From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello, and welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They call me Ben. You are you? And that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Uh. This this is something that's been a long time in coming for the three of us and for everyone else. It's also been a long time in Alberton, that's a joke about coming the county, another county in Georgia where I grew up. It's a it's a city, it's a city. Excuse me. Alberton's weird because it has the area because seven h six, So does Athens, so does Augusta, where I grew up. It seems like a whole wide swath of Georgia has seven or six and I've never understood why. Yeah, you know, there's a there's an interesting thing we could explore with the You know, there are conspiracy theories about area codes, which will be something for a completely different podcasts. Not Today, my Friend, Not Today, my Friend. Today, we are casting our memory back to nineteen eighty, almost forty years gone now in a small town called Elberton, Georgia, the self proclaimed granite capital of the world. And no, you have, uh, you have praps some of the we you definitely have the most I would say personal experience with today's topic. Could you could you lead us in? You'll give you the set up? Can you give us the setup? I'm gonna do it in my setup voice. In June of nineteen seventy nine, a well dressed, well spoken stranger walked into the office of the Elberton Granite Finishing Company. He used the name R. C. Christian or Robert Christian when introducing himself to the owner, Joe Findley, who was finishing his payroll. He said that he represented a small group of proud Americans who wanted to erect a monument in granite that would help shape the future of mankind. That's right, ladies and gentlemen. Uh, and those who are aliens or ghosts or future AI listening to this show today, at this moment in time and space, we are exploring the strange and fascinating story behind what is often called America's Stonehenge, but has another more common name, the Georgia. Guidestones. Don't don't done? Man? You read my mind with that sound effect? Is that? Okay? I know we could do it in No, no, no, it's better from you. More gravity, yeah, more more gravitas. So we went to the guide Stones for an adventure that we probably won't ever fully explain on air. UM. But circumstances led to the three of us being there in Elberton, Georgia, the seat of Elbert County. And this is a very very very very small town, very small population somewhere between four thousand, five thousand people, about ninety miles east of Atlanta, forty five miles from Athens. But the stones themselves are about nine miles north of downtown Alberton. And you can see it from Georgia Highway seventy seven and you can reach it by turning turning on guide Stones Road. But it's incredibly accessible. You know, it's just sitting there and there are horses near it. It's actually situated on a farm, a piece of farmland that was gifted to the city of Alberton by the Mullanex family. UM. And I don't know we should should we go into why I know this stuff? We should we should go ahead, Yeah, we should at least talk about it. Now. Let's let the badger out of the bag and get into it earlier. Because what what were we referring to when we said that you have some personal experience here? Um, When I was in college, I did my senior thesis film on the Georgia guidestones, much like all of you listeners, just kind of found its way to me, um through a girl that I was dating at the time, and I just was fascinated by it because there's a lot to be fascinated by. It's a pretty pretty awesome mystery, and I decided I was going to make a little documentary about it, and I ended up being I think a little more than that, um in terms of, you know, what I uncovered and who I kind of befriended along the way. We can get into that a little further into the episode here. Yes, because you have you have unique, one of a kind, uh, not just experiences, not just pieces of footage, but also documents and connections with it. And we're going to be coming back to repeatedly over this because ladies and gentlemen, you are going to hear in this podcast or see in this video things that you have probably never heard nor seen regarding this topic, even if you have researched extensively yourself. Um, let's look at the history of Albert County. What do we know about this? We know that it is named after a revolutionary and former governor of Georgia, Mr. Samuel Albert, who was born in Savannah in seventeen forty. Wow, seventeen forty. That's that's old South. Yes, with a capital O and the capitals definitely, So early on in this gentleman's career, he established this record for peaceable interactions with the native populations in the area, particularly the Creek Indians that were prevalent there. So this guy is allegedly a free Mason and his name supposedly appears on the ninth on the seventeen seventy nine Masonic membership roles of Solomon's Lodge Number one in Savannah. Keep this pretty cool? Yeah, yeah, well that's you know, Savannah is one of the older cities in Georgia and for it to be there, that's pretty significant. And he made waves during his time in office. He ignored some existing legislation that sought to mix the powers of church and state in Georgia at the time. The way that the powers that a governor would have over his state or her state, we're a little bit different than they are in the modern age today, or what we consider the modern age, because who knows when you're watching this, And like many people, he passed away in November of seventeen eight, like all people eventually, but Alberton remains as the most notable location surrounding the Georgia Guide Stones. All of its lore, all of its history, all rooted there in the town of Alberton. With also is still in the town of Alberton is a whole hell of a lot of granite, which is the main industry of that city. When we went and visited, every business from McDonald's to a you know, funeral home has a granite sign, you know on the outside basically looks like a tombstone. Or they call the monuments as their houses mailboxes. You know. It's just that the place is just lousy with the stuff and granite processing, granite processing facilities everywhere. I was able to visit one for the film actually and see the way they do it, and it's a very There are some machines involved, but a lot of it is still very hands on hammer and chisel kind of activity, where they you know, literally draw lines around the edges and hit it with a hammer and chisel and break them off, break off the edges to make those kind of rough you know, monument slabs that you see in tombstones, granite countertops. There's all kinds of different processes for doing it. But the place I went there were just lines of workers, you know, working on this stuff with their hands. The place is just full of dust, granite dust in the air, big huge saw blades with water spraying into them to cool it down and make these really precise cuts, really interesting stuff. And it's a very close knit community where pretty much the only reason you live there is if you work for that industry in some form or fashion. Yeah, which makes absolute sense, because no, you're not exaggerating in any way. This was and is a granite town. And also they're famous for the type of granite that I think it's called blue pyramid granite, which is of a higher grade than some of the other stuff out there on the market, and that is one of the reasons people conjecture that's part of the reason that r C went down I'm going to assume that I'm very familiar with him, or you are more than most. Uh so you can probably call him r C. That's why he and his associates, his cohorts selected this area specifically, so they built this monument we call the Georgia Guide Stones. It's built to convey astrological information, contains these multi lingual directives for a new world paradigm or almost it seems like a restart, like this should be the base level if everything gets destroyed, this is where we should go. And we'll run through some statistics that are pretty easily available online. Here, just the basics. Overall, nineteen ft three inches tall ways