Latest / Ridiculous History / The Atlantropa Project, Part One: Saving Europe via Supercontinent

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The Atlantropa Project, Part One: Saving Europe via Supercontinent · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. I am Ben. That's our
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  Speaker 1: one and only super producer. Mr Max Williams joined as
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: always with the Man the midfl Legend, Mr Noel Brown.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know why I did. For some reason, your
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  Speaker 1: energy today is very like like like I'm prepping for
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  Speaker 1: a fight, and then if you guys k guess can't
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  Speaker 1: see me because we're podcasting what I'm wearing. I got
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  Speaker 1: a hood on, I got my dukes up when I
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  Speaker 1: joined the call already in progress with you and Max.
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  Speaker 1: You were talking about training some sort of dog or
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  Speaker 1: something for a dog fight. But then I realized you
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  Speaker 1: were just talking about Google Drive. M It was very
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  Speaker 1: misleading conversation to come into kind of halfway, but I
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  Speaker 1: gotta get robust. He say something about robust and more
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: drive and I was like, yeah, he's talking about like
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  Speaker 1: training a fighting dog or some Yeah. It was also
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: giving me some up, some personal counseling. That's what we
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  Speaker 1: do sometimes off air. I appreciate it, but just to
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  Speaker 1: be clear, to get in front of the emails, we
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  Speaker 1: are ridiculous history. Do not condone dog fighting, Oh absolutely so.
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  Speaker 1: So we we are talking about something shocking though today
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  Speaker 1: this is this is a crazy story man. Okay. So
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  Speaker 1: we are recording on the same continents, uh, North America.
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  Speaker 1: That's where the three of us routinely hang out, and
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  Speaker 1: we have listeners on continents across the world except for Antarctica.
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  Speaker 1: If you're listening to this podcast in Antarctica, who who buddy,
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  Speaker 1: We can't wait to hear from you. But today we're
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  Speaker 1: talking about continents, right, We're talking about ambition, I would
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  Speaker 1: say audacity, and just to be honest, a little bit
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  Speaker 1: of racism. M hmm, yeah, just us battering a sort
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  Speaker 1: of assault bay sprinkling of racism because we're talking about
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  Speaker 1: the idea of creating a super continent. Uh. In the
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  Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, a German architect engineer Polly Math pretty genius
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  Speaker 1: fellow named Herman Sergal. He came up with quite the
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  Speaker 1: plan that he thought would unite post World War One Europe,
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  Speaker 1: which was in desperate need of uniting. In order to
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  Speaker 1: do this, he wanted to accomplish a feat of engineering
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  Speaker 1: mad scientistry um by draining the Mediterranean Sea not fully
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  Speaker 1: but like a good a good amount. Let's not go crazy,
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  Speaker 1: he said, exactly. Yeah, no, that would be insane draining
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  Speaker 1: it fully. But he want to lower it as much,
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  Speaker 1: lower the water level by as much as six hundred
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  Speaker 1: and fifty feet in order to create a brand new
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  Speaker 1: super continent called m hm atlant Tropa. He can tell
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  Speaker 1: a reverb or something on that. I hope, I hope
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  Speaker 1: that was just like understood Max. We got the thumbs
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  Speaker 1: and then we got the surf sign from Max, or
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  Speaker 1: the devil horns we got. Oh, Max, you were killing
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  Speaker 1: it with the gestures today. Okay, all right, well Southern
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  Speaker 1: Italian speaking with your hands there, I appreciate it. So yes,
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  Speaker 1: Herman talks about this idea. You can tell it's been
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  Speaker 1: on his mind for a while. He first goes public
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  Speaker 1: with it in print in a book in nineteen twenty
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  Speaker 1: nine called The Project. And this plan is also pitched
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  Speaker 1: as having numerous advantages. He says it won't just culturally
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  Speaker 1: kind of unify the disparate cultures of World War one Europe.
