Speaker 1: All right, Mango. So, I know we've both spent some
Speaker 1: time in San Francisco over the years, but did you
Speaker 1: know there's somewhere between thirty and sixties ships buried under
Speaker 1: the city there, right, Yeah, it's true. And this this
Speaker 1: goes back to the eighteen hundreds and prospectors were in
Speaker 1: such a hurry to find fortune in San Francisco that
Speaker 1: they would abandoned their vessels right there in the harbor,
Speaker 1: you know, So part of the town was just built
Speaker 1: on top of any ships and debris that got abandoned
Speaker 1: in that shallow water there. I mean, I mean that
Speaker 1: just sounds lazy. You're like careless or something, I know.
Speaker 1: But you know, historians looking at old photos apparently said
Speaker 1: it looked like a forest of masts, and some ships
Speaker 1: got run aground to be used as bars or hotels.
Speaker 1: But what's even weirder than that, According to the National
Speaker 1: Geographic if you sunk a ship, you could actually claim
Speaker 1: the land under it, So a bunch of the ship's
Speaker 1: got sunk deliberately. In fact, today, according to the San
Speaker 1: Francisco m t A, if you've ever taken the Muni
Speaker 1: train to the Embarcadero station, you've actually passed through a
Speaker 1: ship's hole without knowing it. And that's the first of
Speaker 1: today's not Things, all about the weirdest stuff intentionally buried
Speaker 1: by people. Welcome to part time Genius. I'm Will Pearson
Speaker 1: and as always I'm joined by my good friend Mangesh Ticketer.
Speaker 1: And behind the soundproof glass assembling an Ikea Schmore board
Speaker 1: is our producer Tristan McNeil. Good job, Tristan, We've got
Speaker 1: our wonderful research. Extraordinary gave Luisier joining us as well. So, Mango,
Speaker 1: how do we decide on this week's nine things topic? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, you and I were brainstorming, or we were
Speaker 1: about to brainstorm topics when this Twitter user Jason st
Speaker 1: wrote in with the request. And of course, you know
Speaker 1: we love requests and listener suggestions, and Jason had a
Speaker 1: great one. He asked if we could do a list
Speaker 1: of the weirdest things intentionally buried by pole, which of
Speaker 1: course made a smile. Yeah, it's a great idea, all right,
Speaker 1: So we took him up on the challenge and I
Speaker 1: started with the ships of San Francisco. So, Gabe, how
Speaker 1: are you today? I'm doing well? All right, Well, we're
Speaker 1: gonna put you on the spot and let you go.
Speaker 1: Let you go next. Okay, cool, I can do that. Actually,
Speaker 1: I want to start with the problem of beach whale.
Speaker 1: All right. So sometimes, as you might expect, when it
Speaker 1: dead whales shows up on shore, you can kind of
Speaker 1: just let nature take its course. But the problem is,
Speaker 1: you know, that causes a big smell, and it can
Speaker 1: take months or even years for the whale to fully decomposed.
Speaker 1: So another option is to cut it up and take
Speaker 1: the pieces to a landfill. But you know that's that's
Speaker 1: some grizzons. Yeah, that's some grizzly work. And and again
Speaker 1: the stench. Uh So a sart option is to make
Speaker 1: the same mistake the Oregon the Highway Division did and
Speaker 1: then King seventy, and that's to use dynamite and you know,
Speaker 1: blow up a beach whale. Yeah, this is possibly the
Speaker 1: worst idea and definitely not recommended. But the National Oceanic
Speaker 1: and Atmospheric Administration, which has been tasked with taking care
Speaker 1: of all stranded marine mammals in that he sometimes recommends
Speaker 1: simply burying the whale. And what's crazy about that is
Speaker 1: the effort it takes to bury in eighty thousand pounds creatures.
