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Was Atlantis a real place? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, back in the saddle again
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Speaker 1: with Charles W. Chuck Bryant. We share a horse, we do.
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Speaker 1: I have a horse side car. Actually, if it's a
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Speaker 1: small mule, yeah, that's attached to your horse. Yeah, and
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Speaker 1: I have to lean into the corners. It's more of
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Speaker 1: a hay cart than a side car. Okay, Back in
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Speaker 1: the saddle, meaning we are back from Texas and back
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Speaker 1: in the recording booth for the first time in two weeks. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: it feels nice, dude to be back in this smelly, little,
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Speaker 1: dimly lit room. Yeah, it's strangely at least it's not
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Speaker 1: like blood colored, you know. Yeah, man, that'd be weird. Um.
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Speaker 1: So Chuck, Okay, yes, I guess we should get started. Huh.
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Speaker 1: You don't have an intro? Well, I I mean I
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Speaker 1: was gonna use the intro. Was the intro? Go ahead? Then?
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Speaker 1: Have you have you ever heard of a place called Atlantis?
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Speaker 1: I have? Are you? Are you read like the Dean
1:16
Speaker 1: the Triangle? The vacation getaway. No, we're like Britney Spears
1:20
Speaker 1: stayed for free for like a month when they opened
1:23
Speaker 1: and try to generate. I'm sure they were packing a
1:26
Speaker 1: minute after that. I think they have been. I don't know.
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Speaker 1: I can't. I can't discuss the financial a state of Atlantis,
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Speaker 1: the resort in the Bahamas. But what I can discuss
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Speaker 1: is Atlantis, the possibly fictitious place. Yeah, I'm gonna go
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Speaker 1: ahead and go on record as fictitious, are you well?
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Speaker 1: After reading this and by the way, this was awesome,
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Speaker 1: I had no idea about the secret surprise that's coming.
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Speaker 1: Which one, well, the the other place, the real place?
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Speaker 1: Oh gotcha? Okay, which I've meant to ask you before
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Speaker 1: how we pronounce that? But we'll just get to that
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Speaker 1: and I'll let you say it first. But yeah, I'm
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Speaker 1: gonna say it's fictitious and based on that, Okay, I
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Speaker 1: think I kind of go with that too, mainly because
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Speaker 1: one of the things about Plato is, uh, he was
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Speaker 1: the only person ever mentioned Atlantis. Plenty of people have
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Speaker 1: mentioned it after him, but it was based on what
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Speaker 1: he said, which kind of makes you think, like, okay,
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Speaker 1: is this um, this is an allegory. Probably it's about wickedness. Yeah.
2:32
Speaker 1: What was his book in to Mas Yeah, that was
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Speaker 1: the book where we first mentioned it, and it was
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Speaker 1: written in three sixty b C. And to Manus is
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Speaker 1: one of his dialogues, I believe. And Plato has a
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Speaker 1: thing where he likes to take real places, real people,
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Speaker 1: real events, and then just kinda use some literary license.
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Speaker 1: He's a philosopher, Okay, yeah he was. He was not
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Speaker 1: a documentarian of real things, right, Um. But along the
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Speaker 1: way somewhere that idea got lost, right right. So for example,
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Speaker 1: Sodom and Gomora. I I would wager that a lot
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Speaker 1: of people think that Sodom and Gomorrah something really happened,
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Speaker 1: and then um it was it was taken. Eventually it
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Speaker 1: was used as allegory that these people were punished by God. Um,
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Speaker 1: but really, you know, something really bad happened to him,
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Speaker 1: and somebody decided, hey, this is a great, great chance
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Speaker 1: to use this as a life lesson for everyone. So
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Speaker 1: there's a really strong possibility that Plato did the same thing,
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Speaker 1: because as he describes Atlantis, um, they they had gotten
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Speaker 1: kind of hubristic. I guess it does mimic other things
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Speaker 1: in the Bible. That's sure it does. And um, the
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Speaker 1: great god Poseidon, who is the god of the sea
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Speaker 1: and of earthquakes, decided that he was kind of tired
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Speaker 1: of the people of Atlantis, which was the seat of
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Speaker 1: a cult that worshiped him. Right, so he, using the
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Speaker 1: techniques at hand, sent he created He's he, I guess,
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Speaker 1: created an earthquake that generated a tsunami that sunk Atlantis
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Speaker 1: beneath the waves, lost forever. Yeah. I think the quote
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Speaker 1: from the book was sank into the sea in a
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Speaker 1: single day and night of misfortune. Yeah, that's putting it
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Speaker 1: lightly so. And he placed it too, didn't he? Actually? Yeah,
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Speaker 1: where off Spain the Pillars of Hercules, which is now
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Speaker 1: called the Strait of Gibraltar. And there's people looking in
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Speaker 1: Spain now, right, I think legitimate bona fide archaeologists. They're
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Speaker 1: fun Yeah. So um so Plato. I guess part of
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Speaker 1: the problem is he's he's saying, like, yes, this this
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Speaker 1: was that the Strait of Gibraltar in his parlance at
4:51
Speaker 1: the time. He's saying, is that the Straight of Gibraltar.
