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.
Speaker 2: A production of Iheartrading, Hello and welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2: My name is Noel.
Speaker 3: Our colleague Matt is on adventures. Hopefully we'll send us
Speaker 3: some photographs of him on a boat. He will be
Speaker 3: returning soon. They call me Ben. We're joined as always
Speaker 3: with our super producer Paul mission controlled decans.
Speaker 2: Most importantly, you are you. You are here.
Speaker 3: That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Noel,
Speaker 3: do you remember when we got we went through our
Speaker 3: anti Catherra mechanism phase.
Speaker 4: I think everyone had one of those, you know, right
Speaker 4: next it's like Pokemon, POGs, Pokemon, and then an anti
Speaker 4: Caatherra mechanism of like a historical precedent.
Speaker 3: It's it's weird because history is full of incredibly strange things,
Speaker 3: so much so that you and I made an entirely
Speaker 3: different show all about ridiculous events, places, and people.
Speaker 2: We're fans of the weird stuff.
Speaker 4: Surely anti Caatherra mechanism has come up on ridiculous history
Speaker 4: at some point or another if anyone needs a quick reminder,
Speaker 4: just like a Bizarro device that seemingly way ahead of
Speaker 4: its time. You know, historically that was discovered and no
Speaker 4: one quite knew what it was for or what.
Speaker 2: It did, and I believe the jury is still kind
Speaker 2: of out.
Speaker 4: It's almost like a I don't know what you might
Speaker 4: picture like an Indiana Jones time travel relic, looking like
Speaker 4: you know, in fact, if I'm not mistaken, isn't that
Speaker 4: Wasn't that part of the plot for the current Indiana Jones,
Speaker 4: isn't The Dial of Destiny as depicted sort of takes
Speaker 4: some inspiration from the antiicate thera mechanism.
Speaker 2: Hey, no one tells the legal department. Well, yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know if anybody holds the IP rights to this
Speaker 2: bizarre ancient artifact.
Speaker 4: But yeah, and there are other things like that too,
Speaker 4: like what the Bagdad battery, Yes, the Bagdad battery, which
Speaker 4: is very much a very much real thing, probably early
Speaker 4: electro plating.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: We love this stuff, and our pal Matt loves it
Speaker 3: as well. The idea of anachronistic artifacts the idea that
Speaker 3: sometime in the past there was a technology that was
Speaker 3: far far past the current state of technology today in
Speaker 3: tonight's episode. Uh, we're fellow conspiracy realist NOL Mission Control
Speaker 3: and I are going to solve or at least explore
Speaker 3: a deep cut in the infamously controversial field of ancient aliens.
Speaker 3: This is the story of the drop of Stones.
Speaker 2: Here are the facts.
Speaker 4: The earliest source for the dropa Stones is in an
Speaker 4: article in Dan You're a big jerk?
Speaker 2: Is this nonsense?
Speaker 4: Here? I'm sorry, Ben's printed in the outline here and
Speaker 4: I guess what is this Greek?
Speaker 2: Russian? Maybe? Huh? Yeah, yeah, it's real, so real, like
Speaker 2: it's an incredible script.
Speaker 4: But it just hit me out of the blue, and
Speaker 4: I'm just like, I just my brain logjamm, you did
Speaker 4: helpfully include in parenthesies that it does translate to literatornia gazetta.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry I called you a jerk. I
Speaker 2: didn't mean it. You know, I love you now, It's fine.
Speaker 2: You know me, I'm a dirtbag.
Speaker 3: This was February ninth, nineteen sixty and in this article
Speaker 3: they talked about the speculations of a guy named Matist
Speaker 3: m Augrist. Pardon ar mispronunciations here. We are not native speakers.
Speaker 3: He's he's a guy who was born in like nineteen fifteen,
Speaker 3: who believes that aliens visited Earth in the distant past
Speaker 3: and they left traces of their arrival. And this became
Speaker 3: a breakout success. Like at first it just published. No
Speaker 3: one really read it until a few years later in
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty two, and Nola, I'm going to lean on
Speaker 3: you for this German pronunciation. There was a German magazine
Speaker 3: that republished the story.
Speaker 4: That's right, and it became like the I guess scientific
Speaker 4: concept of the summer the way like we're having a
Speaker 4: brat summer right now.
Speaker 2: Whatever the song of the summer is.
Speaker 4: This was the banger of the summer of sixty two,
Speaker 4: when dos vegetariica universe sum here is the vegetarian universe.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, I don't mean to do like the heavy
Speaker 4: it's just fine German. You're good, aggressive sounding.
Speaker 2: You know it does it. It's just it's hard to
Speaker 2: not say it without that oomph.
Speaker 4: The Vegetarian Universe, which you could probably derive from from
Speaker 4: the German itself, published this story in nineteen thirty seven.