almost two hundred and forty thousand pounds um. The four major stones or sixteen ft four inches, and they have support stones, and they have a cap stone right, and the languages all of these directives are listed in English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, and Russian. And at the top in that capstone they have four older languages, and in each of those languages is written the same ten commandments, and they are as follows, presented without comment. Number one maintain humanity under five hundred million in perpetual balance with nature. Number two guide reproduction wisely improving fitness and diversity. The third one is a unite humanity with a living new language. Four Rule passion, faith, tradition, and all things with tempered reason. Next, protect people in nations with fair laws and just courts. Six, Let all nations rule internally, resolving external disputes in a world court. Seven, avoid petty laws and useless officials. Balance personal rights with social duties. Prize truth, beauty, love, seeking, harmony with the infinite, and last, but not least, number ten, be not a cancer on the earth. Leave room for nature. Leave room for nature. This has been the subject of so much controversy, but everything you've heard at this point have been facts, and no I wanted to ask you. Did you in in the course of talking about the construction, um, what did you learn about how this came from a stranger walking into a granted company in a bank to actually becoming a thing. So, in trying to find folks to interview for this film, I kept seeing the name Wyatt Martin pop up. He was the banker at a place at the time was called the Granite City Bank, and I believe it eventually became a region's bank. UM. And he was the one who received this Mr Christian when he came in a gentleman just looking to discuss financing a project or having someone act as sort of an intermediary. UM. He wanted to remain anonymous, so he needed someone that was rooted in that community that could sort of help move the funds around higher the right people. And he wasn't asking for someone's advice. He already had his mindset that this is where he wanted to build this thing. He already had the plans drawn up, he had the thing designed, you know, and it was a lot of money for the community and a lot of work for you know, people that the granite workers and so. And it would have been an interesting if you think about it. At the time, not knowing too much about it, I could see this as being an interesting tourist attraction, you know, the idea of having sort of a mystery around it. It got people in the community kind of um buzzing about what this was all about, who this mysterious stranger was and all that. And I've found Mr Martin Um. He had moved from Elberton, but I was look him up, just googling his name, and I called him and he was very gracious and hospitable, and went over to his house several times and hung out and just chatted, and you know, he had some really interesting things to say about the process without revealing the identity of this man. He was true to his word. The first thing the man said was, I want to use you as my owntermediary, but you have to promise me that you will never tell anyone who I really was, no matter where. I swore him to secrecy more or less. And you know, this is a man of his word, a Southern gentleman, shall we say, a businessman, you know, John businessman. And um, he did that thing. You know, he definitely kept to his word. So once it was clear that the funds were available and this guy wasn't completely full of crap and that he was serious about doing this project, um, he sent him over to see a man named Joe Finley at the Albert and Granite Finishing Company or I believe it was maybe the Albert Granite Finishing Company. And um, he said that they could get it done. And he had, you know, folks that could do the work that were craftsmen. They ended up having to bring in some outside help to do some translations for these directives that we talked about, and they hired some people at the University of Georgia to do some of the different translations, which we'll get into in a bit. But the stones were actually completed, um in the March of nineteen eighty and they even had an unveiling ceremony where all of local politicians were there, local business people. Like I said, it was for many looked at as a potential for a source of great pride for the community, like you know, here is the kind of work we can do. It was a much bigger project than just your typical to countertop or you know, a gravestone, a grave marker. This was a big deal and it was right there on the open in this field for all to see. So it was you know, it was a big point of pride for the community. Um. The unveiling ceremony was on March the twenty two of nineteen eighty and uh there was covered by the media and the locally and regionally, and so you know, I'm going it took about a year to get the whole process done, and um, there you have it there. We have the genesis, the origin point, the beginning, but not nearly the end, not nearly the end. And we'll get to some of the stranger things about the Georgia guidestones after a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. Remember that R. C. Christian guy. We still don't know who that guy is. We don't know the group that he represented, If he represented a group, we don't know much about it. Maybe a little bit. Well, we know speculations, but we there's much more that we don't know. We have theories about his identity, we have theories about his affiliations. Um. One of the interesting things that you'll find, one of the more conspiratorial, perhaps is that there are people who believe R. C. Christian could have been one of two people, or maybe even more than one. And for the record, I find that very difficult to believe because it sounds like when Christian was interacting with his intermediary, it was always the same person. They saw each other's face as they recognized each other. But my my favorite guest here is some people believe that R. C. Christian was actually guy named Robert Carter Cook. So Robert Carter Cook was a guy who headed eugenics organizations like the Planned Parenthood League, American Eugenic Society, the Association for Research and Human Heredity, and many other groups to uh too numerous recall he's very into eugenics, right. Uh. He was a big fan of Thomas Paying, also a freemason and author of the Age of Reason. Or next candidate Ted Turner, definitely, Yep, it's dead Turner. You're sold mat that's sold sold in on a buffalo. And he was like, this is how we're doing this. These are my stones, We're making them. You off that TBS money. Let's see. I just don't feel like Turner is the kind of guy that keeps much of anything a secret. You know. He seems like a pretty ostentatious fellow, wants to wants to leave his mark and let people know that it was his Well, this was his one secret, all kind of like everybody gets one. Yeah, it was probably Jane's idea, so she seems a little more subtle. No, let's go, let's go back to that is clearly blow Well, I don't uh. The problem is like the Robert Carter Cooke being a eugenicist. While that's evidence of a supporter of eugenics. It's not it's the it's not a smoking guy. And let's let's not forget too that the initials R C. Christian can't help but think about the Rosicrucian order, the Order of the Rose Cross Um also having some Enlightenment philosophies and um, you know, a similar kind of um ideology to something like a Freemason in that they combined aspects of religion and numerology symbology, uh in a similar way to the Freemasons, Right, Yeah, Rosicrucians who combine her medicism, some Jewish mysticism, and Christian gnosticism and and things of that nature to communicate this secret wisdom which has passed down through the ages um. And this sort of philosophy goes back to what are known as mystery religions. Interesting side note, all right, Um, you may hear at times people talk about a revealed religion. It's easy for us to think that means they're all sorts of secret religions. That may be true, but the actual definition of a revealed religion is simply one that has a book, you know, a Koran, a Bible uh Torah or something like