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: Welcome Back Fellow conspiracy realist Tonight's classic episode takes us
Speaker 2: to Staffordshire, England, where we are going to learn about gosh,
Speaker 2: do you guys remember this one the Sugarburgh inscription cipher.
Speaker 3: Sugarburwh Oh, yeah, that's where sug Knight was from. It
Speaker 3: was named after sug Knight. That's his childhood home, that
Speaker 3: sugar Burrow.
Speaker 4: Yeahs.
Speaker 2: There's a sculpture out there in England that is a
Speaker 2: recreation of a painting called Shepherds of Arcadia. But this
Speaker 2: sculpture has a very bizarre inscription. And this inscription has
Speaker 2: birthed numerous conspiracy theories, or I guess, if we're being
Speaker 2: a little more diplomatic, numerous fringe interpretations.
Speaker 4: Love it accurate, let's start transcribe, no inscribe, I don't know,
Speaker 4: let's check it out. Sure.
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 iHeart Radios, How Stuff Works.
Speaker 4: Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 3: My name is Matt.
Speaker 2: They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
Speaker 2: our super producer Paul, Mission Control decad. Most importantly, you
Speaker 2: are you, You are here, and that makes this stuff.
Speaker 2: They don't want you to know. How's everybody feeling back.
Speaker 4: For another week? I'm feeling awesome. Can I tell you
Speaker 4: a quick story please? Okay. So my son is aware
Speaker 4: of Star Wars. We haven't watched any of the movies yet,
Speaker 4: but he has a couple of these, the paper or
Speaker 4: the cardboard books of Star Wars stories, and he knows
Speaker 4: what a lightsaber is. And he's real hyped about lightsabers.
Speaker 4: So does he say it? Huh?
Speaker 3: He says lightsaber yeah, lightsabers.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: He loves it, and he makes this sound. He goes great. Well,
Speaker 4: So I realized that my wife and I had an
Speaker 4: old stash of glow sticks, because you know, everybody's just
Speaker 4: got some glow sticks hanging around that are still packaged
Speaker 4: from you know, back in your twenties, right, I bro cool? Okay,
Speaker 4: So I realized that we had some I found like
Speaker 4: a green one and a red one. So I get
Speaker 4: to play Darth Daddy and he gets to and he
Speaker 4: pretends that he's Yoda, always Yoda. Yeah, and we have
Speaker 4: lightsaber battles with glow sticks now almost nightly.
Speaker 3: You think it's because Yoda is like around his height
Speaker 3: and he recognizes that super agile. Yeah, yeah, that's got
Speaker 3: to be. It's to mind control powers. That's a that's
Speaker 3: a selling point.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And he does force Tornado on me all the
Speaker 4: time and it's it's stabilitated.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Where is that in the lexicon?
Speaker 5: Though?
Speaker 3: Forced tornado? Is that? Did he make that up? Or
Speaker 3: is that canon?
Speaker 4: Pretty sure? The next episode is going to have a
Speaker 4: forced tornado. Okay, and you heard it here first.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, well we look forward to seeing this
Speaker 2: franchise development.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the Star Wars things going places.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, my Spider sense tells me, how
Speaker 2: are you doing? Noel, how's it? How's how's it going?
Speaker 3: I'm doing well? Speaking of Spider sense, did you guys
Speaker 3: see the end game? The end of the end game?
Speaker 4: I did, I haven't.
Speaker 3: Okay you no? No?
Speaker 4: No discussion then no, no, I kind of want discussion. Well,
Speaker 4: I mean this isn't really the place I saved me
Speaker 4: three hours.
Speaker 2: Please Victory Lap.
Speaker 3: It's it's a but it's a really really expensive Victory
Speaker 3: Lap and and it and it has some very satisfying conclusions.
Speaker 3: It has a few things that are kind of like
Speaker 3: w TF. And it has a few things that are
Speaker 3: kind of a little bit glossed over and then sort
Speaker 3: of like wait what happened to that thread? They sort
Speaker 3: of like it. But all in all, what a what
Speaker 3: a feat?
Speaker 2: What? What a what a feat?
Speaker 3: Though? Like just organizational skills right to give all those
Speaker 3: characters their.
Speaker 2: Due and no one's expecting that wolverine cameo that well,
Speaker 2: like that is wild.
Speaker 4: Is there ever any point in the movie where all
Speaker 4: of those A list like actors are in one place
Speaker 4: totally or not, like like you can tell they're not
Speaker 4: green screened in or whatever.
Speaker 3: I can't comment that's too much though.
Speaker 4: Okay, well, I mean there the Avengers plus all the others.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean it's a payoff people have been
Speaker 2: waiting for, and I think it's well worth the price
Speaker 2: of a ticket. You know, that's the kind of film
Speaker 2: that's good to see in theaters.
Speaker 3: Good to see on the imax. If you have that availability.
Speaker 3: For sure, I will die on this hill. To quote
Speaker 3: Ben Bollen, screw three D not worth the price. I'd
Speaker 3: pay that price just to see it on the bigger
Speaker 3: screen with the better sound system.
Speaker 2: Did you watch it in three No?
Speaker 3: I don't. I just some one time Black Panther I
Speaker 3: saw on three D because someone invited me, having already
Speaker 3: bought the tickets, and then popped it on. I mean
Speaker 3: once I got there that it was three D and
Speaker 3: the tickets were like forty bucks a B.
Speaker 2: I don't like three D.
Speaker 3: See, it's like, give me a headache. It wasn't fun,
Speaker 3: and I have my kid with me, so that was
Speaker 3: like eighty dollars of movie. Oh it was. I mean
Speaker 3: I'm probably exaggerating.
Speaker 2: A little bit, but I don't know. Man, once you
Speaker 2: factor in popcorn.
Speaker 3: I just don't like three D. I don't find it
Speaker 3: immersive or fun.
Speaker 2: We're already in three D, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Album.
Speaker 4: Yeah, fully, it's.
Speaker 2: Like advertising a movie with sound.
Speaker 4: I had this this well yeah, yeah, Ben, how are
Speaker 4: you doing? You know?
Speaker 2: I have an interesting story for you about Avengers that
Speaker 2: has nothing to do with the film. Really, I won't
Speaker 2: spoil anything, because I know a lot of us listening
Speaker 2: feel very strongly about spoilers. I love them. Most people
Speaker 2: hate them anyway. So I'm watching this I'm watching this
Speaker 2: thing and it is a long journey. It's long film,
Speaker 2: and there are ups in there, downs, and I think
Speaker 2: overall it's very well made, but there's really there's a really,
Speaker 2: really really sad part that gets a lot of people.
Speaker 2: And as I was watching the sad part in the theater,
Speaker 2: I heard someone uh kind of behind me and I thought, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess. I guess got a cold or something. You
Speaker 2: shouldn't really be outside of your contagious And then I
Speaker 2: heard more people like and.
Speaker 4: Uh, everybody get a hold of and like.
