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. M welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called me Ben. You are you? And that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. We've got our super producer Trysted there and the uh let's see once too. We got a whole stable of superproducers. I feel like the name is taken on less of a special meaning. Are you just mad because I called you a super producer? First? I am? What? Am I now? An inferior producer? You're a super co host? Yea. So it's true. We have been expanding and we're hoping to build something that stands the test of time, which turns out is a fairly tricky endeavor the longer the timeline becomes right, I hear the trick is to stack things on the ground and then stack another layer that's slightly smaller on top of that one, and then just keep going. It's the Lego rule, yeah, or from red Solo cups to UH decks of cards. You know this is such a side note, but I had no idea. Apparently, red solo cups or solo cups in general are US thing, and they've appeared in so many films that people around the world associated with American culture. So people travel traveling to the US from outside of the US often buy these cups and bring them back to their friends and associate them with getting plastered. Sort of like pyramids in Egypt. Am I right, Yes, sort of like pyramids in Egypt. Uh, that is true, that's what we are. We sort of circumnavigated the uh, the topic, and so let's get right to it. Let's jump into the bush instead of beating around it. Pyramids, Well, you may have seen one of these things before, perhaps in a history book, perhaps you've taken a trip to somewhere in the world where they exist. It's a structure with a triangular outer surface, like we were talking, Uh, smaller layers on top of bigger ones, and it converges to a single point at the top. Hold your horses, kids, are about to get into some serious geometry. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilateral, or any polygonal shape. You guys remember that stuff. Oh yeah, I don't so let's look at his square pyramid is square pyramid has a base for triangular outer surfaces. This is a common version and the design is simple but brilliant. Right. Pyramid keeps the majority of the structure's weight closer to the ground. And uh, the pyramid ian on top, that's the fancy word for a capstone, means that less material higher up on the pyramid will be pushing down from above. So these are structurally very very stable. And when early civilizations created these, uh, they quickly realized, you know, this is way more durable than just building straight up the way we do with skyscrapers. Yeah, and we can build these things much larger than any other building that we've created thus far. And they're cool looking. Yeah, that's true. And let's be honest. When most people hear the word pyramid, they don't really think of geometry, quadrilaterals and polygons. They think of and Egypt. That's I mean, you're totally right, they think of They can go Egypt, pharaohs, mummies, right and nw who can blame them? Egypt has a huge amount of pyramids. The estimates vary, but sources currently site anywhere from eight to a hundred and thirty eight identified pyramids, and there could be more hiding out underneath something which we this will be a common thing that we find throughout this episode. Yeah, most of these right, No, I think you're spot on to mention mummies, because most of the ones in Egypt were built as tombs. You know, it was the it was the very last word in luxury, and these were common during the Old and Middle Kingdom periods. The earliest known pyramids are found in a place northwest of Memphis, Memphis in Egypt. The Memphis in Tennessee is named after the Memphis in Egypt, which I didn't know for a long time, but it's an old town called uh Sakara. The earliest of these pyramids is the Pyramid of jos Er d j O se Er, and it was built during the Third dynasty. In this pyramid and it's surrounding complex, I guess you could say it's almost like a kind of compound where everything is sort of built around it, like a mall or something. Um They were designed by the architect Emma tap and they're generally considered to be the world's oldest monumental structures constructed of what's called dressed masonry, so not like not like a earthen mound. Yeah, I mean, they're more polished and finished stones, right, and by far the most famous pyramids that exist. When you close your eyes and you imagine a pyramid, you're probably thinking, Okay, yeah, what are you saying? It's probably the Pyramids of Giza, the on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. These have been featured all over the place since you were a baby. These have these things have been on covers of magazines and on television and in movies, and there's some of the largest structures ever built. The largest one Giza. The largest pyramid is the Pyramid of Cufu. And as remember the Seven Wonders of the Ancient world, the Hanging Gardens, all that jazz, the Pyramid of Cufu is the only one still in existence. So pretty serious accomplishment for a structure. I mean, I'm not surprised they beat the garden, but any any man made structure. You've probably seen this in various uh non fiction television shows where they talk about what would happen if humans just disappeared or when the species goes extinct, start talking about how quickly things will deteriorate. The US has a couple of durable structures, but not as many as we think. No, the Hoover Dam is pretty pretty cool. That thing is still curing. It's technically not finished. That's an odd thought. But the pyramids will probably outlast a lot of the architecture that's currently on the planet. And for thousands and thousands of years, these were the largest man made structures on Earth. For example, let's take a closer look at the Pyramid of Cufu, which is built mainly of limestone in the exterior and most of the pyramid itself, but then as you get towards the interior, there are some large red granite blocks in there. Yeah, and it contains over two million blocks, and they have a wide range of weight, but they're they're all gigantic. The large limestone blocks weighs six point five to ten tons, and the smaller ones would weigh in at about one point three tons, And so you can see various calculations of this. There's another thing. It's not just the size and the weight of the structure. The placement is surprisingly precise, right. It has four sides that face the four cardinal points. Absolutely as you said precisely, and it also has an angle of fifty two to Greece. Originally it was fo feet high, but today, um, I guess through pyramid shrinkage, we the well known, undocumented phenomenon. It's