Speaker 4: As they described in nineteen sixty two, a man named
Speaker 4: Chi Pooh Tie led an archaeological expedition into the Baiyonhar
Speaker 4: Mountains in western China and discovered seven hundred and sixteen
Speaker 4: granite discs with hieroglyphs or I guess, you know, run
Speaker 4: like perhaps hieroglyph cryptograms, you know on these granite discs. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: And they looked like they were made on purpose instead
Speaker 4: of say, you know, the weathering or something right right.
Speaker 3: Erosion on rocks or something. Someone or something appeared to
Speaker 3: have carved stuff onto these discs the way that you
Speaker 3: would lay a song into a record on vinyl.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Late later again, according to the story, later testing would
Speaker 3: determine that these disc were created about twelve thousand years ago.
Speaker 3: They vary in size. The biggest one is like a
Speaker 3: foot in diameter, and all of them have these grooves
Speaker 3: just like on a record in a double spiral that
Speaker 3: originates from a hole in the center, and the hieroglyphs
Speaker 3: apparently are discernible only with a magnifying class. It gets
Speaker 3: even weirder because in the story, both in the original
Speaker 3: Russian version and in the later German vegetarian version, the
Speaker 3: disc are found near these maps of constellations, and there
Speaker 3: are humanoid remains dude, something not quite homo sapien like
Speaker 3: thin bodies, unusually large heads. Paul, can we get something
Speaker 3: that sounds kind of like the X Files theme?
Speaker 2: Oh? Man, you know it's funny already from the start.
Speaker 4: I was hearkening back to about three days ago when
Speaker 4: I started my full rewatch of The X Files, and
Speaker 4: I realized, Ben, I had never seen the pilot before
Speaker 4: that ever, And it deals with ancient alien any kind
Speaker 4: of things, you know, from the very start, and I
Speaker 4: believe there's a question posed or you know, when Moulder
Speaker 4: and Scully first meet, and Scully's laying out her reasoning
Speaker 4: for the notion that aliens probably don't exist or have
Speaker 4: not made it to Earth, and it has to do
Speaker 4: with the energy would take to traverse that kind of
Speaker 4: distance and the reasoning behind it and all of that stuff.
Speaker 4: But then within the span of one episode or maybe
Speaker 4: a couple, she's on board on the belief train pretty quick.
Speaker 3: One of the weirdest things about The X Files, which
Speaker 3: is a fantastic series for the most part, one of
Speaker 3: the weirdest things is how often people use the name Molder.
Speaker 3: People say that guy's name way more often than you
Speaker 3: would in normal conversation, so much so that just to
Speaker 3: argue with information for your rewatch. We invented a drinking game.
Speaker 3: Back one evening. We said, every time someone says molder unnecessarily,
Speaker 3: then you know, take a sip or something.
Speaker 2: And as a result of Scully a lot too. To
Speaker 2: be fair, he does, he does. But we did the math.
Speaker 3: They're scullies more molders, And it was so bad that
Speaker 3: at the gosh somewhere in season three, I quit drinking alcohol,
Speaker 3: and I didn't drink alcohol for a year because I
Speaker 3: was worried about my health. If I had to, like,
Speaker 3: that's how many molders there are?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess when you're living, when you're using the
Speaker 4: drinking game, like in everyday life where you just watch
Speaker 4: a lot of X files, I can't get out of hand.
Speaker 2: Pretty quickly, no kidding, speaking of getting out of hand.
Speaker 3: The original story here all right, after more than two
Speaker 3: decades of work, So what did you say?
Speaker 4: It was nineteen thirty seven. Nineteen thirty seven is when
Speaker 4: the yes when they were discovered.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, so nineteen thirty seven. Fast forward twenty years
Speaker 3: of work at something called the Academy of Prehistory in Beijing.
Speaker 3: These Chinese archaeologists apparently managed to not only discern these hieroglyphs,
Speaker 3: but also to translate them. And they say, all right,
Speaker 3: here's the skinny. These stone discs we have found were
Speaker 3: carved by aliens who crashed right there on the border
Speaker 3: of China and Tibet.
Speaker 4: Oh, so these are like the star maps that we're
Speaker 4: talking about. Or is that the it's like their record
Speaker 4: of what happened, you know, the way that the way
Speaker 4: that someone stranded on a desert island marks the time
Speaker 4: off on the wall or whatever text days are in prison.
Speaker 4: I guess I just the spiral configuration is interesting to me.
Speaker 4: I wonder like you mentioned the idea of like grooves
Speaker 4: on a record, which immediately makes me think, is this
Speaker 4: some sort of was there potentially a device to decode
Speaker 4: this beyond what's just on there on the surface, there's
Speaker 4: actually some embedded hidden message in there?
Speaker 2: Pretty cool? I like where your head's at. Uh.
Speaker 3: There's a guy who publishes, according to the story, all
Speaker 3: of this translation. His name is sum um Nui. And
Speaker 3: when he publishes this, all right, here's the idea. He says,
Speaker 3: we've decoded the hieroglyphics. We're learning an alien spacecraft crashed
Speaker 3: as you said in this region in western China twelve
Speaker 3: thousand years ago, and he says, the occupants call themselves
Speaker 3: the Dropa or the Zopa, and they couldn't repair their spacecraft.
