Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome back to the show. My name is Noel.
Speaker 3: Our colleague Matt is on Adventures. They called me Ben.
Speaker 3: We are joined with our guest producer, Matt the Madman. Still,
Speaker 3: most importantly, you are here. That makes this the stuff
Speaker 3: they don't want you to know. Uh No.
Speaker 2: Should we give a.
Speaker 3: Little bit of context before we get into today's story.
Speaker 2: I guess so to why we might sound a little punchy,
Speaker 2: a little bit different, Yeah, a little different. We are
Speaker 2: coming to you, not live live for us. I guess
Speaker 2: from the web summit in Qatar? What do you say Ben?
Speaker 2: Is it cut her or kutar?
Speaker 1: It?
Speaker 3: Usually when you pronounce it in the Western world, it's
Speaker 3: okay to say Qatar. People know what you're talking about.
Speaker 3: The correct pronunciation, from what I understand, is something more
Speaker 3: like cultter cutter.
Speaker 2: And we are in the wonderful, beautiful, very futuristic city
Speaker 2: of Doha.
Speaker 3: That is correct. We will be rejoining Matt now. People
Speaker 3: know that we've been on the road quite a bit,
Speaker 3: quite a bit looking forward to being homeward bound. As
Speaker 3: Paul Simon and Three Dogs once said.
Speaker 2: The three dog the Night of the three Dogs.
Speaker 3: Do you know why it's called three dog night.
Speaker 2: I've never really looked at so that bank just used
Speaker 2: my imagination and had probably my own narrative or with
Speaker 2: the three dogs and that night question.
Speaker 3: Apparently because apparently three dog night is inspired by this
Speaker 3: idiom or this saying in Australia that when things get
Speaker 3: really cold you would sleep with three of your dogs
Speaker 3: instead of one.
Speaker 2: Why not make it an even four.
Speaker 3: I don't know what a four dog night looks like.
Speaker 3: We are very much punching kids. Yeah, it's funny for us,
Speaker 3: as we wanted to. You know, there are so many
Speaker 3: parts of the world that remain unexplored. Here in this
Speaker 3: part of the world, there's so much hidden history. Getting
Speaker 3: in we saw, you know, ancient cities out and forts
Speaker 3: out in the desert. Maybe we'll be able to visit them.
Speaker 3: But tonight today we have something more on our minds.
Speaker 3: We have a true story of hidden history. Over in
Speaker 3: China's Sichuan province, right on the edge of Tibet, there's
Speaker 3: this massive collection of mysterious stone towers, and to this
Speaker 3: day people still argue about what they are, who built them,
Speaker 3: or why. This is kind of a Tibet episode as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah it is, and it is a hidden history episode.
Speaker 2: We are here Ben and I for some ridiculous history activities.
Speaker 2: So this is almost like a crossover in a way,
Speaker 2: right it.
Speaker 3: Very much is? It very much is. And we can't
Speaker 3: shout out our guest super producer, Matt well enough, who's
Speaker 3: gonna be so so freaking tired of us?
Speaker 2: No? No, no, we're great, We're nice.
Speaker 3: Yeah you say that now Matt's doing just that.
Speaker 2: Out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, that's our We're gonna pause for a
Speaker 3: word from our sponsors and then we'll dive in.
Speaker 2: Let's do it.
Speaker 3: Here are the facts. No, let's travel to switch one China.
Speaker 2: Let's why not. We're already on the road. What's another
Speaker 2: ten hour flight between friends?
Speaker 3: That was the thing. I remember. It was obnoxious because
Speaker 3: I realized it the moment when we hadn't slept and
Speaker 3: I thought, dang, Remember I was telling you, like, if
Speaker 3: I know where you're going with yeah, if I just
Speaker 3: kept going Japan, yeah that I will have circumnavigated the globe.
Speaker 2: Oh, man, I think you should do it. Ben, I
Speaker 2: fully support you, and I think iHeart Financing will also
Speaker 2: support this endeavor.
Speaker 3: Do you want to go?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Do you want to go? Matt? What are you doing later?
Speaker 2: And Matt says okay, yeah, yeah, all right.
Speaker 3: So if we do that, then on the way we
Speaker 3: will fly over Sichuan, we'll fly over part of Tibet.
Speaker 3: What's your do you remember? Do you remember back in
Speaker 3: the nineteen I want to say the nineteen nineties when
Speaker 3: a lot of Western musicians rallied for a Tibetan concert.
Speaker 2: The Tibetan Freedom Concert, I believe founded by the Beastie Boys.
Speaker 2: The Beastie Boys, they were really a big part of that.
Speaker 2: Adam Yauch I believe was his name, was a big
Speaker 2: booster for the Tibetan freedom movement and that was a massive,
Speaker 2: very nineties series of concerts. Bands like the Smashing Pumpkins performed,
Speaker 2: and it was all what was the deal that what
Speaker 2: was Tibet was under the yoke of an impressive government. Essentially,
Speaker 2: critics will say, so, yeah, Tibet is technically it's an
Speaker 2: autonomous zone. This means that the larger government of China
Speaker 2: still ultimately controls the area, and for critics this is
Speaker 2: quite controversial, right, but they do have a spiritual leader
Speaker 2: in the Dali Lamak, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, and we're giving you this to kind of
Speaker 3: situate these sitution. Yes, though a high five. You earned it,
Speaker 3: so we high fived on that one. So this is
Speaker 3: to sichuanuate amazing the province of Sichuan, which is sort
Speaker 3: of to the if you look into map, it's kind
Speaker 3: of to the right, or it's adjacent to Tibet.
Speaker 2: It's a basin if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3: Yeah, could you tell us a little bit more about that.
