
whole another issue. Yeah, whole, another whole other uh box
(15:28):
carve badgers, Yes, the box car badgers that are heating
up the earth from the inside. What's going on? Been
a whole another boot of birds, bag of boots. Yeah,
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
(15:50):
Texas at Austin or U T I G for those
of you who love an acronym, and that is in
a journal called the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
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
(16:11):
out that geothermal energy is our geo thermal heat 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
(16:33):
a bit long in the tooth for us, but in
the grand scheme of things, that's like, that's a 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 five
(16:54):
million years ago, because apparently, just in the scheme of things,
the way this ice across the 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, sure, we're not for
(17:16):
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 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 split up,
(17:36):
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 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
(17:59):
people 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. So 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
(18:20):
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 if you're going to get different
research on the northeastern side that's very different from the
(18:41):
research you get on the southwest. If there's there's like
a good neighborhood of Antartico, maybe 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 ago there was an expedition that you and
I have talked about a few years back. Um, actually
(19:03):
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. By permanent settlement, I mean like a
nation state or colony. I don't mean a research center,
(19:27):
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, I think that's already
an insurance. Yeah, USA just buys Antarctica. UM or some
(19:49):
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 goes through and
just burrows through the three miles of ice, makes giant
(20:10):
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, so the
thing is, it's not science fiction. It's happening now, just
in a different country. Oh, Iceland is not the big
(20:35):
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
Antarctic climates or the long term effects are still largely there.
(20:55):
There's still some questions 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 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,
(21:20):
but they have. 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 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
(21:42):
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, it's
it seems like a lot of the things are based
on yeah, yeah, yeah, Harald structure and improv or something.
Oh that's why. Oh my gosh, Ben, I never thought
(22:03):
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
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
(22:26):
that it's just something that TV company made too as
a recreation, but always startled that so many people 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
(22:48):
I ever have to meet uh Uh Seinfeld, Jerry Jerry Seinfeld,
Larry David if I ever have to meet them, because
I don't. I don't know. I guess I was just like, hey, guys,
I understand your show is quite popular, and I don't
think we're ever going to meet the congratulations. Who knows
they might be listening now anyway. Anyhow, tangents abound in
(23:10):
this episode. Let's move to one of the Let's cut
straight to the chase, one of the episodes we did
early on in our career together. 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
(23:30):
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 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
(23:53):
win their battles. Because as the national Socialists of these
factions of nationals socialist ak Nazis today um 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,
(24:19):
totally and down for the cause, right right, and cared
about what was happening between in these political political maneuvers.
So well, we did fine 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
(24:43):
is true that factions of the Nazi Party had an
intense belief in the occult, which we've talked about with
Za Naimberby, 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
(25:08):
these hidden mystical lands like 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
(25:30):
German wailing industry 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
(25:54):
to say there's not an extensive possible cave system in Antarctica.
I would say there most definitely is just because of
the ice over time and then refreezing, the melting and
refreezing in the way caves form. Yeah, yeah, so there
might be something there, but we have at this point
(26:15):
we have little evidence of We we know a little
bit 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
(26:35):
to take over Antarctica ties in with a little known
story in US history as well. Right ah, Operation High Jump.
You say, 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 it. How
(26:56):
would you how would you say them? If you were
if you were pitching the move version of Operation High
How would you? How would you pitch it to me? Okay,
like we're in the elevator, We've got five seconds before
we get the next Yeah, I'll help you pitch to
Let's say nol Is. Uh, nol Is, Who's a good director.
Who's the director that you other than nol He has
(27:18):
to be someone else? Oh, and he has to be
someone else. Let's go with Michael Bay. No. 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?