Speaker 3: They tried to adapt to Earth environments, but they couldn't
Speaker 3: do it, and local human tribes hunted them down and
Speaker 3: essentially ended them, killed most of them. The skeletons, with
Speaker 3: unusually large heads and thin bodies, were pretty short, and
Speaker 3: apparently they intermarried, according to this translation, with the human population,
Speaker 3: so you couldn't tell whether who was a human versus
Speaker 3: who was an alien versus who was a human alien hybrid.
Speaker 3: When this guy publishes this, everybody thinks his ideas are trash,
Speaker 3: So the story goes soon leaves for Japan, he exiles himself,
Speaker 3: and he dies shortly after under mysterious circumstances, well and.
Speaker 4: Presumably shamed, you know, feeling like having been sort of
Speaker 4: pilloried in this way, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: In nineteen sixty six, Russian magazine called Sputnik republishes this story.
Speaker 3: This time the author byline is a guy named Vyaschislav Zatsiev,
Speaker 3: and Zetziev adds some more details to the mix, and
Speaker 3: he says, look after this stuff was found in China.
Speaker 3: These disc a lot of them were shipped off to
Speaker 3: Moscow and Soviet researchers discovered You'll love the story. Soviet
Speaker 3: researchers discovered the material composition of the disc not just stone.
Speaker 3: They have a lot of cobalt and other metals. They
Speaker 3: conduct electricity and here's the part they produce. No, they
Speaker 3: produce a humming sound when they are placed on a
Speaker 3: special turn tape.
Speaker 2: There we go.
Speaker 4: There is thank you, because man, I gotta say, like
Speaker 4: I'm a big audiophile, synthesizer, you know, music production nerd.
Speaker 4: To me, the technology of vinyl and sound reproduction in general,
Speaker 4: but specifically with vinyl is like magic.
Speaker 2: I don't understand it.
Speaker 4: Like if you you can play a record without an
Speaker 4: amplification source and just turn it on and stick your
Speaker 4: ear next to it, to the needle, and you hear
Speaker 4: a little bit of it, Like you know, I know
Speaker 4: that sound is just vibration capture, and that you know,
Speaker 4: an audio recording is just a way of capturing that
Speaker 4: and replaying it and sort of reproducing it. But that's
Speaker 4: as far as I can go with like the actual
Speaker 4: explanation of how that stuff works. And we used to
Speaker 4: work for a web so I called house Stuff Works,
Speaker 4: which by the way, has.
Speaker 2: Quite a good article on the dropo Stones in there.
Speaker 2: It does. Yes, yes, very much. So that is our
Speaker 2: alma matter.
Speaker 3: And one thing that I've always loved about being able
Speaker 3: to hang out with you is your your immense knowledge
Speaker 3: of music and the fact that no matter where we are,
Speaker 3: no matter what's happening, you know, we're on the road somewhere,
Speaker 3: we might.
Speaker 2: Go see a film or something.
Speaker 3: If anyone brings up synth or music to my pal
Speaker 3: Noel Brown, then twenty minutes are done. No, twenty very
Speaker 3: interesting minutes.
Speaker 2: Oh that's very kind. Now I try to keep it
Speaker 2: in check, but yeah, I'm a big I'm a big fan.
Speaker 4: I'm a big fan of just technology in general as
Speaker 4: a tool. And I think this, you know, whether or
Speaker 4: not it exists, it immediately tickles that part of my brain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, because the truth maybe out there. The legend
Speaker 3: grows for reason. Right in nineteen seventy four, again, according
Speaker 3: to the story, there's this engineer from Austria. Sometimes he's
Speaker 3: called Ernst Vegarer, sometimes he's called Ernst Wegener, and according
Speaker 3: to the story, he visits a museum Bampo Museum in
Speaker 3: Western China, and he sees two of the drop of stones.
Speaker 3: He asked the museum staff about it, and they shrug,
Speaker 3: they don't know what they are, but they do allow
Speaker 3: him to hold a disc to physically, you know, engage
Speaker 3: with it, and they let him photograph several of these
Speaker 3: up close. The mystery by nineteen ninety four, these drop
Speaker 3: a disc are ghosts, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Kaiser sooze themselves especially or at least you know, or
Speaker 4: were they ever there in.
Speaker 2: The first place.
Speaker 4: It's an incredible story, It's about all It ticks all
Speaker 4: the boxes of.
Speaker 2: What we love in a good conspiracy tale.
Speaker 4: And I think you know, Ben, you and Matt and
Speaker 4: I always make it clear that our goal here is
Speaker 4: not to tell you what to believe, is to dissect
Speaker 4: the facts, the chatter, you know, what's out there, and
Speaker 4: then kind of allow people to form their own conclusions.
Speaker 4: But we all love a good story, and this has
Speaker 4: the makings of a top notch conspiracy.
Speaker 2: Ancient wisdom from the stars, hidden history, geopolitical.