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Speaker 1: The problem is is that Atlantis was this magnificent ringed city, um,
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Speaker 1: and it had like fantastic technology and architecture, and it
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Speaker 1: was just an amazingly advanced place. But he also says
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Speaker 1: that this has happened nine thousand years ago, right, right,
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Speaker 1: so nine thousand years before him, So they're aliens. Well
5:16
Speaker 1: that was that is thanks to a guy named Ignacious Donnally.
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Speaker 1: So this guy, so Plato writes about Atlantis, goes about
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Speaker 1: his business, right, and apparently nobody back then took it seriously.
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Speaker 1: And that's like modern man were the first people to say, oh,
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Speaker 1: maybe there wasn't Atlantis. Yeah, back in the day, everyone's like,
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Speaker 1: it's just Plato going off again. Right, it was this
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Speaker 1: one guy, Ignacious Donnally. Can lay it all at his feet, jerk,
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Speaker 1: because in eighteen eighty two he published a book called
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Speaker 1: Atlantis The Antidiluvian World, and in it he's saying, Okay,
5:48
Speaker 1: the Azores, the Zories, man, I wish i'd put that
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Speaker 1: one up, and I think that's right. Um, the islands
5:55
Speaker 1: in the middle of the Atlantic. That's actually the highest
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Speaker 1: peaks of the highest mountaintops of Atlanta tists. And wait
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Speaker 1: there's more. Uh, the incredibly advanced civilizations in Egypt and
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Speaker 1: high up in the Andes of Peru, pre inca. Um.
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Speaker 1: Those were colonies set forth by Atlantis that survived because
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Speaker 1: they weren't there for the sinking of Atlantis. So basically, um,
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Speaker 1: we have civilization to thank We have Atlantis to thank
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Speaker 1: for civilization. The problem is all this is totally unfounded,
6:24
Speaker 1: but it just kicked off the um occultization of Atlantis. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: It's been placed everywhere from uh, South China, see the Caribbean,
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Speaker 1: the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, the Canary Islands, Antarctica, supposedly Switzerland. Yeah.
6:40
Speaker 1: I didn't chase that one down, but I saw somewhere
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Speaker 1: that somebody said Switzerland ahead and say everywhere. Yeah, everywhere,
6:46
Speaker 1: Atlantis is everywhere. There's um Edgar Casey, who is known
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Speaker 1: as the Sleeping Prophet of Virginia Beach, who's a psychic
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Speaker 1: he um. He said that Atlantis stretched from the Gulf
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Speaker 1: of Mexico to Spain, and that the Bermuda Triangle there
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Speaker 1: are a lot of you know, if there is mystery
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Speaker 1: in the Bermuda Triangle, it's due to Atlantis is energy crystals,
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Speaker 1: I will say though. He said it would rise off
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Speaker 1: Beminy and then when they discovered the Bemini Road, Everyone's
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Speaker 1: like see there, and then it's too bad Cherry's not
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Speaker 1: here because she's like I dove the Beminy Road. Yeah, guests,
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Speaker 1: producer Maddie's in the house, Hey, Matt, we didn't mention that.
7:23
Speaker 1: Um So, once Donnelly comes along and kind of takes
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Speaker 1: up the mantle of searching for Atlantis and making it
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Speaker 1: as far out as possible, it just becomes more and
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Speaker 1: more the domain of like fringe dwellers. Right, sure, but
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Speaker 1: that is not to say that there aren't legitimate archaeologists
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Speaker 1: searching for something like Atlantis. That that doesn't mean that
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Speaker 1: there isn't something that inspired Plato, and we probably know
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Speaker 1: what that is. Actually, that's where my money is. And
7:58
Speaker 1: now you're gonna make me say it, even though I
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Speaker 1: asked you to say it. Hilaki haliki, hiliki, haliki, haliki, Yeah, okay,
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Speaker 1: haliki spelled he like, yeah, Um, I saw some weird
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Speaker 1: pronunciation things that I didn't understand when I looked it up,
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Speaker 1: so I just figured i'd hear it from you. That
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Speaker 1: was Greek to you, it was indeed, um So, yeah,
8:21
Speaker 1: the cats out of the bag. As far as I'm concerned,
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Speaker 1: it is hiliki. It was a super interesting story though. Um,
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Speaker 1: this was well documented by lots of people, not not
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Speaker 1: like a single source like Plato single made up so exactly.