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  Speaker 1: It will also generate a lot of hydro electricity. It
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  Speaker 1: will create some primo new coastline that is arable, so
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  Speaker 1: you can grow stuff on it, and you can create
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  Speaker 1: new communities. There's more opportunity for farming, for colonization. This
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  Speaker 1: like this idea depended on a couple of things, including
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  Speaker 1: some very ambitious dams, like the twenty one mile long
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  Speaker 1: damn at the Strait of Gibraltar that would be able
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  Speaker 1: to power at least eight point two million homes from
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  Speaker 1: hydro electricity. And this would also link Europe in Africa,
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  Speaker 1: but maybe not in a way that was super advantageous
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  Speaker 1: to the African continent, as we're gonna find. He didn't
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  Speaker 1: worry too much about that. Uh. In his work. He
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  Speaker 1: was focused more in Europe and the Mediterranean. But I've
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  Speaker 1: got to ask at this point, like if someone just
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  Speaker 1: said that, if you just encountered someone randomly and you
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  Speaker 1: were trying to solve a problem together and this person
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  Speaker 1: said maybe we should just make a new continent, how
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  Speaker 1: would you react? I would assume they were joking, you
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  Speaker 1: know what I mean? Like if I heard the current
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  Speaker 1: president of the US say, all right, and these are
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  Speaker 1: divisive times, a lot of people are falling into tribalism,
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  Speaker 1: and that's why we're gonna make a a new North America.
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  Speaker 1: It's we're just gonna We're gonna damn up everything from
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  Speaker 1: here to Greenland. How would you react? It's sort of
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  Speaker 1: like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. That's not
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  Speaker 1: even the right um metaphor. It's like going around you're
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  Speaker 1: asked to get to your elbow. It just seems like
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  Speaker 1: a really big swing solution, um that that could potentially
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  Speaker 1: create more problems. Yeah, you know, it reminds me of
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: and we're all big, big fans of music here on
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  Speaker 1: the show, folks, It reminds me of some really technically impressive,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: but long guitar solos I've heard that get to the
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  Speaker 1: point where they're just their own things, separate from the
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  Speaker 1: song they're supposed to be part of. There's a moment
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  Speaker 1: with some of those guitar solos where it sounds like
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  Speaker 1: the musician just said, I wonder if I can do
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  Speaker 1: this not is it good for the song? Right? Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: we're gonna see. We're gonna see with Sorg with whether
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  Speaker 1: he um was this like his long guitar solo. Was
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  Speaker 1: this like a thing where he thought, well, I bet
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  Speaker 1: we could do it, so why not? You know what
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  Speaker 1: I mean? Yeah, I mean the guy was like, um,
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  Speaker 1: you know, he came from the bout House School of Architecture.
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  Speaker 1: He was born in eighteen eighty five. He was a
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  Speaker 1: very well known dude. And to him, I mean, this
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  Speaker 1: almost was like an opportunity to really flex and show
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  Speaker 1: his stuff and get like state sponsorship, right. Um, I
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  Speaker 1: have a feeling that, you know, on the one hand,
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  Speaker 1: he was probably looking at it from a benevolent standpoint,
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  Speaker 1: from like a nationalistic standpoint. But on the other hand,
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  Speaker 1: he was just looking at as an opportunity to do
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  Speaker 1: a big art project, you know what I mean. And
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  Speaker 1: he had a assertitude about the future or he was
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  Speaker 1: pretty convinced that given his learning on culture and space
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  Speaker 1: and geopolitics, uh, there was going to be an inevitable
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  Speaker 1: course of action internationally. He believed that three global superpowers
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  Speaker 1: would arise, kind of like the world of nine eight
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  Speaker 1: four honestly, where there would be one superpower that's the
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  Speaker 1: North and South American continents, another that would be what
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  Speaker 1: he called a pan Asian block, and then there would
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  Speaker 1: be Europe, the third superpower. And he thought this would
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  Speaker 1: be a problem because Europe would be the weakest of
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  Speaker 1: these three powers. He ended up being all yeah, yeah, exactly,
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  Speaker 1: And so he lived through World War One, he saw
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  Speaker 1: the chaos of the nineteen twenties, he witnessed the rise
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  Speaker 1: of the Nazi movement, and he said, you know what,
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  Speaker 1: the only way we can avoid a second World War
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  Speaker 1: is if we find a radical solution fast two problems
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  Speaker 1: like chronic unemployment and over population and an impending energy crisis.