that, So Rosicrucian and teachings then would be non revealed religions because they there's not like the one official book that everybody knows about that you can you know, buy at Barnes and Noble. You can buy a lot of books about it, a lot of books that purport to be sending the message, but there's not a single canonical thing at this point, which goes my next question, what are you guys doing next week doing the write one? Well? Whatever, man, all right, while we're getting together our snops is for that book. I think it's it's important for us to point out that when people are essing about what this organization could be, or what this group of people could be, all they have to go on is that the what they said in the Stones, and then that they describe themselves as a small group of Americans who seek the age of reason, patriotic Americans, even patriotic Americans absolutely, And this has led various various speculators to guess that these are Resicrucians, like we're saying, Freemasons, of course, the new world order of globalists, which it does sound similar with the World Court stuff or occultist However, we have on this show thanks to you know, uh, we have proof that at least the person responsible for constructing the guide stones took great exception to this because we actually have stuff that you found in your investigations from the man himself. That's trueman. But before I reveal this material, I do want to say that it should be noted that there was a sense at the time and now among the people that live in the area that this is some sort of shadowy occult monument, some sort of let's satanic site for ritual. You know. I actually interviewed a pastor from a church nearby who claims to have driven by at night and seen robed figures sacrificing animals and throwing down rose pedals. In all of this, I also spoke at length to a very lovely woman named l Um who was a pagan, and Um knows folks who have gone there to do Solstice ceremonies. Because it's on a high place, it does have that kind of druid I, you know, majesty to it. I could definitely see how that would be an appealing site, and it's oriented astronomy. It yes to show certain certain features of the right attracts the movement of the north Star. There's a hole in it called the Noman hole that allows you to aligns with the north Star. Yeah and so yeah, again, a lot of the stuff that we could um kind of lump in with some of these astrological obsessed shall we say, organizations, orders, religions. You know, it's a lot of that is there if you want it. And people still, local local populations still occasionally deface the monument by throwing paints on it and stuff like that. There was actually spoke with a local historian who had done some work around the history of Alberton and written several books about, uh, the history of that part of the state, and talked about how someone at one point had actually defaced it with a jackhammer or it looked like they had driven a car into it, or tried to literally pull it out the ground with some sort of toe line. You know, we saw evidence of that. Be guys, remember seeing the chips at the bottom have been defaced. You can you know they were able to buff a lot of that off. I mean again, it's a town full of granite workers. Yeah, um, but so there you know, even to this day, people there are there is a certain subset of people that look at his look at a mystery as being a sign of ill will or a sign of some sort of force that is negative in some way threat exactly, they're threatened by it. Um. Even in nineteen eighty, right when the stones were erected, Mr Christian wasn't having any of that, and he sent this letter to Wyatt Martin um. It's dated six August nineteen eighty Dear Mr Martin, thank you for sending me the newspaper stories. These were clippings about so of the controversy. This is the type of controversy which we had hoped to avoid, which I suppose is unavoidable. I'm inclosing a statement which you might forward to the local newspaper and perhaps to the offended ministers of the gospel. Perhaps printing this information will control the problem. We can only hope that common sense will prevail. This is quite a long statement, actually, so here are some selected highlights. Dear Mr Martin, I have received your recent letter detailing some of the bizarre reactions to the Georgia guidestones. If I were not concerned by them, I would only be amused. The sponsors of the project do not believe in demonology or astrology or satanism. We regard such activities as being a form of superstition. There may be evil spirits of a personal sort in the universe, we are not convinced. We would rather regard evil as the absence of good. Only through the most strained constructions can the precepts referring to the commandments of this monument be construed as being anti religious or anti Christian. It's actually so good, I'm gonna keep reading. The monument attempts to appeal to the good in human beings of all faiths. For this reason and this reason alone, it does not carry the badges of any of the world's major religions or philosophies. And for this reason it speaks in Russian and Arabic and Swahili and other major tongues of the human family. It is devoid of political overtones. It appeals to human reason as a God given tool to be used by humanity in dealing with the problems which now confront us so urgently. We hope that the good people of Elbert County will interpret our message literally just as we have presented it, and that they will not twist and turn our words to find hidden meanings which are not a part of our concept. New morologists can find secret meanings in the random patterns of a telephone book. The dimensions of the stones were determined by the limits of our financial resources and the physical requirements of the texts. Meters were used because the metric system is being adopted universally. Larger stones were too costly. It is probably unavoidable that followers of unusual sects will attempt to find in the astronomical bearings some occult message. None have been placed therein As we have indicated, the present stone cluster indicates the northern and southern extremes of the motions of the sunrise and sunset throughout the year. They have been calculated by scientifically trained astronomers using modern computer technology. The significance of these orientations is to recognize the constancy of the laws of nature which govern the motions of the heavenly bodies. If additional stones are added a later date by other donors whose gifts would be most welcome, they should indicate the migrations of the moon. If the donors wish, they may cause these stones to indicate some other interesting but constant feature in the nighttime sky. Our initial group of stones are intended to carry only the simple message we have inscribed upon them. Any other mysterious significance which may be thought to attach to these stones will be purely the product of the imagination of the viewer. We specifically disavow any connection with the so called cults and superstitions which are now being professed by people who claim a relationship to ancient religions or to witchcraft or other irrational human beliefs. We discourage the use of the monument site for cultist purposes of any kind. We ask the people of Elbert County to protect the site from abuse, so that our brief appeal to reason may be carried to our fellow human beings of all philosophies in a united effort to deal with the problems of the world through the application of human him yours truly, r. C. So this official statement more or less categorically disavows any sort of occult or ritualistic um involvement, at least on the part of our seat. And again, the words that we are hearing that pop up here consistently are things like reason, common sense. This is clearly based on at least a group that perceives themselves as proceeding in secularism and rationalism, also as being relatively neutral in terms of any kind of there they mentioned. He mentioned in the letter that there is no political message. I disagree with. I completely disagree with that, especially in context of nine when it was Yeah. I love that you point that outmat because we cannot divorce this from the context of time in which