Speaker 1: Now really, now really. This is another episode of Really
Speaker 1: No Really, the podcast that makes Peter Tilden and Jason
Speaker 1: Alexander examine things that have us say to each other or.
Speaker 2: Perhaps on our own under yeah the Wolves, Really no really,
Speaker 2: that's exactly and this one shed launched right into this one.
Speaker 1: I saw as long as kind of fascinating this This
Speaker 1: both intrigues me and freaks me out a little bit,
Speaker 1: but yes, by all means. So it started.
Speaker 2: I've always been fascinated about like the steam in New
Speaker 2: York City.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because if any major city, you know, there's not
Speaker 1: only is there steam coming out of the sewer grades
Speaker 1: and the manholes, but there's occasionally you'll see like a pipe,
Speaker 1: like a like a yeah, you know, a FLEXI show.
Speaker 2: So I started looking at that stuff and then I
Speaker 2: see this headline it's manhole Explosion Season in New York
Speaker 2: City and a beautiful song. I think, I think that's
Speaker 2: a Trials act. And so then I start looking that
Speaker 2: up and I go, what's that about. From two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine to twenty eighteen, Yeah, there were four thousand
Speaker 2: dispatches by the Fire Department New York for manhold explosions.
Speaker 2: And that's among the forty five thousand emergency manhold incidents.
Speaker 2: So this is when a manhole literally blows off up
Speaker 2: out of the street and lands god knows where as
Speaker 2: it did in the Bronx and flipped the Cadillac escalade,
Speaker 2: blew out windows April ten, twenty twenty two. Three explosions
Speaker 2: in Times Square February eighteenth to in Midtown. But not
Speaker 2: to be left out, Yonkers has got their own. So
Speaker 2: I go, what the what.
Speaker 1: If the Free Prise Yonkers isn't breaking the record?
Speaker 2: What is going on underground? So I started looking that
Speaker 2: up a bit, and what you find out is there
Speaker 2: are two hundred and sixty four thousand manholes in New
Speaker 2: York City just waiting, just waiting for their moment.
Speaker 1: Manholes. That's not even potholes, that's not manholes.
Speaker 2: One hundred and five steam pipes. Then you got ninety
Speaker 2: eight thousand miles of electrical.
Speaker 1: One hundred and five of those pipes that come up
Speaker 1: out of the ground where I say we sometimes see
Speaker 1: steam underground.
Speaker 2: And by the way, only one hundred and five, but
Speaker 2: big ones, and they go for miles and miles and miles, okay,
Speaker 2: and on and on and on, and the amazing thing
Speaker 2: about New York City and what's underground is I didn't
Speaker 2: realize the sewage pipes used to dump raw sewage directly
Speaker 2: into the Hudson.
Speaker 1: You didn't realize that until wait, wait did you stand? In?
Speaker 2: What year did they stop? When?
Speaker 1: Do you think they stop recently?
Speaker 2: Yes? Yeah, like twenty twelve, nineteen eighty six, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: And by me, how I know that my apartment was
Speaker 2: a block from the Hudson.
Speaker 1: I am well aware. They used to put a ross
Speaker 1: sewage in the Hutston, and.
Speaker 2: Then people used to it was an annual race swim
Speaker 2: around Manhattan Island in the Hudson. Yeah, and a lot
Speaker 2: of those people got sick.
Speaker 1: I bet I'll tell you something else. No pipes in
Speaker 1: this I once went into the boat pond in Central
Speaker 1: Park for a commercial.
Speaker 2: I got appatitis. I was just in not even in
Speaker 2: the Hudson. So yeah. And the other thing. The other
Speaker 2: thing is some of these pipes under New York City, Yeah,
Speaker 2: pre date the Civil War.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, yeah, I'm.
Speaker 2: Sure wouldn't put in there when we're here.
Speaker 1: I don't think the pipe was wooden.
Speaker 2: So oh they have, wouldn't they have wooden? Wooden pipes?
Speaker 2: Under New York that they had to convert that. They
Speaker 2: started with, Oh yeah, what's a wooden and we'll talk
Speaker 2: about that. We have a guest on, So we wanted
Speaker 2: to get a guest on who knows what's under cities
Speaker 2: not just New York, but under cities in Italy, there's
Speaker 2: all kinds of in France, there's like catacombs and skulls.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of stuff down there. You got the
Speaker 2: under guy that you don't know, so I got the
Speaker 2: under guy underdogor Don Waldman is joining us. Don is
Speaker 2: one of TV's most trustworthy and adventurous history enthusiasts.
Speaker 1: He writes here, by the way, that's not a big category.
Speaker 3: It's not a category at all.
Speaker 2: Category already you're gonna see not a lot of respect.
Speaker 2: But we love you're you're really something else.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Posted hosted a lot of stuff on the Travel Channel,
Speaker 2: and a lot of it has to do with history,
Speaker 2: mysteries in the museum, monumental mysteries, greatest mysteries, beyond the Unknown,
Speaker 2: dark tales, mysteries for even me, mystery mysteries. So, but Don,
Speaker 2: you've traveled all over the world and you've seen it all.
Speaker 2: Can we welcome to the upon.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. It's really really an honor to
Speaker 3: be here.
Speaker 1: Now, don't get crazy.
Speaker 2: You're a handsome and powerful man, don and we appreciate.
Speaker 1: It, all right.
Speaker 2: So if you can, why Bob wi, how creepy is
Speaker 2: it just in general going under cities?
Speaker 3: Is that is that it depends on the space, you know.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: This basically comes from the fact of the matter that
Speaker 3: in old times it was a lot easier to knock
Speaker 3: something down and bury it instead of as we do today,
Speaker 3: carry it away, you know, And so you end up
Speaker 3: with layers upon layers of civilization in these older areas
Speaker 3: of the world that are still there, you know, and
Speaker 3: when you go down and look for them, you find
Speaker 3: those older versions of whatever city you're standing in. This
Speaker 3: is a very very lively subject that goes from you know,
Speaker 3: ancient man up until modern times. Because the same thing
Speaker 3: happens today. We build foundations that we build upon, we
Speaker 3: dig things with tunnel boring machines. It's just this huge
Speaker 3: realm underground that once you get access to it and
Speaker 3: start looking around, it just kind of blows your mind
Speaker 3: about the incredible innovations, the determination of human beings to
Speaker 3: do what they do and create the structures that they
Speaker 3: need to do, you know, to build their buildings.
Speaker 1: And are you talking about like, I'll focus on New
Speaker 1: York for a moment, so when we talk about an
Speaker 1: underground city, are we talking about the real I realized
Speaker 1: that there are working subway tunnels and they're working.
Speaker 3: Exactly piety utilities.
Speaker 1: But is there also, like what I find remnants of
Speaker 1: old New York New York?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yes. There's a very famous story from the
Speaker 3: nineteen eighties. His first name is Bob lovely Man, who
Speaker 3: took up a radio contest. There had been a legend
Speaker 3: about a masonically built like the Masons, building a tunnel
Speaker 3: under Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, and this tunnel had been dug,
Speaker 3: you know, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, but it
Speaker 3: had been sealed off by modern times. And this radio guy,
Speaker 3: sort of crazy shockjock guy, challenged people this new world
Speaker 3: of urban exploration, go find this tunnel and we'll give
Speaker 3: you a prize. And this guy named Bob, who was
Speaker 3: a guy in his twenties at the time, decided to
Speaker 3: take this upon himself and he found out where this
Speaker 3: tunnel was, and it indeed had been buried with regular
Speaker 3: old sand. But he and his pals dug up a
Speaker 3: manhole and then started digging, and they found the tunnel,
Speaker 3: and it had been sealed off with concrete or a
Speaker 3: cinderblock wall in World War One times because of their
Speaker 3: worries about the German espionage and so forth. But once
Speaker 3: you broke down that wall, you got through to what
Speaker 3: was probably three blocks long of old train tunnel, like
Speaker 3: old big brick, big stone tunnel that was down there
Speaker 3: and at the end of which it had also been collapsed.