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  Speaker 1: And he also said he was a technocrat at heart.
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  Speaker 1: He said, you know, forget politics, that's for the birds
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  Speaker 1: and the badgers and the buzzards. Technology is going to
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  Speaker 1: save us. So why did you pick the Mediterranean? Though, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's a good question. Um. I mean, I think it's because, well,
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  Speaker 1: first of all, like you said, he kind of based
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  Speaker 1: a lot of his thinking around this on the notion
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  Speaker 1: that energy was going to be the most important commodity around,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: you know, in the future. I mean, obviously this is
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  Speaker 1: something that we now understand incredibly palpably along with things
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  Speaker 1: like water, but this was not really a time where
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  Speaker 1: that was quite as much part of the conversation. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: this is even before uh, Saudi oil was a thing,
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  Speaker 1: I think um as as an article in the Conversation,
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  Speaker 1: dot Com reports in their article Atlantropa the Colossal nineteen
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  Speaker 1: twenties planned to damn the Mediterranean. Um. This was like
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  Speaker 1: decades before m Saudi oil kind of came into the picture.
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  Speaker 1: But uh, this guy was pretty prescient in his thinking.
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  Speaker 1: The article, by the way, is by RICARDA. Vidal, highly
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  Speaker 1: recommend giving that one a look. But back to water right,
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  Speaker 1: not necessarily water as a perceived scarcity issue, but water
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  Speaker 1: as a means of generating power, which was also very
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  Speaker 1: forward thinking. He saw that the significant flow of water
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  Speaker 1: into the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar, of course
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  Speaker 1: coming in from the Atlantic um and the Dardan Nells
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  Speaker 1: which was coming in from the Black Sea, was potentially
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  Speaker 1: a source for generating massive amounts of hydro electric power. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: Not to mention that it was consistent the water level
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  Speaker 1: of the Mediterranean always stayed the same because of evaporation.
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  Speaker 1: So his whole idea to damn the Mediterranean on both
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  Speaker 1: ends and using this reduced inflow of water. This would
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  Speaker 1: create to generate up to a hundred and ten thousand
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  Speaker 1: megawatts of hydro electric energy in total through these various
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  Speaker 1: damning locations. And in the process of doing this this
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  Speaker 1: is kind of be like the the end game would
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  Speaker 1: create a new piece of land a new supercontinent. And
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  Speaker 1: then he believed this could be used for future colonization,
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  Speaker 1: but also would connect Europe to Africa, making it a
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  Speaker 1: super continent, kind of like a feat of human engineering,
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  Speaker 1: a marvel to behold. Um. Initially the project or the
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  Speaker 1: you know, the supercontinent was going to be called pan Ropa. Um.
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  Speaker 1: It was later changed to at Land Tropa. I imagine
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  Speaker 1: because of the I'm assuming maybe in some small ways
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  Speaker 1: devoted to the idea of this very advanced society of atlantis,
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  Speaker 1: you know, like under the sea or the Atlantic Ocean.