it occurred. We are as a species at that point, possibly closer to nuclear war than we have been at any time definitely before or a since World War Two. And now another another factor we forget is that these two gigantic superpowers are fighting proxy wars throughout the country. And this is the These are the days before widespread internet, So the average person was going after work very hard to have more of an international understanding. Right. Yeah, investigative journalism was better, That's just a fact. But the problem is that fewer people had access to diverse sources of information. And the reason I think that all of us are having a hard time separating this from a politicical context as they're talking about the rule of law on a global scale, which is itself a political opinion. What don't you think absolutely? I mean, and as you say, it's almost like there's a a very palpable desire need, if you will, to combat the potential for hysteria and and and losing that rationality and that sense of reason and just completely falling victim to you know, the hysteria of the time, which was Cold war paranoia, the idea that we, you know, may not be long for this world, you know, and and finding a way to kind of come together as humans. And let's not forget that this also, there's a lot here that might lead one to believe this is maybe for after the bombs fall. That's that's exactly my thought. It's if bombs do fall on us soil and this one remote part of Georgia remains somewhat unaffected, and as people continue to like rebuild after some disaster like that, you happen upon it and you can read it because it's in all the languages, and you make a new society. Yeah. I think that's an excellent point. And it's got to be in the reckoning there, because the things that tend to last the longest out of human made, anything made by humanity will will tend to be very um. When I say primitive, I just mean they don't have a lot of moving parts, but like very unsophisticated things mounds in the ground, burial mounds, stonework works of soone. And this reminds me of something that we may have talked about on the show before, which was when NASA started asking people how we would um uh necessary, asking people how we would protect future generations or even extraterrestrial species from radiation sites, nuclear fallout, or nuclear waste. Right, because the half life math there is tremendous, and it's completely possible that the US could fall, the bombs could drop, civilization could like go down into just a tiny uh Tinese stuttering match flame, and then later rekindle and people are finding out these new continents and stuff, and then they boom, they stumble onto a toxic wasting and like the last the fertile humans die. That was the fear, and they came up with all these weird, um very creative things like hey, let's get cats or plants that grow in the presence of radiation, or let's have big stonework warnings. But I think you guys are absolutely right. I think it is intended for post disaster because it's built pretty far inland. So even if climate change projections of the time were but you know, as catastrophic as it might have been, then it still wouldn't be underwater. Well, and again it's at the it's the highest point in Elbert County. It is a high place and it's flat. So um. Mr Christian did tell why Martin that he chose Alberton because of a the quality and availability of the granite, and the personnel that it would take to construct such a monument, and more importantly, even the conditions the climate. You know, the location and these things you're talking about with it being inland the way it was and the elevation, making it a place that could serve as a rallying point, you know, if the bleep hit the fan, if the bleep hit the fan. Yeah, that's uh, that's it's interesting. I wonder how many survivalist preppers have that plan. It's like, all right, if it goes down, meet me at the stones. I like that seventy two hours. I don't know. I mean, yeah, it might not be very helpful in gathering food and stuff. Hey, you'd have some horses right there, though. At least I think it's a nice idea, but there's a lot of ideas that maybe are not so nice, And I think maybe where we go now on this show, as we get little granular with him, pull this thing apart, talk about each one. But first let's take a quick break. So, as we said earlier, there are ten commandments, or as our friend RC likes to call them, precepts carved into these stones, and we're looking let's look at each of them, uh, during the time of their construction in the nineteen eighties and compare those changes or the global progress may or lost from then to now at the end of six So what's first? The first one is maintain humanity under five hundred million in perpetual balance the nature lot to unpack here, Yeah, that, I mean it just okay, well, well why is this? Why does this feel strange when you hear that? Well, it obviously hasn't happened yet. And in nineteen eighty when this monument was built, there were in estimated four billion, four hundred and fifty three million, eight hundred and thirty one thousand, seven hundred and fourteen rough estimated people on planet Earth at that time. Now, you know, we don't have to exactly do the math here to let you know that five million is significantly fewer than the number of people that existed at the time, which brings us back to our eugenics discussions. Right. So the big question that the guide zones imply, or the question that conjures up immediately, is what happens to these more than four billion people who around? So this gives us another Um, this give us another leg to our argument that this was meant to be read by survivors of something what happened to all those people? That's true. Um. There is another possibility though, that Mr Christian did in fact support the idea of calling you know, the undesirable element. Shall we say from the population, that there needed to be some sort of separating the wheat from the chaff? Shall we say for this new society? Careful? Well, I am, but I actually have here, uh in my hands a book um called common Sense renewed the Georgia Guidestones by Robert Christian, and this was distributed. It was given out for free at the Albert Library for years. They have them on file there and I believe they had copies that you could actually get. He left them with Mr Martin and asked that he makes them available to people. Have a copier. I don't think there are tons left. But the very first the preface starts like this. At harvest time, primitive farmers separate their grain by beating the stalks with flails on a threshing floor. They removed the loose straw, leaving a residue of grain, chaff, and dust. This mixture is purified by winnowing, tossing it into the air to permit the empty husks and useless debris to be carried away on the wind. The grain kernels fall back where they can be recovered and put to use by the community. So what's fascinating there is that's clearly that clearly implies something for our second precept that's coming up here too. Um. But there are numerous things that show up in in fiction and in international affairs and real politics where people are saying, you know this the egg omelet argument, right, you gotta break a ton of eggs to make that delicious Colorado to build a better omelet. Right, And obviously, no matter how you look at it, right now, as often this hasn't worked. As of sixteen, there are over seven point four billion people alive, and there's an estimated eighty million more on the way in seventeen unless the winnowing begins. The second one, the one that I think fascinates the three of us immensely, is guide reproduction wisely improving fitness and diversity. And this is also exactly what um Robert Christians talking about here. It's obviously an argument for eugenics, which itself has been the rationale for numerous horrific crimes, genocides, forced sterilizations, other other strange, huge medical experiments, and during various points of history it's been lauded as a way to improve humanity, though hopefully we can all understand how improving something might mean very different things to different people according to who right right. And it's true that while there