Speaker 3: They suspected that the original train that went to Long
Speaker 3: Island out to the farmlands of Long Island was buried
Speaker 3: in there as well. There's even rumors of all kinds
Speaker 3: of crazy stuff back there. It was very much used
Speaker 3: by murder inc As a place to deposit dead bodies
Speaker 3: and so forth, and that had been buried in that
Speaker 3: had been covered up until Bob found it, and I
Speaker 3: went down with him the first time that he was
Speaker 3: able to go back as an older man. He was
Speaker 3: very ill, and he knew that it was really a
Speaker 3: funny day. He knew the manhole. He says, I know
Speaker 3: that all the gas guys don't worry about it. He
Speaker 3: brings his own little cones and circles the cones in
Speaker 3: the middle of a regular day, and we said, public,
Speaker 3: can we really do this? And it's all being shot
Speaker 3: veritee with my cameraman and everything, and we pry open
Speaker 3: the manhole, pretending we're gas guys, and we go down
Speaker 3: in this place. He hadn't been in for maybe twenty years,
Speaker 3: and we climbed down and sure enough you'd walk in
Speaker 3: and there is this enormous tunnel that no one ever
Speaker 3: goes there and nobody ever knows is even there, and
Speaker 3: it was just an incredible thing to see. So that
Speaker 3: was one of many many pieces of infrastructure that are
Speaker 3: in New York. What you mentioned before, Peter, the idea
Speaker 3: of these wooden pipes. They just dug one up not
Speaker 3: too long ago. The original Aaron Burr water system that's
Speaker 3: underneath the Financial District still, which is a whole big story.
Speaker 2: I mean, and don the water pipes or gravity, right,
Speaker 2: So they like tilted in a way that they had
Speaker 2: the run down.
Speaker 1: Even he doesn't how long could that run?
Speaker 3: So it was a story. It's it's Aaron Burr, the
Speaker 3: creepy guy of history, right, and he basically conned. I
Speaker 3: mean this is wait, my friend, I'm sorry, and very well,
Speaker 3: and very well. Aaron Burke got a contract from the
Speaker 3: New York City, from New York City to deliver fresh
Speaker 3: water for the first time. And you know, they were
Speaker 3: suffering in those early days of the eighteen hundreds, and
Speaker 3: he guaranteed that he would deliver two hundred some plus
Speaker 3: outlets through this new system of water that was going
Speaker 3: to be pumped from the Bronx River. And he got
Speaker 3: this whole thing contracted, and he built the system and
Speaker 3: it was all made of hollowed out wooden logs that
Speaker 3: were all connected, and that was all down there. And
Speaker 3: so then he just took the money and ran because
Speaker 3: in the contract he had that he could use the
Speaker 3: money for his own banking purposes. So it was a
Speaker 3: total con job. Only a little bit of the water
Speaker 3: was ever delivered, not from the Bronx but from from
Speaker 3: the old source that was there in the East village.
Speaker 1: Did not see that, and.
Speaker 3: And he took that money and he started his own
Speaker 3: company called the Manhattan Company, and that Manhattan Company eventually
Speaker 3: becomes Chase Manhattan. So that's the bank chat and oh
Speaker 3: my god, there my first.
Speaker 2: Really and the connection in the show fraud and everything
Speaker 2: else that is in the Hamilton show. I would love
Speaker 2: to see Manuel rap about's make.
Speaker 1: A wooden pipe get together with him? Stuck go then
Speaker 1: I don't know right?
Speaker 2: Your water is not there? And either am I? So wow?
Speaker 2: And that continues today? Is it true? There? Okay, I'm
Speaker 2: going to hit you with a couple of things. The
Speaker 2: river down down downstream underground there is called snot stickles
Speaker 2: because it's underground, snotstickles because it's got back to Is
Speaker 2: that accurate?
Speaker 3: Oh god?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And the little lag tights that come from the from
Speaker 3: the drips through the ceiling and stuff, all the limestone
Speaker 3: that comes through. It's gross discussed.
Speaker 1: So you go down? Are you in like a has man?
Speaker 3: Sometimes ends on who I'm interviewing and what we're doing
Speaker 3: and what we got away with. You know, this is
Speaker 3: the realm of urban explorers who've been doing this forever.
Speaker 3: There's a guy named Steve who's been very famously doing this.
Speaker 3: He's now a professor of city history and stuff. You know,
Speaker 3: there have been people who've been, you know, going through
Speaker 3: this realm forever, and we sort of jumped on their
Speaker 3: coattails doing this as a TV show. It all started
Speaker 3: with Istanbul. You know, Istanbul was very famous in the
Speaker 3: nineties and early aughts because they started building a subway
Speaker 3: tunnel in Istanbul and modernizing the city, and all they
Speaker 3: kept doing is having to stop all this construction because
Speaker 3: they've run into yet another archaeological, amazing find. You know,
Speaker 3: the famous Basilica that they that they opened up was
Speaker 3: because of that subway construction. And it was at that
Speaker 3: time that people that I work with, this great production company,
Speaker 3: one of whom is a Turk, said hey, this seems
Speaker 3: like a really good idea for a show, and I
Speaker 3: said yep, and so off we went. And it turns
Speaker 3: out the entire world is full of these kinds of
Speaker 3: mysteries that are that are revealed as soon as you
Speaker 3: dig down below and find them. The best of all
Speaker 3: of them is an Acco do you know Aka, it's
Speaker 3: also called Okra in northern Israel. It's around Haifa, oh yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 3: in insane place where you have the original Crusader castle,
Speaker 3: which is there from like twelve hundred and it's real
Speaker 3: like it's the hospitality of the French guys, and they've
Speaker 3: got flirt delis and all that that was buried by
Speaker 3: the Ottomans who took it over, of course, the Muslim
Speaker 3: who came over and they buried in sort of symbolically
Speaker 3: as well as practically built their city on top of that.
Speaker 3: And then the Brits come along later on and build
Speaker 3: something else on top of that. And so it's this
Speaker 3: multi level city that they just started digging up in
Speaker 3: the nineties. And you can go all the way down
Speaker 3: and that's tourism and that's great and it's clean and easy.
Speaker 3: But all around the city are people with their own
Speaker 3: little basement entrances into this place, so they're very dangerous.
Speaker 3: But you can literally go into people's basements and then
Speaker 3: go two levels down and be sort of pushing things
Speaker 3: aside and crawling into the top of a doorway into
Speaker 3: a twelve hundred year old you know, from the year
Speaker 3: twelve hundred, into this, into this castle system. It's incredible.
Speaker 1: And are these are are these? Is there a danger
Speaker 1: to going in?
Speaker 2: Very much?
Speaker 3: So, very much so. I was not allowed by that
Speaker 3: archaeologist that day who took me down. It was a
Speaker 3: he's the head of the whole thing. He said, no,
Speaker 3: I'm going in there. You're not going to do it.
Speaker 3: Because the gases that get released, you know, the mold
Speaker 3: and everything else that gets into your into your system
Speaker 3: is very dangerous and it's amazing. It's simply amazing that
Speaker 3: I did not get sick in some major way from
Speaker 3: the bat caves that we did and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: All the the guano and things like that, the rats
Speaker 3: and everything. It's it's disgusting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, don you gotta start spending some time above ground.
Speaker 2: So let's finish with New York real quick. More people.
Speaker 2: I've heard stories about mold people. I read about a
Speaker 2: guy who met them old people and the woman who's
Speaker 2: living down there for twenty eight years, and they hear
Speaker 2: from other people. Yeah, it's real, total bs. It doesn't
Speaker 2: it doesn't exist.
Speaker 3: So yes, I you know, to a degree, I think
Speaker 3: it does. I think it wasn't as sensational as that
Speaker 3: was reported to be. I mean what that about was
Speaker 3: really like Times Square and the unused tunnels of the
Speaker 3: subway system. There's a lot of those. I mean down
Speaker 3: in the village there's that new uh, you know, the
Speaker 3: the underground version of the high line is being developed
Speaker 3: into a into a park, you know, where they use
Speaker 3: the original subway tunnel down by city Hall and stuff.