(27:41):
All right, sub Bay? So check this out. I got
this idea for a movie. I think United States Military
Navy giant ships. Right then you've got Nazi ships too, right,
So there there there's one section Nazi ships, United States Navy,
other ships heading towards Antarctica. Right then they get into
these battles. Were Well, we're gonna make them get into
(28:03):
battles because we need explosions, right right, Bay? Okay, so
what else? Oh? This was? Yeah? This is good. I
think that I think he would go, um, all right,
it's not you have any explosions and naval ships? Now,
can these ships transform? Yeah? I didn't do battleship. I
don't remember who did battleship was Oliver Stone. Oh god,
(28:25):
I don't think all right, yeah, it's it's if we
were doing that in a world 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
(28:50):
first let's talk about what Operation High Jump actually was
supposed to be. It was led by a guy named
Richard E. Bird. 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
(29:12):
I don't Little America for that that's gonna be look
look interesting 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 extending severnty over as much of Antarctic
(29:33):
as they could. Make sense, that's what we do, that's
what Yeah, that's what people in general seem 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 National Socialist Party but the
(30:00):
Soviet Party, the the USSR, 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 well, uh Nazis regrouped to a secret place
(30:23):
in 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. Yea,
even before it ended, right right, even before it ended.
(30:45):
And 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 any body 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
(31:08):
the most exciting things, the most exciting thing about this stuff.
People found fossils into Antarctica. So I smelts, what else
are we gonna find? One other kind of life is
going to be there, like living life or just more fossils. Well,
(31:28):
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
(31:49):
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 huh an abundance of life. Sure, I was looking
(32:15):
for the right word that didn't have a curseword that
it uh. 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
(32:37):
identified a handful 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
(32:59):
exciting thing. What we might not just be looking for
relics of life gone by. We may find living things,
life in action. Yeah, 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
(33:21):
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.
(33:43):
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 Myanmar countries. It's about the size is of
Lake Ontario, one of the great lakes here in the US,
(34:03):
and it's the largest of the more than 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 that
(34:28):
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 just kind of
(34:49):
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 when
something's isolated that long, if you're familiar with the evolution
to creepy, in my opinion, the creepy evolution of cave
(35:09):
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 of All
(35:30):
stark and really do as much research as possible, 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
(35:53):
meet ups for readings. I would interrupt people's finding 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
(36:17):
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
(36:38):
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 found over one multi cell sular species, which is
(37:02):
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 it was like, okay, well maybe not
fish alright, right, because it's so difficult to uh, it's
(37:22):
so difficult to present scientific findings to the 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, and
(37:44):
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, cognitively,
(38:08):
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 sudden
(38:30):
just dumb about it. Now, 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
(38:51):
but so I I don't think like I do. I
think it's just a huge error to say that he
had to he had to withdraw that might have fish
they 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
like and I'm sure they did fish. I don't remember
(39:13):
seeing the headline, 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
(39:35):
don't know, I cannot There's gonna be a dinosaur. Yeah,
I cannot wait. Ancient civilization, alien life 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, probably not, probably not. I'm gonna keep hoping.
And well, I was gonna say praying, But well, we
(39:56):
we live. That's the thing, though we literally don't know.
It's it's such and 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 e cosmically in in
(40:18):
a cosmic sense or cosmic scale, is right next to us.
We're already 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,
(40:41):
and that is who owns it? Precisely, 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 fifty two because they
would start signing the terms of it so they could
(41:01):
send scientists down do some research. It has a couple
of very big provisions. The first one is that antarcticas
shall be used for peaceful purposes only, So no nuclear bases, guys,
no submarine reups. Uh, none of that. I feel like
that's a tough thing to enforce, but well don't it's not.
(41:29):
It's not impossible. I'm I'm sure it's a pain in
the butt. 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 maud islands are excuse me,
(41:56):
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 thing is that freedom of
(42:19):
scientific investigation Antarctica 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 matter what's really going on
(42:39):
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, No saying we've discovered
the ruins of an ancient alien civilization. No one tell Greg.
You know what, I really we probably shouldn't tell Gregg.
(43:02):
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 combler dot com. Yeah, but so alright, so
right now there is this there is this agreement that holds.