8:39
Speaker 1: And it was a lost Greek city. It suffered a
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Speaker 1: fate much like Atlantis supposedly did. Yeah. So Haliki was
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Speaker 1: this um very powerful city in ancient Greece on the
8:52
Speaker 1: Gulf corinth Um, very nice in that area. Yeah, yeah,
8:56
Speaker 1: I imagine have you been? No, I want to go. Um.
9:00
Speaker 1: It was powerful enough to have its own colonies. So
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Speaker 1: I mentioned if Atlanta had colonies in like Germany, this
9:06
Speaker 1: is very much the case for Haliki, and it was
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Speaker 1: the seat of power for a twelve city league called
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Speaker 1: the Achaian League, which is kind of like the Confederacy
9:15
Speaker 1: in the South. Will that be like having a bar
9:19
Speaker 1: in a different city that's like your home bar, like
9:21
Speaker 1: you know they have like it's usually football based. There's
9:24
Speaker 1: like a New York Jets bar Atlanta, Pittsburgh Steelers bar
9:28
Speaker 1: in Atlanta. Maybe that the same thing. I thought it
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Speaker 1: was more like the capital of like a number of states.
9:35
Speaker 1: I don't think it's the same thing, but I like
9:37
Speaker 1: that analogy. I'm just being coy. Um. So the the
9:42
Speaker 1: a key in league now I've just realized that I
9:45
Speaker 1: missed something. Now that's a joke. Yeah. So the the
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Speaker 1: Haliki is the city or the center of the a
9:53
Speaker 1: keen league get controlled, like the shipping around there. By
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Speaker 1: the time Plato came about, it was hundreds of years old,
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Speaker 1: already a very active port. They had their own coinage. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and and it looked very cool too. I looked up
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Speaker 1: the coins like dolphins and Poseidon and yeah, pitch or
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Speaker 1: not pitchforks, what they call the tridents tridents, and it
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Speaker 1: was it had Poseidon on the coin because this was
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Speaker 1: like the seat of a cult of Poseidon. Yeah, just
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Speaker 1: like Atlantis exactly. And um it was had a very prominent,
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Speaker 1: well known statue of Poseidon, just like Atlantis. Right, that's right.
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Speaker 1: So the similarities are starting to mount up, they are,
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Speaker 1: and uh, they really mount in a big way in
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Speaker 1: December of three seventy three BC, when the townspeople started noticing,
10:47
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, all these small animals are scurring for
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Speaker 1: the hills and that's never a good sign. Because we
10:53
Speaker 1: did talk about in another podcast how animals can sense
10:56
Speaker 1: underground tremmors. I had to have been in how earthquakes
10:59
Speaker 1: were Yeah, I think that's what it was. And sure enough,
11:02
Speaker 1: earthquake came in the middle of the night on the
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Speaker 1: fifth day, and that was followed by an enormous wave
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Speaker 1: and just like that overnight, just like Atlantis, it was
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Speaker 1: submerged to the bottom of the sea. Well not the
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Speaker 1: bottom but no, and not necessarily the sea either. As
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Speaker 1: we'll see, this is getting more mysterious. So, um, so
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Speaker 1: this really happened. This is pretty Uh, it was a
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Speaker 1: pretty well known event. UM. One of the there, I
11:33
Speaker 1: guess we should say there were no survivors, like people
11:36
Speaker 1: from the surrounding cities got together, like um, a search party,
11:40
Speaker 1: a rescue party, UM, that set out at dawn just
11:44
Speaker 1: a few hours after this happened, and there was well
11:48
Speaker 1: I think they got they walked as far as they
11:50
Speaker 1: couldn't were like, oh yeah, well, there's now like a
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Speaker 1: sea where there used to be this, This Um city's gone.
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Speaker 1: There was no one there apparently. The only thing visible
12:00
Speaker 1: where the tops of Um the trees in Poseidon's Sacred grove.
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Speaker 1: I would guess, all of the trees. Yeah uh. And
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Speaker 1: there were ten ships and this will come up later too,
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Speaker 1: from Sparta that were a dock there in the port
12:12
Speaker 1: and they were gone as well, just gone, and that
12:15
Speaker 1: will play an important part here coming up soon. Yeah. So, um,
12:20
Speaker 1: imagine like there's a city, it's a very powerful, rich city,
12:24
Speaker 1: and you live out in the boondocks and you just
12:27
Speaker 1: know something happened there as an earthquake, so you go
12:29
Speaker 1: to check on the city, and then the city's gone,
12:31
Speaker 1: and it's just silence, and there's ten ships that aren't
12:34
Speaker 1: there anymore. Everything is just gone. Creepy. What was even
12:37
Speaker 1: creepier though, is you could look down into the city
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Speaker 1: underwater and see it all there still, Yeah, including the
12:44
Speaker 1: statue of Poseidon, which apparently still stood erect and in
12:47
Speaker 1: place right, and local fishermen and ferryman um reported having
12:52
Speaker 1: their nets get caught in Poseidon statue all the time,
12:55
Speaker 1: which is kind of ironic. Yeah, but um, so you
12:58
Speaker 1: could see leaky for hundreds of years, which is one
13:02
Speaker 1: of the reasons why it's so well documented, because they
13:05
Speaker 1: were it was kind of like have you heard of
13:07
Speaker 1: than of tourism, dark tourism or death tourism, So um,
13:12
Speaker 1: it was kind of like an early version of a
13:14
Speaker 1: dark tourism site, like yeah, exactly, um, and you could
13:21
Speaker 1: go check it out and travelers and writers and scholars didn't.