Speaker 2: Bordered on all sides by mountains and highlands. To the north,
Speaker 2: the kin Or Shin Mountains, I believe it's a q
Speaker 2: i n situation. Stretching from the east to the west.
Speaker 2: To the northeast, we have the Daba Mountains and then
Speaker 2: the Dahalu Mountains form much of the southern border. To
Speaker 2: the east, it's dominated by the Wu Mountains, home to
Speaker 2: the legendary yang Tsi Gorges, some gorgeous gorges if you
Speaker 2: ask me. Then to the west we have the Daksu
Speaker 2: Mountains of the Tibetan borderlands.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is we're describing things that are absolutely
Speaker 3: stunning views. So when you think about this, think of,
Speaker 3: you know, so many adventure films you've seen in the West,
Speaker 3: so many Chinese produced epic action adventures. There. We're also
Speaker 3: talking about in real life some of the most diverse
Speaker 3: collections of ethnic groups in all of the nation of China,
Speaker 3: because on the eastern side, that's where most of the
Speaker 3: people live, and it's pretty densely populated, and you go
Speaker 3: to the west, it's definitely still a rarian there's more
Speaker 3: agriculture based industries. Even though it has modernized very quickly,
Speaker 3: there's still a lot of people who retain their own
Speaker 3: somewhat separate.
Speaker 2: Beliefs community cultural identity. Perfect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's the Han, which is, you know, the dominance
Speaker 3: kind of ethnicity of China, the Ye, the Mong, the Tujia,
Speaker 3: the Hue. And of course they're there are oh and
Speaker 3: the way are practitioners.
Speaker 2: Of Islam, and they're also way cool.
Speaker 3: They're also cool. Sorry, So we said a little bit
Speaker 3: about this, like they they want to maintain their autonomy, right,
Speaker 3: and uh, they have this kind of paradigmatic maybe not
Speaker 3: a word pushe there. It is just say with confidence.
Speaker 3: They make it a they're at longerheads sometimes with this
Speaker 3: push for modernity versus this powerful need, this compulsion to
Speaker 3: retain one's cultural identity.
Speaker 2: History is very important to them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's nuts. You can even see it in the language,
Speaker 3: that's right.
Speaker 2: For example, the Han speak a southern dialect of Mandarin,
Speaker 2: which I know that you've been studying for quite some time.
Speaker 2: They're just Mandarin in general, and I know there are
Speaker 2: many many flavors of Mandarin, to the point where it
Speaker 2: can be absolutely overwhelming to even settle.
Speaker 3: On one right dialects. Yeah, A way to compare it
Speaker 3: would be not even counting Cantonese.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: A way to compare it I was thinking about this
Speaker 3: would be to talk about different dialects of English that
Speaker 3: we have, because you know, I don't I don't know
Speaker 3: if there's a hot take, and all with great affection
Speaker 3: to our friends up in the Scottish Highlands. Sometimes you
Speaker 3: know it's tough. Oh yeah, it's tough for me to tell.
Speaker 3: Can't watch train Spotting without the subtitles on.
Speaker 2: Let's put it that way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, is that too far?
Speaker 2: No? Is that too far? That's the truth. And I mean,
Speaker 2: if you experience it and you live with it, and
Speaker 2: you're surrounded by a lot you can definitely take it in,
Speaker 2: but it is something that you have to train your
Speaker 2: ears to recognize the difference. Even though we know English
Speaker 2: and they are speaking English, are there slang? There are
Speaker 2: various prounciations. There is a rhythm and a cadence to
Speaker 2: the language that is just different from what we would
Speaker 2: know as modern standard English, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So this gives us a way to compare
Speaker 3: the experience with this mix of people in this very
Speaker 3: diverse area. Because everybody will speak the lingua franca, the
Speaker 3: idea of you know, the Southern Mandarin dialect, but different
Speaker 3: communities will use Turkish and Arabic in their religious really
Speaker 3: yeah yeah, I didn't realize that. So what we're saying
Speaker 3: is for a long time, this has been a really
Speaker 3: fascinating land. It's witnessed empires rise and full and.
Speaker 2: We are back to the Han as well. By the way,
Speaker 2: just I know, we kind of took a little detour
Speaker 2: just talking about language, but we started off with the
Speaker 2: Han and the way they speak this southern dialect of Mandarin,
Speaker 2: which also can consist of some of this Turkish and
Speaker 2: Arabic kind of flavor.
Speaker 3: Depending on the communities. Yeah, so for centuries traveling into
Speaker 3: or out of Sichuan because of those mountains you described,
Speaker 3: it was very difficult. It was treacherous. It was difficult
Speaker 3: just to get there, much much more difficult, or to
Speaker 3: say nothing of actually holding the land. And it's also
Speaker 3: this was something. This was one of the side notes
Speaker 3: that I think delighted the two of us and Matt.
Speaker 3: We hope it delights you too, So at least, you know,
Speaker 3: just back us up, man, just yes and yeah, all right, Okay,
Speaker 3: what are two dumb facts we learned about Sichuan.
Speaker 2: Well, it is the home of kung paw chicken, which
Speaker 2: I'm a fan of, claimed claimed home and speaking of cuisine,
Speaker 2: I mean, I think I asked you this off, Mike,
Speaker 2: But Sichuan the name of the region, it is spelled
Speaker 2: differently than Seschuan, the seasoning or the genre of flavor
Speaker 2: profile absolution cuisine. Right, Yeah, you nailed it, important distinction. So, yes,
Speaker 2: home of kung pou chicken, which is a spicy, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of brown sauce peanut based dish.