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  Speaker 1: And let me make a quick clarification here. So he
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  Speaker 1: he had two books. Uh. And originally I had said
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  Speaker 1: that the Atlantropa Project is his nine book, but that
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  Speaker 1: came out three years later in nineteen nine. The book
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  Speaker 1: he wrote was the pan Ropa Project, with that original
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  Speaker 1: name you mentioned. The full title is the pan Ropa Project,
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  Speaker 1: Lowering the Mediterranean, Irrigating the Sahara and uh. And so
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  Speaker 1: we went with the Lantropa because of branding. It was
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  Speaker 1: very much a branding decision. He was trying to sell
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  Speaker 1: this to people, you know. Um. He also started he
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  Speaker 1: added stuff to this over the course of his lifetime.
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  Speaker 1: You can see revised versions of the proposal that include
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  Speaker 1: things like a plan to create a bunch of giant
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  Speaker 1: lakes in Central Africa. And he believed in hydro electricity
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  Speaker 1: because his father had pioneered it in Bavaria. Also shout
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: out to big think damning the Mediterranean the atlant tropa
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  Speaker 1: project by Frank Jacobs. So if you just look at
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  Speaker 1: the problems, he's trying to address energy independence from more
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  Speaker 1: energy at least from the hydro electric dams, more land,
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  Speaker 1: to address over population and grow food, uh and more
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  Speaker 1: jobs because you've got people building these massive dams. Then
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  Speaker 1: it seems like, you know, his heart's in the right place.
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  Speaker 1: Put diplomatically, it's an out of the box creative solution. Now,
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  Speaker 1: a lot of astute, ridiculous historians in the crowd today
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  Speaker 1: are saying, hang on, I've been to the Mediterranean. There's
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  Speaker 1: still a lot of water there. Yes. Yeah, But before
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  Speaker 1: we tell you how all this went down, maybe no,
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  Speaker 1: we've talked a little bit more detail about what the
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  Speaker 1: plan actually entails, because you you described it so beautifully,
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  Speaker 1: this kind of book ending with dams one across straight
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  Speaker 1: at Gibraltar, and he said that Dardanells and then eventually
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  Speaker 1: he would have a dam between Sicily and Tunisia, and
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  Speaker 1: all of these would have these hydro electric power plants
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  Speaker 1: and that would be the basis of this new continent, right,
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  Speaker 1: and it's a super continent because it's just adding more
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  Speaker 1: to Europe. Correct, Yeah, exactly. And he had like tons
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  Speaker 1: of drawings and schematics and you know, planning for all
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  Speaker 1: of this that is preserved in a museum in Munich. Um.
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  Speaker 1: We'll get to the name in a little bit. Escapes
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  Speaker 1: me at the moment, but his plan was super elaborate.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, the idea was to create a thirty five
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  Speaker 1: kilometer long dam in these straits of Gibraltar, uh and
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  Speaker 1: cut off the water supply from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. UM.
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  Speaker 1: Cabinet magazine dot org has a great kind of blow
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  Speaker 1: by blow um of how this whole thing was done,
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  Speaker 1: and it it immediately compares it to something from Gene
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Roddenberry's nineteen seventy nine book version of Star Trek of
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  Speaker 1: the motion picture. UM. So you know, you're you're already
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  Speaker 1: getting these kind of utopian kind of like you know,
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  Speaker 1: future civilization kind of vibes. This dude definitely had that
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  Speaker 1: sort of imagination. So, uh, he would cut off the
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  Speaker 1: water supply from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean and uh,
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  Speaker 1: conceptually or theoretically, the sea would dry up. Uh not
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  Speaker 1: completely like we said, but the water level would be
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  Speaker 1: reduced by around two hundred meters and this in theory
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  Speaker 1: would open up around six hundred thousand square kilometers of
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  Speaker 1: new land and enable them to harness uh, this body
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  Speaker 1: of water and its movement for hydroelectric power. And you know,
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  Speaker 1: it's funny been again, this wasn't necessarily Yes, they needed energy,
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  Speaker 1: of course, and they were in a post war situation,
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  Speaker 1: But I don't think the energy crisis was what we