are more people being born, the pattern of birth birthrates is changing geographically. The majority of First World developed nations are experiencing and decline in birth rates, that Japan being one of the most um one of the most extreme examples. And if we look to the future we walk a little past. What we're seeing is the idea that eugenics may be easier and more customizable than ever before. Uh we may become a species wherein thanks to gene editing technology, we don't have people practicing genocides so much as we have people editing genes of fetuses, unborn children, getting that crisper out, getting the crisper out. Yep, crisper the famous gene editing software which was recently used on human material for the first time. And God, it sounds messed up to call it human material. Ye. Speaking of that stuff, here's another quote from a chapter in the book Uh Common Sense Renewed by Robert Christian, chapter called cultural evolution Um. The science of genetics has provided us with rudimentary understanding of the manner in which a human body and brain developed from a single living cell, the fertilized ovum. That tiny miracle combines contributions from two parents and approximately equal proportions. It's central nucleus contains a genetic blueprint which spells out the general characteristics of our species, together with the minor variations which determine our racial and individual features. Our greatest acquired feature is invisible and intangible. It is our total cultural heritage, the composite of knowledge which is maintained and transferred in our libraries and in the information stores of our arts and sciences, our trades, traditions, and all the complex living patterns of human society. The capacity for assimilating that heritage and in enriching it is mysteriously contained in the trillion or more cells which constitute the living brain, and each of us collectively, these features determine our national and individual awareness and our character. Alright, So the argument there that culture is the most important thing. The learning, actually the learning of the dead and our predecessors, would be the most important thing carried by our um, carried by our human brains, right or whatever, we build a function as a proxy for a human brain. Uh, there is a dangerous part here with eugenics, of course, which is the idea of breeding programs. That sounds fun. Well, we know that the Nazi Party tried it to create their perfect aryan there and many you know, insipid so called royals or aristocrats have made essentially made incest a family tradition, and that happened to their massive disadvantage. I mean, look at look at the deformities of King Tutt, look at the jaws of the Hapsburgs, look at the web of grossly intertwined families that are still somehow treated as the tribal mascots of Europe. It's not just a lanister thing. And did you know that China, the nation of China, allegedly used a breeding program to create the famous basketball player uh Yao Ming. And you can read reports of this because China asked to very tall basketball players, his father being six foot seven and his mom being six three two, essentially breed together and see if they if their children would be tall and then boom. For now, there is no publicly acknowledged widespread eugenics program or breeding program, although generational family based discrimination is almost certainly functioning in a eugenistic way by for instance, North Korea's North Korea's collective punishment system, which says if if someone violates a law, then uh their family three generations up, three generations down off, which means that entire family, you know, lines are are being lost. Here's another one, unite humanity with a new living language. I feel like this also is a big part of of what you mentioned earlier been about how there it just wasn't as easy to get information, especially in an increasingly global society, global world um where there are years of outside invaders coming and challenging our way of life. The idea here being that if we could communicate with our enemies in the same language, using the same tongue, that maybe we could find more common ground. Perhaps. I mean, I think overall a lot of the messages of the guidestones are one of peace and environmentalism and sort of taking care of what you have and nurturing relationships. And I think that's that's how it speaks to me. What do you guys think. I don't know if this is correct, but I believe that English would be the closest thing that we could call a universal language that exists on the planet today. In TWI yeah, it's the okay. So there's a difference between what would be a constructed language and then a language like English, right, or a language like Mandarin. So many people have made attempts to create a global language before the Georgia Guidestones were a thing, and one of the most famous is Esperanto. There's uh, there's an Esperanto film starting William Schattner. I think we talked a little bit about Esperanto on a on another trip, uh, but it never it never caught on and Matt, You're absolutely right. Currently English, let's consider it the de facto language of business. So there are more people in raw numbers being native speakers of Mandarin for instance, right, or Chinese language. However, there are more and more people who are speaking English in their common Like let's say you spoke German and you spoke Spanish, and you spoke English, and Nole spoke Russian, and Noll spoke uh Swahili and also English, then of course you would naturally converse in English, but it's still not the not the world's language yet. And like you said, Noll, the rise of this incredibly cheap communication now the fact that we can have essentially the same kind of conversation if you live in Thailand and I lived in Um. What's far away from Thailand, that's not here, Australia, Australia. What I meant originally was, at the time, we didn't have that kind of instantaneous communication the way we do now. In nine it was much more difficult to get instantaneous news and information. Like you said, there was better quality of news, but it certainly wasn't as readily available to all people, and it wouldn't be as easy to find out what was going on in Russia, you know, or have a one on one conversation with somebody who was perceived as being like an enemy. I think the idea here to have to unify people with a living new language is the idea of bringing people together by getting rid of those language barriers. So in a way, technology and the Internet has sort of achieved this precept. From where we stand today, well I did. I think it's definitely eroded it and I don't think it's eliminating. But but it also goes to another bigger question. How do we define a language? This is this is something that's important because clearly, clearly the authors of the guide some precepts mean to define a language as something like we're speaking English now right, or however we're translated on your television. But is math a language, because if so, then the majority of the world speaks it to one degree or another. And you know, we've always talked about extraterrestrials or how you would communicate with an entirely alien species of some sort, it would probably be something like math um. But there are all lot of things you can't express in math, you know what I mean, Like you can't. Uh, there's a certain poetry to it, but it's not the same as the language is we're speaking and then his music a language, right would you would there be ever being an encounter with someone where you would be able to communicate entirely through music or even like body language, where that can differ significantly across cultures, as can music. But there are things about music that seem to cross cultural barriers, like in terms of a feeling of reverence or or like you know, having the you know, the hairs stand up on the back of your neck when a particular passage of some Beethoven is played, you know beautifully. Um, can you communicate thoughts and concepts? I mean you can paint a picture, but it's very blunt, kind of like you can't really get into specifics. You know, where you have like us the score to Peter in the Wolf for example, where you have you know, the