Speaker 4: Intrigue, Russier line, magical technology. Right, I mean, we agree
Speaker 4: that Vinyl itself is amazing and magical.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: Tonight's question is the story true. We'll put our collective
Speaker 4: needle into that group when we get back from a
Speaker 4: word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2: Here's where it gets crazy, Paul, can we have a womp? Womp?
Speaker 2: We hate to see it.
Speaker 4: This story is not true. Yeah, and apparently JD. Vance
Speaker 4: also probably didn't have sex with a couch. Oh you're
Speaker 4: read up on that double womp. It's just, you know,
Speaker 4: I joke because in this day and age, and this
Speaker 4: is not a Grandpapa, and this day and age in particular,
Speaker 4: when information can be disseminated so quickly and sometimes by
Speaker 4: like not necessarily the best of actors.
Speaker 2: Let's just say, it's real easy for.
Speaker 4: Stories, you know, with questionable providence to be reported as fact.
Speaker 2: And this is, you know, a much older story.
Speaker 4: So it would have taken a lot more doing to
Speaker 4: get this to proliferate in that same way, and yet
Speaker 4: proliferate it did, probably largely because it's just so damn interesting.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: It looks like a pair of science writers essentially made
Speaker 3: a speculative article and it got expanded upon by an
Speaker 3: unknown writer who published published this story under a pseudonym
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty two. Whoever was behind this story? Appears
Speaker 3: to have taken a couple of swings at the plate
Speaker 3: because the time they published it what you called it
Speaker 3: the drop of summer, the brad summer, Yeah, right.
Speaker 2: Sixty four right.
Speaker 3: He pushes it out, or this person pushes out the
Speaker 3: story multiple times and it gets rewritten and rewritten. There
Speaker 3: is a clue in the text that lets us know
Speaker 3: that he is essentially re doing a soft reboot they
Speaker 3: would call it in Hollywood, because our buddy Chi Poote,
Speaker 3: who discovers the disc. Originally it's described as happening forty
Speaker 3: five years before the article, right nineteen thirty seven, and
Speaker 3: then when they republish whomever this prankster is, they don't
Speaker 3: change that timeline. So now our guy, the archaeologist from
Speaker 3: China is doing his expedition in nineteen thirty nine. Accuracy
Speaker 3: is not.
Speaker 4: Is not the primary mission of this article, and we've
Speaker 4: got to.
Speaker 2: Give a big shout out to our friends. A bad archaeology.
Speaker 4: Well, as my mother used to say, never let the
Speaker 4: facts stand in the way of a good story.
Speaker 2: That's true. She has said that. Yeah, she said that
Speaker 2: a lot actually, but that's right.
Speaker 4: Bad archaeology put it like this, I think, really succinctly.
Speaker 4: It seems that nineteen sixty four was a better year
Speaker 4: for tall tales involving crash UFOs as the story was
Speaker 4: taken up in a variety of publications. So even though
Speaker 4: this did in this time, there are people would a
Speaker 4: good story. It's spreadable, it's shareable. You know, everyone wants
Speaker 4: to be the one that shares that crazy story and
Speaker 4: be the first person you heard it from, whether you're
Speaker 4: a human being or a publication. Continuing, it was through
Speaker 4: one of these that Vaya she sheslov Zeitsev's popularization made
Speaker 4: it known to a wider world, including the up and
Speaker 4: coming Eric von Dannikin.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm, Yeah, the author of Chariots of the Gods
Speaker 3: several other stories, was up and coming. It was a
Speaker 3: real up and comer. He was the Kendrick of his
Speaker 3: time in the world of ancient alien folklore. And look,
Speaker 3: when you read Chariots of the Gods, which is a
Speaker 3: good read, it is very much not accurate. It is
Speaker 3: very in my opinion, speculative, if I'm being diplomatic. When
Speaker 3: you read this kind of stuff, you will see a
Speaker 3: narrative suggesting that all of the works of modern human
Speaker 3: society are broken remnants of a much more evolved and
Speaker 3: sophisticated civilization from the stars. This is where you see
Speaker 3: like the pictures of old stone carvings, woodcuts, you know,
Speaker 3: that appear to depict UFOs or visits from godlike entities.
Speaker 3: The issue with the dropa stones is and this is
Speaker 3: why I love that you brought up jd Vance. Okay,
Speaker 3: so jd Vance had love the guy or hate the
Speaker 3: guy has been targeted by a disinfo campaign, the idea
Speaker 3: being that beat me here, Paul, he latex glove that
Speaker 3: was tucked into a couch, that was tucked into a couch, right,
Speaker 3: you call it double fiefee right there?
Speaker 2: Wait? Is that real?
Speaker 4: A fife is an improvised sexual implements. One could argue, yeah,
Speaker 4: And one could argue that a glove combined with a
Speaker 4: couch would be it would be a double yeah or
Speaker 4: maybe now maybe maybe when their powers combined.
Speaker 5: It's so the idea Here's why this is a great
Speaker 5: comparison that we've made here because the original story about upholstery.
Speaker 2: Intimacy. Wow, I walked down for that one. That was good,
Speaker 2: That was very diplomatic. Thanks the idea here, uh for JD. Vance.