(43:23):
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 looking out at under there? You know? Yeah,
(43:44):
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 increasing rate to a point where this land is livable,
we're gonna have to find new places for humans to live.
(44:06):
Maybe this is the answer. Wow, I don't. Yeah, 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
people for a few million years until the next nine
(44:28):
age maybe. Yeah, And that depends on Oh, we shall
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 if you're listening, it's probably within your lifetime. Uh.
(44:51):
The there will be parts of the year 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
(45:12):
countries 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
(45:34):
perspective 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
(45:54):
global hotspots is not as strange as it might sound.
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
(46:18):
to paraphrase 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
(46:40):
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
who studies the climate professionally and to let me know
your estimates, would love to read them on air. Oh
(47:01):
and speaking corrections, 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 Kruschev who gifted Crimea to Ukraine in nineteen
(47:24):
not Stalin. Yeah, 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
(47:50):
of Earth shift. So what this means is, essentially the
north pole becomes a south pole, south pole becomes the
north pole. Most times, it happens gradually the polls start
to slowly shift away from their part, and then the
north that your compass points to is not the geographical
(48:10):
north right. And this, I mean this is something people
know if you use a compass. But other times it's
just flipped like like fresh banding, 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,
(48:34):
you know, I just bring this up because we're talking
about the polls. Every so often 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
(48:55):
a polar versal like that, it's because we're talking about
the main 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
(49:15):
the effects aren't going to be massive. No, No, well,
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? Yeah? Uh? And oh and no speaking of
(49:39):
North as we sow this up, guys, I know we
didn't get to everything. We're a little over our time.
I just saw no buddy Kristen and stuff. Mom never
told you walked by. Well we well, first thing we
have to do, Ben is really fast starts miss Okay, No, yes, man,
(50:01):
I just I just had to talk to you that, okay.
I just need to hear your voice. I was feeling scared.
No not if you know, it looks good, you kind
of you're kind of unhinged. Sorry, I'm really sorry. It's good.
I've just never seen you like this. Man. 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.
(50:22):
It's a horrible it's kind of hot water bottle nestled
underneath his chin, like it's the blood like your face. Yeah,
it's so funny. I was I was watching Mr Robot
last night and this isn't really a spoiler alert, but
I I just okay, So he is kicking a habit.
(50:44):
One of the characters is kicking a habit, and he's
having the night sweats and going through all that stuff,
and I was watching it, identifying so hard with his
character at that moment. Holy crap, Yeah you like in
the show. Oh yeah, watched the first episode. I really
enjoyed it. I need to. I can't speak highly enough
(51:04):
about it. The cinematography of this past episode. I can't
place that guy. I feel like I've seen him in
something that I liked, but I cannot, for the life
of me, figure out what it was. I'm not positive either.
Now I just see him as that character. All right, Ben? Sorry, no, no, no,
what did this? Uh? This Antarctic discussion at least cool
you down? Are you gonna are you gonna do? Are
(51:26):
you gonna put in? Did you just put in like
a drum roll? Yeah? I did it with my mind? Okay, Well,
well we heard in post much like Antarctica, 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. I have to ask both
of you guys, would you, given the chance, take a
(51:47):
trip to Antarctica? Don't they do like cruises or something? Yeah?
I got very close to us sneaking aboard. I mean,
not as a stowaway. I got very one of my
friends family. She was 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
(52:08):
to Antarctica and it's like a punishment. It's more affordable
if more people go with us, and so you know,
I'm here cheap skate. So I said, how affordable is
what do you mean? You know, 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
(52:32):
turned out it was more the dad's thing, and the
wife eventually put her foot down and said, 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
(52:53):
to send people out to find an entrance to the
hollow Earth and yeah, and you could sign up on
line 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
(53:14):
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 do you think
about the episode before we close out? But 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.
(53:34):
I want to go to Antarctica, sign up on a
research station, put my two years in or whatever. And uh,
I want to find the thing. You want to find
the thing? You 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
(53:56):
pathogen The thing was, By the way, what is the thing?