Speaker 3: And I don't even even know how far along that is,
Speaker 3: but it's a great idea. But there are all kinds
Speaker 3: of tunnels that never get used again. I've toured a
Speaker 3: lot of them up in Boston, for example, the Boston
Speaker 3: sub with a t system has a ton of dead
Speaker 3: end tunnels that are just there for storage and stuff.
Speaker 3: And you know, you can imagine how that works. You know,
Speaker 3: they dig these things and then say, oh, never mind,
Speaker 3: we're not going that way, and that that space just
Speaker 3: doesn't get attended to. A lot of these public spaces,
Speaker 3: and I mean public by you know, back into kingdoms
Speaker 3: and so forth, are just there because public money was
Speaker 3: available to do them. But then it runs out, and
Speaker 3: so nobody goes down there ever again until somebody finds
Speaker 3: it and discovers it and does it a television show
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 2: And where about sunken boat? I mean, are here there
Speaker 2: are seventeenth century boats underground in there. I think under
Speaker 2: New York there was a room, a mirrored room that
Speaker 2: they found somewhere underground.
Speaker 3: They found, uh, you know, when they did the World
Speaker 3: the original excavation for the first foundation of the World
Speaker 3: Trade Center, they found boats down there because that had
Speaker 3: been the original you know, shoreline. So much of Manhattan
Speaker 3: shoreline is is you know, backfill. It's all filled in
Speaker 3: as recently as the seventies, I guess. But so you're
Speaker 3: gonna find inevitably things down there that that are from
Speaker 3: the early Dutch days and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: It's it's growing.
Speaker 1: And it done. That's interesting. So I did not know
Speaker 1: that about the actual shoreline of New York. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: New York Island has been enhanced through My god.
Speaker 3: There used to be a beach, you know on where
Speaker 3: the where the World Trade Center is or that whole
Speaker 3: what's it called the you know with.
Speaker 1: A Freedom Plaza.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that whole area with the where American Express used
Speaker 3: to be in all that, Yeah, that's all filled in.
Speaker 3: That's a that's an extended shoreline. And so the original
Speaker 3: shoreline is under where the World Trade Center was sitting
Speaker 3: in her Freedom Tower, I guess is. And so all
Speaker 3: that is is extended, you know.
Speaker 1: So are they well, is that a viable technology?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I'm.
Speaker 1: Putting in the car before the horse. All the reports
Speaker 1: are is that the water levels are rising around Manhattan
Speaker 1: and that particularly lower Manhattan is in grave danger of
Speaker 1: being underwater in the next decade to two. Is do
Speaker 1: we have the technology to keep raising sort of the
Speaker 1: structure of the lower part of the.
Speaker 3: It's just money, you know, That's what that That's where
Speaker 3: the government comes in, and how much are they going
Speaker 3: to spend to raise that that shoreline even more than
Speaker 3: they already did. You go to Prague, for example, You
Speaker 3: walk around Prague. The Jewish quarter of Prague is twelve
Speaker 3: feet higher than the original city, and you can go
Speaker 3: into many many buildings down there and find where they
Speaker 3: actually lifted up the city. You stand next to the
Speaker 3: Tiber river in Rome. Everybody walks along that river. Well,
Speaker 3: that huge wall behind you is the raised city. It's
Speaker 3: thirty feet high. So that new city, the modern city,
Speaker 3: sits on top of that, that whole underground, which is
Speaker 3: the original spaces of each level of that city. When
Speaker 3: they raised it higher and higher, that's typically what is done.
Speaker 3: It's more of a practical measure just for flood control,
Speaker 3: mostly of those old cities, because they were constantly getting
Speaker 3: flooded out, So of course that's what they would do.
Speaker 3: But that's an old technique for human society, is just
Speaker 3: to raise the level of ground, and.
Speaker 2: They cannot do that to a place like Venice, Italy
Speaker 2: because there is no that's.
Speaker 3: A whole different thing.
Speaker 1: It's like a floating Yeah, there's so much water.
Speaker 3: I mean it's so much. It's just open water. That's
Speaker 3: the whole idea that they didn't have streets, they just
Speaker 3: had canals, and so it's a different kind of challenge.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, don we're also seeing now across the country is
Speaker 2: major structured big buildings. Yeah, there are sinking, sinking buildings
Speaker 2: that are tilting buildings there sinking. What's and with your
Speaker 2: knowledge of what's under stuff? Yeah, you go, uh oh,
Speaker 2: there are kind of comes under there. There's movable grounds. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a fault line. I would get out of Apartment three.
Speaker 1: Scene now I know. Well, I mean this is this
Speaker 1: is happening all the time.
Speaker 2: I start researching where they are and you go, oh wow,
Speaker 2: this is not a one one.
Speaker 3: Where are you thinking of what's the what's the area?
Speaker 2: Well, the one they said even in the marina out
Speaker 2: here they're concerned about some of those buildings starting to sink. Well,
Speaker 2: the one that they had to knock down and the
Speaker 2: one's next to them in Florida, there's something. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: because of rising sea levels, it's also altering even inland.
Speaker 2: What's going on?
Speaker 3: My wife and I just bought an eighteen hundred cottage
Speaker 3: on Martha's Vineyard that the engineer just explained to me
Speaker 3: that the foundation is rotting away and and that's why
Speaker 3: the porch is tilting that way, you know, downwards. And
Speaker 3: I said, what do you mean it's rotting away? And
Speaker 3: he said, well, that's every building in the world eventually,
Speaker 3: is that happens to So that's why you have to
Speaker 3: go under and repoor foundations every hundred years or so.
Speaker 3: So it happens to everything, and it's it's just a
Speaker 3: matter of time.
Speaker 1: So do I always own it?
Speaker 2: When?
Speaker 3: Why didn't I do the right investigation before?
Speaker 2: People?
Speaker 1: Don't you mind the house for My inspector said, good
Speaker 1: to go, And.
Speaker 2: I know, but this man spends half his life underground.
Speaker 3: It doesn't have a basement. That's the problem.
Speaker 2: So of all the cities, and I know this is
Speaker 2: tough because I'm looking at the list of Boston, Jerusalem,
Speaker 2: Hoshiman City, roam l A. What was the most eye
Speaker 2: opening event?
Speaker 3: I would tell you that my favorite story of underground
Speaker 3: is Ethiopia. I really uh learned so much from it
Speaker 3: and had an incredible cultural experience going there. It wasn't
Speaker 3: dangerous then. It's now dangerous to go to where we
Speaker 3: went to because there's been a huge war there over
Speaker 3: the last couple of years. But it's a It's a
Speaker 3: place called t Gray and to Gray is the northernmost
Speaker 3: province of Ethiopia. Ethiopia being an amazing country that everyone
Speaker 3: should try to get to in their lifetimes. It's an
Speaker 3: incredible place. But to Gray is on your way to Egypt.
Speaker 3: You know, it's that whole kind of historical world up there,
Speaker 3: and the Tigrans like the Egyptians who were so good
Speaker 3: with stone, obviously, and this place becomes very interesting actually
Speaker 3: because of Christianity. It's a weird thing, but the Ethiopian
Speaker 3: Orthodox Church is one of the most intense fundamentalist churches
Speaker 3: in the world, and that's because of the Nine Saints.
Speaker 3: They were called the Nine Saints were these Christian prophets
Speaker 3: who came down from our missionaries. I guess who came
Speaker 3: down from the Eastern Orthodox realm of Christianity in you know,
Speaker 3: after the Council of chalcetup In. I think four hundred,
Speaker 3: and there was a big conflict in that early time
Speaker 3: of Christianity. Was Jesus Christ a divine god from the
Speaker 3: beginning or was he a man who became divine? It
Speaker 3: sounds like who cares at this point, But back then
Speaker 3: it was really important. And so the church up above,
Speaker 3: you know, up in Turkey, Istanbulant Constantinople went with the
Speaker 3: with the Duophicite, I think it's called, and the Monophysites
Speaker 3: had to go away, and so they went down to
Speaker 3: Ethiopia out of them and they started what was called
Speaker 3: the rock carved churches. And these are in places like
Speaker 3: Lollibella and further north into Gray. They are incredibly complicated
Speaker 3: engineering that's done from carving the rock that's underground, and
Speaker 3: there's in Lollibella, this is a World Heritage Site, very famous.