Speaker 3: It came from a tweet that sounded very authoritative. It
Speaker 3: said this is from Hillbilly Elegy here. Yeah, exactly, and
Speaker 3: credit to our our buddy Miles from Daily's Eye Geys.
Speaker 3: Miles Gray pointed out how excellent that misinformation was and.
Speaker 4: That it wasn't it was reported by a seemingly reputable source.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, yeah, and then.
Speaker 4: And then repeated by other seemingly reputable because it appeared
Speaker 4: to be credible, right, And most people don't read the
Speaker 4: books that they claim to, you know that they claimed
Speaker 4: to sit.
Speaker 3: Uh, that's just a fact of the modern day. And
Speaker 3: in this comparison with current political candidate JD. Vance and
Speaker 3: Couch Sex, we see we see the same story happening
Speaker 3: with the dropa Stones because the closer you look, the
Speaker 3: more the evidence disappears. Turns out there are no records
Speaker 3: of any of the archaeologists or any of the scholars
Speaker 3: mentioned in the original story except in that story.
Speaker 4: And Ben, I'd love to really quickly go back to
Speaker 4: the idea of the Dropeu just as like an actual facts,
Speaker 4: real civilization, because that's thing, right, like they were a nomadic,
Speaker 4: hurting society or civilization based in the Tibetan plateau. But
Speaker 4: I believe there were connections in the reporting saying that
Speaker 4: they were like of below average stature, that they were
Speaker 4: like pigmy or something like that. But that even isn't
Speaker 4: entirely accurate or accurate at all.
Speaker 3: No, Yeah, and we know, Look, we know a little
Speaker 3: bit from our episode on giants in an earlier evening.
Speaker 3: We know a little bit about the average human height. Right,
Speaker 3: some people in the world will tend to be taller
Speaker 3: than people in other regions. And the Dropka, as you said,
Speaker 3: are are a real people. They do live in Tibet.
Speaker 3: That the name translates to inhabitants of high pasture lands.
Speaker 4: Okay, you know there could only be one there are
Speaker 4: tractually obplicated highland directly. Can we also talk about the
Speaker 4: fact that I'm getting I'm just looking at some different perspectives,
Speaker 4: like maybe from like you know, Internet sleuthy types, redditors
Speaker 4: or whatever. Like A big question here in terms of
Speaker 4: like some things not passing the smell test is the
Speaker 4: idea that alone linguists could single handedly decode something like
Speaker 4: this in such a short period of time, when typically
Speaker 4: to decode ancient texts and languages and things like that.
Speaker 4: It'll take teams of academic departments, you know, can can
Speaker 4: take years. I mean it's sort of the equivalent of
Speaker 4: decoding a cipher where you don't have the key right.
Speaker 4: Like it's it requires all kinds of permutations and you know, calculations,
Speaker 4: and I mean, again, it's not my wheelhouse in my field,
Speaker 4: but that seems suspiciously easy, Like it was suspiciously easy
Speaker 4: to have done using the magnifying right.
Speaker 2: That's a beautiful point.
Speaker 3: Also, Uh, there is I love this Kaiser's so's a
Speaker 3: comparison because.
Speaker 2: There is no sum um.
Speaker 3: Nui, the translator that, to your point, had these amazing
Speaker 3: skills to decode an alien language. First off, sum um
Speaker 3: Nui is not a real Chinese name. You know, my
Speaker 3: Mandarin is rusty, but I can tell you it's not
Speaker 3: a real Chinese name.
Speaker 4: It's actually a company that makes coffee mugs.
Speaker 2: And was coming up with his yarn. He was just
Speaker 2: looking at stuff around the room.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's funny because I recently rewatched Usual Suspects.
Speaker 2: I did too, did.
Speaker 4: You I did? Yeah, and I thought it. I thought
Speaker 4: it held up marvelously.
Speaker 2: It does.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think I maybe mentioned this in the past,
Speaker 4: but I had occasion to visit with Kevin Pollack. He
Speaker 4: used to have a podcast us on our network, like
Speaker 4: right the Comedy, but he may still be on our network.
Speaker 4: But I would do his house with a colleague of ours,
Speaker 4: Doug Bottom, the lovely dude who helps us with audio
Speaker 4: and runs our audio department in LA and like hooked
Speaker 4: up dropbox for him and just it was the first
Speaker 4: time I ever was showing what a crow nut was.
Speaker 4: He like, got this box of pastries and he's like, here,
Speaker 4: have a crow nut. I'm like, what is this mystical
Speaker 4: pastry that you're handing me? Guy from the Usual Suspects,
Speaker 4: and man, that guy can act his butt off, and
Speaker 4: all of those Usual Suspects really put in a stellar performance.
Speaker 4: I think it's a real fun movie. But unfortunately that
Speaker 4: director is mega canceled. But the you know artist, yeah,
Speaker 4: he was the one having like, oh gosh, Brian Singer,
Speaker 4: he was having like.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's right.