only four hundred and fifty five ft. So what happens that missing thirty three ft? Somebody stole it? Right, it wasn't erosion. Nature didn't steal it. People stole it. There was this high quality casing limestone, not a thing. Well, I guess in the way that retail stores refer to shoplifting and shrinkage spoilage, right, I urged shrinkage spoilage might be one too, But nonetheless, this thing still remains as a massive structure out there in the desert or at least on the outskirts of a city. And yeah, and when we hear this word again, we we often think of ancient Egypt, one of the world's most influential situations. Tombs, desert, mystery, winds in the night, and curses. Right. Uh, Pyramids are mysterious, though for hundreds of years societies around the world forgot what they were for. I had no idea why they were built. Would just take tours to stare at them and then to steal stuff. And to be fair, there are a lot of human beings out there that don't believe we've nailed down exactly what these pyramids are for, even though, yes, even though it's kind of a known thing, but we're gonna, we're gonna get into it. Yeah, Okay, So there's a precedent for pyramids. The earliest proven precedents for pyramids are called zig rats, and they they're not in Egypt. Instead, the earliest zig rats were located in Mesopotamia. So when you just if you're thinking about what Mesopotamia is, if you're not going back to those high school classes, Uh, it's a rock Syria of a couple other countries right in the Middle East there that goes through the Tiber Euphrates River. It's the cradle of civilization, right It's where mass yes, but it's where massive war is being waged right now. And that's why it was the cradle of civilization because it was very supportive of you know, growing crops, and it was you know, within all that desert, it was a sort of an oasis. It's great soil. Absolutely, yeah, and we see that we see different civilizations springing up around uh, fertile deltas you know, and the convergence of rivers silt silt. Yeah, it's all about the silt. Uh So. The earliest cigarettes are towards the end of what's called the early Dynastic period, and the latest or most recent ones date from the sixth century BC. They were all the rage, and they weren't you know, they used to look way cooler. They were brightly painted and gold and bronze. But since they're constructed from the sun dried mud bricks, over time they've decayed. Can you imagine rolling up in a somewhat desert area and seeing a gold covered giant building that's just reflecting sun directly back at itself, back at the sun and at your face. I would assume that I was my life was immortal danger, and whomever built it was going to sacrifice. I'd be like, that's pretty dope. But yeah, especially if you're talking the what you said, the latest ones were sixth century. Yeah, and just imagine the technology available, the understanding of the world at the time. It's a big thing with pyramids even today is like people are like, how did they manage to hoist these blocks, and they're still you know, wild speculation. That's two different methods that they could have used, and some of those include help from extraterrestrials. And zigarettes were also built by the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Elamites, the Acadians, and the Assyrians, typically for local religions. And as as we mentioned earlier, these didn't exist in a vacuum. Each one was part of a larger complex. So there would be a place for storage, there might be a place where a priest lives, and in various other buildings with some bureaucratic functions, some support functions, and some official proceedings and my official, I guess in this case we mean like religious or governmental proceedings. And when we talk about how these things are structured, we discussed the pyramid, which is, you know, more of that traditional structure that you imagine of a sloping side. Even though it's not you know, perfect, you're still dealing with layers of blocks. When you think about a ziggar atte, it's a little more of a tiered system. So if you're looking at it, you're gonna see some kind of base, so it's either rectangular, oval, some like perhaps a square, and then the pyramidal structure is similar, but it's just divided more as you go up. Well, that's the thing to The ziggattes are obviously super cool to look at as well, but construction and engineering wise a little more straightforward. Right on was like building a brick wall like or a brick staircase, whereas the pyramids are like smooth and like to actually do the math and figure out how to get those blocks just the right size to slide in there, and how to be structurally sound and also make those amazing sloping, perfectly flat sides. That's that's where the real mystery kind of comes in. It's like, man, how did you even conceive this? Yeah, that's the thing. The where you have the capstone with the pyramid. With the zigarettes, you have more of a flat top, so you could do things at the top of a zigarette, like sacrifice virgins. Sure if that's uh, if that's what your religion dictates, or just sacrifice you know whomever. Yeah. Yeah, a lamb could be just a lamb, could be a land, It could be a king, it could be the child of the king, depending on the weather. It was a different time, it was it's a different time. There's another thing here that I thought was was interesting and a practice that you can see even in the modern day. Kings sometimes had their names on the bricks. And it makes me think of various public works and parks where people donate to a cause, right like in we have a thing in Atlanta called Centennial Park and there are these huge swaths of of of cobblestone or brick where people have People during the Olympics paid some sort of fee to have a brick with their name on it. Have you seen that episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm where it's like Anonymous, he's really upset that he gets his name put on a wing of a museum, and then the other guys anonymous, and it turns out it's Ted dancing, but he keeps telling everybody that it's him and cool and chill because it's like anonymous for the For me that it reminds me of presidential libraries or something where it just has your name across the top emblazon there. I'd make my anonymous. Yeah, people and people do a lot of stuff to just to get their name on something, you know, maybe a hotel, maybe an I mean this podcast is so I could maybe one day end up like on a T shirt. There you go, so alright, so we we can see then the most famous examples also pyramids and zigarettes. The comparison always think of, you guys, we talked about legos earlier. We mentioned that, you remember do plos? Do plose like the less