Speaker 2: I thought, people, I was like, wow, it's really going around,
Speaker 2: you know, it's this And I've never encountered measles in
Speaker 2: the wild, so it's like, do people have measles or whatever?
Speaker 2: And then uh, the people I was at the movie with, uh,
Speaker 2: I like, I asked them about it afterwards and they said, no,
Speaker 2: you've I don't want to use the strong language they used,
Speaker 2: but they said, no, dude, don't be a robot. They
Speaker 2: were crying. Yeah, So I think I just am missing
Speaker 2: that emotional switch.
Speaker 3: Ire one feeling a year would possibly have fallen on
Speaker 3: the Avengers.
Speaker 4: I would have put that beat down to three three
Speaker 4: three three.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going one of your one of your guy.
Speaker 3: You could have reserved for the Avenger.
Speaker 4: Because you you genuinely did grow up with these characters.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: I guess we all did.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but out of a lot of people that I know,
Speaker 4: you're probably one of Yeah, you know the characters in the.
Speaker 3: Story, and you know the comics too, you know. That's
Speaker 3: what I'm saying that the original the comic not no,
Speaker 3: not to degree, so many of these characters were not
Speaker 3: big flagship characters, at least for me, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, uh. But but be that as it may,
Speaker 2: I think we did a really great job talking about
Speaker 2: the Avengers without giving anything away totally. So if if
Speaker 2: you haven't seen it yet, do check it out. They
Speaker 2: are not paying us to say this. You just think
Speaker 2: of it, And Matt, I can't wait till you see
Speaker 2: it so we can hang out and talk about it.
Speaker 4: I can't wait to finally see ant Man get crushed
Speaker 4: by the boot.
Speaker 3: Of some other character that's actually his nemesis. It's a
Speaker 3: supervillain called the Boot.
Speaker 4: No, it's not.
Speaker 2: It's like Paul is. Paul is a huge film buff
Speaker 2: Mission Control over here, and he enjoyed the film as well.
Speaker 2: So if you can't take Nolan I's co sign as
Speaker 2: as worth worth it, yeah, take Paul's.
Speaker 4: Okay, but what about Game of Game of Thrones, Joe
Speaker 4: Game of Thrones? What about the Game of Thrones?
Speaker 3: Hey?
Speaker 2: Did you did you guys love that Cup cameo?
Speaker 4: The Cup cameo made my day?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I get it because Cup's story is
Speaker 2: super complicated in the books and it's like a pivotal point.
Speaker 2: You just can't do it justice on the screen, you know.
Speaker 4: Tyrian is like giving it the side eye.
Speaker 3: They see gied it out though. That's one of the beauty,
Speaker 3: beautiful things as far as the networks concerned of streaming
Speaker 3: is you know, if it's printed and it's in the theaters,
Speaker 3: they're not going to pull all those prints out of
Speaker 3: every theater in the in the country. But for this
Speaker 3: they just go in there, blip, re upload, yep. It's
Speaker 3: like it was never there, except the internet never forgets.
Speaker 4: How many people got fired? Do you think just one? One?
Speaker 4: Uh one?
Speaker 2: Best boy one best boy with the best dream, so well,
Speaker 2: that guy became a legend. We'll get to the point
Speaker 2: of the show in just a second.
Speaker 3: We guys owe us a little bit of a rambling insurer.
Speaker 3: I think we've been keeping it pretty tight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And we want to hear directly from you
Speaker 2: your opinions about this this intro, or your your opinions
Speaker 2: about any old thing on your mind from previous episodes,
Speaker 2: or suggestions for a future episode. Matt our friend and cohort.
Speaker 2: Matt has been on this amazing journey listening to voicemails.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I gotta tell you, I haven't been off of
Speaker 4: this journey in a while. Now.
Speaker 2: Someone need to take up the mantleman.
Speaker 4: It's so great. It's such a roller coaster because it
Speaker 4: gets really dark sometimes and then it is the funniest
Speaker 4: thing I've heard all week sometimes and then it just
Speaker 4: happens again. But the best thing is that everything that
Speaker 4: gets put on that the voicemail message machine is genuine
Speaker 4: and awesome. And everyone, if you're hearing this, you are awesome.
Speaker 4: Give us a call again. You can call one eight
Speaker 4: three three S ST D W I T K right now.
Speaker 4: Leave us a message. Any suggestions even on the format
Speaker 4: of the show. Just tell us, tell us what you
Speaker 4: want us to do. We're listening.
Speaker 2: Get weird with it. And also, speaking of the phones,
Speaker 2: shout out to our formerly anonymous caller, Stephen B. Who
Speaker 2: hipped us to Canada's Shag Harbor incident as an episode.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for tuning in, Stephen. Stephen reached out,
Speaker 2: reached out to us and I hope you don't get
Speaker 2: mad at us for say this, Steven, but he said, guys,
Speaker 2: I don't know why I didn't say my name, but
Speaker 2: I'm the one who called about Shag Harbor incident. So
Speaker 2: there you go. It's we I especially get it. It's
Speaker 2: tough when you're when you're working live and you only
Speaker 2: got three minutes, but call us. Try it for yourself.
Speaker 2: Don't take my word or Steven's word for it. Today
Speaker 2: we're off to England and as they say in Staffordshire,
Speaker 2: both of them, yes, yes, yes, what the heck are
Speaker 2: we talking about? We'll tell you a journey with us.
Speaker 2: And if you are a listener on the other side
Speaker 2: of the Atlantic, if you are located in Europe, if
Speaker 2: you are located in the United Kingdom, if you are
Speaker 2: located in Staffordshire or I've ever been there, We want
Speaker 2: to hear from you. Here's the thing about Saffordshire. It's
Speaker 2: a county in the west Midlands of England. It's landlocked, right,
Speaker 2: it's not one of the coastal areas. It has a
Speaker 2: pretty healthy population of just over one million people, and
Speaker 2: like most places in the United Kingdom, it's home to
Speaker 2: a storied past, numerous historical buildings, monuments and so on.
Speaker 2: You know that thing that you probably here thrown around
Speaker 2: all the time. In Europe, two hundred miles is a
Speaker 2: long way and in the US two hundred years is
Speaker 2: a long time. Yes, yeah, so this place does have
Speaker 2: a lot of history. However, most people outside of the
Speaker 2: United Kingdom in Europe haven't really heard of the place,
Speaker 2: unless that is there into the world of fringe research
Speaker 2: and conspiracies.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 4: Straffordshire is actually a little bit famous in those realms
Speaker 4: because there's this tiny little thing relatively to the rest
Speaker 4: of Straffordshire, tiny tiny little thing. It's a monument called
Speaker 4: the Shepherd's Monument. And on this monument there's an engraving.
Speaker 4: It's got one of the most enigmatic as of yet
Speaker 4: unbroken ciphers that you heard us say, or at least
Speaker 4: phonetically attempt to say earlier.