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Speaker 1: They documented what they saw um pretty pretty um specifically too.
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Speaker 1: Like in Stadia, they said, well, here's the this is
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Speaker 1: where the city is now, this is where it was
13:37
Speaker 1: in relation to you know this river, that river. So
13:41
Speaker 1: like the sources are pretty pretty abundant, and they're pretty specific.
13:46
Speaker 1: Speaking of abundant and rivers and sources, look at you. Uh,
13:52
Speaker 1: that area was was unique in that it had these
13:56
Speaker 1: three rivers that met there bringing fresh water in. So
14:00
Speaker 1: you've got some good freshwater, you got some good seawater
14:03
Speaker 1: with tons of good seafood. You've got very rich land
14:07
Speaker 1: for crops, Wh've got irrigation because we've got the freshwater.
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Speaker 1: The weather is gorgeous. So it's right here on on
14:13
Speaker 1: the lovely seaside, and that's what made it and on
14:15
Speaker 1: the ideal spot for people to say, hey, maybe we
14:18
Speaker 1: should settle down here. Yeah, let's hanging out here for
14:21
Speaker 1: a while, get fat on shrimp. Unfortunately, it's also a
14:24
Speaker 1: bad spot because there are two fault lines that run
14:28
Speaker 1: parallel through the area, and uh, they haven't been known
14:31
Speaker 1: to call some major disruption over the years, like the
14:34
Speaker 1: earthquake that destroyed Hiliki and generated the tsunami. So it's
14:39
Speaker 1: it's kind of like this whole place is like made
14:42
Speaker 1: to produce a lost city, right, Yeah, because there's other
14:46
Speaker 1: places around the world, um, where there's violent tectonic activity
14:51
Speaker 1: and its coastal, so that means that it's in danger
14:53
Speaker 1: of a tsunami. California not with tesunami, I don't think. Japan. Yeah, um,
14:59
Speaker 1: the Malaysian tsunami two four. Um, Yeah, there's a lot
15:05
Speaker 1: of places. But to produce a so that's that will
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Speaker 1: ruin a coastal city, right, yes, but for it to
15:11
Speaker 1: become lost, it has to be covered up somehow, and
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Speaker 1: Hiliki is in a really unique situation for this because
15:19
Speaker 1: of those three rivers that form the Hiliki Delta where
15:22
Speaker 1: Hiliki was situated. Right, So you've got the earthquake, you've
15:27
Speaker 1: got the tsunami, so you have a ruined city now submerged,
15:30
Speaker 1: and then these three rivers bring a lot of silt
15:33
Speaker 1: to the area and so eventually Hiliki was covered up
15:37
Speaker 1: over over the centuries. Yeah. You put it in the
15:39
Speaker 1: article about how if you bought a house or not
15:43
Speaker 1: bought a house, let's say, built a house along the
15:46
Speaker 1: shore in eight nine it would be a thousand feet inland,
15:50
Speaker 1: which imagine is quite a rub for people that build
15:54
Speaker 1: that lovely house right on the water, because within a
15:57
Speaker 1: century or so, it's gonna be a couple of streets
16:00
Speaker 1: back and there's like tin jerks in front of you
16:03
Speaker 1: that have built houses exactly. And it's kind of like
16:06
Speaker 1: what's that game where you like leap frog? Oh yeah,
16:10
Speaker 1: I can say monopoly where you build bigger houses than
16:13
Speaker 1: the other guy. Oh yeah, that would have worked too. Um.
16:17
Speaker 1: So you've got the tsunamis, you've got the river, you've
16:20
Speaker 1: got the the silt. You also have um, the delta
16:25
Speaker 1: itself because of this violent activity, UM is moving up there.