Speaker 3: There's eleven rock carved churches that will blow your socks
Speaker 3: off as you walk around inside of them, and they're used.
Speaker 3: This is an active religious site. People make pilgrimages to
Speaker 3: this place. But literally below ground level you're seeing a
Speaker 3: two story tall building that is intricately carved inside and
Speaker 3: out of the stone that was there only once, like
Speaker 3: they had to make it perfect from the from the
Speaker 3: top to the bottom. As they went, it didn't like
Speaker 3: there's no way to it other than that. And you
Speaker 3: just can't believe what you're seeing. It's so astonishing that
Speaker 3: when we did this, I don't know it was two
Speaker 3: thousand and eight, I guess it was. I thought the
Speaker 3: next year there would be Neon signs and Americans would
Speaker 3: be flying over. I just couldn't. I can't. I still
Speaker 3: can't believe that I tell people this and they don't
Speaker 3: know about it. It's the most gobsmacking place I've ever
Speaker 3: been in my life.
Speaker 1: Wow, I just want to talk to Peter for a second.
Speaker 1: Don't take a sip of coffee or something. I was going,
Speaker 1: Did you hear the terms and the dates? This guy's
Speaker 1: throwing up? This guy's there. I think he read some
Speaker 1: of those books behind him. I thought you just got
Speaker 1: a TV guy, you know, like a front man, a beard.
Speaker 1: I didn't know you got like a real is a
Speaker 1: real guy sorr like Mike Rowe who just dabbles, you know,
Speaker 1: milk milks so hoarse.
Speaker 2: For a second.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got he's going down in places where no
Speaker 1: one should go and learning terms and phrases couldn't. Would
Speaker 1: I go down? Would I go down there?
Speaker 3: You would love it? I'm not kidding that, Yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: I actually am fascinated. I went through. You probably know
Speaker 1: this tunnel. There's some sort of ancient aqueduct in Jerusalem.
Speaker 1: I believe it is. That it's still functioning today and
Speaker 1: you can tour through.
Speaker 3: A city of David through it. The city of Davis.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, the City of David aqueduct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's where you get your carbonated water.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 3: That tunnel goes down into the into the famous pond
Speaker 3: where apparently Jesus you know, did one of his miracles.
Speaker 3: And it was also near where Solomon was anointed, you know,
Speaker 3: on the rock that he was anointed on. I mean
Speaker 3: it's amazing. Yeah, you know what.
Speaker 2: I get nervous in the Budapest subway. So I can't
Speaker 2: even imagine going where you went. And I'm looking at
Speaker 2: you going. You're probably one of the luckiest guys that
Speaker 2: you take on those challenges because you've gone just about everywhere.
Speaker 3: I have had a lot of travel.
Speaker 2: I gotta ask you a lesser, Okay, So here's this
Speaker 2: is almost embarrassing to ask, but I got to get it.
Speaker 2: Out of the way. All of these cities always do,
Speaker 2: especially in New York. Alligators or crocodiles are below. Have
Speaker 2: you ever seen in any city now? Because it's always
Speaker 2: a kid throughout the thing flushed it and now they're
Speaker 2: down there. Ever see one?
Speaker 3: No, never there. They don't exist.
Speaker 2: They're definitive.
Speaker 3: There are, of course those stories of people's pythons and
Speaker 3: all that, but I have not myself seen one. I
Speaker 3: did wrestle an alligator for another show that I did,
Speaker 3: but that's another story.
Speaker 2: Whoa, whoa, whoa? Hold on a second down?
Speaker 1: You alone? Are you and a couple of guns?
Speaker 2: And we don't a hobby you're sitting is called we
Speaker 2: haven't lunched. Let me here's go wrestle. I'll be back
Speaker 2: in twenty How.
Speaker 1: Does that happen?
Speaker 3: It was an alligator wrestling quote unquote place you know,
Speaker 3: down in the outside of Miami where you can go
Speaker 3: and do it yourself if you want. But you have to,
Speaker 3: by the way, insurance forms to fill out.
Speaker 2: Is it a one armed guy who's just come on
Speaker 2: in it?
Speaker 3: Very expensive insurance form as a matter of fact.
Speaker 2: So wait, wait, do they say there's your It's just
Speaker 2: like a rodeo. You go, okay, give me twenty bucks.
Speaker 1: There's your alligator now, so.
Speaker 3: You can't do it. But if you, if you were
Speaker 3: doing a television show that promoted them, they would help
Speaker 3: help you figure out how to do it. I sat
Speaker 3: on the back of an alligator and I carefully grasped
Speaker 3: his snout, holding his his mouth shut. This was a
Speaker 3: twelve foot alligator, I suppose, and then I slowly bent
Speaker 3: it backwards and I kissed it on the lips and
Speaker 3: then put it back. And that was the stunt. And
Speaker 3: it was observed and advised upon by it a so
Speaker 3: called expert who was letting me.
Speaker 2: You know what happens when I do that with an expert,
Speaker 2: something bad happens. And every time I've ever tried anything
Speaker 2: parasailing anything in my life, here's what I hear. Never
Speaker 2: saw that happen before. Yeah, no longer.
Speaker 1: Way back all the nice things I said about there,
Speaker 1: because this guy thinks alligators have lips too, But I'm just.
Speaker 2: Going on underground. It's like nothing for him. Kiss they
Speaker 2: have lips the top of the head. You don't know
Speaker 2: what's amazing to me about those like out here, you
Speaker 2: go to a carnival and they have the ride as
Speaker 2: this big and insurance of that. But in Florida it's
Speaker 2: one of those alligator wrestling places. That's the most insane
Speaker 2: thing you can do, and you're just begging for for problems.
Speaker 3: A lot of that in Florida. You know, it's it's Florida.
Speaker 2: That's probably that's in a retirement, by the way, which
Speaker 2: is really odd.
Speaker 1: Non I want to go. I want to get back
Speaker 1: to just one other thing, because we touched on it briefly,
Speaker 1: but I don't know that I heard an absolute answer.
Speaker 1: So are there generally are there segments of a population
Speaker 1: that are are living in the space God, yes, even
Speaker 1: because they're homeless or they're no.
Speaker 3: I'm glad you asked. Over in Turkey, in the center
Speaker 3: part of Turkey is a place called Cappadocia, very famous.
Speaker 3: I mean this place you can take a balloon ride
Speaker 3: in the morning. It's it's a you know, a big
Speaker 3: tourism area. But the fairy towers they call them, are
Speaker 3: creations due to erosion. It's a long story, but they're
Speaker 3: amazingly pointed. Places with with that are easily dug out
Speaker 3: by hand. I mean not easily, but you know, you
Speaker 3: can do it. And so over centuries they have dug
Speaker 3: these places out and they're sort of hollowed out and
Speaker 3: and they were traditionally homes for people to live in.
Speaker 3: Over time they've been squatted in and and and sort
Speaker 3: of civilized as a modern police people have stoves and
Speaker 3: stuff like that in them. And and it's it's very
Speaker 3: much not the place you want to live, you know,
Speaker 3: in our lives, but it is a place of shelter
Speaker 3: and warmth for people. And and I've seen it all
Speaker 3: over the place, you know. It's it's the.
Speaker 1: Equivalent you know, like snels.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the equivalent of any kind of you know, putting
Speaker 3: a tent next to the highway ramp or something like that.
Speaker 3: But but in this case, it's an ancient shelter that
Speaker 3: was used for people like that. Of course, nobody really
Speaker 3: wants to live like that, but it's done to that end.
Speaker 1: Because Peter and I are probably going to discuss this
Speaker 1: a little bit later. Do you see a future where
Speaker 1: instead of building up, we start building.