Speaker 4: So that was his first big breakout hit. And it's
Speaker 4: still a great film, but not a good guy. I
Speaker 4: just have to put that out there. Still love the film,
Speaker 4: love everybody in it.
Speaker 2: And yes we know about the spacey stuff folks.
Speaker 4: Of course forgot he was yeah, yeah, sorry jes Louise.
Speaker 4: Are there any good people in Hollywood? Yes, Tom Baum,
Speaker 4: and please Tom Hanks. Please Tom Hanks. Don't come out
Speaker 4: as some sort of secret dexter actually dexter.
Speaker 2: Man. Tom Hanks is.
Speaker 3: I've never met him, he seems to approach I respect
Speaker 3: that his first great love is typewriters.
Speaker 4: That's right, and that he loves his embarrassing son Chet
Speaker 4: just as much as his.
Speaker 2: His non disappointing son call it so.
Speaker 3: I love that It's funny though, because to your to
Speaker 3: your example there if it turned out, and Tom, if
Speaker 3: you're hearing this, I hope you are not offended and
Speaker 3: take this in the spirit with which it is intended.
Speaker 3: If I heard that Tom Hanks had murdered a number
Speaker 3: of people over a period of years, my first question
Speaker 3: would not be something bad about Tom.
Speaker 2: They do deserve it, exactly, would be.
Speaker 4: It would be more of a dexter scenario. That would
Speaker 4: be immediately what my brain would turn to. Yeah, benevolent,
Speaker 4: you know what's the word, vigilante, serial killer?
Speaker 2: But no, we do love you. Talk the forest gout
Speaker 2: for the greater good exactly. Let's take a quick pause.
Speaker 4: Here, here a work more sponsor, and then come back
Speaker 4: with more discussion of the dropa stones.
Speaker 2: And we're back.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I don't know, Ben, I'm I think this is
Speaker 4: a fun pick just for like a kind of a conspiracy,
Speaker 4: an old conspiracy chestnut that does deserve a little bit
Speaker 4: of picking apart. But it's also we have to remind ourselves.
Speaker 4: One reason we love doing the show is that a
Speaker 4: lot of these stories, whether true or not, are fun
Speaker 4: to talk about, and we love good stories. And you
Speaker 4: know you mentioned Chariots of the Gods, right, Chariots of
Speaker 4: the Gods. So is that book published with the presumption
Speaker 4: that it is true or is it kind oflative in
Speaker 4: its nature? Like, yeah, what the line is on stuff
Speaker 4: like that when it comes to publishing fact VI fiction?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is, at least when it first came out
Speaker 3: and I read it, it was published as though it
Speaker 3: is one hundred percent on the line of nonfiction. We've
Speaker 3: got a guy just saying, hey, look at this, look
Speaker 3: at these pictures. Here's my interpretation of this evidence. And
Speaker 3: then they play the if then game, right, so they
Speaker 3: kind of branch out on the what ifs, and it
Speaker 3: was not ever it was not ever depicted by the
Speaker 3: author as though it were fiction. We also know that
Speaker 3: the news agency cited in all the publications about the
Speaker 3: dropa Stones, the original Asian news outfit doesn't exist.
Speaker 2: You can't find it.
Speaker 3: The story just kept getting published and republished with these convenient,
Speaker 3: true sounding citations, and along the way, as we always
Speaker 3: say in folklore, people kept adding their new pet conspiracies.
Speaker 2: But they're a little spin on it.
Speaker 3: And there has never been a Beijing Academy for Ancient Studies.
Speaker 3: There are no records of the original Chinese archaeologist who
Speaker 3: has cited all the stories that feature these folks. Also
Speaker 3: do a thing that can help you discern fact from fiction.
Speaker 3: When a person's name is spelled one way in one
Speaker 3: version of a.
Speaker 2: Story that always gives me pauses.
Speaker 3: In slightly different way in another. You know, when it's
Speaker 3: like bold nown or something, and then Noel Brown into
Speaker 3: two stories claiming, you know this guy has the ability?
Speaker 2: What's a superpower? You want? Autism? It's a joke. SpongeBob
Speaker 2: was recently discussed.
Speaker 4: Tom Kenny, the voice of SpongeBob, was asked by a
Speaker 4: young autistic fan whether SpongeBob was autistic and he replied,
Speaker 4: of course he is, and that's his superpower, just like this.
Speaker 4: It was a really sweet thing to say. And I
Speaker 4: mentioned it to a mutual friend of ours and she replied, obviously,
Speaker 4: is that news?
Speaker 2: But I just thought it was really sweet that he
Speaker 2: said that. Yeah, shout out to Casper.
Speaker 3: And this is okay, So if someone if you're reading
Speaker 3: a story that claims an amazing thing, and in one
Speaker 3: version of the story it's Bowl Down and in another
Speaker 3: version of the story it's Noel Brown, and there are
Speaker 3: a couple of extra you know, Shyamala and plot twist
Speaker 3: added to make it juicier than you know, this story
Speaker 3: is suspect the photos that this Austrian engineer appears to
Speaker 3: have taken. The weird thing is those photos are genuine,
Speaker 3: or at least there are stone disc that do exist
Speaker 3: with a hole cut in the center, just like a record,
Speaker 3: and there are double spirals on those disc But dude,
Speaker 3: they're not from aliens. They're from a human group that worshiped.