Speaker 3: Peanuts are big there and even now, isolation often reigns
Speaker 3: in the area. Despite you know, the massive successful push
Speaker 3: for modernization, the dialect thing is still an issue. People
Speaker 3: one valley over may speak an entirely different dialect. So
Speaker 3: imagine just walking literally walking the space of a few
Speaker 3: football fields. Sure, and then the people at the other end,
Speaker 3: at that other valley, they speak something where you could
Speaker 3: you could communicate with each other in writing, but if
Speaker 3: you just tried to just have a chat like we're
Speaker 3: having now, you wouldn't understand.
Speaker 2: Each other a little bit of a maybe you know,
Speaker 2: false equivalency. But think about neighborhoods in someplace like New
Speaker 2: York City, where between various neighborhoods you're going to have
Speaker 2: like a difference in culture, you know, almost immediately as
Speaker 2: you you know, cross a certain boundary.
Speaker 3: Or I'll say it.
Speaker 2: You said it, and I'm gonna back you up. Another
Speaker 2: weird fact that's not that weird, but it's very interesting,
Speaker 2: is that this region is also a natural environment for
Speaker 2: giant pandas.
Speaker 3: Yes, that is true, fellas, I love it, and and
Speaker 3: that the initiative to save the giant pandas pretty amazing.
Speaker 3: It might be something we do on ridiculous history, yeah,
Speaker 3: which will also be recording.
Speaker 2: That's true. And in our home place of Atlanta, Georgia,
Speaker 2: the Atlanta Zoo has for a long time been home
Speaker 2: to some giant pandas from this region that were very
Speaker 2: very popular attractions, and also our zoo. You know, I
Speaker 2: think what you will about zoos in general is very
Speaker 2: conservation focused.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, And just to keep it a little bit conspiratorial.
Speaker 3: You know, one fact, not everybody learns about the giant
Speaker 3: pandas they are all owned by China.
Speaker 2: That's right, they were like leased out the essentially to
Speaker 2: the Atlanta Zoo. It was. It's a cultural exchange in
Speaker 2: many ways that is very important.
Speaker 3: And so what we're saying here about this place in particular,
Speaker 3: this isolated place with so much history, so many different cultures.
Speaker 3: We're telling you all of this, fellow conspiracy realists, to
Speaker 3: give ourselves and to give you a sense of place
Speaker 3: and to set up the second act of this episode.
Speaker 3: Because it's isolated, yes, it accessible, it's a huge area,
Speaker 3: it's historically self sufficient. It's got a big population, similar
Speaker 3: to Tibet. Especially the further west you go, this becomes
Speaker 3: a place all its.
Speaker 2: Own very much so. Even now in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 2: as we record this episode, experts wonder about. They continue
Speaker 2: to wonder and speculate about the hidden history of these
Speaker 2: lands of this region. So perhaps the most mysterious feature,
Speaker 2: which is the topic of part two of this episode,
Speaker 2: Scattered throughout the area, an enigmatic collection of star shaped
Speaker 2: towers have been erected at some point in time, ancient
Speaker 2: stone and wood structures reaching toward the heavens like some
Speaker 2: sort of ben You described it beautifully here in the
Speaker 2: outline Eldritch version of one hundred foot plus skyscraper straight
Speaker 2: out of some sort of Lovecraftian nightmare escape.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're also beautiful.
Speaker 3: They're also beautiful, and they're older than dynasties, they're older
Speaker 3: than empires. They've survived earthquakes, they could have obliterated more
Speaker 3: modern constructions. And this is what's fascinating about this aspect
Speaker 3: of it is it reminds me a bit of you know,
Speaker 3: we mentioned Lovecraft, HP Lovecraft stories. He has things like
Speaker 3: the Plateau of Lang or so on. This feels like
Speaker 3: a mystery that needs to be solved. And surprisingly enough,
Speaker 3: it took more than one thousand years for someone a
Speaker 3: traveling Westerner who are about to meet to ask hey,
Speaker 3: What the heck are the these things? What on earth
Speaker 3: is going on here?
Speaker 2: And we're going to meet our star player after a
Speaker 2: quick word from our sponsor.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy. All right, let's get this
Speaker 3: out of the way first. Sure, Thank goodness, no one
Speaker 3: claims to have as you would say, Noel discovered these towers.
Speaker 2: That's right. All the locals knew about them. I mean
Speaker 2: they were a pron prominent feature of the landscape for
Speaker 2: you know, thousands of years. No One, however, in living memory,
Speaker 2: had used these things, you know, for any sort of
Speaker 2: functional purpose.
Speaker 3: Right, You're absolutely right, nobody in living memory. Is important
Speaker 3: to note people are not using these right. You go
Speaker 3: to some maybe ancient towns in Turkey or in Europe
Speaker 3: or other parts of the world, and you'll see people
Speaker 3: still living in very old strip absolutely but not here,
Speaker 3: and no one is much research on them. At this point.
Speaker 3: This all changed when we meet our hero of the story. Yes,
Speaker 3: let's give.
Speaker 2: Our veritable Indiana Jones esque figure here.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, that is Martine Frederic Derragon, who traveled originally
Speaker 3: born in France, traveled to New York City, New York City,
Speaker 3: New York City, and then as the Salsey commercials say
Speaker 3: New York City.
Speaker 2: Also true, I was doing more of a Matt Berry thing.
Speaker 3: And then from there, Deragon has long held and she
Speaker 3: lives a very fascinating life. She's long held an interest
Speaker 3: in sustainability and animal rights. So she travels to western
Speaker 3: China to this rural area. It's nineteen ninety eighteen ninety eight,
Speaker 3: ninety seven, ninety eight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in the height of the Free Tibetan movement.