sophisticated version of legos. I think their age range is a little younger, okay, right, yeah, yeah, a little little rabbit rabbit. Yeah. So, uh, that's that's what I always think of, because it's like you're building zigarettes and then you've upgraded to right, MAD don't know about I don't know about no, but I'll learn, you'll remember maybe I don't know. I think I think he got the concept though, right, I understand they're big legos. It was an apt metaphor. Be it really does make sense. Over over the centuries, you know, people have, as we said, speculated endlessly about the Pyramids. Some theories range from nearly certain widely accepted in academic circles, and then some get further and further out there to the fringes and beyond. But today we're going to ask a question. A lot of listeners have asked us over the years. Yeah, we know a lot about the Egyptian pyramids. They're literally people called a gyptologist who spend their lives studying this stuff. But what about all those other pyramids? Oh yeah, there are in other places, and we'll get to that right after a quick sponsor break. Here's where it gets crazy. There are other pyramids. It's not just ziggarettes in the ancient cradle of civilization. And it wasn't like an empty tease. No, no, we're gonna deliver. It turns turns out, you see, this might come as a surprise to some people, but the ancient world was actually chalk full of pyramids, lousy with them on continents across the planet. And they're not all these tombs to some god king that you know, sat above all the rest of the citizen ray and you know, dictated what to do. Uh. There were temples. A lot of them were temples, some cases their sites of human sacrifice. And we know that because we found the evidence. But we still don't know how many existed or even still exists today. But in archaeologists actually discovered thirty five pyramids in the Sudanese Necropolis that dated back around two thousand years when a kingdom named Kush flourished in Sudan, and that's insane. Twenty yeah, twenty thirty were still finding pyramids, and these in particular were pretty pretty darn interesting because they're really closely together the way there, you know they're located, they're concentrated, right, and they're pretty big, larger than an NBA basketball court. And you know, it's so surprising to me that you can just discover this just because the sand has moved so much over such a period of time that they got covered up and you can't see them anymore. Sometimes there's growth on top of them that you have to basically just dig away and then oh, there they are. You've heard of these. I'm sure the Mayan pyramids that exist in Mesoamerica technically their ziggarattes and were used for human sacrifice. I guess when I was conjuring the image of virgin sacrifices, I was maybe thinking more along the Mayan lines. You know, it's it's not far it's not far off, because a lot of the in Mesoamerica and Aztecan and Mayan culture there were religious sites, but there's also documented human sacrifice, and a lot of times sacrifices might involve prisoners of war, so AZ tech parties at least would send out raiding parties two wage war with these really brutal crazy Have you seen what was sort of the analog of a sword in that culture? It was like this wooden slap with these obsidian chips. Yeah, terribly sharp, frightening. Uh. Did you ever see that movie Apocalypto? Remember that I still haven't seen that. I still haven't seen the passion of the Christ. Oh jeez. I also have not seen the passion of the christ Man neither. That's why I haven't seen Apocalypto, because it just struck me as kind of like taking that movie to Meso America. I mean, it's got the similar kind of you know, brutal gourd and violence, and I don't usually go for you wouldn't think that, but I'm a little bit sensitive about that kind of stuff. It's a you know, Apocalypto I thought was a great film. I can't speak to the passion of the Christ because I haven't. I did see part of it, so Satan makes a couple of appearances, and I went on YouTube and watched those parts. Is it like played by like an actor, is he in makeup or something? No, it's the devil really yeah, it just mean like is it just like a dude, like it's to spoil passion of the crisis. It's a it's an ambiguous figure, but it's not all fire and brimstone, at least from the stuff I saw. There might be another segment of the film where they're like wings sprouting and al Pacino comes out and it's like we're carrying all those bricks for Kevin God, that's Devil's advocate. I love that one. But there are also pyramids in Nigeria. Now these are ones that I was not aware of, but upon looking into it, it turns out that the sud Pyramids at the Nigerian town of in the suit Um in northern Igbo Lands were in fact a thing. Ten pyramidal structures were built of clay and mud, much like the early zigarattes we talked about um and the first base section was sixty feet in circumference and three ft in height. The next stack was forty ft in circumference, and then you had these circular stacks that continued up um, almost like a chimney stack kind of look at the top, and then you had those going on until you got to the very top of the structure. Uh. These were temples for the god Allah or Uto, who was believed to reside at the top um and a stick was placed at the top to represent the god's residence, sort of like you know, putting an angel on a Christmas tree. Yeah, that's a really good analogment, a really good comparison. There were also pyramids in Spain. Yeah, there were some more recent ones that were that our thought to have come from the nineteenth century. They look like zigarattes, but they they appear to be just agricultural techniques. Um. But you know that's not a sure kind of thing. But then you go to a gentleman, gentleman named Manuel A Brill that thinks he's discovered something even bigger. Yes, manuel A Brill is an amateur archaeologist, and you might see armchair archaeologist if you want to call a turkey a bird about it. Uh. Other professional archaeologists sort of dismissed him as an amateur at times. So he believes that he found this gut reported in twenty sixteen. He believes that he discovered a huge ancient building buried beneath undergrowth in Spain. It's on the outskirts of a town called Cannette, and it's believed to be the first of monolithic structure discovered in the country. Yeah, if you look at it looks like a hill that maybe has a little more structure to it, a little more pointed than you'd normally see in a you know, a naturally forming hill of that sort um. But you know, it's it's pretty compelling, but it's not as of this point, it hasn't been verified, correct, Right, So for hundreds of years, locals