The thing was an alien life form that landed. Yeah,
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
(54:17):
contagion or a viral life form that lives there. We
should get to We should do that in a future
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
(54:37):
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?
And then there's the other one, uh, Gregg's plague. I've
already forgotten what it was. You've already forgotten what I
(55:02):
think it was like, neumonic christneumonic plague. Yeah, that's what
it was exactly. It was the bubonicnemonic. That sounds like
a fun plague that it helps you remember the mubonic plague. Yes, well,
well playeds are well plagued. On that note, We're we
(55:25):
better get out of here before Kristen Christy comes back
for revenge. So we hope that you did enjoy this episode. Again,
there's a lot of stuff we didn't get to, uh,
but we would like to hear from you with your
thoughts on the future of Antarctica, any of the things
we've discussed before, and any ideas you have for an
(55:46):
upcoming episode. And that's the end of this classic episode.
If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode,
you can get into contact with us in a number
of different ways. One of the best is to give
us a call our numbers one, eight, three three, std
w y t K. If you don't want to do that,
you can send us a good old fashioned email. We
(56:07):
are conspiracy at i heart 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
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
So we all love traveling. And I can't remember if
I said this in today's classic episode, but I got
really really close to making it to Antarctica once before
my operation went bust. One day go we'll go there,
hopefully as a group. And in today's classic episode, we
(00:21):
ask what will people find beneath the South Pole? In
what are we talking ancient artifacts of a civilization? Are
we talking a cave system that leads down into the
depths where the others live, Perhaps alien DNA trapped in
ice cores, maybe ancient monuments or pyramids. This is a
(00:45):
question that is fascinating, but it also leads to some
troubling implications. Alright, so travel with us. Here we go
from UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups, histories re
with unexplained and events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Welcome
(01:05):
back to the show. My name is Matt, I'm Ben,
and we are here as always where that our super
producer Noel the iceman Brown, Hey, Noel, So everybody, it
just on the top here. I just wanted to let
you know I got a vaccine a T DEAP. What's
a T depth specifically, it's is supposed to help you
(01:27):
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 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
(01:47):
and one point seven and uh just been sweating up
ut off, kind of out of it. Feel like your
brain is sort of wrapped in cotton a bit. Yeah.
So yeah, I remember you were telling me that about
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.
(02:08):
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
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
(02:31):
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 tetapp and he's like, oh, man, you know there's
about a one and one chance that you're going to
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,
(02:53):
maybe he accepted you somehow. I don't know. Well, this
guy I've met, if you were described were to describe
him to someone, would you describe him as a doctor.
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
(03:14):
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 gargantuan thing.
And today we're talking about unexplored gargantlan things. No, guys,
we hope that you appreciate this show because Matt has
(03:35):
pushed himself a little bit closer and closer to that
death's door. So 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, 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 of cool.
I respect that cool. So we're we're gonna get through
(03:58):
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 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
(04:20):
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 this. So maybe I'm just
on a downward spiral. We'll find out. What's cool Man,
a little delirium always helps his show. At that time,
I didn't sleep. That was great. That was my favorite episode.
We've made some more. Really all right, well this is
(04:41):
going to be the new favorite. Okay. So there's this
book that I really enjoy called The Atlas of Remote Islands,
and and for everyone who is a 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,
(05:01):
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. It doesn't mean that they
themselves are objectively bad, just means 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
(05:22):
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. It kind of becomes a part of
your worldview almost almost, Yeah. And the Atlas of Remote Islands,
which is more of a travel log than an actual atlas.
(05:47):
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, what I became really captivated
by were the islands in the Southern Hemisphere, not just
(06:09):
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 you get to Antarctica,
the more it seems as though the natural world is
(06:31):
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 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
(06:54):
covered lands. It's home to the world's freshwater supply and
nine percent of the world's freshwater ice. And this place
is really cool. It's currently the coldest and the 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,
(07:17):
that's another and 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 it
did not have those mountains, then it would probably be
a h covered with ice. Well maybe ninety nine or something.