Speaker 2: Be backwards masking again, that we're going to talk progressively
Speaker 2: and backwards masking. Yes, nice episode. Yeah it was Paul's idea. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's true.
Speaker 4: It's true.
Speaker 2: We are phonetically pronouncing this very weird cipher.
Speaker 4: It's literally eight characters and then two more little characters
Speaker 4: and an exclamation mark.
Speaker 2: No, no, you know. It made me think of do
Speaker 2: you guys? You know I don't have time to play
Speaker 2: a lot of video games, but I'm in this somewhat
Speaker 2: monogamous video game relationship with a thing called Skyrim. And
Speaker 2: still I went back and started playing it again. I'm
Speaker 2: different now I'm an Argonian. They're the lizard people.
Speaker 5: I was.
Speaker 3: You were?
Speaker 4: I was?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Were? You were?
Speaker 2: You of age? I know you love in age.
Speaker 3: I was an Argonian mage.
Speaker 4: Nice messed up? You should have been a thief? Why?
Speaker 4: I don't know. Argonians are awesome with.
Speaker 2: The that's a stereotype.
Speaker 4: They have a lot of good attributes for it. It's
Speaker 4: all I'm saying, Oh God, that sounds awful, but it's
Speaker 4: so true because you literally pick your like species or
Speaker 4: your race.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's it's a great game and
Speaker 2: you can go back and you can do all the
Speaker 2: stuff you want to do.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: Anyway, anyway, it reminds me of the Dragon Shouts where
Speaker 2: they're all, you know, it's got really dope music in
Speaker 2: that game and they're like doing Dov King's you know,
Speaker 2: Oh it totally does it. That's intense stuff, you know.
Speaker 2: But anyhow, this weird Dovi king esque code came to
Speaker 2: be sometime between well, the monument came to be sometime
Speaker 2: between seventeen forty eight and seventeen sixty three, when this
Speaker 2: British parliament member named Thomas Anson commissioned a monument to
Speaker 2: be built at a place called Sugarburrow Hall in Staffordshire.
Speaker 2: And we may be mispronouncing that. We talked a little
Speaker 2: bit about that before it went on the Sugbroh, sugarbro
Speaker 2: sug Barh and no, you said it feels like an
Speaker 2: Australian It does kind of, yeah.
Speaker 4: Sugar Barrow, Sugarbarrow was a little bit I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know why.
Speaker 3: Shug just the word Shug, you know, feels Australia. Seems
Speaker 3: like the name of some kind of Australian implement, you know,
Speaker 3: a shug.
Speaker 2: Dear OSSes, Yeah, I know.
Speaker 4: It's like a shiv, but it's more blunt.
Speaker 2: You know, into Australian slang. Calling McDonald's Macca's has like
Speaker 2: just it's changed my world. I say that, yeah, m
Speaker 2: Acca nice. I don't know if it'll actually get me
Speaker 2: to go to a McDonald's, but I like to drive
Speaker 2: by and say Macca's.
Speaker 3: I feel like a shug would be some kind of club.
Speaker 3: It's not like a club where you party, like a club,
Speaker 3: like a couch club. Someone with yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this this place, Sugarburw Hall in Staffordshire is
Speaker 2: the location of this monument and Thomas Anson, although he
Speaker 2: commissions this monument, the Shepherd's Monument, his brother George, who
Speaker 2: is an admiral, actually pays for it. And a Flemish
Speaker 2: sculptor named Peter Shemaker's with two e's is the guy
Speaker 2: who actually builds the thing. But what does it look like?
Speaker 3: Well, the sculpture is comprised of a mirror image, or
Speaker 3: what's known as a boss relief, of a painting by
Speaker 3: Nicholas Poussin that's called The Shepherds of Arcadia, and it's
Speaker 3: also known as Okay, I'm gonna give this a whirl.
Speaker 3: I think it's his Latin. Yes, yeah, at in Arcadia ego.
Speaker 3: Les Burger's the Arcadi or the Arcadian Shepherds, and I
Speaker 3: was painted in sixteen thirty seven or between sixteen thirty
Speaker 3: seven to sixteen thirty eight.
Speaker 2: And it's this fascinating iconic work. You can it's more
Speaker 2: than worth your time to check it out. And I
Speaker 2: think some of us listening will be familiar with this
Speaker 2: painting and know where this is going.
Speaker 4: Because it's shepherds that are around a tomb, right, and
Speaker 4: then they have very specific hand gestures that they're doing,
Speaker 4: and it's check it out.
Speaker 2: So there are four figures in the in the painting,
Speaker 2: there are three shepherds, there's a female figure gathered around
Speaker 2: this tomb, as you said, Matt, and two of the
Speaker 2: shepherds are pointing at the tomb and in a real
Speaker 2: sketchy way, you know what I mean. And on this
Speaker 2: tomb there's this Latin text at in Arcadia Ego, which
Speaker 2: translates to I am even in Arcadia or I am
Speaker 2: also in Arcadia. You'll hear other versions with like even
Speaker 2: in arcadia, am I M whatever, it's Latin, it's really
Speaker 2: it's really cool phrase, very famous phrase in literature. But
Speaker 2: let's let's bracket that. Just know that that exists right now,
Speaker 2: and let's let's go back to this sculpture, this bass relief.
Speaker 2: It looks like the painting, but it's got some key differences.
Speaker 4: The first big thing you'll notice if you're looking at
Speaker 4: the monument, the Sugbro monument, is that there is an
Speaker 4: extra sarcophagus that's sitting on top of a tomb inside
Speaker 4: the original painting, which you go, Okay, I wonder what
Speaker 4: that could mean. An extra tomb. Maybe there are two
Speaker 4: people in tomb that we need to be thinking about
Speaker 4: in this Who knows it could be more cryptic than that.
Speaker 4: Let's move on because the other thing is that there
Speaker 4: are two stone heads above the image from the painting. Okay,
Speaker 4: so you got one that's this mirthful, mirthful fellow. The
Speaker 4: look on his face is the way to tell the mirth. Yeah.
Speaker 4: The other, though, is horned and bearing a marketing resemblance
Speaker 4: to that old Greek god Pan that you might remember,
Speaker 4: that old goat literally the old goat Pan. That is
Speaker 4: both fun in like whimsical but also extremely creepy. Yeah.
Speaker 4: It has some representations, some symbolical representations of other things,
Speaker 4: the goat being one of them. You might remember from
Speaker 4: other things we've talked about on the show with the
Speaker 4: old bachhomet Ah.
Speaker 2: That's right, yes, yes, And while the sculpture itself is impressive,
Speaker 2: most people are are kind of over the sculpture. They're
Speaker 2: more fascinated by this inscription carved below it. At first glance,
Speaker 2: it seems simple. It's as you said, beat, it's a
Speaker 2: scant two lines of text. Yes, and it looks very confusing.
Speaker 2: It looks like the worst wheel of fortune.