thought this was just a natural formation. You know, the eternal question is that a pyramid or a hill? Right? But this guy's making claims. We were waiting to see how they developed. He's making claims that this earthwork conceals a gigantic structure. And it would be uh tremendous deal if it turned out that Europe had these these megalithic structures, these megalithic pyramids as well. They're also pyramids in China. Nat Geo did a great, a great exploration of the lost pyramids of China. Yeah, that's coreact. It was a whole show that they created. It's kind of awesome. Goes back to I think two hundred and twenty something BC in search of pyramids from different warring kingdoms in China, and it appears that perhaps there where pyramids built, don't know, all over the place. I haven't seen the show yet, but I'm definitely interested. China's first emperor, the guy who got all of the various tribes and communities to form a cohesive nation, uh, pretty much bankrupted the country and oppressed thousands of people to build some of the largest mortuary complexes. There was something about ancient kings where they thought, you know, what's really making it is having a big building that commemorates that I'm dead. Yeah, just you gotta make sure people remember that you existed after you're gone. Some people even have, you know, like some of the aristocrats had kitchens and toilets and these underground complexes. I just don't get it. I was talking to my mom the other day about, like, you know, our family burial plot, and so I'm like, that's mom, that's depressing. I don't want to talk about that. I don't want to think about that. Why do we have to make these arrangements. Can't they just you know, chuck us in a paper bag into the highway or something to wrap you up in newspaper. These things are important, son, and you know you'll understand. And so they are also pyramids in India, Indonesia and Peru. Uh. There was for a time, and people who visit the state of Georgia or people who live in that state will find this interesting. For a time there was a complex of pyramids here in our own state, in Eatonton, Georgia. They were not ancient, no, and they're a little more modest in their size, but they were pyramids. They were built by a religious group. I would hesitate to use the C word just because I don't you know, I I it's got a bit of a negative connotation. Yeah, yeah, trying to look down on anybody for their beliefs. But they definitely hadn't, let's say, a very particular set of skills, beliefs, police skills. The New Wabi ins Uh, the New Wabi impyramids were constructed in the early nineteen nineties on their compound Toma Ray and that is again in Eatonton, Georgia. I do want to say one thing is interesting about the literature of this group is they have a they have a linguistic practice where they take words and sort of switched them around into something that rhymes but they feel is more true to what the thing that the object they're describing is. Uh. The example I remember most prominently is they don't say television, they say tell lies vision that's perfect, and they're like dozens of words they use this. Unfortunately, these pyramids are no more. Yeah, they don't exist anymore. It's a shame. Looking up some aerial shots of the whole compound right now, it's actually quite beautiful from you know, a helicopter. It's the whole thing is. The way it's laid out is very purposeful. And then you've got the pyramid surrounded by these almost like hedge maze looking pieces, and then all of the other plots are very kind of colored in such a way where the whole thing that looks almost like a face. It's pretty pretty interesting. And then you think that, you know, the government sees it, and then they tore the entire thing down. I have two thoughts. I wish they would have left it. What's the story? First? Something, Well, the guy was arrested on some pretty heinous charges. The molestation. You can only imagine probably what went down, you know, near there or in some of those structures. Yeah. So, to be fair to the people who still adhere to Nuabian beliefs, there are a lot of X members obviously, but they believe that their leader was force or is kind of was framed, was a set up. And that's despite the Nuabian leader as a phone named Dwight York. He was charged with interstate transportation of miners for sex hundred and sixteen charges of child molestation, and he was Okay, Look, I'll say the New Abian is a black supremacist sect, so it subscribes to and subscribes to some beliefs that you know, are racially tinged and therefore reprehensible. But they also thought spaceship would take the group away in two thousand and three. It is I have not had contact with any of the New Abian folks, so perhaps some of them did make it on their ship. You know, this might even make a good podcast in its own light. They built again, they built pyramids as religious structures, right, But that brings us to another question. Why have such similar structures rang up in unrelated cultures across the planet. We'll explore some of the answers or some of the theories after a word from our sponsor. So since the first missions to Antarctica early in the twentieth century, there have been tales of a mysterious pyramid discovered on this icy continent near the South Pole Um. There were British explorers in the early nineteen tens who found a pointy rock and they named it the pyramid and included it on their maps. So this formation is most likely the source of various Antarctic pyramids legends throughout modern history. But I'd just like to go here and say, oh, look at this trap. Oh do you see that's pointing out with the ice there? What does that look like to you? I declare that is that's a tad pointing. Don't you think You're quite pointy? Much more pointy than I would expect here on this icy continent. And then you take a big pull from your calabash, I say, mark that down. Jeffrey's Pyramids pretty good. So do you want to do want it to be named after you or perhaps your lovely wife? Phone make it anonymous pyramid of Suffice? And so and so as we said this, you can imagine right, it's understandable. It sounds a little weird today, but you can easily understand how people return right from Antarctica and they have these maps, and maybe the maps are reproduced, and then you get a cold of a map and you're just a regular person and you're looking at this map of this mysterious unknown continent, and then you think, holy snikey is a pyramid? Do people still say? R? I? P Chris? Oh? It was Chris Farley speaking of which apparently I stole skadooche from Kung Fu Panda. And I'm okay with that because I was a big, tenacious D fan back in the day, and I'm sure I heard Jack Black say something