16:30
Speaker 1: Finding over time it's it's rising. So you have a
16:34
Speaker 1: rising delta which is low, like right at sea level,
16:39
Speaker 1: but it's it's getting bigger, and silt is piling it
16:43
Speaker 1: up and making dry ground even further jut out into
16:47
Speaker 1: the coast. Well, what it made was a nice little
16:49
Speaker 1: surprise for archaeologists, and I imagine archaeologists just went berserk
16:54
Speaker 1: with this place. Yeah, they had no idea. They just
16:57
Speaker 1: thought Hliki itself was there. They knew it was there,
17:00
Speaker 1: and that they suspected it would be kind of like
17:03
Speaker 1: a Pompeii, but even more. Um they considered it even
17:08
Speaker 1: more vital to archaeology, the archaeological record than Pompeii even Well,
17:13
Speaker 1: what they found though is, you know, Josh, but we're
17:15
Speaker 1: gonna spring it on you now, is six other distinct
17:20
Speaker 1: occupied horizons besides six other ones are seven total, sixth total,
17:25
Speaker 1: six total, five others besides Laki underneath one on top
17:30
Speaker 1: of the other that had been settled and civilized and
17:34
Speaker 1: wiped out and covered up and like just kind of
17:36
Speaker 1: captured in time. That is crazy. Yeah, which one? What
17:39
Speaker 1: were they? So? There was one from the Byzantine period,
17:42
Speaker 1: which was pretty long. I think it ran from two
17:45
Speaker 1: d to the fifte century UM. And then beneath that
17:50
Speaker 1: there is a Roman ruin which is from the second
17:54
Speaker 1: to the fourth a D. And that one even features
17:56
Speaker 1: a Roman road, which is the road that try velers
18:00
Speaker 1: and writers used to come look at Hiliki the ruins
18:04
Speaker 1: um and that one also chucked. This just blows in
18:08
Speaker 1: my mind. It's so captured in time that there's a
18:11
Speaker 1: human skeleton a top a like a cattle skull that
18:17
Speaker 1: like it was knocked on top of this beast and
18:20
Speaker 1: killed like by rock and rubble and just kept there.
18:25
Speaker 1: So there's skeletons are intertwined now in that nuts. So
18:29
Speaker 1: the Roman cities on top of Hiliki than beneath Hileaky, Uh,
18:33
Speaker 1: they found even more stuff. They found a settlement from
18:36
Speaker 1: the Bronze Age b C. And before that they kept
18:43
Speaker 1: digging and found uh, prehistoric Neolithic period civilization possibly as
18:49
Speaker 1: old as twelve thousand years. I wonder if there's something
18:52
Speaker 1: beneath that even I don't know. This makes me think
18:55
Speaker 1: they should start digging in Los Angeles or other like
18:58
Speaker 1: seaside retreats to see what you could find. Well, there's
19:01
Speaker 1: a whole um. There's this whole idea, especially among atlantis hunters,
19:06
Speaker 1: that it's extremely intuitive because of rising sea levels that
19:10
Speaker 1: anything that was established around the last I Sage or
19:14
Speaker 1: even at about the end of it, the sea levels
19:17
Speaker 1: have ridged in like more than a hundred feet since then.
19:20
Speaker 1: So any coastal cities now underwater, that's like a big,
19:25
Speaker 1: big thing that they hunt for. Now that archaeologists are
19:28
Speaker 1: kind of starting to try to get into is um
19:31
Speaker 1: looking for human habitation underwater, Like there's this whole area
19:37
Speaker 1: off of whales. I think Northern Wales, Northern Ireland, maybe
19:42
Speaker 1: Um or Scotland. Anyway, it's called dogger Land and it's
19:46
Speaker 1: like just the submerged area that used to be above
19:48
Speaker 1: ground and they're they're they're finding like Neolithic settlements there
19:53
Speaker 1: and that cool. Well, and you know, the earth has
19:56
Speaker 1: changed so much over the course of its existence that
19:59
Speaker 1: what's here didn't used to be here, and what was
20:02
Speaker 1: there was something else, and so yeah, I think it's
20:05
Speaker 1: there's no telling what's down there, but that that idea
20:08
Speaker 1: and the fact that you can find neolithic settlements under
20:12
Speaker 1: water supports, ironically the notion that there could be something
20:17
Speaker 1: like Atlantis that's lost somewhere Heliki. Right. So yeah, so
20:22
Speaker 1: these guys they found this this um area, and once
20:25
Speaker 1: they found Hiliki, it all started to They just it
20:29
Speaker 1: was like jack pot, jackpot, jackpot. But finding Hiliki itself,
20:33
Speaker 1: um proved a little more difficult than they thought, especially
20:37
Speaker 1: considering all the documentation they had. Yeah, they knew supposedly
20:41
Speaker 1: knew where it was, quote unquote like it's not like
20:44
Speaker 1: they were searching for a needle in a haystack. They
20:46
Speaker 1: were searching for like, uh, like a pool qu in
20:50
Speaker 1: a haystack, you know. Uh. So in the late eighties
20:54
Speaker 1: a couple of Cornell professors started looking for it for
20:57
Speaker 1: real z s and uh They had a little bit
21:01
Speaker 1: of misinterpretation, um for the word for the translation for
21:06
Speaker 1: body of water, and lucky enough, they had a Greek
21:08
Speaker 1: woman with them. Well she's one of the Cornelli professors.