Speaker 4: Clue Ever, I'm going to do a version of your
Speaker 4: Skyroom of how I would do it.
Speaker 3: Chance here, Wow, that was great?
Speaker 4: Is that? Did it blow out? Like crazy?
Speaker 3: Try?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 4: All right, cool?
Speaker 3: We got protections against that, against the dark arts. I
Speaker 3: would do it more as like, oh, that's great, okay,
Speaker 3: because the double V at the end gives you yeah,
Speaker 3: how do you how do you add in the D
Speaker 3: in the M though? This is a separate line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so this is that's the top line O
Speaker 2: U O S V A V V and it's encapsulated
Speaker 2: or bookended by these letters at the bottom line. So
Speaker 2: if you look at the second at the second line,
Speaker 2: the line below O U O S V A V
Speaker 2: v U, there is a letter D below and to
Speaker 2: the left of the first O if you're looking at it,
Speaker 2: if you're looking straight at it, and there's an M
Speaker 2: below and to the right of the last V. So
Speaker 2: when you put it all together, that's what it looks like.
Speaker 2: It looks like that, that agglomeration of vowels and v's
Speaker 2: yeah and one s, and then below it there's the
Speaker 2: D and D M. And we keep adding the exclamation
Speaker 2: mark just because it feels like something you should shout.
Speaker 2: But appearing simple is not the same thing as being simple, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, because a lot of people have been trying
Speaker 4: to figure out since this thing was put up what
Speaker 4: exactly it means, and nobody has, let's say, sufficiently come
Speaker 4: up with an answer. But again, even if you think
Speaker 4: you completely got the answer, there's a matter of proving it,
Speaker 4: because who's gonna prove it to you anyway. We'll get
Speaker 4: into that right now, because let's go through some of
Speaker 4: the people who've actually attempted several charles in here.
Speaker 2: It's very Charles Heavy Charles Dickens. We may be familiar
Speaker 2: with some of his work. He wrote a ton of
Speaker 2: things that are popular in West drink Cannon and he
Speaker 2: was defeated by this series of letters. He tried and
Speaker 2: he failed.
Speaker 3: And we have another important British Charles also with a
Speaker 3: D for her last name, Darwin, who apparently ate every
Speaker 3: animal that he documented.
Speaker 2: True story that was, wasn't it.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, wait, you're telling me he was out there
Speaker 4: in the Galapagos and he was just going to town. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean, I guess when you're in the Galapagos.
Speaker 3: Well, he apparently had a history. He was in some
Speaker 3: kind of club of exotic meats at Cambridge or whatever,
Speaker 3: where he would eat like albatrosses and egrets and weird,
Speaker 3: you know, stringy gamey meats, and he.
Speaker 4: Kept he carried that spirit right into his research. That
Speaker 4: is like one of the most elite clubs I've ever
Speaker 4: heard of.
Speaker 2: He called he apparently defended. We learned this from Jack O'Brien.
Speaker 2: Apparently he defended He defended this practice by say it
Speaker 2: was for science, but he ate like twenty tortoises or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to the point where I think he threatened their
Speaker 3: very existence on Set Island because he's thought of as
Speaker 3: this like great conservationist and that really was not his
Speaker 3: bag at all. He was mortisis scientist, research or documentary
Speaker 3: and a devourer.
Speaker 4: There we go, lifest dollar.
Speaker 3: Yet he mastered the tortoise, he discovered the secret of evolution,
Speaker 3: and yet he could not surmount these letters.
Speaker 4: Wow, neither could a man named Josiah Wedgewood. He was
Speaker 4: one of the godfathers of industrialization, and oh man, he
Speaker 4: he got out all the steam works. He like figured out, Okay,
Speaker 4: we're gonna do this whole thing. We're gonna uh, we're
Speaker 4: gonna get an assembly line and figure out how to
Speaker 4: do this. And guess what.
Speaker 2: Nope, Nope, he couldn't. Even though he uh industrialized the
Speaker 2: manufacture of pottery, which you know, that's important. It sounds
Speaker 2: it sounds weird now, but it was a bit. To
Speaker 2: take our word for it. He was a big deal.
Speaker 2: Maybe a subject for a different episode, but here we are.
Speaker 2: It's twenty nineteen and those old ants and bros Are
Speaker 2: long since gone to dust and death. The guys who
Speaker 2: actually made the thing, yeah, well, the guys who commissioned it.
Speaker 4: Well, yes, Okay, you're right, But the ones who commission
Speaker 4: are generally the ones who have the meaning right because
Speaker 4: the person who sculpted it and chiseled it just knew
Speaker 4: all that goes there. Yeah, got his marching orders.
Speaker 2: Good call. So here we are, and people, everyone still
Speaker 2: wonders what on earth this code could mean, And just
Speaker 2: as importantly, everyone is still wondering whether someone has finally
Speaker 2: solved it. What are we talking about? Will tell you
Speaker 2: after a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
Speaker 4: And I just have to say, Paul was trying to
Speaker 4: get us to go to ad break for like ten
Speaker 4: minutes there, and it was so much fun to watch
Speaker 4: Paul and continually not Tom like, oh yes, of course,
Speaker 4: but when I could see where exactly we were going. Oh,
Speaker 4: toying with you, Paul is one of my greatest excitements.
Speaker 4: Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 3: So over the past few centuries, numerous people have made
Speaker 3: varying claims about this inscription. That includes conjecture about the intent,
Speaker 3: any some kind of explanation or origin story, and most importantly,
Speaker 3: the meaning.
Speaker 2: So let's look at the theories in no particular order.
Speaker 2: Some are a little out there, some may seem more mundane,
Speaker 2: but we want to see which one sound the most
Speaker 2: reasonable to you. So there's an author named Dave Ramsden.
Speaker 2: In a twenty fourteen book, he references manuscript efidence from
Speaker 2: the local record office and he says that based on
Speaker 2: what he found, Thomas Andson's peers thought the monument was
Speaker 2: a funereal structure that was dedicated to some figure known
Speaker 2: just as the Shepherdess. So from his take that DM
Speaker 2: stands for Dismannabus and the eight letter inscription is a
Speaker 2: cipher concealing the name of the person being memorialized. So
Speaker 2: in his book he walks through a pretty thorough decryption
Speaker 2: effort and he argues that through the use of a
Speaker 2: poly alphabetic cipher, he has found that the name, the
Speaker 2: name they're referring to is Magdalen Dude.
Speaker 4: By the way, the dismannabus that you heard us talking about,
Speaker 4: it's in reference to Roman spirits or goat, not ghosts,
Speaker 4: but spirits of people who have died. It's kind of
Speaker 4: really interesting because it has actually further back or it
Speaker 4: has pagan roots as well. So just an interesting thing
Speaker 4: when you connect it up with what Ben is just
Speaker 4: talking about there. I don't know, was it in the
Speaker 4: spirit and a ghost man. Well, isn't it the same
Speaker 4: thing by the ghost get is trapped and caught behind right?