But just because there's still be some land on the
(07:37):
coast in some places, Matt, this ice is three miles
thick cheese. So, to paraphrase so many horror movies, what
lay beneath? We know relatively little about this, and this
week we looked at what people might find beneath the
ice if it all melted away. The ice in Antarctica
(07:59):
comes in two large categories. There's the Western sheets Eastern sheet.
It extends all across the land like some curse in
a medieval fairy tale, and also into the surrounding ocean.
So what we'd like to do is talk a little
bit about some of the fringe theories and some of
(08:21):
the concepts that you will hear 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,
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
(08:41):
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
man made climate change? It's our fault. And yeah, the anthropocene, right, Uh,
(09:04):
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 clichefing, 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
(09:26):
would be, uh, the Ironing 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 onto the internet and search. The
mainstream news is not really say, telling the details of stuff.
(09:47):
And you know what else, just while woman rand here
and this is just gonna be so brief. Look, I
understand when people get very very emotional and angry about
their their opinion or what they see as the facts.
Right when someone because we get letters all the time
(10:07):
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, stuff like that, things that have been proven right, right,
(10:31):
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
where all of a sudden, the person who believes climate
changes um not man made, or believes you know that, uh,
(10:57):
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 how
you support that belief. And it makes me, It makes
me just somewhere between UM derisively, amused, and uh incredibly
(11:20):
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,
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
(11:41):
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 one, uh
a little bit of inside baseball here. That's one show
that I pitched for brain Stuff. It's other show I do,
and they, after we discussed with the production team and stuff,
(12:06):
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?
But but okay, so aside from that that rant there, uh,
the forces of climate change clearly have impacted the planet
(12:27):
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,
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,
(12:50):
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
times 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
(13:14):
as coming in two different types. So you've got your
land ice and you've got your sea ice. Now, the
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
(13:37):
a if I make a bad comparison. Uh, it's kind
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 winter, Antarctica gets some water weight. Okay,
(13:58):
that's exactly what Yeah, But like you were saying, there's
a there's a different kind of ice, right, Yeah, 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
(14:20):
increasing the amount of water, of liquid water that's in
the seas, right, because the amount of frozen water already
in the sea is part of the volume of the ocean,
the sea we're talking about. So let's let's advance this
further because there are probably some people who already saying no, no, no,
(14:43):
he totally don't get it. Well, we have a we
have a plot twist here that 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 Waits Glacier. It's this large, rapidly changing outlet
of the West Antarctic ice sheet, and it's it's being
(15:08):
eroded by the ocean, sure, of course, but it's also
being melted by a different, uh, a different thing, yeah,
from below, from the geothermal heat that's being forced uff
through it, and that that to me, Ben presents a
whole another issue. Yeah, whole, another whole other uh box
(15:28):
carve badgers, Yes, the box car badgers that are heating
up the earth from the inside. What's going on? Been
a whole another boot of birds, bag of boots. Yeah,
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
(15:50):
Texas at Austin or U T I G for those
of you who love an acronym, and that is in
a journal called the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
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
(16:11):
out that geothermal energy is our geo thermal heat 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
(16:33):
a bit long in the tooth for us, but in
the grand scheme of things, that's like, that's a 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 five
(16:54):
million years ago, because apparently, just in the scheme of things,
the way this ice across the 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, sure, we're not for
(17:16):
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 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 split up,
(17:36):
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 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
(17:59):
people 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. So 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
(18:20):
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 if you're going to get different
research on the northeastern side that's very different from the
(18:41):
research you get on the southwest. If there's there's like
a good neighborhood of Antartico, maybe 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 ago there was an expedition that you and
I have talked about a few years back. Um, actually
(19:03):
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. By permanent settlement, I mean like a
nation state or colony. I don't mean a research center,
(19:27):
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, I think that's already
an insurance. Yeah, USA just buys Antarctica. UM or some
(19:49):
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 goes through and
just burrows through the three miles of ice, makes giant
(20:10):
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, so the
thing is, it's not science fiction. It's happening now, just
in a different country. Oh, Iceland is not the big
(20:35):
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
Antarctic climates or the long term effects are still largely there.