21:11
Speaker 1: Oh she was. Yeah. Well then lucky that she was Greek,
21:15
Speaker 1: Well yeah, because she translates. She was like, wait a minute,
21:17
Speaker 1: She's like, it may not be in the Gulf after all,
21:19
Speaker 1: it maybe inland. And they were like, yeah, everybody had
21:23
Speaker 1: been thinking that this was the Gulf had swallowed him,
21:26
Speaker 1: swallowed up the city, which would makes sense, right. It
21:28
Speaker 1: turns out it was an inland lagoon that did. So.
21:31
Speaker 1: I think it was very much akin to the you know,
21:33
Speaker 1: the Noah's Ark episode we just did. Yeah, um, what
21:37
Speaker 1: is it? The Dead Sea? I think where they think
21:40
Speaker 1: that the Dead Sea used to be freshwater. Now it's
21:44
Speaker 1: salt water, because that's evidence of the flood happening. And
21:48
Speaker 1: probably what they think is the Mediterranean overwhelmed the straight
21:54
Speaker 1: I can't remember what's straight it was. You're searching the reaches. Yeah, anyway,
21:59
Speaker 1: I think give as much the same way, like the
22:01
Speaker 1: city used to be around a lagoon, and then the
22:05
Speaker 1: lagoon got a lot bigger, thus swallowing the city. Right,
22:08
Speaker 1: So they looked under land, and all of a sudden
22:10
Speaker 1: they had to ditch their scuba gear for shovels, and
22:14
Speaker 1: they found the first Roman city. The first ruins were like,
22:17
Speaker 1: wait a minute, twelve feet just twelve feet below the land,
22:22
Speaker 1: which doesn't seem like that far at all. No, it's
22:24
Speaker 1: not because the Roman rumors were like four or five ft. Yeah,
22:26
Speaker 1: I wouldn't think that someone would have accidentally found it
22:30
Speaker 1: before that even you know, well that kicked it off.
22:33
Speaker 1: There was a German archaeologists who was traveling in the
22:36
Speaker 1: area and found a Hliky coin with poseidon on and
22:40
Speaker 1: was like, holy cow, this is significant. So I think
22:44
Speaker 1: that's kind of how it started. Yeah, so they found
22:48
Speaker 1: have found a lot of stuff since then, um buildings,
22:51
Speaker 1: industrial buildings, kilns, looms, intersecting streets. Yeah, with buildings along
22:57
Speaker 1: these streets like a real city. Yeah. What else? The coins,
23:01
Speaker 1: of course, um jugs, jugs with their original contents, and
23:06
Speaker 1: those are from the Bronze Age. They found a storehouse
23:09
Speaker 1: of like jugs of different sizes and types from the
23:13
Speaker 1: Bronze Age, so we're talking like five thousand years old.
23:18
Speaker 1: They don't have any idea about these civilizations, but this
23:21
Speaker 1: was contemporary to like ancient Troy, which itself was considered
23:25
Speaker 1: a legendary city until hiring Schleiman found it. Um. So
23:31
Speaker 1: they just finding this stuff is amazingly awesome because and
23:35
Speaker 1: there's more, yeah, there is supposedly, yes, So they think
23:39
Speaker 1: that they found the outskirts of Hliki and that they
23:43
Speaker 1: there's a lot more left, and that it's intact. Oh,
23:46
Speaker 1: they're not actually at Hiliki yet. No, they're in Hiliki,
23:50
Speaker 1: but they're not in the city center. They don't, so
23:53
Speaker 1: they're just out in the outskirts. That's what they think. Yeah. Um.
23:56
Speaker 1: And when they were looking for Hiliki out in the gulf,
23:59
Speaker 1: they found something cool too, didn't they. I don't think
24:03
Speaker 1: I know this, you do know it. They found a
24:05
Speaker 1: sea wall acent sea walls of the city. And they
24:09
Speaker 1: also found what they think are the ten Spartan ship.
24:12
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's right. I thought you were going to
24:14
Speaker 1: say the Statue of Poseidon. That would be like, well,
24:16
Speaker 1: they'll find an eventually, the motherload. If they found that
24:19
Speaker 1: things still standing upright under the earth. So they keep following.
24:23
Speaker 1: They started by following the Roman road, so they're basically
24:26
Speaker 1: they're unearthing like imagine this, dude. They're unearthing like three
24:30
Speaker 1: lost cities at once. Isn't that insane? Do you know? What?