Speaker 3: Ah, yes, they cannot believe. Maybe I like that behind
Speaker 3: that okay.
Speaker 4: And also but having that name Magdalen, I mean, come on,
Speaker 4: we all know that might be referring to right old
Speaker 4: Mary Mary Magdalene. Hmmm.
Speaker 2: Yes, the plot thickens, but that's not the only thing.
Speaker 2: Just spoiler alert. People disagree with this author. In another
Speaker 2: book called Anson's Gold, a fellow named George Edmund says
Speaker 2: that we have to remember George Anson was a navel man.
Speaker 2: He was an admiral, and George Edmund argues that Anson
Speaker 2: created this cipher to hide the latitude and longitude of
Speaker 2: an island where he had buried or discovered huge Spanish treasure.
Speaker 4: Oh, it's a treasure map, of course it.
Speaker 2: Is, yeah, and that he mounted a secret expedition in
Speaker 2: the eighteenth century to recover this treasure, which was located,
Speaker 2: but due to unforeseen circumstances, left where it was found.
Speaker 4: Oh, man, do you think it's in that one, that
Speaker 4: one giant hole, you know, the one I'm talking about
Speaker 4: Oak Island? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Man, do you think they're really finding stuff at Oak
Speaker 2: Island or do you think that the production team is.
Speaker 4: Slipping growing stuff into the hole feathers?
Speaker 2: And I mean, I I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I had heard that, but I don't have a ton
Speaker 2: of experience. I've never been there.
Speaker 4: So it would certainly make for a good TV to
Speaker 4: have things discovered, That's all I would say. Good point,
Speaker 4: good point.
Speaker 2: So the idea here is that letters in code were
Speaker 2: sent back to Lord Anson by the expedition leader, and
Speaker 2: that these validate and include part of the cipher, and
Speaker 2: that this proves what the cipher is for. So George
Speaker 2: Edmund isn't necessarily saying that the cipher is solved, but
Speaker 2: he's saying that's the right direction to look into. And
Speaker 2: then we have a returning school of thought from a
Speaker 2: previous episode. In nineteen eighty two, the authors of a
Speaker 2: book called The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail speculated
Speaker 2: that the painter you had mentioned earlier, Noel Pussin, was
Speaker 2: a member of what's called the Priory of Scion with
Speaker 2: an s. Yeah, and we remember we interviewed the daughter
Speaker 2: of one of the authors, Agient.
Speaker 4: What was her last name, I believe, m hmm. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that was a great interview, fascinating story. And the whole
Speaker 4: idea here, right, is that perhaps the Shepherds of Arcadia,
Speaker 4: they are in this monument, are actually pointed to something
Speaker 4: very specific, not necessarily anything to do with the tomb,
Speaker 4: but where to find the Holy Grail dunk dum. And
Speaker 4: then there's this whole other thing where as part of
Speaker 4: the promotion of the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail,
Speaker 4: they had these experts or they're I guess they're formerly
Speaker 4: code breakers, right, who came through and they tried to
Speaker 4: figure out what the heck this thing is, and they
Speaker 4: specifically were looking at this connection here with the priory
Speaker 4: of Scion, connection with the shepherd's pointing to the Holy Grail,
Speaker 4: and got a little more on that. So it's a
Speaker 4: Sheila and Oliver lawn to the people involved here. They
Speaker 4: proposed that the letters actually encode a specific phrase, a
Speaker 4: phrase Jesus H Deafi d e f Yeah, where the
Speaker 4: H supposedly stands for Cristos and this is a Greek
Speaker 4: word meaning Messiah, and the reference is to a Jesus
Speaker 4: bloodline or the bloodline of Jesus H. Christ. I don't
Speaker 4: I honestly don't know what that comes from Jesus H.
Speaker 3: Christ.
Speaker 4: What what is that?
Speaker 3: Do we know?
Speaker 5: Somebody somebody call us right, Yeah, it's it's this idea, right,
Speaker 5: that that Jesus Christ, the historical Jesus Christ, did actually
Speaker 5: have children, yes.
Speaker 2: Or issue as they would be called. And you know,
Speaker 2: this is very Dan Brown. Dan Brown leans very heavily
Speaker 2: on this in one of his books, at least in
Speaker 2: The Da Vinci Code. And the idea is that this
Speaker 2: bloodline was secreted away and you'll read about it being
Speaker 2: secreted away in different parts of the world, often France.
Speaker 2: So that that idea is really interesting because these code breakers,
Speaker 2: Sheila Lahan and Oliver Lawn are no joke. They are
Speaker 2: the legit, true blue, real deal. Yes, they were working
Speaker 2: on a enigma in World War Two, so they're not
Speaker 2: just They're not just some couple who happened by.
Speaker 4: You know what I mean. They're breaking Nazi codes and
Speaker 4: then they think that that's what happened, right, or that's
Speaker 4: they think that that's what the meaning could.
Speaker 2: Be, right, And Sheila Lahan said that she believes it
Speaker 2: may also be kind of a love letter of some.
Speaker 4: Sort of Yeah. Well, the other thing you have to
Speaker 4: remember here is that they're having ideas put out there
Speaker 4: for them to look for in a way, you know,
Speaker 4: with the way it was shaped, with the promotion for
Speaker 4: the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, and for what
Speaker 4: it could mean. You just just keep that in mind.
Speaker 4: You're the little skeptic part of the back of your
Speaker 4: mind that they're being led a little bit.
Speaker 2: So already this is this is getting weird, right. You've
Speaker 2: got we've got someone saying it's the one of the
Speaker 2: clues to the secret story of Jesus Christ. We've got
Speaker 2: someone else saying it's buried treasure. And we've got someone
Speaker 2: else saying that Anson was in love drahps with someone
Speaker 2: and needed for some reason to keep their identity a secret.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So how does this shake out in the modern day?
Speaker 3: Yeah, most of the modern theories approach this from sort
Speaker 3: of acrostic kind of perspective or like, you know, think
Speaker 3: about any kind of word patterned patterned word art, I
Speaker 3: guess where various letters line up, almost like a crossword puzzle,
Speaker 3: but when across is a specific form of this meaning,
Speaker 3: they interpret each letter as the initial letter of a
Speaker 3: larger word.
Speaker 2: So like m Att, for example, not to pick on you,
Speaker 2: like make make alice, take tile it all or whatever.
Speaker 3: Absolutely so sort of like a mnemonic device of like
Speaker 3: the way to remember something or it's They're also very
Speaker 3: popular in like presentations or kind of like self help,
Speaker 3: touchy feely kind of you know, office power points. You
Speaker 3: know about things like synergy and you know thing you
Speaker 3: know S would stand for super cool and e. Anyway,
Speaker 3: it's not good. I love that.
Speaker 4: I'm fond of making up those.