(20:55):
There's still some questions 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 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,
(21:20):
but they have. 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 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
(21:42):
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, it's
it seems like a lot of the things are based
on yeah, yeah, yeah, Harald structure and improv or something.
Oh that's why. Oh my gosh, Ben, I never thought
(22:03):
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
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
(22:26):
that it's just something that TV company made too as
a recreation, but always startled that so many people 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
(22:48):
I ever have to meet uh Uh Seinfeld, Jerry Jerry Seinfeld,
Larry David if I ever have to meet them, because
I don't. I don't know. I guess I was just like, hey, guys,
I understand your show is quite popular, and I don't
think we're ever going to meet the congratulations. Who knows
they might be listening now anyway. Anyhow, tangents abound in
(23:10):
this episode. Let's move to one of the Let's cut
straight to the chase, one of the episodes we did
early on in our career together. 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
(23:30):
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 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
(23:53):
win their battles. Because as the national Socialists of these
factions of nationals socialist ak Nazis today um 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,
(24:19):
totally and down for the cause, right right, and cared
about what was happening between in these political political maneuvers.
So well, we did fine 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
(24:43):
is true that factions of the Nazi Party had an
intense belief in the occult, which we've talked about with
Za Naimberby, 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
(25:08):
these hidden mystical lands like 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
(25:30):
German wailing industry 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
(25:54):
to say there's not an extensive possible cave system in Antarctica.
I would say there most definitely is just because of
the ice over time and then refreezing, the melting and
refreezing in the way caves form. Yeah, yeah, so there
might be something there, but we have at this point
(26:15):
we have little evidence of We we know a little
bit 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
(26:35):
to take over Antarctica ties in with a little known
story in US history as well. Right ah, Operation High Jump.
You say, 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 it. How
(26:56):
would you how would you say them? If you were
if you were pitching the move version of Operation High
How would you? How would you pitch it to me? Okay,
like we're in the elevator, We've got five seconds before
we get the next Yeah, I'll help you pitch to
Let's say nol Is. Uh, nol Is, Who's a good director.
Who's the director that you other than nol He has
(27:18):
to be someone else? Oh, and he has to be
someone else. Let's go with Michael Bay. No. 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?
(27:41):
All right, sub Bay? So check this out. I got
this idea for a movie. I think United States Military
Navy giant ships. Right then you've got Nazi ships too, right,
So there there there's one section Nazi ships, United States Navy,
other ships heading towards Antarctica. Right then they get into
these battles. Were Well, we're gonna make them get into
(28:03):
battles because we need explosions, right right, Bay? Okay, so
what else? Oh? This was? Yeah? This is good. I
think that I think he would go, um, all right,
it's not you have any explosions and naval ships? Now,
can these ships transform? Yeah? I didn't do battleship. I
don't remember who did battleship was Oliver Stone. Oh god,
(28:25):
I don't think all right, yeah, it's it's if we
were doing that in a world 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
(28:50):
first let's talk about what Operation High Jump actually was
supposed to be. It was led by a guy named
Richard E. Bird. 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
(29:12):
I don't Little America for that that's gonna be look
look interesting 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 extending severnty over as much of Antarctic
(29:33):
as they could. Make sense, that's what we do, that's
what Yeah, that's what people in general seem 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 National Socialist Party but the
(30:00):
Soviet Party, the the USSR, 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 well, uh Nazis regrouped to a secret place
(30:23):
in 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. Yea,
even before it ended, right right, even before it ended.
(30:45):
And 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 any body 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
(31:08):
the most exciting things, the most exciting thing about this stuff.