Speaker 2: By the way, this is nineteen ninety eight, was peak
Speaker 2: Tibetan freedom concert area just to bring it back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. And here's the thing. She doesn't know
Speaker 3: about the towers. Most Westerners don't. And her entire thing
Speaker 3: is that she wants to learn more about the endangered
Speaker 3: snow leopard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, beautiful, beautiful.
Speaker 3: Snow leopards look like they're out of an anime.
Speaker 2: I just saw a thing on the internet that was
Speaker 2: a rocky outcrop and the idea was, or where's waldoe situation?
Speaker 2: Find the snow leopard. And the first thing you need
Speaker 2: to know, there's also some snow. They're not pure white, no,
Speaker 2: they it blended in more with the beige, non snow
Speaker 2: covered parts of the of the cliffs than the white
Speaker 2: but your mind immediately tries to look forward in the snow,
Speaker 2: but not accurate. Right, let's bust a little mythy.
Speaker 3: There we go. Well done, and this also speaks to
Speaker 3: the unique biodiversity of the region. Now, obviously her mission
Speaker 3: changes when she sees the towers. She's walking around and
Speaker 3: you know, she's in areas where there's not at this
Speaker 3: point a lot of infrastructure built up the wilderness, like
Speaker 3: you're in the places where you could find a snow leopard.
Speaker 3: And then she says, wait, that's not a natural rock formation.
Speaker 3: Somebody built a tower. She's a curious investigator. She starts
Speaker 3: by asking the locals for more information. And get this,
Speaker 3: no one has a clue. Everybody is literally saying, you know,
Speaker 3: in Southern Mandarin. They're saying, oh, yes, yeah, it's this
Speaker 3: whole thing.
Speaker 2: That's the thing. Can we set the stage a little
Speaker 2: bit more here and kind of describe what these look like?
Speaker 2: In my mind, I'm picturing a like two towers Lord
Speaker 2: of the Rings esque situation I have saw on Yes,
Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe it was your your Lovecraftian analogy,
Speaker 2: but help us out then, not.
Speaker 3: Too far off, nol, because what you'll see is a
Speaker 3: lot of the towers are in their heyday.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: These are stone structures that vary in height, vary in age.
Speaker 3: But we're not we're not blowing smoke when they when
Speaker 3: we say skyscraper esque, some could go from one hundred
Speaker 3: to two hundred feet. There would be an entry way
Speaker 3: at the bottom, and then they would have different features,
Speaker 3: so like a defensive tower would have slits where someone
Speaker 3: could shoot an arrow.
Speaker 2: Oh what do you call those? There's a name for
Speaker 2: those little little holes in fortified towers arrow arrow holes,
Speaker 2: row slots, slots. Yeah, I like exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: But these are also not particularly adorned, right. These are
Speaker 2: very straightforward kind of designs.
Speaker 3: That's the tricky part because it seems this is a
Speaker 3: great question. There are clues afoot because they don't all
Speaker 3: have the same design. You see some of these towers
Speaker 3: almost stood up here. But some of these towers are
Speaker 3: in a star shape. Like if if you if you
Speaker 3: had a a cookie cutter, okay, that was a star
Speaker 3: shaped cookie cutter, then it looks like this tower was
Speaker 3: built in that shape, not none.
Speaker 2: And we're not talking about a star shaped array of
Speaker 2: multiple structures. This is a single tower that, when looked
Speaker 2: at from an aerial view, is itself in a star
Speaker 2: shaped pattern.
Speaker 3: Yes, God, just so great description, especially because we're an
Speaker 3: audio podcast. Exactly siate that. So it's like a so
Speaker 3: imagine if someone took a shape of an eight point
Speaker 3: star and just pulled it longways.
Speaker 2: Like Plato kind of situations pasta like Apasta is good
Speaker 2: like it, it's I'm thinking about Plato though. From my
Speaker 2: youth they had those little extreuting kind of things that
Speaker 2: you could push a plunger thing, and then the Plato
Speaker 2: would get pushed through.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, so just so, and then sometimes they would
Speaker 3: have twelve points m. Questions, Yeah, questions begin to occur
Speaker 3: to Derek on One of the first wins, of course,
Speaker 3: is what what what on earth is going on here?
Speaker 3: The second is how do these things? How did any
Speaker 3: of this survive? First off, why are there so many?
Speaker 3: How did so many survive through antiquity in an area
Speaker 3: that is very prone to earthquakes?
Speaker 2: Craftsmanship, my friend, how do you even get a contiguous
Speaker 2: struck sure like that in this shape?
Speaker 3: I think about this all the I think about this
Speaker 3: all the time. To be honest with you, reading the
Speaker 3: the amazing works of the great thinkers and architects of old,
Speaker 3: and realizing that more than once I have fallen asleep
Speaker 3: trying to put on a pair of pants.
Speaker 2: Of course, it really makes one one.
Speaker 3: And then that's just look upon my works.
Speaker 1: You might.
Speaker 3: So this is weird because Deregon not weird. But Deregon
Speaker 3: is obviously not the type of person to leave a
Speaker 3: stone unturned.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'll allow it. Yeah, I can allow it.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm staring about it like he like, it's his
Speaker 3: job to have you allow it, he says.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: So she has a great series of conversations with a
Speaker 3: journalist named Richard Stone writing for the Smithsonian, And this
Speaker 3: is where we get a look at.
Speaker 2: Just Richard Stone. This is kind of his whole wheelhouse, right,
Speaker 2: no Stone on there.
Speaker 3: We we have, we already paid for the drum riff
Speaker 3: sound cue. Yeah, we got to use to get your
Speaker 3: county to get us. So okay, can Noel, can we
Speaker 3: share a quote from Stone which describes Derrogut. She like,
Speaker 3: the world's most interesting.