Speaker 3: They're fun when you make them absurd on purpose, but
Speaker 3: like as an actual motivational device, it sort of illicits
Speaker 3: an instant I roll because it's sort of like a cliche, right,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Right, But it's it's just a fundamental exercise. It is
Speaker 2: tough to take it seriously though, well, it's also tough
Speaker 2: to do it well.
Speaker 3: And that's the joke too, right, is a lot of
Speaker 3: times they end up people run out of ideas and
Speaker 3: they just kind of become either redundant or just absurd.
Speaker 2: If you're ever in a knife fight, remember to stop.
Speaker 2: That stands for a stab to other people.
Speaker 3: There you go, very very good, very very helpful. But yeah,
Speaker 3: So in nineteen fifty one, More Charred Bishop or more
Speaker 3: Card and I'm not going to go with the hard
Speaker 3: ch speculated that the letters might be an initialism for
Speaker 3: the Latin phrase optim sorous optimy soros vydue a Montese moose.
Speaker 3: I want to sing this in like a choir, sorrow
Speaker 3: ses VDUs a Montese moose vovied veritui boo.
Speaker 4: That was great, But the big question is what does
Speaker 4: that mean for those of us who don't speak Latin.
Speaker 4: Best of wives, best of sisters, a most devoted widower
Speaker 4: dedicates parentheses this to your virtues.
Speaker 3: Oh that's nice.
Speaker 4: See now that's really really nice. So that's that's specifically
Speaker 4: about George andson, right, And that would mean, if this
Speaker 4: is correct, that those eight letters are actually just a
Speaker 4: coded dedication to his wife after she passed away.
Speaker 2: Which is interesting because why would you have to put
Speaker 2: that in code?
Speaker 4: Well, it's I think it's less of in code and
Speaker 4: more of fitting it on monument perhaps, right, And this
Speaker 4: would be my opinion. His his spouse, by the way,
Speaker 4: Lady Elizabeth Yorke, daughter of Philip Yorke, first Earl of Hardwick.
Speaker 4: They did not have any children, but I could see
Speaker 4: that if it's just a person who spouse died and
Speaker 4: had the means to give some kind of dedication to
Speaker 4: her that only maybe even had meaning to him. Maybe, Okay,
Speaker 4: maybe that's there.
Speaker 2: Let's be their private thing. Yeah, I just like it.
Speaker 2: To me, Alan's surface, it seems it seems very strange
Speaker 2: and a little bit chuckleworthy that this guy would say,
Speaker 2: all right, I really love my wife and I think
Speaker 2: all these wonderful nice things about her, but no one
Speaker 2: can know. Well, yeah, well, guys, I love my wife.
Speaker 2: Everyone keep it a secret.
Speaker 4: The other don't tell anyone. The other thing that you
Speaker 4: could say here, just before we move on, is that
Speaker 4: maybe it was a backhanded thing or like a cruel
Speaker 4: joke in in her memory, because maybe she wasn't devoted,
Speaker 4: Maybe she wasn't the best of wives and sisters and devoted.
Speaker 3: Uh a little tongue in the cheek.
Speaker 2: This is before that forward slash s stand for sarcasms. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and what.
Speaker 3: I need to be I need to use that.
Speaker 4: But see, but that way, only he knows that he's
Speaker 4: being a dick to his wife.
Speaker 2: Oh good good, Oh, this is this is terrible. I
Speaker 2: hope that's not the case. Other people don't think it is, though.
Speaker 2: There's a guy named Steve Regimbal, who interprets the letters
Speaker 2: as standing for a new Latin translation of the following
Speaker 2: phrase vanity, oh vanities saith the preacher all is vanity,
Speaker 2: oh Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes twelve eight uh. He speculates that this,
Speaker 2: this phrase, orator ut omnia vanitas vanitatum, would feel like
Speaker 2: I just cast a spell.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: He thinks it may be the source of an earlier
Speaker 2: inscription only a Vanitas, which might have been carved on
Speaker 2: an alcove at the estate by one of Thomas Anson's pals,
Speaker 2: George Lyttleton. Interesting, they keep an eye on that, maybe though,
Speaker 2: that might and that.
Speaker 4: Maybe again this one, this is one of the ones that, yeah,
Speaker 4: I guess I just don't I need to know more
Speaker 4: about that, because I vanity of vanities, saith the preacher
Speaker 4: all is vanity, all is vanity. All worldly things and
Speaker 4: actions are vanity. It's it's just like carving a giant
Speaker 4: monument for anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, yeah, well, you know, this reminds me of
Speaker 3: It reminds me of the Georgia guidestones, that whole idea
Speaker 3: of like give a little thought to what's important, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. It's sort of like, but at
Speaker 3: least the Georgia guidestones intent was to be understood, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, it's not really very cool if you have
Speaker 3: like a message for the world and no one can
Speaker 3: understand it, or if they're just wildly speculating about what
Speaker 3: it means.
Speaker 4: That's a good point.
Speaker 2: So it may be a personal thing, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean of personal significance to the ants and brothers,
Speaker 2: if they are. Indeed the people who inscribed this. The
Speaker 2: NSA also got involved, so we had us intelligence in there.
Speaker 2: A guy named Keith Massey. In modern times you'll read
Speaker 2: some press about him claiming to have solved the letters.
Speaker 2: He interprets them as an initialism for the Latin phrase
Speaker 2: oro ut omnes sequant vm vitam.
Speaker 4: I pray that all may follow the way to true life.
Speaker 4: Is this biblical again?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, Johnny four sixteen, John, Yeah, that's really good
Speaker 2: reference to that verse. Reading John four sixteen read I
Speaker 2: am the Way, the Truth and the life. He goes
Speaker 2: something via at veritas at vita.
Speaker 3: And that's the one that stone cold Steve Austin had
Speaker 3: printed on the back of his sleeveless leather jacket.
Speaker 4: No. I was three sixteen. That's the one.
Speaker 2: That's the go too, that's the go to. Yeah, as
Speaker 2: a child, I never understood that.
Speaker 4: Oh I have way too many of those rattling around
Speaker 4: in my brain that I could probably well, I'm not
Speaker 4: even going.
Speaker 3: Through versus Wrestler trivia, just versus and Wrestler trivia.
Speaker 2: The Yeah, I thought the Undertaker was the coolest, but
Speaker 2: that's very unbranded for me.
Speaker 3: Staying Man three sixteen is just for God so loved
Speaker 3: the world. Yeah, I didn't realize that. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 3: very nice message that stone Cold has on his That's
Speaker 3: very counter to his stone cold image.
Speaker 4: You know. For God so loved the world that he
Speaker 4: made me, and then what does he do?
Speaker 3: He does the stunner stunner. Yeah, it reminds me of
Speaker 3: like jewels in pulp fiction doing that Biblical verse. Only
Speaker 3: that one gets scary though, that one gets I will
Speaker 3: strike down upon thee and all that you think anyway.