People found fossils into Antarctica. So I smelts, what else
are we gonna find? One other kind of life is
going to be there, like living life or just more fossils. Well,
(31:28):
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
(31:49):
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 huh an abundance of life. Sure, I was looking
(32:15):
for the right word that didn't have a curseword that
it uh. 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
(32:37):
identified a handful 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
(32:59):
exciting thing. What we might not just be looking for
relics of life gone by. We may find living things,
life in action. Yeah, 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
(33:21):
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.
(33:43):
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 Myanmar countries. It's about the size is of
Lake Ontario, one of the great lakes here in the US,
(34:03):
and it's the largest of the more than 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 that
(34:28):
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 just kind of
(34:49):
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 when
something's isolated that long, if you're familiar with the evolution
to creepy, in my opinion, the creepy evolution of cave
(35:09):
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 of All
(35:30):
stark and really do as much research as possible, 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
(35:53):
meet ups for readings. I would interrupt people's finding 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
(36:17):
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
(36:38):
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 found over one multi cell sular species, which is
(37:02):
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 it was like, okay, well maybe not
fish alright, right, because it's so difficult to uh, it's
(37:22):
so difficult to present scientific findings to the 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, and
(37:44):
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, cognitively,
(38:08):
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 sudden
(38:30):
just dumb about it. Now, 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
(38:51):
but so I I don't think like I do. I
think it's just a huge error to say that he
had to he had to withdraw that might have fish
they 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
like and I'm sure they did fish. I don't remember
(39:13):
seeing the headline, 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
(39:35):
don't know, I cannot There's gonna be a dinosaur. Yeah,
I cannot wait. Ancient civilization, alien life 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, probably not, probably not. I'm gonna keep hoping.
And well, I was gonna say praying, But well, we
(39:56):
we live. That's the thing, though we literally don't know.
It's it's such and 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 e cosmically in in
(40:18):
a cosmic sense or cosmic scale, is right next to us.
We're already 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,
(40:41):
and that is who owns it? Precisely, 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 fifty two because they
would start signing the terms of it so they could
(41:01):
send scientists down do some research. It has a couple
of very big provisions. The first one is that antarcticas
shall be used for peaceful purposes only, So no nuclear bases, guys,
no submarine reups. Uh, none of that. I feel like
that's a tough thing to enforce, but well don't it's not.
(41:29):
It's not impossible. I'm I'm sure it's a pain in
the butt. 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 maud islands are excuse me,
(41:56):
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 thing is that freedom of
(42:19):
scientific investigation Antarctica 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 matter what's really going on
(42:39):
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, No saying we've discovered
the ruins of an ancient alien civilization. No one tell Greg.
You know what, I really we probably shouldn't tell Gregg.
(43:02):
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 combler dot com. Yeah, but so alright, so
right now there is this there is this agreement that holds.
(43:23):
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 looking out at under there? You know? Yeah,
(43:44):
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 increasing rate to a point where this land is livable,
we're gonna have to find new places for humans to live.
(44:06):
Maybe this is the answer. Wow, I don't. Yeah, 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
people for a few million years until the next nine
(44:28):
age maybe. Yeah, And that depends on Oh, we shall
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 if you're listening, it's probably within your lifetime. Uh.
(44:51):
The there will be parts of the year 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
(45:12):
countries 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
(45:34):
perspective 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
(45:54):
global hotspots is not as strange as it might sound.
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
(46:18):
to paraphrase 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
(46:40):
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
who studies the climate professionally and to let me know
your estimates, would love to read them on air. Oh
(47:01):
and speaking corrections, 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 Kruschev who gifted Crimea to Ukraine in nineteen
(47:24):
not Stalin. Yeah, 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
(47:50):
of Earth shift. So what this means is, essentially the
north pole becomes a south pole, south pole becomes the
north pole. Most times, it happens gradually the polls start
to slowly shift away from their part, and then the
north that your compass points to is not the geographical
(48:10):
north right. And this, I mean this is something people
know if you use a compass. But other times it's
just flipped like like fresh banding, 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,
(48:34):
you know, I just bring this up because we're talking
about the polls. Every so often 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
(48:55):
a polar versal like that, it's because we're talking about
the main 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
(49:15):
the effects aren't going to be massive. No, No, well,
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? Yeah? Uh? And oh and no speaking of
(49:39):
North as we sow this up, guys, I know we
didn't get to everything. We're a little over our time.