Speaker 2: Person, absolutely like the what's that? The do sekis guy?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: The world?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Anyway, yeah, yeah. The Aragon is a self described free spirit.
Speaker 2: He says with an eclectic resume, an undergraduate degree and
Speaker 2: economics founder of an organization that supports education in world China,
Speaker 2: star polo player in Argentina, sailboat racer and artists. Artist,
Speaker 2: ye see, filmmaker, Uh, incredible, uh, designer, several things, a
Speaker 2: person for all seasons.
Speaker 3: And we'll we'll get to some more stuff about her
Speaker 3: personal life later. I think we're excited to explore that photographer. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: very much so, right, which makes.
Speaker 2: Sense with the way she was traveling and wanting to
Speaker 2: documents all of these rural areas and just an absolute
Speaker 2: archivist in and of herself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they were gone again. It's nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 3: She's going to places that many people, especially Westerners, and
Speaker 3: they have on travel.
Speaker 2: No, it's just important work.
Speaker 3: It's difficult to get that far to the west of China,
Speaker 3: and she travels to the area no less than nine
Speaker 3: times from nineteen ninety eight to the early two thousands.
Speaker 3: She documents almost two hundred separate towers between Sichuan and
Speaker 3: to that.
Speaker 2: That many that I had no idea. This is incredible.
Speaker 2: She took measurements again, she took photographs. When possible, she
Speaker 2: would climb within the structures. These were again ben these
Speaker 2: were fortified kind of towers, so there would be some
Speaker 2: sort of spiral staircase situation in them, different obviously case
Speaker 2: by case basis.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some way to access the elevation, assuming that they
Speaker 3: were still structurally sound, so many of them were, and
Speaker 3: many of them were possible.
Speaker 2: She would she would climb within them, which is.
Speaker 3: Quite courageous when you think about it. And she also
Speaker 3: did the thing you should do anytime you're investigating a
Speaker 3: local mystery, whether it be some of the stuff we've
Speaker 3: seen in Guatemala, whether it be the stone jars of
Speaker 3: Laos which we talked about earlier.
Speaker 2: Consult the work of others who came before you.
Speaker 3: Right, yes, and then talk to the locals.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: Don't be those nerds who thought they rediscovered the celicaf
Speaker 3: no no.
Speaker 2: So, to be fair, Dregan did discover some references to
Speaker 2: these towers in some relatively unrelated Chinese and European travel logs.
Speaker 2: She also consulted monasteries. She poured over centuries of other
Speaker 2: internal documents that were collected by the monks themselves, who
Speaker 2: actually could find no particular references to the origins of
Speaker 2: the towers in terms of who right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, when she's looking, she realizes that, as you said,
Speaker 3: she has to dig through all possible sources and get this.
Speaker 3: She she does find mentions.
Speaker 2: Yes, and in some diaries if I'm not mistaken from
Speaker 2: some of those predecessors in terms of European explorers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the monasteries don't appear like the locals appear
Speaker 3: not to be too perplexed about this.
Speaker 2: They're not worried about it. To them, it's just a
Speaker 2: thing that's around that has always been there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They are not really asking the how, the where the moon? Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so the where they already know where they are,
Speaker 2: why why, It's just a feature of their everyday lives.
Speaker 2: They've just always accepted as fact.
Speaker 3: And so they so deregn fies is so nuts. She
Speaker 3: goes to the diaries like you were, mentioning of eighteen
Speaker 3: eighteen hundreds esque explorers from the West. And these guys
Speaker 3: are kind of like the locals because they they don't
Speaker 3: they mention it as a like a tangent in another
Speaker 3: story about something they're more interested about, you know.
Speaker 2: Which is unusual.
Speaker 3: I was walking through and you know, there were like towers,
Speaker 3: but my main thing was insert here.
Speaker 2: That's right. I guess maybe it's just because of what
Speaker 2: we do. We ask why about everything, that's sort of
Speaker 2: our thing. It's just interesting to me that some of
Speaker 2: these thinkers and these explorers would just accept these and
Speaker 2: not be curious about where they came from. They are
Speaker 2: unusual features, and they're clearly not natural.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think part of it comes from the A
Speaker 3: big part of it comes from the fact that, in
Speaker 3: the context of their day, these Chinese scholars and these
Speaker 3: Western explorers had seen a bunch of towers, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean.
Speaker 2: That's a good point.
Speaker 3: It wasn't a new structure. They were on the way
Speaker 3: to something else. It took time for people to appreciate
Speaker 3: the extraordinary nature of these of these structures. And Deregon
Speaker 3: had advantages that didn't exist in the sixteen hundred and
Speaker 3: seventeen hundreds, eighteen hundreds, sure.
Speaker 2: Stuff like radiocarbon dating, for example.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and she talks about it in her documentary, which
Speaker 3: has been sometimes called The Secret Towers of the Himalayas
Speaker 3: and then sometimes The Mystery of the Towers of Eastern Tibets.
Speaker 2: Which was also adapted into print form in two thousand
Speaker 2: and five, she started excavating pieces of some of these towers,
Speaker 2: which which were in part made.
Speaker 3: Of wood, right, yes, yeah, And she salvage more than
Speaker 3: thirty pieces of wood from different towers, thirty two different towers.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that she was immediately already
Speaker 3: clocking was that this is not a UNESCO World Heritage
Speaker 3: Site yet, not yet, and it should be right that's
Speaker 3: her aim, and so she says, Okay, to do this,
Speaker 3: we have to step back in time. If we can
Speaker 3: prove the age or determine the age of the towers,
Speaker 3: then that sets us up for this World Heritage pursuit.