Speaker 4: But which wasn't an actual Bible verse?
Speaker 3: You kidding?
Speaker 4: No, it's what No, really, it's this whole time man. Sorry,
Speaker 4: it's an interpretation, let's put it that way.
Speaker 2: And maybe it's just vanity. Maybe it all is vanity.
Speaker 2: But these are just some of the most popular concepts.
Speaker 2: Now it's time to ask whether any of this checks out,
Speaker 2: And we'll do just that after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 3: And we're back in Matt, you just wrecked my childhood.
Speaker 3: That Tarantino line isn't from the Bible. It's a much
Speaker 3: more elaborated version. The real verse is actually just and
Speaker 3: I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes.
Speaker 3: And they shall know I am the Lord when I
Speaker 3: shall lay my vengeance upon them.
Speaker 4: So obviously, well that's one translation. There are so many
Speaker 4: different ones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but vulgate versions and whatnot. I like the word rebuke.
Speaker 2: Let's bring rebuke back.
Speaker 4: I would rebuke some stuff.
Speaker 3: Isn't that as when you like call someone out you
Speaker 3: take them to task. It's sort of like a rebuttal,
Speaker 3: but it's a little stronger. It's a little it's like
Speaker 3: it implies shaming of some sort of finger wagging.
Speaker 2: Right, criticizing someone, So it's it's not quite rejecting. It's
Speaker 2: kind of admonishing, but in a very strong way, kind
Speaker 2: of like how contempt is worse than dislike.
Speaker 4: It's a really good white instant for pretty low manocosts.
Speaker 4: Just so you know.
Speaker 2: You have made so many people's day. It's just that
Speaker 2: said it.
Speaker 3: I don't think I understand the reference.
Speaker 4: It's the MTG magic together.
Speaker 3: Ah, yes, yes, anytime anytime you say something that I
Speaker 3: don't understand, I should always assume that it's even when
Speaker 3: you say MTG, I have to be Madison Square Gardens and.
Speaker 2: We're making an acrostic move them giblets. I don't ye, yep,
Speaker 2: I'm working live here.
Speaker 4: But literally all of my vocabulary comes from middle school magic.
Speaker 3: The gathering plan.
Speaker 4: We should get together and play play magic.
Speaker 3: At some point you have to learn first, all of us. Yeah, everyone, like,
Speaker 3: even even you the listener.
Speaker 4: Well yeah, yeah, come hang out, let's play, let's do
Speaker 4: let's do it.
Speaker 2: We'll sneak everyone in. I think it's more fun if
Speaker 2: we feel like it's a heist.
Speaker 3: We'll do an MTG meetup.
Speaker 4: MTG conspiracy meetup sounds epic. Meet the group MTG or
Speaker 4: the gang or the guys.
Speaker 2: I like the gang now, but it's not.
Speaker 3: An acrosstic and an acronym aren't the same thing, right,
Speaker 3: I mean they're sort of they're they're kind of no,
Speaker 3: because this isn't the down word has to be a
Speaker 3: word in and of itself. Oh right, So MTG, even
Speaker 3: if it's spelled MTG and Magic Gathering, it's not an
Speaker 3: acrosstic because MTG is meaningless without representing something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, an acronym would be the abbreviation made out of
Speaker 2: the first letters of the words. So our MTG thing
Speaker 2: is an acronym. But an acrostic would be uh, some
Speaker 2: kind of poem or form of writing like you described,
Speaker 2: where the first letter or syllable or word of each
Speaker 2: line or spells out a word.
Speaker 4: Ah. Uh.
Speaker 2: So we've got to ask ourselves, does any of this
Speaker 2: stuff check out?
Speaker 4: Uh? Not?
Speaker 2: Not our not our plans to invite everyone to play
Speaker 2: Magic the Gathering with us, uh and have Matt roundly
Speaker 2: kick kick the snot out of all of us. Very
Speaker 2: good at that game. You are lying. You're one of
Speaker 2: my favorite peopil. But I can tell when you're lying.
Speaker 2: Oh no, Matt, Matt is really really good at this. Uh.
Speaker 2: So not talking about that stuff, but talking about this concept.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: The one that I think really stuck out to us
Speaker 2: and to a lot of us listening now is the
Speaker 2: idea of this priory of scion.
Speaker 4: I think this is definitely where the mystery heightens.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, yeah, this is this is a wild one.
Speaker 2: So this is a fringe I guess secret society. Maybe
Speaker 2: a fraternal order is a good way to describe it.
Speaker 2: It was founded. The official stories it was founded and
Speaker 2: then dissolved in nineteen fifty six by a guy named
Speaker 2: Pierre Plantart as part of a hoax. But people who
Speaker 2: buy into the idea think it dates back much much further,
Speaker 2: you know, back to of course the time of the
Speaker 2: living historical Jesus Christ. This was considered. This was not
Speaker 2: taken very well or very seriously by a lot of
Speaker 2: people in the Academy with a capital A, but the
Speaker 2: concept existed for a long time. Some people say it
Speaker 2: was a hoax and some people taking it very seriously,
Speaker 2: and some people even claiming to be members of the
Speaker 2: Priory of Scion. And then boom, it went mainstream when
Speaker 2: Dan Brown leveraged this concept for the the basis of
Speaker 2: the Da Vinci Code, which is I still think a solid,
Speaker 2: solid film, and I enjoyed the book.
Speaker 4: I would say I have not read the book, but
Speaker 4: the film I was happier than a lot of the
Speaker 4: critics about it.
Speaker 3: You enjoyed it, yeah, did you see the subsequent film The.
Speaker 4: Inferno, Angels and Demons and Infernos, and I did not.
Speaker 3: See was there a third one that was an inferno?
Speaker 4: Inferno is the third one? Angels and Demons is the second?
Speaker 4: Is that correct? Well?
Speaker 3: Did this do well? I mean they made three of them,
Speaker 3: they must have done relatively sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had to coast off the blockbuster status expensive.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, okay, so Paul just off Mike or in
Speaker 3: our ears and at last you will never hear the
Speaker 3: voice of Paul because if you did, it would melt
Speaker 3: your insides. It was much like hearing the voice of
Speaker 3: the archangel Gabriel or something like that. But yeah, he says,
Speaker 3: Inferno was apparently quite bad. I haven't seen any of them.
Speaker 3: But the reason I asked did they do well? Is
Speaker 3: because I just don't really have much of a memory
Speaker 3: of them existing.
Speaker 4: I just remember the lyric of the lure of You
Speaker 4: guys are great at French.
Speaker 2: I'm not even gonna try it yet. Yeah. So this
Speaker 2: also this book, by the way, the da Vinci Code.