Speaker 1: According to Wire, you need a hold. It's at least
Speaker 1: two stories deep, and that's because you need to cover
Speaker 1: the whale in a minimum of ten feet of stands.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of work, but it actually happens with
Speaker 1: some frequency off the California coat. That's crazy. Well, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, since you started with dead bodies, the first
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to talk about was the Pringles inventor
Speaker 1: Frederick Bauer, who I remember was cremated and buried in
Speaker 1: a Pringles can. But when I actually looked him up,
Speaker 1: I found out he wasn't actually the only snack inventor
Speaker 1: who wanted a tasty tribute in his afterlife. So the
Speaker 1: Dorrito's inventor, Arch West was buried in an urned that
Speaker 1: was dusted in a layer of Doritos. No way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just because you're wondering. While he didn't seem to
Speaker 1: mind the blazon Offlow or Pizza Supreme or even the
Speaker 1: third degree burned scorch in habit narrow flavors, according to
Speaker 1: a Washington Post article, he took one bite of the
Speaker 1: late Night, All Night or Cheeseburger Dorrito's and had to
Speaker 1: spin him out. Actually saw that Washington Post eulogy, and
Speaker 1: I like the way it ended. I think it said
Speaker 1: ashes to ashes, crunch to crunch. Alright, so we've got ships,
Speaker 1: whales and to snack food geniuses. How about we tackle
Speaker 1: something a little more I don't know, conniving. So let's
Speaker 1: think about things that were buried out of spite or
Speaker 1: I don't know, less than pure intentions. Mango, you got one? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I actually do so. I don't know if you remember this,
Speaker 1: but in two thousand and eight, the New York Yankees
Speaker 1: management presided over an excavation ceremony where they dug up
Speaker 1: a David Ortiz Red Sox jersey. Apparently this construction worker
Speaker 1: from the Bronx secretly buried under two and a half
Speaker 1: feet of concrete, all in the hopes that would lead
Speaker 1: to a new Yankees curse. And how would the Yankees
Speaker 1: find out about this? Well, apparently to his fellow workers
Speaker 1: ride him out. But the Yankees organization clean up the
Speaker 1: shirt and said it to Boston with a T shirt
Speaker 1: of their own, and at the jersey and the shirt
Speaker 1: were actually auctioned for charity, or at least it has
Speaker 1: a happy ending. So all right, gay, what do you have? Alright? Well, well,
Speaker 1: this is just kind of funny to me. But inten
Speaker 1: seventy eight, some kids were playing in the mud in
Speaker 1: the backyard of the house in l a and they
Speaker 1: were kind of you know, digging around that when they
Speaker 1: uncovered something shiny. So they kept digging and eventually called
Speaker 1: the cops because it turned out they had found a Ferrari.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that must have been so psyched about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm surely we're Initially the car only had
Speaker 1: five hundred miles on it and it was worth about
Speaker 1: twenty K at the time. But sadly the kids didn't
Speaker 1: get to keep it, and I don't even think they
Speaker 1: got a finders to be The whole thing was apparently
Speaker 1: an insurance scam and the guy would have got away
Speaker 1: with it, but you know, these sky meddling kids. So
Speaker 1: the car was ultimately sent back to the insurance company
Speaker 1: who had you know, already paid out good money for
Speaker 1: it to the owner. Uh, don't worry, though, the car
Speaker 1: had a happy after life. It was auctioned off to
Speaker 1: a guy named Brad Hours and he ended up having
Speaker 1: a car registered with the license of course. All right,
Speaker 1: so this one isn't exactly duplicitus it's more that the
Speaker 1: game was buried out of shame. But I kind of
Speaker 1: like it anyway. And that's Atri's notorious ET game. And
Speaker 1: I think we've talked about this was before. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you both know. The game is considered the worst video
Speaker 1: game of all time. I think it was rushed to
Speaker 1: market in something like thirty or thirty four days or
Speaker 1: something like that. You know, the idea was that you
Speaker 1: wandered aimlessly trying to find three pieces of a phone
Speaker 1: in the hopes that ET can phone home. And that's stupid.