scadoch she, you know, back in the old days when he was on a MR Show and TD. So I did not know that that was directly from Kung Fu Panda. I stand by it, though, and it's it's just kind of a fun sound that sort of means like zippity do die, you know, It's just kind of that's it. I wasn't trying to rip off of animated. Has this been on you? It really has. It's been pressing down on my soul. I remember one time when we're off air. You we were meeting about something else and then you stopped, Matt now and you say, guys, I gotta say something, And I didn't know what was gonna come up. I was worried about you. Do you feel better? Do you feel lighter? I feel a little unburdened. Yeah, that's well, right in and let noel how much you're angry at him for stealing from the beloved Jack Black. He has quite beloved. And as always we do have a special email for any complaints about the show. Your criticism is very important. Keep us honest and just email us directly at Jonathan dot Strickland at how stuff works dot com. Yeah, and really just feel free to open it, open up, and yesus know how you feel. Again, that's Jonathan dots Strickland at how stuff works dot com. So back to Antarctica. Back to Antarctica from from two thousand twelve to twenties sixteen, there was this whole other round of rumors that were spreading about pyramids and Antarctica because there were photographs they got put online that showed something apparently sitting down there with these regular triangular sides. Now, I have to say I saw these. I saw you know, the crystal links links in the UFO sites links that had these pictures, and I got super interested. But you know, as we do on our show, you dig down a little deeper and then you find the skeptic side, which throws salt on all my excitement. Uh. And you know they're saying that this is actually some kind of natural structure that got photographed at an angle that makes it feel even more mysterious, which is similar to the old argument about the uh face on Mars. Right. Is it just the angle of the photograph that makes a otherwise mundane topographical formation appear to be you know, man made and purposeful, or or they're buried pyramids out there. Man. Maybe maybe that's where that's where civilization started, was in Antarctica before it all iced over. What do you some kind of hippie. I'm just saying, that's one of my favorite troops, and a lot of science fiction me too, that that moment about two thirds of the way through a sci fi story where someone goes, we are the aliens right before they get sucked out into spaces and you just spoiled every every single one shut down the theaters. But for me, the idea of an Atlantean civilization that existed, you know, of some kind of intelligent life existing down there in Antarctica before everything froze over, I don't know. That just pulls me, pulls my heart. Well, we do know that, we do know that there's a lot of stuff that historians got wrong over the years, and we know that history is still a continuing conversation. Right. There's no solid, widely accepted proof of a global ancient civilization yet. But that just that could just mean, although it may it may be implausible, it could just mean that we haven't found something yet. Yeah, but technology continues to advance, and as lidar gets better, Ben, We're gonna find some stuff. I know it, Yeah, I think so. Oh, before we go on, these these rumors that Matt just mentioned, they were linked with a couple of famous visitors to Antarctica in late seen as the US presidential campaign was in in hot, hot heat. Uh. John Kerry went to Antarctica in November and then just just just to be clear here, it was Forest Collan Bones reunion. Yes, they were hanging out in Antarctica. Point Rock was decide dislike men is like a duel. Yeah, that's where the real election took place Pointy Rock, Antarctica in just a short time later in December of I think this one was interesting. This was just a rumor. Okay, I haven't confirmed it. This was just what's what's the word? Uh? Scalia? You sus scuttle buttons or what else? They do? He the guy, Regardless of what you think about the guy at a gift for obscure words? Was it the straight poop? Straight poop? We got an email about that too, uh, he said, Argyll bargel, which is a real word, Hurley, Burley Is that a real one too? It works though, Hurdy gurdy Man, Hurdy gurdie Man. Buzz Aldrin astronaut rumored again just rumored to have tweeted We're all in danger. It is evil itself, along with a picture of the alleged ice pyramid Antarctic ice periman, and then he rapidly deleted it. Let's let's take a note here. Buzz Aldrin is notorious for his distaste for what he considers conspiracy theorists and for his sense of humor. It's also not obvious why somebody would fly buzz out to Antarctica to investigate a pyramid. And one last thing here, according to Snopes, that website that is loved and loathed by so many it's it says this is false. Yeah, so okay, that's not that's just what it doesn't mean. It does. Well that that just means if you believe Snopes, then it's scuttled. But so apparently there are not astronauts trape scene about Antarctica, although the US military did have some excursions there in the World War two days. And if you are feeling like a lovely trip down a rabbit hole, uh, go ahead and hop on your preferred Internet search engine and type in operation high Jump. Definitely. And just to stay on Aldrin for a moment, Do you guys remember when he was on c SPAN and he had that little he mentioned that aside about the monolith on one of the moons of Jupiter. Do you guys remember this? He actually says his statement. I don't have an exact quotes in in front of you, but a statement is like, when people see that monolith monolith on one of the moons of Jupiter, they're gonna say, where did that come from? Who built that? And then he just goes on with this conversation. It's pretty incredible and it's real. It's absolutely real. And so there are other theories. I think we should just jump to this theory. Some people, Okay, so we can divide theories about pyramids into three rough buckets. There's the bucket of how are they built? Right, and there's the bucket of what were they for? And then there's the other one, which is what do they do? Because some people, you know, people who believe in uh, sacred geometry for example, um people, there are people who believe that these shapes or the polacement of these structures has some sort of significance in a in a larger sense, right, you can find people who believe that the pyramids are built along lay lines L. E. Y. Right, which is sort of the belief in lay lines is the belief that the planet has something like its own nervous system and that these lines aggregate some sort