Speaker 3: And she sends the wood to a lab in Miami,
Speaker 3: of all places. I don't know why in my head,
Speaker 3: like I'm thinking Miami.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean sure that Miami contains multitudes, but there
Speaker 2: are some forensic research labs there that she employs. If
Speaker 2: she could arrive at an approximate date for some of
Speaker 2: these wooden salvage pieces, she figured she could then determine
Speaker 2: the approximate age of a tower. And yet this research
Speaker 2: or this forensic data only yielded further.
Speaker 3: Mysteries, absolutely one hundred percent, because it turned out that
Speaker 3: not all of these towers were in the same in
Speaker 3: the same age range. Interesting, So some were built just
Speaker 3: a few centuries ago, which I know sounds maybe a
Speaker 3: little big glib a little bit, but it's a big
Speaker 3: deal still. But in the grand scheme of things, that's
Speaker 3: relatively young. In contrast, some towers were built between one
Speaker 3: thousand to one thousand and two hundred years ago. That
Speaker 3: makes them more than a millennium old.
Speaker 2: Incredible. This means that at least a few of these
Speaker 2: towers were built by someone before the Mongolian forces invaded
Speaker 2: that region of Tibet back in twelve forty.
Speaker 3: And this is the beginning of a incredibly curious mystery,
Speaker 3: curious and curiouser or, as as they say in Lord
Speaker 3: of the Rings Way or the Hobbit Way, leads on
Speaker 3: the way. Second breakfast, second breakfast, potato, eleven zies and
Speaker 3: ad breaks.
Speaker 2: Here we go.
Speaker 3: We've returned. So if you look at some of again,
Speaker 3: Derragan has never described herself as a PhD ar archaeologist.
Speaker 3: She's self professed just an enthusiast. She's interested in this.
Speaker 3: She wants to save history. She wants to say just
Speaker 3: the way she wants to to save you know, the
Speaker 3: snow leopard which led her to this way, leads onto way.
Speaker 3: But she does write, she does get published. Her research
Speaker 3: is found in places like the Journal of Cambridge Studies,
Speaker 3: and she says, look these towers, overall, the ones that
Speaker 3: are still standing, I can prove they were built from
Speaker 3: two hundred CE to sixteen hundred CE, and I think
Speaker 3: they were built for different reasons. Going to your earlier question,
Speaker 3: she says, there are four categories. First, towers situated in
Speaker 3: fortified villages. These are defensive structures. They've got the slots
Speaker 3: or the slits for archers other fortifications. Maybe this is
Speaker 3: why it didn't stick out that much to those earlier
Speaker 3: European explorers, because they recognized it and they said, oh,
Speaker 3: this is like a this is it like a castle tower?
Speaker 2: By the way, I was just I had to find out.
Speaker 2: I had to look aeroslits absolutely correct. Oh really another
Speaker 2: term put log holes that for me utlog also known
Speaker 2: as embrasiers. I like embraziers because it sounds more specific.
Speaker 2: Also known as arrow loops, arrow.
Speaker 3: Loops or loopholes. A little amalogy there. Indeed, So of
Speaker 3: course the Europeans then they're not going to be impressed
Speaker 3: because they recognize this as a tower from a castle.
Speaker 3: And then there's a second kind of thing, and this one,
Speaker 3: this one's really interesting.
Speaker 2: To be I agree, towers disseminated over mountain slopes that
Speaker 2: are not along main historic trade routes. Is this from
Speaker 2: our buddy stone, This is from Derregan herself, deregun herself
Speaker 2: and often hidden from view. So you stumble upon these
Speaker 2: things not because you're on the main stretch of you know,
Speaker 2: the Silk Road or something, sure, but because you are,
Speaker 2: you are in the know, and when you see it,
Speaker 2: these are the really impressive ones. These are the status
Speaker 2: of These may have spiritual significance that we'll talk about
Speaker 2: uh later. And the it's funny because uh, Derregan cracked
Speaker 2: me up when I was when I was reading some
Speaker 2: of her research about this, where she said, these might
Speaker 2: be kind of like a flex They might be the
Speaker 2: Cadillacs of their time right, because these were not all
Speaker 2: created equals. Some of them were definitely fancier than others.
Speaker 3: And then third, we've got towers that were in wealthy
Speaker 3: agricultural valleys where the ground was quite fertile, and there
Speaker 3: were a bunch of trading routes, and they had two purposes.
Speaker 3: The secondary purpose was that if you rolled into town
Speaker 3: and you're a merchant, you know, you gotta sell your
Speaker 3: what are people selling pelts? You gotta sell your pelts?
Speaker 3: And you roll in you're you're a humble Peltzman and
Speaker 3: then you are you are Peltsmouth. Yes, you are confronted
Speaker 3: with this obnoxiously impressive tower, this ornate tower.
Speaker 2: We say ostentation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then someone's scare stands maybe a top it,
Speaker 3: with their fingers steepled, and they say, beltsmen, welcome.
Speaker 2: Yes, look upon my works mighty. And what's the does
Speaker 2: that one go despair there? Yeah? Maybe don't despair. It's okay.
Speaker 2: Let's let's be a little more cheerful than that welcome.
Speaker 2: There was an implication, there was a bit of a flex.
Speaker 2: It was a bit of a show of force as well.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, and uh, I love that we're referencing, uh
Speaker 3: one of my favorite poems that are osumandias m. Do
Speaker 3: reread it. It won't take a second and it'll stay with you. However,
Speaker 3: the primary purpose of these, uh this third type of
Speaker 3: tower was really to facilitate trade. So there was a
Speaker 3: lot of capacity to store goods. Be that a silo
Speaker 3: kind of issue, yeah, should be the agricultural products or pelts.