I just saw no buddy Kristen and stuff. Mom never
told you walked by. Well we well, first thing we
have to do, Ben is really fast starts miss Okay, No, yes, man,
(50:01):
I just I just had to talk to you that, okay.
I just need to hear your voice. I was feeling scared.
No not if you know, it looks good, you kind
of you're kind of unhinged. Sorry, I'm really sorry. It's good.
I've just never seen you like this. Man. 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.
(50:22):
It's a horrible it's kind of hot water bottle nestled
underneath his chin, like it's the blood like your face. Yeah,
it's so funny. I was I was watching Mr Robot
last night and this isn't really a spoiler alert, but
I I just okay, So he is kicking a habit.
(50:44):
One of the characters is kicking a habit, and he's
having the night sweats and going through all that stuff,
and I was watching it, identifying so hard with his
character at that moment. Holy crap, Yeah you like in
the show. Oh yeah, watched the first episode. I really
enjoyed it. I need to. I can't speak highly enough
(51:04):
about it. The cinematography of this past episode. I can't
place that guy. I feel like I've seen him in
something that I liked, but I cannot, for the life
of me, figure out what it was. I'm not positive either.
Now I just see him as that character. All right, Ben? Sorry, no, no, no,
what did this? Uh? This Antarctic discussion at least cool
you down? Are you gonna are you gonna do? Are
(51:26):
you gonna put in? Did you just put in like
a drum roll? Yeah? I did it with my mind? Okay, Well,
well we heard in post much like Antarctica, 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. I have to ask both
of you guys, would you, given the chance, take a
(51:47):
trip to Antarctica? Don't they do like cruises or something? Yeah?
I got very close to us sneaking aboard. I mean,
not as a stowaway. I got very one of my
friends family. She was 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
(52:08):
to Antarctica and it's like a punishment. It's more affordable
if more people go with us, and so you know,
I'm here cheap skate. So I said, how affordable is
what do you mean? You know, 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
(52:32):
turned out it was more the dad's thing, and the
wife eventually put her foot down and said, 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
(52:53):
to send people out to find an entrance to the
hollow Earth and yeah, and you could sign up on
line 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
(53:14):
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 do you think
about the episode before we close out? But 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.
(53:34):
I want to go to Antarctica, sign up on a
research station, put my two years in or whatever. And uh,
I want to find the thing. You want to find
the thing? You 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
(53:56):
pathogen The thing was, By the way, what is the thing?
The thing was an alien life form that landed. Yeah,
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
(54:17):
contagion or a viral life form that lives there. We
should get to We should do that in a future
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
(54:37):
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?
And then there's the other one, uh, Gregg's plague. I've
already forgotten what it was. You've already forgotten what I
(55:02):
think it was like, neumonic christneumonic plague. Yeah, that's what
it was exactly. It was the bubonicnemonic. That sounds like
a fun plague that it helps you remember the mubonic plague. Yes, well,
well playeds are well plagued. On that note, We're we
(55:25):
better get out of here before Kristen Christy comes back
for revenge. So we hope that you did enjoy this episode. Again,
there's a lot of stuff we didn't get to, uh,
but we would like to hear from you with your
thoughts on the future of Antarctica, any of the things
we've discussed before, and any ideas you have for an
(55:46):
upcoming episode. And that's the end of this classic episode.
If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode,
you can get into contact with us in a number
of different ways. One of the best is to give
us a call our numbers one, eight, three three, std
w y t K. If you don't want to do that,
you can send us a good old fashioned email. We
(56:07):
are conspiracy at i heart 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
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
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