Latest / Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities / The Lost Continent

Transcript

The Lost Continent · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales right there on display, just waiting
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: For a certain part of the population, nothing says childhood
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: nostalgia like Saturday Morning cartoons. Most of us have fond
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: memories of pouring a big bowl of cereal, sitting in
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: front of the TV, and watching our favorite shows. For
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: many kids of the early sixties, that Saturday morning ritual
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: was centered around a flying squirrel and his moose. Best friend.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Rocky and Bullwinkle was a cartoon created by Ward that
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: chronicled the exploits of Rocky, a flying squirrel, and the
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: moronic moose Bullwinkle. The show was characterized by zeny humor
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: and wordplay, poking fun at American politics and anti communist sensibilities. However,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: creator Jay Ward never expected his little show to land
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: him in the middle of a real life Cold War crisis.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: In an early episode of the show, Bullwinkle takes Rocky
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: to visit his home, a tiny island right on the
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Canadian border called Musylvania, damp, cold, and with no permanent population.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Neither the US nor Canada wants to Claimmusylvania as their own,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: leaving Bullwinkle as its governor. After the episode aired, fan
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: mail came in from across the country begging to visit
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: the real Musylvania, which gave creator Jay Ward a great idea.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty two, Jay asked his publicist Howard Brandy
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: for help with the scheme to drum up publicity for
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: the next season of Rocky and Bullwinkle. Phase one, they
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: would lease a small island in a lake on the
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Canadian border. Phase two, they would travel around the country
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: gathering signatures and support. Phase three, they would petition President
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy to annex the island from Canada and
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: Makemosylvania America's fifty first state. Howard immediately said yes. Once
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: the island was leased, Jay and Howard loaded into a
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: multicolored van and set out on the campaign trail. At
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: each stop, Jay and Howard rolled into town while blasting
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: circus music. They would give grand speeches about how the
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: residents of Musylvania, who need I remind you did not exist,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: were sick of being passed over for other territories like
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Alaska and Hawaii. They laid out some of the finer
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: tenants of the Musylvania Manifesto, like how Musylvania demanded aid
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: from the United States to the tune of exactly eighteen
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: billion dollars and four cents. Then they would encourage residents
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: to sign a petition for statehood to be delivered to
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: the White House. After stopping in over fifty cities, driving
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: thousands of miles, and collecting more signatures than they could count,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: the big day had finally arrived. On October twenty seventh
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty two, Jay Ward and Howard Brandy arrived
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: at the White House. Jay was in rare form, blasting
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: silly music and dressed in a Napoleon costume. When he
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: was stopped at the gate by Secret Service, he declared
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: that they were there to see President Kennedy to petition
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: him for Musylvania statehood. When he was asked to leave,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: he replied that he would not, as of course, he
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: had diplomatic immunity. To Jay's surprise, this caused the Secret
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Service agent to pull out his gun. You see, what
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Jay and Howard didn't know is that they had picked
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: the worst possible day to show up unannounced at the
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: White House. Just a few days earlier, on October fourteenth
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty two, an American spy plane had spotted
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: nuclear missile sites hidden in Cuba. This had kicked off
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: the Cuban Missile Crisis, thirteen of the tensest days in
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: American history. At that very moment, moment, America was as
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: close as it had ever been to a full scale
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: nuclear war with Russia. What's worse, that very morning, an
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: American pilot was shot down and killed over Cuba. As
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Jay and Howard rolled up to the White House gates
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: to demand statehood for Musylvania, President Kennedy was weighing whether
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: to declare war. The Secret Service sent Jay and Howard packing,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: much to Jay's disappointment, as he later said he thought
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: that President Kennedy had a sense of humor. It wasn't
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: until after they left that they learned just how serious
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: the situation was. The crisis was resolved peacefully the next day,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: when the US promised to remove missiles from Turkey and
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: the Soviets promised to do the same in Cuba. For
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: their part, Jay and Howard never did get Mussylvania declared
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: the fifty first state, and in all honesty, maybe it's