Speaker 4: Snakes, okay, like, which is even weird snake god Glican.
Speaker 4: Perhaps I just know what's his name, Alan Moore, the
Speaker 4: Bearded wizard of comics. Yeah, supposedly worships a stone snake god.
Speaker 4: And I don't remember if he made it up or
Speaker 4: if it's a story classic Alan accurate. Yeah, like has
Speaker 4: an interesting fella. I have a I want to pop
Speaker 4: back really quickly to the idea of like fact versus
Speaker 4: fiction and publishing, and like, it's almost similar to the
Speaker 4: argument that is being really put front and center with
Speaker 4: the whole baby reindeer thing. It's like, is it based
Speaker 4: on a true story or is it a true story?
Speaker 2: And then that language ultimately matters. It made me think
Speaker 2: of the book.
Speaker 4: Holy Blood, Holy Grail Ah Yes, which is like again
Speaker 4: would be presented by the author, which is we actually
Speaker 4: interviewed his daughter way back if you go into the archive,
Speaker 4: Michael Bagent in addition to Richard Lee and Henry Lincoln,
Speaker 4: but we interviewed Baigent's daughter, if I remember correctly, that's
Speaker 4: quite a few years ago. But it purported to have
Speaker 4: a some information, or at least it laid forth a
Speaker 4: kind of theory about, you know, certain secret societies and
Speaker 4: the providence of Jesus and Mary Magdalene and the sacred
Speaker 4: royal bloodline that Mary Magdalene was.
Speaker 2: The mother of.
Speaker 4: And the book was largely like crapped on hardcore by
Speaker 4: historians and you know, scholars of this type of history.
Speaker 4: But one of the writers had this to say, Yeah,
Speaker 4: I guess all of them maybe collectively released us in
Speaker 4: a statement, but they compared what they were doing in
Speaker 4: the book to the reporters who uncovered the Watergate scan
Speaker 4: and they have this to say that only through speculative
Speaker 4: synthesis can one discern the underlying continuity, the unified and
Speaker 4: coherent fabric which lies at the core of any historical problem. Okay,
Speaker 4: it's interesting, it's interesting like this, but I think it's interesting.
Speaker 2: It's well put.
Speaker 4: They go on to say that to do so, one
Speaker 4: must realize that it's not sufficient to confine oneself exclusively
Speaker 4: to facts.
Speaker 2: It is a slippery slope. I think speculation. Again, that's
Speaker 2: a lot of what we do here on the show.
Speaker 4: But at the end of the day, with an utter
Speaker 4: absence of facts, is speculation enough? And are you really
Speaker 4: just kind of spinning your own wheels?
Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
Speaker 3: We've run into it through the course of our careers together,
Speaker 3: you know, Like I remember I would send some crazy
Speaker 3: story and say we should do this, and Matt and
Speaker 3: you would I remember you guys texted me one time.
Speaker 2: I think it was.
Speaker 4: The oh, the very weird cursed record story we did
Speaker 4: Uh for sorrow Bread our short lived radio theater company.
Speaker 2: I can't even and nolded all the production on this.
Speaker 2: I want to do more of that. That's so fun.
Speaker 4: Now that I've got all the beet boob machines here,
Speaker 4: I love to just like live improv a crazy spooky synth.
Speaker 2: Let's make it happen. And now check that out, folks.
Speaker 3: We do, we have done, and we'll do more fiction
Speaker 3: on stuff they want you to know. But to that
Speaker 3: excellent point about well put bs, I remember when you
Speaker 3: and Matt had to sit down with me and to
Speaker 3: ask me, hey, how much of this story is true?
Speaker 3: Because it just it sounded plausible enough, right, It's based
Speaker 3: on an urban legend, et cetera. Gosh, I'm just I
Speaker 3: really love the production on that one.
Speaker 2: Man, Oh, I appreciate it. I'm gonna go revisit that.
Speaker 4: But it also makes me think of some things that
Speaker 4: we've experienced in pop culture too, where it's like, again
Speaker 4: based on a true story, this is a true story.
Speaker 4: The marketing behind say a Blair Witch project situation where
Speaker 4: it's put out kind of almost like we're not saying
Speaker 4: it's a documentary exactly. They may well have, though I
Speaker 4: can't remember. It was just a really interesting role out
Speaker 4: for a film. A lot of people went to see
Speaker 4: it thinking it was real, and that they thought it
Speaker 4: was real is what made it as scary as it was.
Speaker 4: And maybe you could argue that if you go in
Speaker 4: watching it knowing it's just a movie, it's just a
Speaker 4: bunch of shaky cam and people crying in the snotty
Speaker 4: nose and stuff.
Speaker 2: But like if you really.
Speaker 4: Thought it was real and you were seeing a genuine
Speaker 4: artifact of someone being hunted by a malevolent spirits or
Speaker 4: witch or.