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: would maybe think of it as today, right, like the
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: in terms of like how I occupied the zeitgeis this
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: is more him just kind of like trying to dig
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: themselves out of the things that come along with the
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: post war kind of rebuilding. But it certainly wouldn't have
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: been something on the minds of like the world like,
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: oh no, we're not gonna have enough energy. I think
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: it's fair to say that while people were aware of it,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: a lot of people who were just living at the
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: ground level of society, like your normal everyday sadis and
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: spins or whatever. They were worried about having power in
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: their community, and they maybe weren't thinking about the global
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: bigger picture, but he certainly was. And there's something interesting
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: about the timing here too, because infrastructure had just been wrecked.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: You know, maybe this is the right time his reasoning
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: went to build something new instead of just rebuilding the
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: old stuff. Now we have to take a turn for
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: a bit of a darker explanation as we look at
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: at what his plan is doing in North Africa and
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: southern Spain. You can, by the way, if you're listening
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: along at home, pull up some of those articles we've mentioned,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: or just type at land trop a project map and
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: you can see some great maps that will help outline
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  Speaker 1: where he sees these damns going. Here's the problem, here's
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  Speaker 1: the dark side. So Sorgel was a man of his time,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: even though he felt like he was a man ahead
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: of his time, and that might be true. In some ways.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: He was very much a European colonialist, and he didn't
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: particularly think of what the people living in Africa would
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: think of this plan. As a matter of fact, one
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: of the things he spun as a benefit to people
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: when he's trying to get him on board. Is he said, look,
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  Speaker 1: we can also have two dams across the Congo River,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: creating a Chad and Congo see. And this will have
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: a good influence on the African climate. It will be
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: more pleasant for European settlers. He didn't exactly hold meetings
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: with people who lived in those areas at all. He
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: just sort of thought this will help us continue our
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: resource extraction. Heist and uh and he did, oh he
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: did notice something cool and Max thought of you with
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: this part. Uh. He wanted to build a continuous train
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: connection between Africa and Europe, which would be cool. All right,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: we got the Max. Not thank you. Uh I, I
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: love it. We all love traveling by train. His advantage.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: And this is nasty. These are not This is not
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: us speaking, folks. This is a verbatim quote from him.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: He especially just talking about turning the Congo Basin into
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: an enormous dammed up see. He said, we go to
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: the smattering of racism here. Is that the Uh yeah,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: we've been there for a few minutes. Yeah. He said
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Africa would be turned into quote a territory actually useful
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  Speaker 1: for Europe boo. Indeed, do I make a foggina. I
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: think it means you asked me a question and I
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: did not answer. But when they say it the way
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: they aid and that song, it just sounds so intense,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: but the lyrics are actually pretty vanilla. Uh. Now, it's true.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: He there was a sentiment I think, you know, of
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Africa as being a useless continent and its inhabitants being
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: sort of like, you know, unlearned and dare we say
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: again speaking to the sentiment of the time subhuman in
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: some way. It was pretty widely held. So the idea
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: was that he would uh use some kind of you know,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: form twisted form of Darwinism, social Darwinism UM and colonialism
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: to connect Europe to that territory in the hopes that
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  Speaker 1: maybe they would be able to um convert the inhabitants
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  Speaker 1: of that land to their way of thinking and thus
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: rendering them useful in some way. Who doesn't love a
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: white savior, right, bros. That's that's where he's going with this.