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: better they didn't. The country had just survived the Cuban
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: missile crisis. With j Ward's sense of humor, it wouldn't
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: be long before he declared a musil crisis of his own.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: If you've spent any time with jigsaw puzzles, you know
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: the satisfaction that comes from the last piece falling into place,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: and you may also have experienced that uniquely horrible frustration
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: that comes when it doesn't, When you reach into the
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: box and find that the final piece is missing. This
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: discovery is usually followed by a frantic search. You check
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: the floor, under the couch, inside the cushions, the pockets
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: of your hoodie. You wonder if your dog ate it,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: or if some psychopath walked off with the final piece
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: just to torment you. But in the end, the reason
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: it's gone doesn't matter. The puzzle is incomplete, and from
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: now on you will be too. Okay, maybe that's a
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: bit dramatic, but it's hard to deny that there's something
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: about the human mind that gravitates toward puzzles and hates
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: leaving them unfinished. Well in nineteen twelve, that in distinct
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: drove the German scientist Alfred Wigner to look at a
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: model globe and see something no one else had. He
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: realized that the continent's edges fit together, suggesting that they
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: had once been part of a single land mass. Geologists
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: now refer to this sea shaped super continent as Pangaea.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: In our planet's early history, it comprised virtually all of
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: the land on Earth, but around two hundred million years ago,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: shifting tectonic plates caused the land mass to split apart
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: into the continents that we have today. It's taken a
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: lot of work, but geologists now have a pretty accurate
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: picture of how it all fit together. This knowledge has
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: ramifications for countless other fields, explaining things about the Earth's climate,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: biodiversity of plant and animal life, and where ore deposits exist.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: So it would seem that scientists have completed the puzzle,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: so to speak, But for decades there was one glaring problem,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: a missing piece. It seemed that there was a continent
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: roughly the width of the United States that was nowhere
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: to be found. You know, it existed due to a
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: massive underwater basin off the northwestern shore of Australia. This
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: basin is called the Argo Abyssle Plane, and it led
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: geologists to dub the missing continent our Goland. They believe
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: that around one hundred and fifty five million years ago,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: our Goland broke off from the super continent and drifted
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: toward modern Southeast Asia. At that point, it seems to
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: have vanished. And that's a massive problem because if continents
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: can simply disappear, it undermines everything we know about Pangaea
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: and plate tectonics. That's why around twenty sixteen, a team
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: of Dutch researchers embarked on an expedition to find the
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: lost continent. They initially wondered if the continent had sunk
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: beneath the ocean. If that were true, they expected to
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: find it beneath the islands of Southeast Asia, but it
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: wasn't there. Next, they considered whether another continent could have
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: slid on top of our Goland, burying it beneath the
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Earth's crust. That's what happened to Greater Adria, an ancient
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: continent that now lies underneath the Europe, but based on
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: the available evidence, it didn't seem to be the case
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: for our Goland. The team didn't give up, though. For
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: seven years they tested rock samples from around the world,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: and in twenty twenty three they announced a groundbreaking discovery.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Our Goland didn't sink beneath the waves or into the
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Earth's mantle. Instead, it broke up into countless smaller fragments
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: that eventually got folded in with other land masses. The
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: team found pieces of the lost continent scattered throughout the
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: jungles of Indonesia and Mayanmar, which means that the final
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: puzzle piece has been found. We can all rest a
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: bit easier knowing that the bedrock theories of modern geology
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: are still in place. Scientists can still reasonably construct what
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: the Earth looked like in the distant past, and ironically
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: that knowledge can help them predict what it will look
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: like in the future. Because the continents are still shifting.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Instead of drifting apart, they're pulling closer together. Eventually they
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: will reform into a new supercontinent, and like Pangaea, that
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: future land masks will eventually break up all over again,
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: although what happens after that is a puzzle for another day.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.