of energy or power. People who have tested this feel that that is not scientifically valid, right, they say, okay, there's the secretion of energy, or you stand in Stonehenge on the right time of the lunar year or the solar year, and you you feel like there's some great thing happening, but there's no measurement of it. Right, there's no if there's no heat differential hold, there's not massive geothermal vent or anything. We're definitely not fully discounting that, but we are saying there is no scientific evidence to prove its existence. So let's bounce around these theories a little bit. No, I know you've been dying to talk about this. Yeah, grain, you'll know me whe Where where does grain come into all this? That I mentioned that a couple couple of times. I wasn't tried to poke fine, but just a friend of the show, Ben Carson, who I believe currently serves as our HUD secretary. Um. He came out during the campaign for president with an interesting theory that that the Pyramids were created by Joseph Um and his amazing technicolor dreamcoat to store grain. Yeah, there were granaries. This disbelief surprised a lot of people when, uh, when Ben Carson said this. When Secretary Carson said this, because he uh, he was espousing a belief that a lot of people had never heard before. It turns out medieval Europeans believe the pyramids were these granaries that were described in the Old Testament, and that's where the description of the pyramids is Joseph's Granaries come from. It It goes back to like the sixth century. So he wasn't just you know, off the dome making a guess um this uh. This was in a book called History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours, and then it got popularized by a book called the Book of John Mandeville. That was back when there were a way fewer books, so you could just call the thing you wrote the book. Yeah, what his His main argument was that the pyramids were hermetically sealed um, and that you wouldn't need to hermetically seal a crypt um, but that would be something would come in handy if you were trying to preserve grain. I've got a quote here from a BBC article from an egyptologist. Remember those guys we talked about them, They exist, They're real. One of them is named James Allen of Brown University, and he says, quote, there's no way in the world an ounce of grain would be stored in a structure like that. It would be totally impractical. It's like saying the Tower of London was built as a granary store. You could put grain in it, and I mean, so is it granary? Just any structure that contains grain essentially that's used specifically, that's it. So we could fill this studio with grain and that way, it wouldn't make it a granary because we didn't build it specifically for that purpose, I guess. But you also have to think about how does the grain get in? How do you get it out? Does it make sense? I mean with the pyramid, it just doesn't make any sense. And there's another there's another idea here. In eighteen fifty nine, a British publisher named John Taylor wrote a book called The Great Pyramid, Why It Was Built? And Who built it? Uh? He said that Noah, not the Egyptians, the biblical Noah built the pyramid because he built the arc and then he was therefore the most competent to direct the building of the pyramid. He also believes that the purpose of the pyramid, if we're going to a different theory, is to be a repository for the divine system of all mathematical truths. WHOA right? That's fun? What is that is that? Like a like a like a real fancy slide rule or something. Yeah, it's it's an enormous slide rule because they couldn't get the moving parts for an abbocus. Got it, and we're going to build a huge advocus. There are other people who believe that the Great Pyramid is predictive. There's a book called Our Inheritance of the Great Pyramid, also published in the eighteen hundreds, revealed to use to use our patented air quote revealed the date of the apocalypse. I mean that's cool, is it? Yeah? I mean why not if you could? You want to know, if you could glean the date, then maybe you can prevent it. What are you gonna do about it? Drink more water and less soda? Where more sunscreen? So we can see that. A lot of the more m HM out there theories about pyramids come from the pyramid craze in the eighteen hundreds, right, and a lot of them are religiously based. There of course, people who will say that pyramids were built by some diabolical force, right, an ancient evil or a demon. Uh. There is of course no proof of that. Back in the time when a lot of these theories were propagated, people were sort of feeling around in the dark. Um. One of the interesting things probably interested a lot of people here, is that for a long time there was a fairly popular conspiracy theory of sorts that, uh, you know, a global civilization built all of these things, to to with the Atlantis fabled lost civilization of Atlantis built the pyramids. So let's look at the arguments of fellow named Ignatious Loyola Donnelly. How's that for a name that sounds great? Congressman from Minnesota in the late eighteen hundreds, he argued this very point, he said, and that there once existed in the Atlantic Ocean opposite the mouth of the mediterrane see a large island was a remnant of another Atlantic continent known as Atlanta. Us Uh. He said that Plato's description, which Soften taken to be a fable, was the straight poop, that it was actual history, and that modern man first rose from barbarism to civilization in Atlantis. And then he said that the Atlanteans stablished colonies around the world. I mean, we've we've heard all of this, right, uh. And at this point we know that there have been ancient low civilizations, but again, there's never been one big, you know, like one people to rule them all found. You know. Still people love this theory. What do you guys think about the cargo cult theory of pyramids? Oh, that's interesting. So cargo cults, which do exist. Cargo cults came from Polynesian islands out in the Pacific Ocean, where in pretty fairly isolated communities saw for the first time technology that they had never seen before radio towers, right, airplanes, weapons of war, even clothing, even clothing of type yeah, that they had never seen before. And so they also would see these cargo drops which would contain food and clothing, survival materials, stuff like that humanitarian aid for example. And so these cargo cults began, uh instituting religious practices, spiritual practices wherein they would build uh radio towers or an airplane. Yeah, but it would be out of available materials. Yeah, it wouldn't be a flying It would be a symbolic radio tower, symbolic airplane, and they would reproduce or enact various