Speaker 3: Down already happening. I mean, it's a no brainer that
Speaker 3: that's where this all goes to. When climate becomes too
Speaker 3: difficult and when congestion is too much and the population
Speaker 3: grows even more. It will be worldwide. It will be
Speaker 3: more easily done than it is now. Elon musk Is
Speaker 3: still is already talking about building highways underground. Of course
Speaker 3: you can do it. The tunnel boring machine is a
Speaker 3: well trod territory. Now it's engineering that works all over
Speaker 3: the place, and we can talk about that. The new
Speaker 3: technology is mostly tunnel boring machines that work, you know,
Speaker 3: if you stand on it. First of all, I'll explain.
Speaker 3: There's a big rotating blade that's bigger than you are tall.
Speaker 3: It's a you know, two people tall, and it's circular,
Speaker 3: and it turns and it pushes through the earth, and
Speaker 3: it literally carves as it goes, and that material is
Speaker 3: carried out by a conveyor belt. The general machines I've
Speaker 3: been on have been three hundred, you know, one hundred
Speaker 3: to more feet long, and so you're seeing all that
Speaker 3: dirt go away as you're standing there. You're also watching
Speaker 3: the wall move. I mean that's literally how fast this
Speaker 3: thing goes. Inches are moving past you at any kind
Speaker 3: of moment, and and after a day they can do
Speaker 3: five feet a day. And so it takes you know,
Speaker 3: weeks only to dig a huge tunnel. And so that
Speaker 3: is happening all over the world and already has in
Speaker 3: other ways. The sand you know, the sand hogs have
Speaker 3: been doing it under New York for a century or more.
Speaker 1: So, yes, and it doesn't destabilize the ground, not at all.
Speaker 3: In fact, it's it's that is not even a factor
Speaker 3: because nothing that deep matters. And also it's circular, so
Speaker 3: that's so perfectly you know, and just geometrically or whatever.
Speaker 2: Forces amazing, amazing, Hey, before we go, you know, the
Speaker 2: Steven Spielberg movies are always find these tunnels with skulls
Speaker 2: and stuff. Yeah, and and in catagoms and a lot
Speaker 2: of skeletons, miles of skeletons.
Speaker 3: There are like that, Oh my god, yes, yes, everywhere,
Speaker 3: I mean pre Columbian stuff. All around in South America,
Speaker 3: you'll find all kinds of burial sites underground. And you know,
Speaker 3: you realize, I don't you know, I don't go to
Speaker 3: these places unless I'm working. You know, the average person
Speaker 3: isn't going to want to spend a lot of effort
Speaker 3: and time and money to find out of the way places.
Speaker 3: So out of the way places exist everywhere, and they're
Speaker 3: barely visited but by locals. So if you go, like
Speaker 3: I have, to these places, you're astonished at how much
Speaker 3: stuff exists in these caves and on shelves and oh
Speaker 3: there's another skull. You kind of get bored of it, frankly,
Speaker 3: because there's just so much. And you're talking about hundreds,
Speaker 3: if not thousands of years of people just throwing stuff
Speaker 3: away and putting it away or burying it or anything
Speaker 3: like that. It's it's both moving and like, oh god,
Speaker 3: we've been here for a while. You know, it's a
Speaker 3: astonishing factory.
Speaker 2: And Moscow done Moscow? Were you welcomed underground or was
Speaker 2: that tough to do?
Speaker 3: Moscow was interesting. This was the two thousand and eight,
Speaker 3: so we were not, you know, doing what we are
Speaker 3: doing now in terms of we were getting along in
Speaker 3: those days. Nonetheless, there was still a lot of obvious
Speaker 3: Cold War tension in the air. Several experiences like we
Speaker 3: did Ukraine, which had a lot of the Russian population
Speaker 3: against us there, and we were just trying to tell
Speaker 3: heroic stories about Soviet Soviets and World War Two. I'll
Speaker 3: tell you it's another one of those things that every
Speaker 3: American should see is the Moscow Moscow subway system. It's
Speaker 3: just amazing and the complete opposite of the New York
Speaker 3: subway system. It's beautiful, it's clean, it's extraordinary and grand.
Speaker 3: It has sculptures and art and it just blows your mind.
Speaker 3: And it's and it works. You know, it's incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they don't have Broadway.
Speaker 3: They don't have broad I know where you're going, and
Speaker 3: I feel the same way. There's a human quality to
Speaker 3: the New York City subway, which I really like. And
Speaker 3: you know, oh it's human.
Speaker 2: But you don't see somebody their nose out on the
Speaker 2: Moscow subway, which I did in New York.
Speaker 1: It is every time it's painted by him.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I didn't realize leving in Philadelphia that when
Speaker 2: you go to New York and take a subway that
Speaker 2: you don't use tissues. You just hold one nobody.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 2: They also don't have bathrooms on the cars. But so
Speaker 2: you know, there's this based between the cars.
Speaker 1: I've seen it. I've seen it does.
Speaker 3: Then there's the Philadelphia subway system.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, hey hey hey, hey, yeah, okay, before
Speaker 2: you go, what's under Philly my hometown?
Speaker 3: Not too much good? You know, you got the Old
Speaker 3: City and then uh, you know, I did the water system.
Speaker 3: I will tell you that the Schookle underneath of the
Speaker 3: underneath the Art Museum right behind there one of the
Speaker 3: original water systems of the War of America and a
Speaker 3: real product of you know that a colonial engineering. Ben Franklin,
Speaker 3: I'm named for Ben Franklin. My middle name is Franklin.
Speaker 3: So I'm very proud of Philly in those regards. I'm
Speaker 3: even Quaker, believe it or not. There you go, oh yeah, hey.
Speaker 1: Don what's what's the one you haven't gotten to that
Speaker 1: you will?
Speaker 3: You know what I haven't done Brazil enough. You know,
Speaker 3: there's a ton of stuff in Brazil that's extraordinary, and
Speaker 3: in general South America. You know, I think that that's Argentina,
Speaker 3: all of that area. For some reason, we never really
Speaker 3: got down to doing enough of that stuff. We did
Speaker 3: a bit in Peru which scratched the surface, no pun intended.
Speaker 3: It was one of the most leading Stanford guy, a
Speaker 3: Stanford archaeologist. That's one of my favorite parts of the
Speaker 3: job is that I run into these scientists who have
Speaker 3: been working for you know, their entire careers and their
Speaker 3: legends and their worlds, and there they are, you know,
Speaker 3: into their up to their gills and whatever project they're doing,
Speaker 3: and nobody ever knows they're there except their students, their
Speaker 3: graduate students. And suddenly you meet this man who is
Speaker 3: revered in his world and knows everything about everything. It's credible.
Speaker 3: If you have a minute more, I need to tell
Speaker 3: you the story about what this one archaeologist found in
Speaker 3: northern Peru. If you go to Peru, you generally go
Speaker 3: to the southern part of Peru. That's the Inca Trail,
Speaker 3: that's all the big, glamorous Machipichu and all that sort
Speaker 3: of thing. The northern part of Peru is less known,
Speaker 3: and that's the Chimu civilization. And it's an an equally grand,
Speaker 3: amazing thing. And it was where an archaeologist who was
Speaker 3: working there, a Peruvian, was called by a pizzeria owner
Speaker 3: in this beachside surfing town a few years ago and said,
Speaker 3: we're finding bones in this empty lot. My kids keep
Speaker 3: coming back with them, and my dog brought back a skull.
Speaker 3: I think there's something over there. And this archaeologist was
Speaker 3: very busy on his own work down the road, just
Speaker 3: a mile down the road, on this major excavation, and
Speaker 3: he ignored the call for three different calls. He told me.