Speaker 3: And perhaps more importantly, this is where you would trade
Speaker 3: out your pack animals. There's like an ancient version of
Speaker 3: a gas station, a trading post. Yeah yeah. So now
Speaker 3: we have to continue our journey western east, so let's
Speaker 3: get maybe some different horses.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, you know what I mean. Fourth, and again this
Speaker 2: is from Dereghn herself. Tower situated on mountaintops, entrances to
Speaker 2: valleys or other strategic positions for Gondo. Indeed, I was
Speaker 2: very much on the Lord of the rings tip this.
Speaker 2: These were the type of places where smoke signals could
Speaker 2: be sent up ways of communicating across long distances before
Speaker 2: like you know the Internet.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, and they had they had their own code
Speaker 3: and language and everybody understood it kind of like a
Speaker 3: smoke based semaphore. And we definitely just.
Speaker 2: Is a semaphore like a pettifour.
Speaker 3: And that they rhyme and that they rhyme.
Speaker 2: I don't know what a semaphore is. Where you have
Speaker 2: you know, flag code, oh, the flags like traffic controllers.
Speaker 3: Sure yeah great, so uh it's weird that I know semaphores.
Speaker 2: And just so you know, folks, as being an audio podcast,
Speaker 2: Ben was flopping his arms around in flagsmen uh.
Speaker 3: Fashion, and it's specifically I'm talking about flag semaphore. Of course,
Speaker 3: semaphore can mean other things. And apologies to some folks
Speaker 3: who drop by the studio and got our slightly neurodivergent
Speaker 3: info dump on that. Yeah, because we were surprised.
Speaker 2: That's how we roll. Yeah, we were definitely taken by surprise.
Speaker 2: But it was a lovely visit.
Speaker 3: It was a lovely visit. And so this is a
Speaker 3: really effective way to not just communicate, but also to
Speaker 3: sort of lay out your order space. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 3: there were likely Derregune finds thousands of these towers, and
Speaker 3: she as she's looking at the footprint of where these
Speaker 3: are built, she finds that some are much further away
Speaker 3: than you would originally assume. It forms all, all in all,
Speaker 3: from what we know, a territory that's as large as
Speaker 3: a third of modern day France.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: So someone was building a lot of towers.
Speaker 2: And some were more typical free standing towers, others that
Speaker 2: had that iconic star shape eight points for some towers,
Speaker 2: twelve points for others. That's the part where we're not
Speaker 2: quite sure. Was it an aesthetic thing? Was there some
Speaker 2: estrological purpose? Maybe it reminds me of the Georgia guidestones
Speaker 2: and something, you know, the idea of using it to
Speaker 2: mark time, to measure the changing of the seasons and
Speaker 2: the changing of the day. We don't know this. I'm
Speaker 2: just speculating here. I do wonder that's a great question.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that also makes us wonder is there a
Speaker 3: possibility that some of these were purely religious constructions. We
Speaker 3: know that according to Tibetan legend, the mood cord Dmu
Speaker 3: is said to connect heaven and earth. So you'll find
Speaker 3: people arguing that this is almost like the Pyramids.
Speaker 2: Extension, you know, from our mortal coil into the great
Speaker 2: beyond right.
Speaker 3: Right, And this leads us to more questions. All right,
Speaker 3: if there are thousands of these that were built over
Speaker 3: some period of time, what happened to the rest?
Speaker 2: It's a good question. What about the two similar structures
Speaker 2: further west in modern day Afghanistan, which is pretty far away,
Speaker 2: pretty far away ben the Gosny minarets have a very
Speaker 2: similar appearance to these Tibetan towers, And the most important
Speaker 2: question is why were they abandoned? May know the most
Speaker 2: important and an additional important question.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, what happened? Because we know that there are
Speaker 3: other again, there are other structures that are roughly around
Speaker 3: the same time as some of these towers, and people
Speaker 3: still live in those, you know, and they still kick it.
Speaker 3: You can get an air B and B from like
Speaker 3: the fourteen hundreds, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Is that true?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's kind of true. How it's like it's like
Speaker 3: podcast true.
Speaker 2: Okay, you point that the other day we did a
Speaker 2: lovely live event as part of on Air Fest in
Speaker 2: Brooklyn with our pal Matt Frederick, and I believe that
Speaker 2: Ben is either in conversation or maybe even during the
Speaker 2: event itself where you coined podcast accurate.
Speaker 3: For us, that means a proximately indeed true. Okay, I'm
Speaker 3: looking through this. We're going to go back to this
Speaker 3: in a later episode, and it's not gonna make any
Speaker 3: sense to Matt Frederick.
Speaker 2: That's okay, keep him on his toes.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so you're in on that conspiracy, folks. But
Speaker 3: there are these great questions, you know, why are they abandoned?
Speaker 3: What happened to all the other thousands of towers, Like
Speaker 3: we were saying, the most likely answer is simply the
Speaker 3: ravages of time. Right, we're in a very earthquake prone area.
Speaker 3: Clearly there were attacks by rival or invading communities, because
Speaker 3: a lot of these towers were defensive fortications with arrow
Speaker 3: loops or loopholes, and sometimes the thing about defenses is
Speaker 3: they fall.
Speaker 2: They do. But many of these obviously remain, and we're
Speaker 2: built to last, and we're looking at we also have
Speaker 2: to remember we are looking at the flotsam and jetsam
Speaker 2: of history.
Speaker 3: The range of these towers, however many there were one
Speaker 3: point or another.
Speaker 2: There were way more.
Speaker 3: There were way more. We're seeing the remnants of something
Speaker 3: like the stories about how Grecian architecture was actually quite colorful, right, right,
Speaker 3: you remember hearing about.
Speaker 2: That, well, the frescoes and things like that. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: like the colors faded over time, of course. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: they're pigments that would not have necessarily lasted as long
Speaker 2: as the stone medium that they were put.