duck is a particular instrument and you can kind of picture a duck waddling around or something like that, But then you can't get much more specific than that. If you used music, like like in close encounters for example, where you used music to represent intervals with are then translated to math to a type of code and Morse code or what have you. You know, you could communicate things that way. Yeah, and we know that maybe a computer code could be used in a similar way. If we go back to example of one person speaking German, one speaking Russian, uh, and they both are using the same sort of code, computer code, then it's possible that what they would be doing is like communication. But I love that you point out that music has more of an a mode of emotional content, because you could. We can hear Peter and the Wolf, which is a great example. We can hear in the Hall of the Mountain King and get the fact that things are going crazy there. But we can't listen to an instrumental if we don't know how to tie our shoes and expect to teach us how to do that. Right, we need words for certain things, well, unless you're using emojis, and that's the new language, because it would essentially be like hieroglyphics, but digital and universal. Yeah, idiograms, pictograms. That's fascinating. Well, what what about this next? What about ruling, passion, faith, tradition and all things with tempered reason? There's the R word again. I just think that comes back to not getting carried away with you know, the paranoias and the burdens of our time. You know, we could we could probably use that advice where we are right now with what's going on politically, and a lot of people are very paranoid and concerned. The idea of sort of ruling your emotional life with some measured form of reason and kind of tamping down your base or instincts to just fly off the handle and you know, go to war, be it with your neighbor, you know, or on a global scale. I just think that it's sort of just encouraging people to like think things through and not fly off the handle, you know. You know, I took it as an argument against religious extremes m as well as ideological uh. And I was looking at this in Night sixteen. There's a clear trend towards secularism in the U S and in Western Europe, but in other parts of the world there's a clear trend toward what is often called extremist ideology, right. Uh. And when I say that, I don't mean just one particular faith. I'm talking about different areas of the world. So the amount of people in the U s who say they're absolutely certain God exists has dropped from seventy one in two thousand and seven to sixty three percent in two thousand fourteen. UH and the amount of people who identified as non religious, agnostic or atheistic has increased UM and In the US, the population of people who believe in in some sort of God is UH, far higher than most other developed countries, but it's still slowly declining UM from UM over over about the same time span UH since the Pew Research Center conducted their first religious Landscape study. UM and now the religious religiously unaffiliated, which is slightly different than people who say, well, I'm none, I'm not an atheist. I'm not you know, a Catholic or um a shape, a shaker. The religiously unaffiliated, the people who don't consider themselves you know, Catholic, or or Muslim or a Jehovah witness, where an atheist at all has increased. People who like that was the population called the nuns who just put none in o n e UH has increased in the current age, which is strange. But I I like the way you're looking at it more than you know. I think it is better for it to be an argument of let's be reasonable rather than an argument against religion, which is what it could be against religious extremism. But I don't think it's against spirituality in general. Well, and it's also the the language here is very specific. It says rule, passion, faith, tradition and all things that. Well, yeah, the so the people that are either in charge of it or you know in some way that I guess the religious leaders like this. It's a direct message to that person. Um. That's interesting to me because it feels like, I don't want to I don't want to say patriarchal can control because it's not you know, specifying any kind of gender or anything like that. But it just feels like that the your leader will control these things with reason or make it. It seems like there's a hierarchy, definitely a hi how to prioritize of stuff, right, And I think that many of the precepts on here are specifically directed at government, and then I think some of them can be um made more personal as well. You know. I think that's what I mean. That's interesting about the language of these precepts is that a lot of them are clearly advice for setting up a government or for changing a government for the better. But a lot of them can kind of are twofold where you can sort of apply them to your own philosophy, in your own way of thinking, just as a human person. Yeah, there's a code of Hammurabi kind of thing going on here, which is exactly as you said, to establish a civilization, or to establish an ideal civilization. Well, what's next? Where are we at with the next precept? The next commandment states that we should protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts. Sounds pretty straightforward, sounds like a good idea to me, open ended though it is. Yeah, is it? Is it fair? I don't know? Or what? Do you look at the words fair and just? I guess definition of those isn't that Fox News is tagline fair and just now more than ever? Uh? Yeah, it's It's interesting because it makes me wonder too if this is similar to Asimov's fictional laws of robotics, which are also hierarchical, and that the first one establishes everything and the later ones build off that. So maybe that's interesting. Yeah, So maybe these are put in this order to build like you can't do you can't do this one unless you've achieved ruling your passion's faith and tradition and all things with that temperate reason. Exactly, if you don't have that down, then your courts and your laws are gonna be all kinds of messed up. Right. Yeah, Let's consider, for example, many practitioners of various religions that have a legal system encoded in that religion will consider that religions um that religion's legal system the only true, fair and just rule of law. Even if it's a religion that says destroy nonbelievers, that'll they'll just seem like fair and just. But it doesn't seem so if you're not ruling, you know, tempered things with reason. And obviously I think the guide Stones architects would take exception to that. Now, the United Nations existed in the eighties, right when when the guide Since were being built, but the International Criminal Court did not exist until the Rome Statute in the late nineties and only became active in the early two thousands. So we could say that if this um, we could say that, if we're protecting people and nations, that the International Criminal Court is a step forward in that direction. So that's progress. However, people's will argue back and forth over whether dear National Criminal Court a works there's be effective and the US is not a signatory and probably never will be. Do you feel like some of this is a comment on the state of the United Nations and like how to make it better, sort of a critique of it not being all that it's cracked up to be. I think think it's in support of it. Um. I feel like it's definitely. I think they see parts of the United Nations as a model. I think it's a mix, But I don't think they believe in the United Nations specifically. They believe in some sort of peaceful global enterprise. Um. The word enterprise, for instance, makes you know what they believe in. It sounds like a Star Trek world. You know how in the world of Star Trek Earth is utopian. That's why I'm so on defense about all this eugenic stuff. Mean, I read some passages from the book, and there is some language in here that is a little bit troubling, But at the same time, it's just not in line with so many of the other precepts. So many of them seem to be focusing on peace and harmony, and you know, being one with nature as we'll get to, you know. So, I just