Speaker 3: The story is, we did this on TV. And so
Speaker 3: we met him in this town and he walked me
Speaker 3: to that vacant lot, which is where he discovered the
Speaker 3: largest child sacrifice in the world and in history that
Speaker 3: has ever been discovered, some two hundred plus children who
Speaker 3: had been all killed in one particular event. And the
Speaker 3: reason that they had been sacrificed was because there had
Speaker 3: been a huge amount of rain had come in. And
Speaker 3: they know this from the flooding and from the geology
Speaker 3: that they were able to excavate, and that this sacrificial
Speaker 3: event happened because the political elite had to prove to
Speaker 3: the common people that they were going to do something
Speaker 3: about this terrible suffering that they were all doing. All
Speaker 3: the crops were being killed and everything else. So they
Speaker 3: pooled all these kids from around the whole region and
Speaker 3: came in and slaughtered them, and one fell swoop, and
Speaker 3: so you find all these holes in the ground and
Speaker 3: all these bodies one after another over this whole period
Speaker 3: of time. That is like unbelievable in this world to
Speaker 3: go into and see and understand how ancient man dealt
Speaker 3: with things dealt with, but even practically politically, and it's
Speaker 3: a fascinating historical understanding of mankind through the underground, through
Speaker 3: the spaces below. Wow, I could Yeah, I don't Wow,
Speaker 3: I could talk and talk about this. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I really fascinated.
Speaker 2: You are thrilled to have as you're invited to every
Speaker 2: dinner party we ever have. The most interesting but the
Speaker 2: funniest thing is when we go back to how we
Speaker 2: started the interview. Of course he's doing it in the
Speaker 2: basement of his house.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's where, But you know, it's also it just
Speaker 1: makes me think, I can't remember what I was talking to.
Speaker 1: Said that they they didn't want to They had the
Speaker 1: opportunity to buy a piece of property near a cemetery,
Speaker 1: and they said, I don't want to do that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I want to be I don't want to
Speaker 2: live where there's bodies buried. I went the planet Earth.
Speaker 2: Yeah we are, we're all building on the bones.
Speaker 1: Of you know, and the notion that if we just
Speaker 1: tunnel down a little bit. I mean, I'm fascinated because
Speaker 1: you were talking about doing found we probably have to
Speaker 1: do some foundation work on my house. And I'd love
Speaker 1: to know what's ten feet down under my house. I
Speaker 1: bet there's some really cool stare down there.
Speaker 2: I really thought what Jason was going to do was
Speaker 2: say have down one because I really need to. Who
Speaker 2: recommends about don you were? You're really a joy man
Speaker 2: and life must be Are you on the move all
Speaker 2: the time? Or does the family go it's enough with
Speaker 2: the underground.
Speaker 3: Now I'm I'm podcasting like you. I'm doing my underground
Speaker 3: in my basement like this, but no, it's a pause
Speaker 3: right now. I'm pitching a new series about this. I
Speaker 3: really believe in it. It's a it's an endlessly fascinating
Speaker 3: thing that that there's way more of than I can
Speaker 3: even tell you, uh to explore.
Speaker 1: So you know it's well, you know what you just
Speaker 1: where the series ever takes celebrities. I know Peter would
Speaker 1: love to go.
Speaker 2: Right, you know, going I went down to the amazing
Speaker 2: thing is And it's funny you ended with that story
Speaker 2: even though it's it's chilling. I didn't when we got
Speaker 2: you on. I wanted you because of what's underground and
Speaker 2: where you've been, what you've seen, But you hit us
Speaker 2: with that as the last story, and you go, oh wow,
Speaker 2: peeling away the layers underground also shows your decisions people
Speaker 2: may yeah sorry, politics at the time, the religion of
Speaker 2: the time, and how they lived, and it tells your history.
Speaker 2: Because you don't know our history, you're apt to repeat
Speaker 2: it so that it's a really unique perspective.
Speaker 3: Sorry for the downer story, but yeah, no, no.
Speaker 1: No textbooks and certain pints of the guys you really
Speaker 1: just erase that. That's fine, it doesn't exist.
Speaker 2: You don't exist on you were never here. As if
Speaker 2: you were never here. Thank well, you are joy, you
Speaker 2: really are a joy. Tell us what you're working on now.
Speaker 3: The podcast I do is called American History Hit. It's
Speaker 3: for history hit dot com and it's a it's a
Speaker 3: twice a week Mondays and Thursdays they release a new
Speaker 3: episode and it's deep dives on American history, which is
Speaker 3: my one of my great passions of life. So that's
Speaker 3: that's what I'm occupied on all the time these days.
Speaker 2: So you're looking for the o whows that people don't
Speaker 2: necessarily know.
Speaker 3: Underneath it's more of a one oh one course on
Speaker 3: on American history. It's like it's deep, I just did
Speaker 3: the right.
Speaker 1: The amazing how how people don't know the one oh one.
Speaker 3: Stuff I just did the right brothers I today, just
Speaker 3: a minute an hour ago, and I couldn't believe how
Speaker 3: little I knew about Orville and Wilbur Wright.
Speaker 1: Amazing. Orville was always on the left, wasn't He was
Speaker 1: always on the left.
Speaker 2: Never were belt I mean, we know this is our
Speaker 2: extra area of expertise because.
Speaker 1: Of his left hand through with his right hand.
Speaker 2: That was very strange and cursed like a sail.
Speaker 1: Unbelieve.
Speaker 2: By the way, Wilbur did most of the work. They
Speaker 2: don't know an it's gonna fly by itself was a
Speaker 2: big phrase of that's right. And do you know they
Speaker 2: were going to take advertising initially on the plane.
Speaker 3: Oh good, Yeah, I didn't know.
Speaker 1: I didn't include that.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Oh you missed it. That's what you
Speaker 2: need to I think pens Oil was may have been one.
Speaker 2: And also a pizza place. Yeah, always a pizza it's
Speaker 2: gonna be national. No, thank you. Yeah. By the way,
Speaker 2: they had their own troubles too getting the thing going,
Speaker 2: and that's it is a fact.
Speaker 1: No, thank you, professor, thank you, thank.
Speaker 2: You for telling me what that's my favorite part of.
Speaker 1: The trouble getting that.
Speaker 2: You know, that's why that's my favorite alleviation.
Speaker 1: Discovery of aviation wasn't a snap, It wasn't a slam
Speaker 1: dunk Wilver and all the time.
Speaker 2: Had had some use Peter and the professor or is
Speaker 2: that come first? Professor tilden't thank you. What I didn't
Speaker 2: know was we had shot a video. Brad Paysy shot
Speaker 2: a video on the outer banks. I'd never been there with.
Speaker 2: And what I noticed was I go, why aren't these
Speaker 2: houses new? And that's because those houses blow down for
Speaker 2: a couple of years. I mean they're gone, and they're
Speaker 2: building above ground and they try. They have ceilings. The
Speaker 2: roofs of those houses have a metal pole into the
Speaker 2: ceiling holding them down because if not, it's gonna blow in.
Speaker 2: That's the other thing. Don the places we move to
Speaker 2: like New Orleans.
Speaker 1: When I saw don't be pitching things, don't pitch a show,
Speaker 1: don't pitch.
Speaker 2: It's called don't move here.
Speaker 3: There you go. I like that.
Speaker 2: Yes see I'm blinking if you know some morse code.
Speaker 2: I'm blinking with my eyes that we'll talk later.
Speaker 1: Don the pleasure said, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you were, You are a wonderful. Well, we'll catch
Speaker 2: up with you again in another six months.
Speaker 1: You're kind of Okay, somebody else will be buried by that.
Speaker 2: He'll be underground again. We don't often, you know you.
Speaker 2: I have to say you. I make a lot of
Speaker 2: fun of you. I want you to stand you.
Speaker 1: Yep, do you? But you find the best people for
Speaker 1: our subjects. You really, you know what it was?
Speaker 2: He was hard to find people. And Laurie knows this
Speaker 2: because Laurier works for ass Off than David too. In
Speaker 2: today's world, you got to be really careful because you
Speaker 2: got to vet people because they come up and they
Speaker 2: present themselves as experts or whatever, and then you go, oh,
Speaker 2: you got them on. And that almost happened to me
Speaker 2: in micro dosing. You know, we're going down that path,
Speaker 2: and I went, I don't want somebody an ayahuasca guide
Speaker 2: because I don't know their agenda. So you go to
Speaker 2: the source. He is just fascinating and all of his
Speaker 2: stories are based on history, which makes it even that
Speaker 2: more interesting. We'll get to google him in a minute.