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  Speaker 1: He did say something that a lot of other um,
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  Speaker 1: a lot of other luminaries in geopolitics have said before,
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  Speaker 1: which is he said the fight for survival is a
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: fight for territory. And that's something that we see play
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: out in the world today. As a matter of fact,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: we also see the damages that large scale dams could
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: have on the world today, like the three gorgeous dam
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: in China displaced a ton of people who were not
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: really allowed to object, you know. And I recently heard
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: a kind of depressing report on BBC World Service or
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: World News podcast where they talked about how hydroelectric dams
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: maybe spelling the end for jaguars and wild tigers. So
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: hydro electric dams, yeah, they're better than a coal mine,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: but they still they still have their drawbacks. He's not
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: worried about any of this. He's not asking the populations
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  Speaker 1: of in the parts of Africa that will be affected
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  Speaker 1: by this because he doesn't care. Uh. Instead, he thinks
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  Speaker 1: this will be a new kind of counterweight to the
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: future power of United North and South American continent and
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: United Asian continent. And so this is his way of
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: kind of putting some gas into Europe's future standing. So
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: let's pause for sick though, because there are a lot
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: of ifs they're right, Like he's he's already he's basing
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: his idea on his theory about these three great superpowers,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: which has not been proven and didn't come to pass. Right, So,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: so I mean I started off to describing Sorgal as
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: being this like concept over function kind of guy. I mean,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: I think I may be mischaracterizing a little bit. He
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: was incredibly ideological and and and this move you know,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: was as much a show of his like engineering and
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: kind of artistic genius and and um, you know, as
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: it was is a way too in his mind, moved
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: some pretty serious geopolitical pieces, right and and set uh
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Europe up for success post World War One. He wrote
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: down all of his thoughts, um and and these drawings
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: uh in what became around a thousand individualized publications that
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: comprised four Atlantropa books. Um. And there's actually an entire
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: special collection in the archive of the Deutsche Museum in Munich.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: That's what I was alluding to earlier, So you can
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: actually check this out for yourself. And he was a
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: big fan of the work of another, uh kind of
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: dour European gentleman by the name of Spangler, right, but
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: not Egan, which which Spangler we're talking about, That Oswald Spangler,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: the guy who's famously fun at parties for things like
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: his two volume work, The Decline of zevest Uh The Vest.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: He didn't like vest, and he also didn't like the West.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: The first volume is about the first volume is about
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: vest that you would wear in suits, and the second
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: volume takes that analogy to geopolitics. It makes a kind
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: of sense if you read it. It's also all entirely
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: an iambic pentameter rhyming verse. Folks, you're gonna have to
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: read the book to see which part of this is true.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: Not not all of it is. But the point of
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Spengler is that he believed that all cultures were super
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: organisms and they had a cyclical, predictable lifespan. We talked
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: about stuff like this a little bit on stuff they
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: don't want you to know. Do empires have an expiration date?
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: And he had predicted way back in like nineteen twenty two,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen or so, that Western civilization would enter its
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: death throws in the year two thousand and then by
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: twenty two hundred, Western civilization as he knew it would collapse.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: So that's where that's kind of a bleak outlook, right,
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: And that really informs a lot of where Sorcal is
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: coming from. We've got to save the European culture basically
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: that point, that's what he's thinking of. Well, and we've
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: been talking about this all along, but I mean against
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: about digging Europe out of this post war malaise, which
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: included things like massive unemployment levels, poverty, and the treatment
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: of Europe as sort of a pariah by other world superpowers, right,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: I mean understandably so, yeah, yeah, because you know, Europe
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: was looking rough after World War One, and that's a
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: very polite way to put it, Like the chaos was widespread,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: massive casualties, all the problems you just mentioned. Uh, the
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: shadow of poverty looming ever larger on the horizon. And
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: one interesting note about Sorcle, despite his racist attitudes, the
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: dude was a pacifist and he thought that building would
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: guide the European continent toward a brighter, a brighter kind
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: of post scarcity future. That Star Trek analogy is not
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: too far off, because in the original Star Trek, poverty
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: has been to a great degree eliminated in the Federation
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: space at least, and people aren't going hungry. He wanted