I I don't know that I believe that Mr Christian was in fact into the idea of of killing off a huge percentage of the population. I think it was more of a after the bomb's false scenario, how do we deal with those that survive? How do we create a society that will encourage reason over you know, hysteria and paranoia and you know, killing your brother to get something better for yourself, that kind of thing. And if you want to go dystopian with it, then maybe the eugenics at that point, post apocalyptic n X would be a matter of survival, right. Maybe there are certain um mutations or deficiencies that occur, like exposure to long long term exposure intergenerational to radiation may mean that only certain people can or should um breed or viruses like Zeka, you know, if it, yeah, somehow travels through a line, then yeah, that I mean, that's that's a really good point. And then also we have to think maybe they were writing by committee, you know what I mean, maybe just like the Founding Fathers had different aims. Maybe there was just one guy there who was super into eugenics and they said, okay, well you have to help us build these stones. We'll put a little in there just before we get too far away from the International Criminal Court. I don't know if you guys saw the news today that Russia withdrew from the International Criminal Court, and earlier this year in several African states withdrew from the International Criminal Court. It's weird see the International Criminal Court losing sway with with parts of the world right now. Yeah, and that brings us to the next precept, which is let all nations rule internally, resolving external disputes in a world court. So on paper, we talked about the i c C and other international systems that help resolve international issues. However, one thing that's not mentioned in the guidestones precepts at all is the rise of corporate entities and the fact that in numerous situations now, especially with Virginy legislation like the t p P Trans Pacific Partnership, what we're seeing is that some external corporations are able to affect the internal functions of state actors of countries, you know, And we don't need to go to court man with the country. We'll just have a tribunal, uh, separately on our own. It'll be fine. You don't have to worry about it. And there's no question that numerous countries since before the nineteen eighties and then after the nineteen eighties have been interfering with the internal functions of other other states. The US is an extreme example. The US has interfered legally and illegally and in gray areas in multiple countries throughout the world. And not to say the US is the only person, the only entity doing this. Russia has done the same with crimea right in the Ukraine. China has famously done the same with the expansion in what's called the South China. See basically, the superpowers do it. Yeah, the superpowers do it do We live in a world where might is right. The architects of the guide stones are arguing that we should not, But so far we haven't made as much progress on that one. And then here's the one that remember earlier we said, uh, we said that we don't agree with the idea that these are not of a political nature. Absolutely, what what do you think with What do you think of this next one? It's it's probably the most middle finger precept of the bunch. I would say avoid petty laws and useless officials. I read that, I thought, what happened. It's like a mic drop right there. You know, it feels like it's personal, right, like somebody in the committee or whoever came up with these didn't like somebody who was either in charge of his group that he is with, and he wrote this one. I think he wrote it on purpose for one person. Well, if we consider Congress a group of officials, then the American public certainly ranks them as largely useless. I mean, their approval numbers are in the tank. Yeah, I mean, not to mention petty. I mean it's it's it's all of this, you know, back and forth. I'm going to block anything that you could possibly want to do, you know, if it kills me. I mean, it's not even about grass, it's about winning. Yeah, it's about progress of the party, not of the country. Yeah, you know what I didn't think about that. You're absolutely right, that is petty. And what makes a law petty? What makes an official useless? Uh? No, I think you had the best answer for that, um, But a lot of our listeners are going to have very different answers depending on political opinions. That's the point. It's another very open ended one here. So this is all about like how you look at it and who you think is use you know, I mean, and it all depends on whether they're doing something for you or not a lot of time. And like Matt pointed out at the very beginning, Uh, since they are anonymous, we don't have a way to contact them and say, hey, what's up with that one? Who did you write this about? In a specific congress person? And the other one balancing personal rights with social duties? The next pre step seems like it's an argument for good citizenship. Um, you know, voting, pain, taxes and so on. If that's the case, well we haven't made that much progress either. Voting rates remain laughably low. Uh. The US elected a president who bragged about never paying taxes and you know whether you support that, uh that president elect or not. Um. It also seems largely legal, but it's also completely true. So what is what is the conflict between a personal right and a social duty? That feels little open ended to me because your social duties vary depending upon the community or the or the civilization in which you live. To me, though, this is almost like a socialist kind of thing, sounding like or even you can go as far as saying communists. It's saying, you know, for the greater good, I will give up my personal rights for the greater good of the community. I see, it is my social duty to limit my personal freedoms for the greater good. That's just how it sounds to me. I don't know about you guy. To me, that sounds very star trek, And I know that may sound counterintuitive to a lot of people literally needs of the many. Well, yeah, but if you think about the way the enterprise function, Oh wow, I sound like such a dork. Okay, I'm gonna keep going. You think about what all of the inhabitants of the enterprise got to do. I mean, there was a holidack where you could, I guess, give us let off some steam or something like that. But in the in the interactions amongst all of the crew members, you had to be very straightforward, very I mean even keel. Like, nobody is going off the handle, having a fight or getting super super drunk. It just doesn't happen because they're greater duties, your paced, your passion, faith, your tradition, all things with that temperate reason you know, not flying off the handle, keeping it cool and calm and collected. I feel like this is another one that speaks both to a system of government that could impose this kind of thinking on you, and also just to this is just how you should be a a guy, good, good gal, good good human citizen. You know, I think that it can be seen both ways, as as many of these can. We're getting down to it now, guys. I know we've been at this for a minute. This is probably our longest ever episode, but let's soldier forth. Yeah, we just had a few more. This is the This is the most open ended prize, truth, beauty, love, seeking, harmony with the infinite? Who has the closest me that is the closest thing to God in this entire affair, because it's it's It's made a lot of effort to be very secular, as we talked about, it really does. Even in that letter I read from Mr Christian, he talks about how they purposely left out any specific mention of a religion of a god, and none is there. And you know, um, I know atheists that still think about the idea of the universe or the idea of the something some force that moves through things. That is sort of what one might consider calling God. And and and this is the reference there, I think when seeking harmony with the infinite. Yeah, it seems like it's an argument of some sort of secular, meditative approach to being self aware of your place in the universe. Right, how could you be mad about that? It