Speaker 2: But what's interesting is we started talking about the future,
Speaker 2: and I started. When I do these we research, you know,
Speaker 2: we start at a place and usually end up somewhere
Speaker 2: related to but bigger. And one of the headlines is
Speaker 2: the only way is down. Why underground urban development is
Speaker 2: happening and they're doing it a lot of places. Helsinki
Speaker 2: is one of them where they have an underground city plan.
Speaker 2: They haven't done yet, but they're starting to do the
Speaker 2: urban development there. Sydney is constructing tunnels. They're looking down
Speaker 2: in Montreal, big shopping complex that's already below the surface.
Speaker 2: And what they're looking at is they don't know that
Speaker 2: they can do whole cities that way because that's a
Speaker 2: lot of real estate, but real estate above ground is
Speaker 2: so big. But they have some cities now in Asia
Speaker 2: they're floating cities because if the sea levels are rising
Speaker 2: right and we're running out of room, you have floating
Speaker 2: cities and you can anchor them to shore with with bridges.
Speaker 1: All the city when you're constantly nauseous.
Speaker 2: I love it. That's not a bad thing. London underground
Speaker 2: underground is a pesticide free farm that they're doing in
Speaker 2: an old war bunker. Mexico City has a concept of
Speaker 2: pyramid shape constructions and stretches a full sixty five stories
Speaker 2: below the earth to do what to start building out
Speaker 2: actually for a habitat.
Speaker 1: O Why pyramid just because because they're doing the shape
Speaker 1: for or whatever.
Speaker 2: The low line which he was talking about in New
Speaker 2: York City. In Montreal, the largest subsradan complex in the
Speaker 2: world has been in use since the sixties and as
Speaker 2: a model for other cities, they got shopping centers, hotels,
Speaker 2: restaurants and metro Helsinki. Like I said, and then Laurie
Speaker 2: and I knew this because we were going to do
Speaker 2: an episode on a subtropolis. In Kansas City is below
Speaker 2: ground since nineteen sixty four. Sixteen hundred people work there.
Speaker 2: It's eleven hundred acres. They have part of the cloud
Speaker 2: because it's so secure down there, and because as climate
Speaker 2: controlled automatically you don't have to worry about is underground.
Speaker 2: They have all these movies, movie storage underground. There Amsterdam
Speaker 2: underground parking for bikes, and like I said, Singapore, I've seen.
Speaker 1: I saw the episode of Star Trek where they were
Speaker 1: people living underground and there were people living in the clouds.
Speaker 1: Nobody could live on the surface. They found a way
Speaker 1: to live in the clouds, and the people underground were
Speaker 1: not faring well. They wanted to be on the clouds.
Speaker 1: The machine more locking. They live in the whistle and
Speaker 1: they come up with those. Yes, all the underground people.
Speaker 1: They've never been happy down there. And you know why
Speaker 1: you can't get reception. You can't get You're constantly going
Speaker 1: can you hear me? Now? Can you hear me? Now?
Speaker 1: Trying to wash it? Where you going to walk the dog?
Speaker 1: Where is that gonna go?
Speaker 2: Point right? Yes?
Speaker 1: Yes, take the dog out. There is no out. There's
Speaker 1: only you're going to go up right every hour and
Speaker 1: you never see not seriously, but you do you what
Speaker 1: do they do for sunlight? We can't live with.
Speaker 2: There are some that they actually tunnel down where it's
Speaker 2: like a tube.
Speaker 1: They do that.
Speaker 2: That is one of the problems with.
Speaker 1: I'm not getting a tan under the solo tube. So
Speaker 1: you know what I wanted to ask, Am I getting
Speaker 1: my vitamin D in the solo tube? If I stand
Speaker 1: there rinsing, I think, can I say, honey, I got it?
Speaker 1: It's another minute I'm getting my vitamin D from.
Speaker 2: I wanted to do a solitube my haus. Does that work?
Speaker 2: It is? It leak?
Speaker 1: Doesn't lea We have two of them and it does.
Speaker 2: It really doesn't.
Speaker 1: I got to tell you it lights up a room.
Speaker 1: Can they do that with.
Speaker 2: A solo tube? That opens up to to get air.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure you have to investigation so much like
Speaker 2: Don Wildman, Why do I have to know? Investigate? Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm working on foundation stuff.
Speaker 1: You want me to know.
Speaker 2: Here's the things that they're talking about though in researching this,
Speaker 2: which is really interesting. Right now with all the flooding
Speaker 2: and the fires, we address them, and I think everybody
Speaker 2: will agree in incremental increment ways, we're going to do this.
Speaker 2: We're going to do that.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: We're not looking at like we need to move New
Speaker 2: Orleans three hundred miles because it's going to be unsustainable.
Speaker 1: Right. And also as the tornadoes and the hurricanes were
Speaker 1: starting to talk about become.
Speaker 2: More devastating, I started to talk about that we have to
Speaker 2: do that. We have to look at also fault of
Speaker 2: photovolc vault X, you know, the son they're thinking about
Speaker 2: nuclear again because our generation against it, because a three
Speaker 2: mile island, because cows is reading lamps. The next generation
Speaker 2: not so worried about it, and they think they can
Speaker 2: get nuclear under control, that it can be that and
Speaker 2: wind and photo of okay and all of that. It
Speaker 2: re envisioned in a new way. And remember we talk
Speaker 2: about AI and we talk about CHAT, GPT and all
Speaker 2: of that. They're talking about construction that does itself, with
Speaker 2: equipment that repairs itself, where every item would be a
Speaker 2: small and that's going to move us under that's going
Speaker 2: to move us further into another direction of how to.
Speaker 1: Live of unemployed.
Speaker 2: No, it'll be it'll be new employment, a new way
Speaker 2: to look at under.
Speaker 1: Well, how is it new employee?
Speaker 2: I don't know. Don't give me that job too. What
Speaker 2: do you whany you see you drag this into an
Speaker 2: area that makes me crazy. I liked when we were
Speaker 2: building underground. If it puts people to work with building people,
Speaker 2: we're gonna okay, guy, he said, the big drill, the
Speaker 2: big drill with the thing that takes a guy to
Speaker 2: work it. One of the when the stuff comes off,
Speaker 2: then all the garbage that dirt the.
Speaker 1: Rocks, somebody's got to.
Speaker 2: Stuff all that old school what how all the new
Speaker 2: stuff that you were scared about that, I'm not so
Speaker 2: scared about it. It's helping in medical and it's helping
Speaker 2: in Journalism's helping is going to be part of our future.
Speaker 1: So you know what that means? You know what all
Speaker 1: those unemployed people are going to start to do podcasting.
Speaker 1: They're all gonna be.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, they're doing it already. Everyone's done a
Speaker 2: podcast already.
Speaker 1: Basically everyone who's currently unemployed that is doing a podcast.
Speaker 2: I had a gig. You think i'd be doing this.
Speaker 2: I get a call once a week from a relative, going,
Speaker 2: you're not going to believe who's doing the podcast? Your
Speaker 2: cousin Leonard just starting. I hang, I just hang up now,
Speaker 2: so before we go and get Google. The one thing
Speaker 2: I didn't talk about is New York City has about
Speaker 2: two million rats. There we go. That's what we didn't
Speaker 2: talk about here in these places.
Speaker 1: I know there's two million rats down there because there's
Speaker 1: one million, one million rats.
Speaker 2: But New York City is not the number one city, No, Laurie,
Speaker 2: do you know what the city is the number one
Speaker 2: city for rodents, for rats? David?
Speaker 1: Do you know? I know? But you told me so.
Speaker 2: I won't give it away.
Speaker 1: I know previously. Oh yeah, it's cheating.
Speaker 2: Number one city. If you're listening, you can be proud.
Speaker 2: Number one. Boston, you're number one, Number two, Philadelphia, number three. Yeah,
Speaker 2: New York City. But you had you have a sense
Speaker 2: of what to do with the rats. That was unique.
Speaker 2: Because they got a rat zar.
Speaker 1: Well, here's the thing. And by the way, how do
Speaker 1: you apply for that job? We're on zip recruiter. What
Speaker 1: do you put in?
Speaker 2: Can you imagine? Okay, you're applying for the job and
Speaker 2: I'm the mirror. Yeah, so we'd like to what are
Speaker 2: your qualifications?