24:34
Speaker 1: Like an archaeological treasure trove that is, So they're unearthing them.
24:38
Speaker 1: And as long as they don't intersect, right, as long
24:41
Speaker 1: as like the Roman town isn't built directly over the
24:44
Speaker 1: statue of Poseidon to where getting to Poseidon would undermine
24:47
Speaker 1: the Roman town, um, then they should be able to
24:52
Speaker 1: get at all. And they're gonna be doing They will
24:53
Speaker 1: excavate this for decades. So this has been ongoing since
24:57
Speaker 1: the late eighties. Well no, they really started uncovering stuff
25:01
Speaker 1: in like two thousand, but they started in so awesome,
25:06
Speaker 1: very cool. So that's a heliki. So of course, Chuck,
25:10
Speaker 1: this doesn't mean that anybody has stopped searching for Atlantis.
25:13
Speaker 1: Like big archaeologist in Spain. Yeah, he's looking inland though,
25:17
Speaker 1: which comes from this theory, so maybe he's on this one.
25:20
Speaker 1: It's possible he's gonna start digging up in Barcelona and
25:25
Speaker 1: people are gonna see what are you doing, Yeah, drink
25:28
Speaker 1: some wine. So, uh, you were saying that you think
25:32
Speaker 1: that Plato was inspired by Hliki. I think there's substantial
25:36
Speaker 1: evidence in what we said. But also keep in mind
25:39
Speaker 1: Laki happened in three seventy three. Plato wrote his book
25:45
Speaker 1: in three sixty, thirteen years later, and he lived in
25:49
Speaker 1: the area. This is a pretty well known catastrophe. So
25:53
Speaker 1: I think you're probably right. But we would not have
25:56
Speaker 1: had the awesome TV show Man from Atlantis had it
26:00
Speaker 1: not been for Plato. No, I guess that's true. Did
26:03
Speaker 1: you watch that? No, that was a little before your time.
26:06
Speaker 1: And there's an awesome um HP Lovecraft short story about
26:10
Speaker 1: a German U boat that ends up in Atlantis. It's awesome.
26:15
Speaker 1: I tried to find YouTube stuff of Man from Atlantis
26:18
Speaker 1: and there there's plenty out there. You know, he had
26:21
Speaker 1: the webbed hands when I was a kid, had webbed
26:23
Speaker 1: hands and feet. It's not Prince Nemore, is it the
26:26
Speaker 1: submariner Prince of Nemore, Nemo, No Prince, He's a Marvel
26:32
Speaker 1: comic guy. No, no, no, it was man. It was
26:34
Speaker 1: a schlocky It ran for like one year. Was like, yeah,
26:39
Speaker 1: he was he had super He had superhuman strength and
26:43
Speaker 1: uh could breathe underwater, had gills, and he had webbed
26:46
Speaker 1: feet in hands and um, I think like some government
26:50
Speaker 1: agency snapped him up to do like investigative undersea work
26:55
Speaker 1: for them. Oh, I know you're talking about Welcome Back Cotter.
27:00
Speaker 1: This is a dude from from Dallas. Uh? Patrick, what's
27:03
Speaker 1: his face? Patrick Ewing? Patrick Guffy? You think? And jail
27:08
Speaker 1: for you? Patrick giving the basketball player? Right, Patrick Duffy? Yeah, yeah, Uh,
27:13
Speaker 1: this is good stuff. I have never heard of that show. Yeah,
27:15
Speaker 1: it was only around for one year. I think. Boy,
27:18
Speaker 1: I was into it when I was like seven. Good stuff.
27:21
Speaker 1: You had webbed hands. Yeah, it got me into Plato,
27:25
Speaker 1: but you hadn't been eating it for years. Funny guy.
27:29
Speaker 1: All right, So that's it. You got anything else? I
27:31
Speaker 1: thank you for doing this one with it was awesome.
27:33
Speaker 1: Thank you for opening my eyes to coolness. Anytime. If
27:37
Speaker 1: you want to know more about Hliki, you should search
27:40
Speaker 1: for was there a real Atlantis? By typing that into
27:44
Speaker 1: the search bar at how stuff works dot com. And
27:47
Speaker 1: I said that, which means it's time for a listener. Man.
27:52
Speaker 1: That's right, Josh. Remember when we did a little TV
27:56
Speaker 1: pilot recently. UM, we tried to get these bookends onto
28:00
Speaker 1: the show. They arrived a little late. We weren't able to.