ritualistic behaviors in hopes of, uh, hopes of the cargo returning. One of these groups worshiped Prince Philip oh Wow as a god, as it like, not as a cool guy, not as just a regular dude as it should bear. Have you've seen as jawline. I mean you can break sunning, break walnuts and hearts on that jo line. So the thing with this would be that the pyramids sprung up throughout the world in all these different developing civilizations because of some in the agent alien theory, some either ship that resembled a pyramid and then they were built like in Memoriam in a way or to try and get them back down. You're doing a stargate thing here. It's essentially little kind of like a star gate, but just you know, a signal, a large enough signal that says, hey, wherever you are up in the heavens, come visit again or come back to us. It's fascinating. So then it would be oh side note, the religious sect that we mentioned is referred to as the Prince Philip Movement. They're in an island in Vanuatu called Tana Nice. So if you are searching spiritually for something and you think you want to just try out a religion you have not heard of, then go ahead and uh give the Prince Philip Movement ago and let us know how it works out for you. So, ancient aliens. We've mentioned this on the show before, and I feel like we'd be remiss if we didn't explore this a little bit, because this ties into one of the conspiracies, not a theory, but one of the conspiracies that happened when Europeans began exploring possibilities of the origin for pyramids. Right, So, there are a couple of things we should address here. First, a lot of the ancient alien theory stuff that exists now is descended from earlier, earlier, very racially based theories, wherein uh, Europeans, maybe not the same guys who found the Pointy Rock and Antarctica, but as someone who for the sake of argument, sounded very much like them, would see a pyramid and say, you know, this is remarkable, This is remarkable. Where where is the lost civilization of clearly white people who built this? And so that just the same way that, um, a lot of modern urban legends descend from earlier what we call fairy tales. Right, Um, there's still that that folklore progression or storytelling progression, because history, as we know, is just one long game of telephone, and we have to we have to consider that because the real, the real cover up, at least one provable cover up, is that a lot of early explorers, we're searching for something that confirmed the belief they already had. They had confirmation bias, because not only did they not believe that native people could accomplish such tremendous works, but they didn't want to believe that. And if we were presented would proof, they probably would have just if we know how confirmation bias works, they probably would have just doubled down on their idea. Exactly. That's what I always do. That, No, I mean, really that is what we do psychologically, unfortunately. I So these are these are some of the ideas. We do know that one provable cover up was was either through negligence or malevolence. Where does this all lead us? You know, we've learned that anything can arguably be a granary if you fill it with grain. Um, But that's kind of like saying that any any bag you put a sandwich in automatically becomes a sandwich bag. Yeah, you know. So we do know that there was one provable cover up situation, and that occurred when earlier explorers from different parts of the world said clearly they didn't build this the line you see, and I know that can be an ugly thing, but it happened. As for the state of pyramids, now, the craziest thing to me is we still don't know how many are out there. We found the big ones, We found the big ones, and well there are also pyramids that appear to be in protected areas where perhaps an insular government doesn't want any third party or NGO, you know, looking around to find new ones that perhaps might be there or just covered up in jungle that we can't see unless we have highly sophisticated lighter just going through the jungle acre by acre, which is a task that I wouldn't want to do well. I guess that wraps up the topic. But should we do some some shouting outing, cornering, absolutely tally ho shout at corners. Our first shout out today comes from Sean. Sean says, guys, I've loved this show up to your most recent episode. You're moving to Mars episode I felt like it turned into a reading of get this guy's the Communist Manifesto? Listen. I get that political opinions of people sink into their work intentional or unintentional. You're usually very good about presenting counter opinions, even if one of you is just playing devil's advocate. It was pretty sad to hear a conspiracy podcast advocating from more government. Wow, well, I I can see what Sean is saying where there were definitely definitely some ideas that could be considered communists, and we pointed that out in the episode. Absolutely, there's definitely a centralization of government, which is not necessarily communism. But I don't think he's talking about just that, because there were other aspects there to yeah, spreading out everything where everybody gets an equal share. Um, there's no real trading of goods for profit in this way, they're just our goods and you get them. You know, when the whole idea of like some greater power authority assessing your worth and giving you work assignment based on a series of algorithms that I guess look through your past work history and you know, kind of tell you what you are and what you need to be doing. But we we we talked about this even before we did the interview, and maybe it didn't come across as much as we would have liked, but these were things that we discussed when kind of like preparing for this interview. Yeah, I think one of the things is when we're hanging out off air, we just for a peek behind the curtain. These episodes don't usually end for us when the episode ends on, you know, the the official episode stream that you're hearing. Yeah, because we'll we'll sit, we'll sit somewhere, we'll go somewhere after work, and we'll still be talking about the thing. And one of one of the things that we would say would be a difference between straight up orthodox communism and what was being advocated here is that, uh, what Marshall Brain was advocating was that this would be a technocracy. So instead of a Stalin or another strong man at the top who was still human, Uh, there would be an artificial intelligence. Almost scarier to me, it's definitely unknown. Well it's like who programs the artificial intelligence? You know, where does that? It's like a chicken or the egg kind of question. But we also should point out that he said from the start this whole thing