Speaker 1: I'm your guy, Maya, I'm your guy. First of all,
Speaker 1: I hate rats. They're always telling on you, you know.
Speaker 2: They're always what do we call it, ratting you out there,
Speaker 2: retting you out?
Speaker 1: I hate them. I hate them.
Speaker 2: So what would you do? What are your qualifications?
Speaker 1: First? What am I qualifications?
Speaker 2: What have you done? I got rid of a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff, don't you worry. I know how to get
Speaker 2: rid of stuff. Okay, all right, all right, don't ask
Speaker 2: me any questions about that part of my resume.
Speaker 1: But what would I do with the rats? First of all,
Speaker 1: we're thinking about it the whole wrong way, every buddy.
Speaker 1: For millions of years, we've been trying to get rid
Speaker 1: of the rats. Get rid of the rats, push them out.
Speaker 2: Pied Piper Hammeling, played some sort of flute, took them
Speaker 2: into the ocean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and what happened the next year? There was no
Speaker 1: piper and there was still rats. They can't get rid
Speaker 1: of the rats, but rats of You know why we
Speaker 1: can't get rid of them. They're very intelligent. They're smart.
Speaker 2: They're smart, and they can learn, and they can pass
Speaker 2: their learning down from generation to generation. So I say,
Speaker 2: put them to work. I listened to your podcast. We
Speaker 2: talked about a goldfish that could drive. If we can
Speaker 2: teach a goldfish to drive, we can teach rats to
Speaker 2: do anything.
Speaker 1: Nannies, right, pushing a carriage? Push a carriage, of course.
Speaker 2: Hey I just ordered pizza, right, del you go? Of course,
Speaker 2: traffic cops, we don't need people standing.
Speaker 1: The only thing these rats can.
Speaker 2: Find a landmine out in the field. You don't think
Speaker 2: they can read a light to come this way about?
Speaker 2: Go on, school bus driver. Let's put them to work.
Speaker 2: Here's the one thing that knocks you out there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they're not smart enough to avoid being in laboratories and
Speaker 2: having dissected. So you know what they are smart enough
Speaker 2: to do? Apply to Peter for that kind there, Googlehind.
Speaker 1: What do we got?
Speaker 2: Put the rats to work would be a unique plant?
Speaker 1: Put them?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, a few things.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: Number one, the original Manhattan shoreline at the at the
Speaker 4: southern tip of the island was at Pearl Street, about
Speaker 4: three blocks Inland.
Speaker 1: I know that street, yes, so really no, really, also
Speaker 1: places to wrestle gators.
Speaker 2: How do you do that? Really? How do you do that?
Speaker 1: The man is in Florida. If anyone's gonna know, they.
Speaker 4: Well, I do some moon lighting, but I didn't want
Speaker 4: to get into that today. But traditionally the the gator
Speaker 4: wrestling has been a spectator activity. But there is a
Speaker 4: place called Gator's Reptile Park where you can actually get
Speaker 4: in there for one hundred bucks and wrestle a.
Speaker 1: Gator worth every.
Speaker 4: Strangely enough, though, it's in Colorado, So there you go.
Speaker 1: Oh all right.
Speaker 2: You know what I always wonder about with those when
Speaker 2: you read that the guy went to Cluise with his
Speaker 2: wife and may have murdered a pursure of this is
Speaker 2: a perfect place to take your spouse. Let's do it again.
Speaker 2: Let's do it again all day on. It's two hundred,
Speaker 2: have a great time. Forget the hour. I'm behind the
Speaker 2: two hours team as a team, right, we already putted dolphins.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's fantastic. DA and I.
Speaker 4: Have a couple of statistics because we're talking about underground
Speaker 4: a phenomenon. So I thought, like, what are some of
Speaker 4: the more phenomenal structures that that we have and things
Speaker 4: that men have made underneath? Yes, we're a long underground tunnel.
Speaker 4: Is the Gothard base in the Swiss Alps that is
Speaker 4: thirty five miles.
Speaker 1: Under the mountain range? There?
Speaker 4: Wow, it's Yes, it's an incredible feat. But the largest
Speaker 4: man made underground structure ever built, guesses and.
Speaker 2: Guesses, the largest underground structure ever. It's gonna be some
Speaker 2: sort of cathedral like thing. I'm guessing, like a religious
Speaker 2: Is it a religious based structure.
Speaker 1: Of some kind? No, it is it? Is it a
Speaker 1: burial place structure of something? You're getting closer, you know,
Speaker 1: it would be great.
Speaker 2: It'd be great if it was a giant, giant, prehistoric
Speaker 2: man cave, like where a guy would just hang out
Speaker 2: to watch sports.
Speaker 1: You should have seen the flat screen on this.
Speaker 2: Yes, So where and where does it give us a hint?
Speaker 1: Where is it? China? Oh, it's in China. The largest
Speaker 1: underground structure is in China. And it is a.
Speaker 2: Gender neutral lushroom.
Speaker 4: You're never going to get it off because it was
Speaker 4: actually created by the Ming dynasty in the fifteenth century.
Speaker 2: So it's a giant room from ming vases. Ming vases
Speaker 2: it was.
Speaker 4: It's called and this is a very fancy name, the
Speaker 4: city water supply system.
Speaker 1: It's in Beijing, China. How big it is three.
Speaker 4: Hundred and thirty three thousand square feet and extends over
Speaker 4: thirty one miles in length.
Speaker 1: Jeez, what's it going for? What do you hear? The
Speaker 1: popular tourist destination? And here just one last one before
Speaker 1: before you get rid of me.
Speaker 4: The deepest man made hole is in the Kola super
Speaker 4: Deep borehole in Mermansk Oblast, Russia, of course. And that
Speaker 4: it's forty thousand, two hundred and thirty feet that's over seven.
Speaker 1: And a half miles down. Wow, it is.
Speaker 4: The deepest artificial extreme point ever ever done. And for perspective,
Speaker 4: to get to reach the Earth's core is three thousand,
Speaker 4: nine and fifty nine miles.
Speaker 2: So why did they do that? Why did they bore that?
Speaker 2: What was the intent?
Speaker 1: They were bored? Are you serious? They just said, David?
Speaker 2: Please? Like no, I just called David doesn't know the
Speaker 2: answer that.
Speaker 1: I believe it was a mining. I believe it had
Speaker 1: to do with mining, okay, like nuclear Waiste down there
Speaker 1: or something and pour some cementaly.
Speaker 2: You know what, in the future. It's really interesting. You
Speaker 2: were trying to get rid of waste and it is
Speaker 2: one of the things they're looking at doing, which is fascinating.
Speaker 2: So they were injecting it and they realized they could
Speaker 2: cause smaller, small earthquakes. Yeah, so they're now they're now
Speaker 2: playing with areas that get an eight point earthquake or
Speaker 2: ten point earthquake if they can start injecting its things
Speaker 2: into those areas to release some of the pressure in tension.
Speaker 2: So those areas will only get three or four point
Speaker 2: earthquakes and not eights anymore. Well, if they get one,
Speaker 2: well that's not a good then we're destroyed. But I'm
Speaker 2: just saying that they're looking at really, I mean, that's
Speaker 2: the this is the first technology where we play with technology. Well,
Speaker 2: we don't know what the possible rem We wouldn't have
Speaker 2: a hardline if you didn't like technology. You wouldn't have
Speaker 2: airplanes if you didn't like technology. Oh, I would have
Speaker 2: them because somewhere stifled.
Speaker 5: All right, Yeah, now, no, thank you everybody.
Speaker 2: Another episode, Googlehind, thank you, Laurie, thank you.
Speaker 1: Next week we go underground. Don Will is from way
Speaker 1: down down.
Speaker 2: By the way against our will. So thank thank you.
Speaker 2: Anything else we want to follow jation O Yes.
Speaker 1: Indeed, Ladies and gentlemen, if you like to follow us specifically,
Speaker 1: you can go to our website really no really dot com.
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Speaker 1: wait to see you then, really no really, thanks David,
Speaker 1: Thanks LORI, thank you really no really