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: to build this kind of thing, which is a noble thought.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: But the big deal with him was not just helping
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: people get jobs, helping people get food, giving people energy.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: He wanted to make the countries of Europe increasingly interdependent
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: upon one another, so you wouldn't be like, if you're
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Austria Hungary, you would be so much less likely to
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: start a war with France because you are trading partners.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Now you're indeed with each other. So what hurts them
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: hurts you. And there is a logic to that, but
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: maybe not as sound a logic as he assumed. It's
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: similar to maybe where we are with China, say right now,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: only maybe it almost seems like the pendulum has swung
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: a little more in China's favor than even ours. Right, yeah,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: right now. It's uh right, right now, they're heated debates
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: going on in the world of the military and in
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: the world of academia about which which country will become
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: the quote unquote global superpower. But there are a lot
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: of that's maybe uh an episode for the future, But
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: there are a lot of factors I would argue people
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: aren't considering. You know, the one child policy left an
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: intergenerational consequence, and population rates are actually going down in
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: a lot of overall in the world. For the first
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: time in a while. So that's not the worst thing
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: in the world, all right, specially given that what we're
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: talking about today, which is the idea of scarcity and
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: not having enough resources to feed everybody and you know,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: poverty and starvation. Again, I'm I'm don't don't want to
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: cast myself as some kind of eugenicist or something, but
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: you know, there is something to be said about maybe
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: times of strife and uncertainty maybe not the best times
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: to have, you know, a Brady Bunch kind of situation. Yeah, no,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: I you know me, man, you know me. Well, I
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: agree with that. This also, this is attractive to him
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: to Sorgal because he doesn't need to go through the
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: realm of politics and diplomacy. And these governments that he's
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: trying to unite are very different culturally, procedurally in many ways,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: they don't get along. But if he can solve it
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: with technology, then, first off, think of all the meetings
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: you get out of You don't have to like kiss
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: the dukes behind anymore. You just have to do it
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: once to get the green light. And now you know,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: there's this there's this attitude that I find inspiring despite
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: all the problems with Sorgals believe as a person, I
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: love the idea that science can save us. I don't
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: know if that's always accurate, but but it's beautiful. And
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: this this concept sort of turning the entirety of Europe
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: and this new supercontinent into one gigantic unified electric grid.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: I think that would do a lot to mitigate the
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: problems of war. And you know, not for nothing. He
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: wasn't wrong. War was going to happen. It's it's crazy
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: that they were. They were calling it the World War
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: at this point, but he was already thinking in terms
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: of World War One and the sequel. Wait, won't wait,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: hold up, We've got to drain the Mediterranean of this podcast.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: This has to be a two parter. There's too much.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: There's too much. We thought we could, We thought we
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: could shove it all into one, but it was just
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: far too grandiose and ambitious of an idea, much like
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: the subject of today's part one of a two part episode. Yes,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: so tune in on Thursday to learn what became of
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: the atlant Tropa project. Thanks as always to the one
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: and only Mr Max Williams, as well as his sibling
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: Alex Williams. Who kindly composed this banging soundtrack. It's a
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: very kind sounding track to it really speaks to Alex's
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: inner goodness. Huge thanks to Jonathan Strickland, the quister. We're
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: gonna be seeing him dark in our doorstep one of
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: these days pretty soon. I'm nearly certain, Gay Bluegier Research
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: Associate extraordinaire. Who else? Who else am I missing? Oh yeah,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Christopher Rociotis and Eves Jeff Cotes here in spirit? M yes,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: And thanks to all the tireless geologists working around the world.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Thanks to everybody who decided not to drain the Mediterranean
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: see and thanks to you ridiculous historians in advance for
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: joining us on the social meds. You can find our
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Facebook community page Ridiculous Historians, but you can also find
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: us not just as a show but individuals. I am
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: at Ben Bowling on Instagram and that Been Bowling hsw
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: on Twitter. If you want to get a behind the
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: scenes look at my various strange, ill informed misadventures the
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: devil you say, Ben, You can find me having misadventures
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: of a kind as well, exclusively on Instagram, where I
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: am at how now Noel Brown, We'll see you next time. Folks.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts from My heart Radio, visit the I
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: your favorite shows.