Speaker 1: That's just such a bad idea for a game, right right, Well,
Speaker 1: on top of the terrible plot, it was really buggy too,
Speaker 1: and it was it was such an embarrassment that Atari
Speaker 1: paid New Mexico to hide the eight hundred thousand copies
Speaker 1: that couldn't sell into a landfill. But then the company
Speaker 1: kept denying the whole thing. So the whole thing was
Speaker 1: kind of this urban legend until when the games were excavated.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a great story, but how does that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. We're like, if you're excavating for one
Speaker 1: thing in particular, how do you know when you're Well,
Speaker 1: that's the weird part about the story is the reports
Speaker 1: on what they were finding is they actually started hitting
Speaker 1: artifacts from that era like Donnie and Marie Osmond posters,
Speaker 1: and there were even other games like Mrs. Pac Man
Speaker 1: and Pale Soccer. But about a foot before they got
Speaker 1: to the actual treasure trove, they found a local newspaper
Speaker 1: with a nineteen eight three headline about this dumping. Isn't
Speaker 1: that weird? It's like the best foreshadowing. Yeah, well all right,
Speaker 1: well you guys, it's time to up your game to
Speaker 1: try to match that. So it's the final round of
Speaker 1: nine things, Mango, what do you have for your last fact? Uh? So,
Speaker 1: so you know I can't follow rules, So I'm actually
Speaker 1: gonna talk about an invention that I thought was awesome,
Speaker 1: And uh do you know that Verizon developed a special
Speaker 1: knife to cut into the ground. Didn't It's for laying
Speaker 1: their fiber optics, But according to the New York Times,
Speaker 1: the company uses like pressurized air to slice into the earth,
Speaker 1: and one description I saw the slicing ability was compared
Speaker 1: to like cutting butter a hot knife. But what's amazing
Speaker 1: is that it's also a smart device. So while it
Speaker 1: cuts clean through the ground, it actually doesn't cut pipes
Speaker 1: or gas lines or even your sprinkler host. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: that's actually pretty cool. All right, you broke the rules,
Speaker 1: but I still like it's so Gabe, your turn. Well,
Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out the most valuable thing
Speaker 1: that was buried, and I came up with two contenders.
Speaker 1: Of course, another rule breaker here. Alright, we'll go ahead
Speaker 1: and give them to us. All right. So the first
Speaker 1: is a time capital that was placed in the ground
Speaker 1: in Amarillo, Texas. According to the book Oddball Texas, the
Speaker 1: capital was put in the ground in honors a hundred
Speaker 1: anniversary of Helium, and there are four capitals there intended
Speaker 1: to be opened on various anniversaries, and the whole thing
Speaker 1: shaped like a helium. Adam uh. And you know there's
Speaker 1: some of your typical time capital fare from the era, included,
Speaker 1: like ten cigarettes, their popular Hollywood movies. But the greatest
Speaker 1: thing might be a ten dollars savings account past book
Speaker 1: that's supposed to be turned over to the US Treasury
Speaker 1: when the capitals opened in ernaing four interest at the moment,
Speaker 1: which you know is estimated to be worth a cool
Speaker 1: ten quadrillium by the time, which shimmy just enough to
Speaker 1: solve any budget crisis. I like that. So, well, what's
Speaker 1: your other fact? All right, well, this is a different
Speaker 1: type of valuable. But in Russian scientists found his seed
Speaker 1: that they assumed was buried by a ninth age world
Speaker 1: And how would they know that? It was buried about
Speaker 1: thirty below the perma frost according to National Geographic which
Speaker 1: dates to about thirty two thousand years ago. But that's
Speaker 1: not the weirdest part either. The seat has been encased
Speaker 1: in nice and frosts and whatever, so it was a
Speaker 1: little bit damaged. The scientists were still able to extract
Speaker 1: tissues and replant them and viled and through this process
Speaker 1: they managed to bring the flowering Siberian plants back to life.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that is incredible. So my fact is that
Speaker 1: there's a steam train buried under New York City. I
Speaker 1: feel like all your facts have to do a giant
Speaker 1: transportation hiding under city. I know, that's my thing, man.
Speaker 1: So that apparently in eighteen eighties six there was an
Speaker 1: underground steam train line that was corrupt, so the city
Speaker 1: just bricked it off and kept it underground, and over
Speaker 1: the years the tunnel got used for bootlegging and smuggling,
Speaker 1: and growing mushrooms apparently, but no one's been able to
Speaker 1: find the giant steam engine. It's just a giant transportation
Speaker 1: treasure waiting to be found. I love that well. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think uh, heralda Special could uncover it for US's
Speaker 1: gonna be right. Um. I do think the fact that
Speaker 1: gave somehow uncovered both the futuristic answer to our budgetary
Speaker 1: woes and hope for life existing in another thirty eight
Speaker 1: thousand years. I think that's all amazing, and so I
Speaker 1: think he deserves this one. Yeah, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe we put an asterisk by his name and the
Speaker 1: record books for that extra fact in there. Okay, that's fair.
Speaker 1: I'm fine at that. We'll legit judge. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: that's it for today's nine things. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius. Will be back with a regular episode tomorrow, y,
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Speaker 1: We forget Jason? Jason who