Speaker 3: Upon, right, or statues painted in bright colors and sold, yes,
Speaker 3: plaster one hundred percent. So now we only see the
Speaker 3: ruins of structures that once upon a time were doubtlessly
Speaker 3: h just a feast for the eyes, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. And the towers may have been like that,
Speaker 3: or perhaps technology involved. Perhaps it became less useful, maybe
Speaker 3: the populations just shifted, maybe everybody just moved out of town.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and thankfully, however, we can explain for the most
Speaker 2: part the construction. They were a mix of stone and wood,
Speaker 2: which is the part that was a to be passed
Speaker 2: along for radiocarbon dating. Along with these star shapes of
Speaker 2: some of the towers. Turns out to be a very
Speaker 2: fantastic protection that array against earthquakes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it gives you a kind of stability in a
Speaker 3: fascinating construction technique. A descendant of it is used today
Speaker 3: in other parts of China and other parts of the
Speaker 3: East Asian theater.
Speaker 2: Overall, it reminds me of some designs of modern skyscrapers
Speaker 2: that are designed to shift with a little bits. Yeah,
Speaker 2: with one hundred percent they are able to sway along
Speaker 2: with the shifting earth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like, look at that skyscraper. It's kind of
Speaker 3: a slinky.
Speaker 2: It feels weird when you feel it, though, and you're
Speaker 2: up really high in one of those.
Speaker 3: I have to say, the higher you get, the more apparent.
Speaker 3: The effect is kind of like sitting on the back
Speaker 3: of a plane.
Speaker 2: Even in the amazing venue that we just performed at
Speaker 2: National Sawdust, when we went down into the guts of
Speaker 2: the building, there were springs inside of the structure. Very
Speaker 2: similar concepts.
Speaker 3: Yes, very much so, because again, people in the ancient
Speaker 3: empires were just as intelligent as people in the modern day. Now,
Speaker 3: we also have a little bit of fun stuff. We
Speaker 3: wanted to end on here before our super producer, Matt's
Speaker 3: still gets tired of us.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that was Yeah, I'm sorry. There's the toilers.
Speaker 3: There's a Ted Turner connection to this. It's another plot
Speaker 3: twist to our story, our own Georgia boy. The also
Speaker 3: a sailor, also a sailor. That's how they met? Is
Speaker 3: it really that's how they met?
Speaker 2: That makes sense? Remember this, I don't remember what I
Speaker 2: saw this and it was a documentary. I think about Ted.
Speaker 2: His name is Ted Turner, Ted Turner. He was almost
Speaker 2: lost at sea during this crazy sailboat race. Yeah, real
Speaker 2: adventure himself makes perfect sense. They would have crossed paths.
Speaker 3: In nineteen sixty nine, Deregon meets Ted Turner and they
Speaker 3: become friends. She cruise on one of his vessels for
Speaker 3: a while, and they you know, this is before he
Speaker 3: gets into bfalow. Yeah, and this is before you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of for Jane Fonda. He I believe he
Speaker 3: was with Fonda at the time. Wait a minute, No, No,
Speaker 3: they were just friends at that point. Oh but didn't
Speaker 3: it didn't it? Bossom didn't romance. I think several years
Speaker 3: after Fonda and Turner split, Okay, okay, and then they
Speaker 3: came back together.
Speaker 2: Don't you dare Jane that way?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Ted? Uh?
Speaker 3: And when they came together, Turner also through You can
Speaker 3: read about the story in the Chicago Tribune, a couple
Speaker 3: of New York Times like posh upper class explorations of culture.
Speaker 2: Anyway, he helped fund some of this recently, helped fund
Speaker 2: a lot. He was a big you know, he was
Speaker 2: a bit of an Indiana Jones figure himself.
Speaker 3: Yes, very much so. And he wanted to, like like Derek,
Speaker 3: and he wanted to explore research, understand the mystery of
Speaker 3: the towers. And this is something that I find wholesome.
Speaker 3: I think we should make clear here. No, Matt derek
Speaker 3: On is not trying to make money off of this
Speaker 3: at all. All the proceeds from her documentary, from her speeches,
Speaker 3: her from her printed work. It all goes directly to
Speaker 3: something called the Unicorn Foundation, which she created with Ted
Speaker 3: specifically to research and protect these towers. So maybe one
Speaker 3: day we'll know the answers behind their providence, But right now,
Speaker 3: none of this answers the immediate question like who built these?
Speaker 3: For real?
Speaker 2: Though, Yeah, it's okay, I mean, I think we have
Speaker 2: enough of an understanding. I mean, I'm sure would like
Speaker 2: to know more. We do have a decent grasp of
Speaker 2: the why, a pretty solid understanding of the how, but
Speaker 2: the who remains anyone's guess, and I you know, we've
Speaker 2: talked about this. Sometimes a little bit of mystery remaining
Speaker 2: is cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Also a plausible guess would be it's most likely
Speaker 3: these were techniques that were shared across and transmitted across
Speaker 3: multiple civilizations cultures.
Speaker 2: As indicated by the presence of very similar structures in Afghanistan.
Speaker 3: You mention, you find something that works, So maybe what
Speaker 3: we're seeing now were the most effective tower designs and
Speaker 3: people just made their own improvements along the way, or
Speaker 3: just maybe it's the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: It's true, So hey, why don't you let us know
Speaker 2: conspiracy realists out there? What do you think these things were? Well,
Speaker 2: it kind of know what they're for, but who do
Speaker 2: you think built them? Do you have any additional theories
Speaker 2: as to this, this idea of the religious aspects behind
Speaker 2: them or the astrology? I like it too. Let us know.
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