Speaker 2: Just to be fair, we should say that he did
Speaker 2: receive criticism from other authors and people familiar with the theory,
Speaker 2: because you know, the authors of Holy Blend and Holy
Speaker 2: Grail felt to a large degree that he plagiarized their work. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that he was essentially using their research to sell
Speaker 2: a novel. So that that's the moment, though, that is
Speaker 2: the moment where this stuff hit the zeitgeist. And the
Speaker 2: idea here is that the Antson brothers were both members
Speaker 2: of the Priory of Scion, and the original painter of
Speaker 2: the Arcadian Shepherd painting was also a member of the
Speaker 2: Priory of Scion, and that the Holy Grail is not
Speaker 2: really a cup a goblet, you know, the the what's
Speaker 2: the Indiana Jones's ligne, the cup of a carpenter. Yeah,
Speaker 2: yours indeed.
Speaker 3: Melting, My face is melting, he chose he also should
Speaker 3: have moisturized.
Speaker 4: Well, okay, so but if it's not that cup, then
Speaker 4: has dastardly powers.
Speaker 2: What is it? It's a symbol, it's a code phrase.
Speaker 2: It's describing the physical descendants of Jesus Christ. If this
Speaker 2: were true, if this were proven, this would be one
Speaker 2: of the most significant moments in human history. And we
Speaker 2: found a provable living descendant of the historical figure known
Speaker 2: as Jesus Christ. So if that's such an amazing thing,
Speaker 2: why hide it.
Speaker 4: Because it would upend everything, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, for most of the last two
Speaker 2: thousand years, the idea of Jesus Christ having children at
Speaker 2: all was very heretical, and the Catholic Church worked arduously
Speaker 2: to control its message, and any splinter groups or dissidence
Speaker 2: schools of thought were brutally suppressed, murdered wholesale, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. Ironically, of course, this is exactly what
Speaker 2: happened to the first Christians, the predecessors of the Catholics.
Speaker 4: New ideas banished the and also torture.
Speaker 2: Well, it's you know, when you think about it, they
Speaker 2: wanted to control a message because they didn't have the
Speaker 2: cost of communication is so high that when people are
Speaker 2: in isolation, you know, like in an island off the
Speaker 2: coast of France or somewhere in North Africa, they can
Speaker 2: begin to make their own saints, for instance. That's a
Speaker 2: huge thing even now, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, dude, the more we look at it, it seems,
Speaker 4: at least in my opinion right now, the brutality of
Speaker 4: the control mechanisms throughout history do seem eerily necessary in
Speaker 4: a lot of ways, and that scares me a little bit.
Speaker 2: It's a real pos kind of move. But this is
Speaker 2: the idea. So it would make sense then for this
Speaker 2: to be kept a secret, because the idea is that
Speaker 2: the Catholic Church doesn't want this truth to get out.
Speaker 2: And we know that while we don't know for sure
Speaker 2: whether this is true or whether it's all you know, speculation,
Speaker 2: bluff and bluster, we do know that the Catholic Church
Speaker 2: has in the past run very, very large and ambitious
Speaker 2: information control campaigns, like for centuries. But is this too weird?
Speaker 2: It might be too weird for some of us. There's
Speaker 2: another mundane theory that came from the telegraph. I like
Speaker 2: this one too. This is interesting. Lay it on it.
Speaker 4: Well, I guess if this is what it is, then
Speaker 4: it makes so many other things hilarious that have happened
Speaker 4: with the NSA getting involved in other high profile people
Speaker 4: trying to solve this thing, when in actuality, perhaps it's
Speaker 4: just some graffiti left by people who lived in the
Speaker 4: house or the estate after the money was put there.
Speaker 4: So okay, So it's this historian aj Morton, and he
Speaker 4: thinks that the inscription is just was put there in
Speaker 4: the nineteenth century by residents George Adams and his wife
Speaker 4: Mary Vernon Venables. I love that last name, Vernon Venables.
Speaker 4: Now what were the two bottom letters D and M?
Speaker 4: D and M hmm? All right? In my head, I
Speaker 4: was for some reason connecting G or making it G
Speaker 4: and M for a moment they are thinking George and Mary.
Speaker 4: But no, that doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2: But Vernon Venables.
Speaker 4: That's two these, That's at least two of them, and
Speaker 4: there are a lot of those.
Speaker 2: So Morton, who is an expert in graves and monuments,
Speaker 2: he said that the letters can be matched to this couple,
Speaker 2: Adams and Vernon Venables, because they were relations of Tom Ansen.
Speaker 2: And there doesn't appear to be any reference to the
Speaker 2: curious letters until the nineteenth century. To Morton, this suggests
Speaker 2: that they were added later. Nothing in Thomas Anson's life
Speaker 2: fits the letters in the inscription, except the family of
Speaker 2: his nephew, George Adams. So the idea is that, regardless
Speaker 2: of all our speculation and these concepts of conspiracy spanning centuries,
Speaker 2: someone just did some graffiti. Which is also it always
Speaker 2: reminds me of that story about the runic inscriptions in
Speaker 2: the Hagia Sophia.
Speaker 4: Do we talk about this on air? I don't know
Speaker 4: that we have maybe as a casual mention.
Speaker 2: So there's this thing in the Haiya sofia these to
Speaker 2: blow people's minds. It is a runic description called the
Speaker 2: half Dan inscription and was discovered in nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 2: And for a while, people, you know, not naturally being
Speaker 2: prone to reading rooms. For a while people thought, whoa,
Speaker 2: this is amazing. Vikings got all the way down here
Speaker 2: and the history is hidden and it goes so much
Speaker 2: deeper and found oh when they translated it. When they
Speaker 2: translated it and they still couldn't read all of it,
Speaker 2: it turned out that it said like half Dan carved
Speaker 2: these rooms. So it's the historical equivalent of you know,
Speaker 2: Paul was here, so a lot of graffiti happens. This
Speaker 2: answer might not satisfy a lot of us, but anyway
Speaker 2: you look at it, the truth is this. At this point,
Speaker 2: no one really agrees on what this inscription means. We've
Speaker 2: outlined some of the main theories, and each of these
Speaker 2: theories have their proponents. Some of us listening now have
Speaker 2: probably found one that particularly calls to us. And I
Speaker 2: will say, the theory of a priory of sion is
Speaker 2: a fascinating read. We just don't know if it is
Speaker 2: connected to this inscription, but residents of Staffordshire encounter new
Speaker 2: theories continually, like all the time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we were quote here that says we get five
Speaker 4: or six people a week who believe they have solved
Speaker 4: the code, so we're a bit wary of them. Now
Speaker 4: exhausted Stratfordshire and shireen Stratfordshire would maybe sheer Stretford sheer well,
Speaker 4: it's Lancashire, Lancashire. I've always heard Lancashire.
Speaker 3: Well, if you want, if the Beatles the Day and
Speaker 3: the Life of is to be believed, it's ten thousand
Speaker 3: holes in Blackford, Lancashire.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but they were just trying to make it fit
Speaker 4: the song.
Speaker 3: It didn't wasn't a rhymestate.
Speaker 2: And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
Speaker 2: wait to hear your thoughts. We try to be easy
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