Speaker 2: Whatever, hell yeah, that's creepy.
Speaker 4: But the barrier to entry is much lower at that true,
Speaker 4: and I feel like that applies to the type of
Speaker 4: stuff as well.
Speaker 3: Ooh perfect, did you hear that, fellow conspiracy realist. This
Speaker 3: is how you bring a show back, right, This.
Speaker 2: How you bring it back to the thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's Friday, we're having a good time. Our buddy
Speaker 4: Matt's on vacation. We're riffing and raffing it up a
Speaker 4: little bit. But no, I really enjoyed this topic this
Speaker 4: is red meat for us, and I think we're like,
Speaker 4: you know, to use another like dogs with bones. I
Speaker 4: wish was real too, And that's where we come from
Speaker 4: with a lot of these discussions, is from a place
Speaker 4: of that old, moldered thing. We want to believe, you know,
Speaker 4: and we we do. We're not parade peers, you know,
Speaker 4: we really we have a deep love for this stuff.
Speaker 4: And I think we all want some Matt magic to
Speaker 4: exist in the universe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just so uh And for anybody who's wondering, my
Speaker 3: pal Nole's favorite superhero is probably Doctor Strange.
Speaker 2: Correct, Doctor Strange, Love Doctor Strange. Okay, don't get it twisted.
Speaker 3: The fact that we want there to be magic in
Speaker 3: the world. We want these extraordinary things. That is part
Speaker 3: of why it is important for us to think critically
Speaker 3: about things that are not true. And sadly, it looks
Speaker 3: as though the drop a stone case is another instance
Speaker 3: of a story that sounds intriguing and just plausible enough
Speaker 3: for people to repeat it ad nauseum without really diving
Speaker 3: into the facts. Obviously, we want all this stuff to
Speaker 3: be real. A single genuine case would absolutely make our day.
Speaker 3: A single genuine ancient alien case we could probably retire.
Speaker 4: Absolutely just you know, I'd probably drop that out of
Speaker 4: sheer joy. But what we do get though, whether or
Speaker 4: not these things are true, is that they leave a
Speaker 4: lasting impact on culture. Whether or not they actually were
Speaker 4: real or not, it almost doesn't matter sometimes. And we
Speaker 4: also often talk about how oftentimes the mystery is cooler
Speaker 4: than the solution, like you know, with the Georgia guidestones
Speaker 4: and things like that, where it's like, let let's leave
Speaker 4: a little mystery in the world. But what I was
Speaker 4: referring to specifically with this one is a video game
Speaker 4: that I believe I referenced on a video we did
Speaker 4: a while back and we were kind of talking about
Speaker 4: books they don't want you to read or whatever. It's
Speaker 4: a game called Outer Wilds, and it involves these ancient
Speaker 4: artifacts and stones left behind by an alien an ancient
Speaker 4: alien civilization, and you're this explorer and you have to
Speaker 4: collect all of these all this data and decode these
Speaker 4: messages and stuff. And I'd be very surprised if the
Speaker 4: creators of Outer Wilds, which is a really smart, weird
Speaker 4: little game, an indie type game, didn't know about this
Speaker 4: story influenced by it in some way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, That's a fantastic point because what we're talking about
Speaker 3: here is folklore essentially, and the purpose of folklore is
Speaker 3: to somehow explain the world. But we also see in
Speaker 3: the story of like everything from Jack and the Beanstalk
Speaker 3: to the Drope of Stones, what these stories really tell
Speaker 3: us is more about ourselves, sort of like how any
Speaker 3: good disguise is an autobiography of the person wearing the disguise.
Speaker 4: It's fair, it's a little weird for a Friday, but
Speaker 4: or oftentimes in political rhetoric it gets really heated. If
Speaker 4: someone's talking a lot of smack it oftentimes they're accusing
Speaker 4: the other person of what they themselves are guilty exactly.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think I read it one time in a
Speaker 3: pithy way. Every accusation is a confession.
Speaker 4: It can be if you're not careful, or if you're
Speaker 4: just kind of like throwing spaghetti at the wall and
Speaker 4: seeing what sticks.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Have you ever thrown spaghetti at a wall? No, but
Speaker 2: I really need to get on that. It seems like
Speaker 2: a lot of fun.
Speaker 4: But there are easier ways to see if your spaghetti
Speaker 4: is al dente.
Speaker 2: You don't necessarily have to throw it at the wall.
Speaker 3: I did it one No, I did it a couple times,
Speaker 3: just to see, but just see what, just to see.
Speaker 3: But that is our show for this evening. The drop
Speaker 3: of Stones, as far as we can tell, are a hoax.
Speaker 3: That does not mean other stuff is not true. We're
Speaker 3: grateful that you have tuned in here. We'll be back
Speaker 3: very soon with some more explorations. Disappearing billionaires, Nazi whispers,
Speaker 3: genuine conspiracies join us in separating the fact from the fiction.
Speaker 3: We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 2: Find us on the Internet of the handle conspiracy Stuff,
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