would be my my response. But it brings us to speaking of harmony the infinite. The very last one and one of the most important, and I would say crucial for our time. Be not a cancer on the earth. Leave room for nature, Leave room for nature. Yeah, twice, says it, twice in a row. There, it's the last one. Yeah. Um, I gotta say this. This one hits home for me a little bit. I think maybe I listened to too much Joe Rogan, uh, at least back in the day, like two thousand twelve Joe Rogan where he discusses flying in a plane over cities as opposed to flying over natural areas, wooded areas, mountain ranges, stuff like that. And I'm paraphrasing Rogan here, but he's just saying, which one of those looks like a tumor when you're that high up and you're looking down on the Earth itself if you imagine it as a living being. The tumor is the city with all this jagged, nasty metal shooting up out of it. And then you've got streams and water running over here with these with plants and animals running around and all that. I don't know, I feel that, I feel that, I feel like we may be really bad for this planet as a species. Well, you know, the Earth is uh, the Earth is definitely in the age of man, the anthroposyne. Uh. The Earth was covered by approximately fourteen point eight billion acres of forest about eight thousand years ago. Has a repercussion of human exploitation. Only about eight point six billion remain in the highest rates of DeForest. The sition occurred during the last fifty years from nineteen to Brazil alone lost over ninety one million acres of rainforest um During the time of the Guide Stones construction, Earth was already undergoing what is called a global mass extinction, and it continues today at a break neck pace. And this is not a what is it. This is not like a Sierra Club uh pea score green piece lecture. This is just these are facts, but that kind of thinking was very popular in nineteen seventy nine and nineteen eighty. You know, this idea of conservation I remember, you know, recycle, reduced reuse um. I mean, this was in the early nineties, even for me. But I think a lot of that stuff began around that time, and it was kind of sort of entering the public consciousness a little more than it had. People were accepting that maybe all this industrialization isn't the best thing in the whole world, you know, especially with how unevenly it has occurred in parts of the world. And then furthermore, sometimes people reject an environmentalist argument out of hand, which is clearly this is an environmentalist argument. The last part leave room for nature. However, there's another bent that a lot of people don't consider, which is the biotechnological part human beings. The more we are learning as scientists and as inventors, the more we are learning about the natural world, the more we are learning that our best technology just imitates a concept that already exists there. So when things go extinct, or when systems become corrupt or defunct or they don't function, what we are losing is the best functioning technology on the planet. And it is not within our capability to replace it after a certain point. So if someone is bothered by if someone's like the rainforest is abstract, that doesn't matter. That doesn't affect the price of breakfast, cereal or whatever. Don't think of it that way. Think of it as a computer, but that a computer that you can't fix, a machine that you can't create enough replacement parts for. Think of that breaking and think of it more like, um, the way you would think of being on a boat in the open water and the engine is slowly breaking down and the whole is disintegrating, and you start to realize that you can swim for a little bit, but not forever. I mean, at our best, at the height of you know, the human races intellect and ability to innovate, Have we even really come close to matching a system like the rainforest or you know, like the way weather works. Have we figured out how to harness that? No, not even close, you know? And I think that's that's a that's pretty forward thinking, um of the creators of this monument to put that in Uh, And it's true right now, I think than than ever and now we can we can say that the time of the recording. Uh, the guide stones still exists. They're except for the drive there. Once you get there is very easy to access. There's no there's no one who will stop you from They are monitored. There are cameras and those were only put up after so many attempts to tear the things down and vandalize them. And I think they are periodically still you know, hit with with spray paint and things like that, but they are very quickly repaired. Someone's actively funds, actively funding them and monitoring them. But you know, you're not being watched per se, you know. I mean, it's you can go there and just enjoy them. It's a very peaceful place just out on this field, just a very small narrow state road. You just hear the occasional sound of a car are whistling past, and it's an interesting place to go and just kind of collect your thoughts and um, it's been a lot of fun talking about it with you guys, that's for sure. Well. It's also actively visited still. When we were there, several families came with children to explore it and look at it and go through it, but not a ton right there for a while, and there were maybe you know two or three other people that came. No, there were I think I counted eight the second day that we were in there groups is what I mean. I guess I got that came together, you know. So it's not like you go and it's just teeming with people. But you can check out our other podcasts. You can check out our video component of this coming out soon. Uh. You can find every podcast that we've ever done on our website Stuff they Don't want you to Know dot Com. You can find some of our Facebook and Twitter adventures that might even relate to this, I think, uh, in our in our pages on those sites where we are conspiracy stuff. We're also on the Instagram's well we're on one Instagram It's Conspiracy Stuff show. And we know this episode is has no all pointed out, probably the longest single episode we've ever done. But we hope that you enjoyed this look at the look at the guidestones in depth and on behalf of it. Not to speak too much for us, Matt, but on behalf of the other two parts of the show, I want to thank you for giving us and giving the audience such a um, such an unheard of look behind the screen of the official story regarding the Georgia guidestones. Yeah, and the one point that I didn't even mentioned is um. And if you guys are interested in anybody wants to see the little documentary and may be glad to shoot out a link, I'm at exist um. But Mr Martin gave me all of the documents that he had that he basically just wanted to unburden himself with this thing, so he gave me everything that he had that didn't point to Mr Christian's true identity and everything else we destroyed you wait, you destroyed? Well, he did, and I filmed it what and that's actually in the film if you want to see it spoiler alert, but it's I think it's important to know that he's the only one that knows he is not going to be around for too much longer. He has passed away. Robert Christian, he did, he didn't. He did say that much. He was he was called by his daughter. Oh another thing to just want to mention the last thing, Uh, this was a family affair. Mr Mr Martin did tell me that much that this was this group. He represented that many of them were his family members using what Yeah, and I like that, We're ending with a tinge of intrigue, a tinge of mystery. If you have something that you think your fellow listeners should know about the Georgia guidestones, please write to Noel and Matt and I and let us know. We have not phased out the shout out Corner. We have had a couple of doozies of episodes, this one being particularly one. Um, but we are collecting some really great letters from you, folks, and we are gonna be sending them back out your way in an episode coming up very soon. Yep. As always, the best suggestions for topics come from you, so please let us know what you think your fellow listeners should know more about. You can write to us directly. We are conspiracy at how stuff works dot com.