was a thought experiment. It wasn't necessarily advocating for any of this because he totally was like very adamant about the fact that this is pretty much impossible. Did you even get there to even have the environment that would allow us to start such a society? And that's why it was a lot of fun for us to talk about, because that's kind of what we like to do, is you know, get hypothetical with stuff and sort of play Devil's advocate for big questions and that sort of this gave us that opportunity a big time And I would say, um Sean Marshall. At the end of that episode, he gave his email address and he asked for people to write to him to discuss so if and actually I have forwarded him everything that's been written to us specifically to conspiracy it how stuff works, because he wants feedback, He wants to know what people think about some of this stuff. So sure, it's very much work in progress, as he said, and I think that's I'm glad you did that matter well. One of the things that I would like to explore in in a future episode would be the actual technology nuts and bolts, because we didn't really talk about that, right and we have, uh, we have received a lot of great questions about this. I'm laughing because one of them comes up in a later episode, and I don't want to spoil it for anybody, but it was a great question and I'm still thinking about it. So thank you, Sean everyone else who wrote in regarding this topic. Marshall Brain is quite prolific, uh and he does read every email he receives, and as he said, he sincerely welcomes feedback. Our next shout out comes from Justin. Send us an email. Justin says, good morning. I recently started listening to stuff they don't want you to know, and I'm enjoying it very much. Awesome, Justin, thank you for listening and hanging out with us. I think you guys should do a cast on cryptocurrency. You could begin with the discussions on Bitcoin the leader, and then move on to companies that you is the blockchain to solve problems in our everyday world. Take care of Justin. That's a that's a great topic. There's a lot to discover there on On my part, at least, I need to do a lot of research just to really wrap my head around how it all functions. I recently got a coin base, which is like this app that allows you to buy different cryptocurrencies. The whole thing is fascinating to me. And we have actually some colleagues at work who bought into bitcoin back in the day where it kind of boomed and actually I want name names, but sold it before it boomed. Hard would have been a minor millionaire he or she at the very least a hundred thousand point being the history of cryptocurrency in itself is really cool, and the whole Mount Cox thing, and you know, all of that is its own stuff, and then like how it's being used now and the black market aspects of it and the deep Web. Totally great episode, and some mysterious inventors stuff is in there still in the future cash list society that we're running up on future, I don't know, we're getting so close and you just have to buy credits and have them put on your wrist bands so that you can scam them. Festival, they're gonna alter your d n A so that every cell you every cell in your body, reflects how much worth you have. That sounds like a personal hell, Like the world is just one big music festival. Yeah yeah, well if it was Bonnaroo, then for sure that is everywhere. I mean, developing countries are increasingly cashless and that our previous episode on whether money is a religion, I've really had us thinking about that too, Like it's it doesn't it's not attached to a commodity directly now, so it's an idea. It's out in the ether. It requires faith, It requires a massive amount of faith. And we got some cool emails about that one too. We should bring up another time. Absolutely, you're so right. Just I just want to say, you're so right about the music festival thing being test run essentially of how it would function when he's getting like a little village, like like a society, you know, where we're all just living in love and listening to string cheese incident and hemorrhaging money, hemoraging money on fifteen dollar red bull and Vodkas. It doesn't you know, it doesn't even have to have alcohol. It's anything is at least ten dollars a hot dog, five dollar waters plus four four dollars for bun service. That's where they give you a hot dog, bun charging for the mud before you know it. Yeah, but but it is true. It is a microcosm of society. So this is fascinating, all right. We got one last one from Anthony just finished watching your latest video on Alisa Lamb's mysterious disappearance. Staying on the topic of disappearances, have you guys looked into the thousands of cases of National park disappearances? Say that Anthony most notable David Pelt's in his book series. He also recently released a short docu Nentury about it that would make for an interesting topic to play. It's all, this is a very prescient email. You guys gonna leave it at that, but just yes and yes, and and to quote our boss Jason Hope, stay tuned. And the book series, the book series Anthony's referring to is missing for one one as well as the documentary that is now available. So yes, as as a colleague here said, stay tuned. And that concludes our go but not our show. That is right, Matt Noel and I will be returning next week with something probably completely different then pyramids. Yes, yep, okay, And we're going to talk about a different shape. Yes, yep, it's gonna be a schapizoid. Perhaps you never know decahedrons. What if there are no angles, What if it's just a formless massive jelly. What if it's non euclidean alien love crafty and geometry right, and just looking at it drives you bad? Isn't that sort of what spawned you? I mean, you know, I don't talk about my personal life shows. It could be any number of things. It might even be government continuity. Who knows, it may well be. Uh. But by the way, we hope that you do tune in, and we hope that you find it interesting. In the meantime, if you were like, this was not enough strange weird stuff for this week? Where do I find more before next Friday? We have just the place for you. If you'd like to learn more about ancient technology, low civilizations, mysterious structures, visit our website stuff they don't want you know dot com, where you can find every audio podcast we have ever done. And if you want to find us on social media, we are conspiracy stuff on Facebook and Twitter and conspiracy stuff show on Instagram. You can find all the things we do, we post them on up on there, and you know we're hanging out constantly on those things. Yeah, we literally have no outside lives. It's true. 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