28:04
Speaker 1: But I want to tell everyone about this project, because
28:06
Speaker 1: that sounds very cryptic, uh, this from my Hey, guys,
28:09
Speaker 1: have been a big fan for a couple of years, UM,
28:12
Speaker 1: and I especially like that some of your causes you
28:14
Speaker 1: have taken on and considered and done podcast about them,
28:19
Speaker 1: Kiva and the Cooperative for Education in particular. So our
28:23
Speaker 1: Guatemala podcast gave him an idea for a Facebook fundraising
28:27
Speaker 1: idea to raise awareness for co op or buddies, Cooperative
28:32
Speaker 1: for Education Cincinnati to do the awesome textbook programs and
28:36
Speaker 1: uh computer Center Labs and Guatemala. And he proposed to
28:41
Speaker 1: them and they said, hey, yeah, let's do this. So
28:43
Speaker 1: his idea was to create quote unquote celebrity book ends
28:48
Speaker 1: with just this basic idea, take an ordinary set of
28:51
Speaker 1: book ends, although they are pretty fancy looking, I gotta admit, uh,
28:55
Speaker 1: and make them super famous uh pop culture icons through
28:59
Speaker 1: social media to you and then sell them for a
29:01
Speaker 1: million bucks and give it all the co ED. So
29:04
Speaker 1: that's the plan. It's a good plan. I don't know
29:06
Speaker 1: if we added anything to that. We added at least
29:10
Speaker 1: okay good. Um, he says, I know it sounds crazy,
29:12
Speaker 1: but crazy is usually what it takes to get people
29:15
Speaker 1: to notice things. The rational thinking behind this is that
29:18
Speaker 1: to get famous, all you need to have are a
29:21
Speaker 1: ton of people believing that you're famous. You know. Yeah,
29:26
Speaker 1: I mean what else is celebrity? Yeah exactly. Uh So
29:29
Speaker 1: they're trying to drum up celebrity for these book ends
29:32
Speaker 1: to raise awareness. They have sent them around the world
29:35
Speaker 1: to meet people and to be on TV shows and
29:37
Speaker 1: in movies. Uh. They're documenting this on Facebook, the travels
29:41
Speaker 1: of these book ends, uh, in Twitter and blogs for
29:43
Speaker 1: people to follow. And our big audacious goal is to
29:47
Speaker 1: get as many Facebook fans as Kim Kardashian. She has
29:51
Speaker 1: nine million fans. Can you believe them? Yes? Wow? Uh
29:55
Speaker 1: So what we're hoping for your listeners is that they
29:58
Speaker 1: will like the idea enough to want to help. All
30:01
Speaker 1: you have to do it can be as simple as
30:02
Speaker 1: going to the Facebook page, Uh, follow you on Twitter
30:06
Speaker 1: the celebrity book ins that is, tweet about us, blog
30:10
Speaker 1: about us, tell your friends to like us, and hook
30:13
Speaker 1: us up with any celebrity friends that you might have. Um.
30:17
Speaker 1: They have been in the hands of Danny de Vito. Uh,
30:21
Speaker 1: Matt burning your of the National. I didn't know how
30:25
Speaker 1: to pronounce that, but I do love The National, and
30:27
Speaker 1: I believe I saw Jeff Bridges holding these things, did
30:30
Speaker 1: you really? Yeah? And then before us. Yeah, So we
30:34
Speaker 1: actually got a little DeVito Bridges stank on our hands
30:36
Speaker 1: unless they clean these things. And they sent it to
30:39
Speaker 1: us originally to get it in our cubicles on the
30:42
Speaker 1: TV pilot, but they arrived a little late and we
30:44
Speaker 1: weren't able to. So we just did some pictures and
30:47
Speaker 1: maybe on down the road, if we do any more
30:48
Speaker 1: TV stuff, we can get them on television and do
30:51
Speaker 1: our part to help raise awareness. So uh, Facebook dot com,
30:56
Speaker 1: slash Celebrity Bookends or Twitter at Celebrity book INDs, or
31:01
Speaker 1: send an email to Celebrity book INDs at Gmail, and
31:05
Speaker 1: that raises awareness to eventually sell these things to Danny
31:09
Speaker 1: de Vito to raise money for God for a million bucks. Well,
31:13
Speaker 1: I certainly don't have a million books. Well, we also
31:16
Speaker 1: have our own Twitter handle and you can get in
31:20
Speaker 1: touch with us too. While you're talking to Celebrity Bookends,
31:24
Speaker 1: you can tweet to us whatever you want. There's no
31:26
Speaker 1: rules except that has to be a hundred forty characters
31:30
Speaker 1: or last um that's s Y s K podcast. We're
31:33
Speaker 1: also on Facebook at facebook dot com slash Stuff you
31:36
Speaker 1: Should Know, and you can send us an email as
31:39
Speaker 1: well at Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com dot be
31:49
Speaker 1: sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from
31:51
Speaker 1: the Future. Join how Stoffwork staff as we explore the
31:54
Speaker 1: most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow, brought to you
32:00
Speaker 1: by the re invented two thousand twelve Camri. It's ready,
32:03
Speaker 1: are you