Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Scarah Dowdy and I'm to bling a Chalk Reporting
Speaker 1: And today's topic is a very popular listener suggestion because
Speaker 1: who doesn't love underground cities. I mean, they're so mysterious.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the world that we want to hide
Speaker 1: from ourselves, if if we want to get really philosophical
Speaker 1: about it, sewerds, bones, all kind of scary, Yeah, kind
Speaker 1: of scary, kind of scary. I means, certainly if you're
Speaker 1: going to go into like comic book territories where the
Speaker 1: penguin lives the bad guy. Um, I don't want to
Speaker 1: go down there by yourself. But intriguing too, and I
Speaker 1: think that's why so many people have suggested this topic
Speaker 1: to us. And um, not too long ago, I actually
Speaker 1: edited an article on urban exploring by my freelancer, Julia Layton,
Speaker 1: and it was, you know, it covered the whole range
Speaker 1: of urban exploring options, what like exploring abandoned buildings, factories,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, but it was the underground spots
Speaker 1: that she mentioned, like these abandoned coal mines in France
Speaker 1: or the Denver International Airport, which has this crazy underground
Speaker 1: baggage handling labyrinth and all these New World Order conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: It was that kind of thing that really captivated my
Speaker 1: attention with that article. Yeah, so that's kind of where
Speaker 1: this idea came from, and we wanted to do a
Speaker 1: mix of cities. But interestingly, some of the listeners suggestions
Speaker 1: that we've gotten over the years have been kind of
Speaker 1: out of the ordinary, just as out of the ordinary
Speaker 1: as the as the Denver International Airport, the unexpected underground location, right,
Speaker 1: not the typical London Rome Paris lineup that you might
Speaker 1: expect if you hear about underground cities, though we will
Speaker 1: be talking about some of those two so fittingly, many
Speaker 1: of the suggestions seem to be inspired by personal experience,
Speaker 1: people who had seen these subterranean worlds on guided tours
Speaker 1: and wanted other people to know about them, and that
Speaker 1: seems like a good place for us to insert a
Speaker 1: little caveat here. While a lot of places will mention
Speaker 1: are open to the public and are safe to tour,
Speaker 1: unsurprisingly most underground areas are not. They can be dangerous,
Speaker 1: deadly and illegal. So just a disclaimer there, our little
Speaker 1: disclaimer before we start, we're actually even going to be
Speaker 1: mentioning a special police unit that tries to discourage exploration
Speaker 1: or trespassing, depending on which side of the law you're on.
Speaker 1: There um in one particularly famous underground city. But the
Speaker 1: first selection on our list is a truly ancient underground city.
Speaker 1: And if you've ever seen Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be visually familiar already with Petra. In the movie,
Speaker 1: it's the one of the buildings of Petra is the
Speaker 1: setting for the temple that holds the Holy Grail, and
Speaker 1: in the movie, the real life stone facade of that building,
Speaker 1: it's called the Treasury in real life, leads to this
Speaker 1: elaborate underground world. So it's probably not gonna be too
Speaker 1: hard for folks who've always seen the movie to imagine
Speaker 1: that there's an underground city connected to Petra. But um,
Speaker 1: that's not entirely the case. It's rather misleading, at least
Speaker 1: not when it comes to that Treasury. Yeah, when the
Speaker 1: when you when it comes to the Treasury building that
Speaker 1: really is mostly a facade with just a very small
Speaker 1: room carved out into the cliffs behind it that was
Speaker 1: once used as a tomb, but Petra as a whole
Speaker 1: definitely counts as an amazing underground city. It does the Nabatations,
Speaker 1: formerly a nomadic tribe, built in as their capital and
Speaker 1: what is today Jordan's, and though they were annexed into
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire in a d one o six, Petra
Speaker 1: thrived as a trading capital for hundreds of years after that.
Speaker 1: So the mountains made to the city defendable from attacks,
Speaker 1: and the soft rocks made it easy to carve and
Speaker 1: excavate underground areas in addition to creating an amazing water
Speaker 1: system pipes, reservoirs, etcetera that allowed for refruit to be
Speaker 1: grown in this arid region, plus uh gardens, baths, drinking
Speaker 1: water and allowed for the inclusion of those things as well.
Speaker 1: So all these pipes just carved right through rock. I
Speaker 1: think it might be um well, maybe not the most
Speaker 1: visually impressive part of Petra. Of certainly an accomplishment, but
Speaker 1: it was an unknown city to Westerners from the twelveth
Speaker 1: century Crusades until eighteen twelve when a guy named Johann
Speaker 1: Ludwig Burkhart came across it. It was, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like a story you would um read in a in
Speaker 1: a real Victorian sort of travel account almost you know,
Speaker 1: he was disguised as the Persian pilgrim came across these ruins,
Speaker 1: and well, obviously, like I just said, very visually impressive.
Speaker 1: You know, imagine soaring buildings carved into rock and all
Speaker 1: these diverse architectural styles peppered with enticing caves and underground chambers.
Speaker 1: For a long time, archaeologists just saw what was on
Speaker 1: the surface, you know, they just saw it as this
Speaker 1: very strange, very elaborate tomb town. I mean, the treasury
Speaker 1: that that we mentioned earlier is the prime example of that.
Speaker 1: This beautiful facade, but just a tiny room underneath, I mean,
Speaker 1: certainly not built for a thriving city, right, And it
Speaker 1: actually wasn't until the later twentieth century that the full
Speaker 1: scale of Petra started to reveal itself. According to a
Speaker 1: Smithsonian article by Andrew Lawler, some eight hundred caves have
Speaker 1: been identified to this point, somewhere tombs, others gathering spots
Speaker 1: or just places to escape from the heat, and a
Speaker 1: thriving surface level city also existed, with a six hundred
Speaker 1: seat theater. Roman style villas, including one that's been excavated,
Speaker 1: which contains an olive press and Pompey style frescoes, and
Speaker 1: these things obviously didn't survive intact, leading to that original
Speaker 1: sort of eerie impression that Petro was underground only exactly
Speaker 1: and in reality, as many as thirty thousand people probably
Speaker 1: lived in Petra at its height. But finally, you know,
Speaker 1: as a trading city, it really relied on lots of
Speaker 1: people coming through, and as new caravan routes developed and
Speaker 1: as the sea trade stole away some of the business,
Speaker 1: eventually the city fell into decline. Earthquakes didn't help matters either. Today, though,
Speaker 1: it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so an underground city
Speaker 1: that you can actually explore to a certain extent. But
Speaker 1: there's a lot left to explore, I mean a lot
Speaker 1: left for the professionals to explore, ed say. According to
Speaker 1: a Natural and Geographic article by Mahdi Miltstein, only fifteen
Speaker 1: percent of the site has been excavated, so find all
Speaker 1: sorts of new things. But Petra we started off because
Speaker 1: it really seems like an engineering marvel, I mean not
Speaker 1: just because of those beautiful thoughts, but all those caves
Speaker 1: carved deep into the rock, something that was clearly carefully planned,
Speaker 1: carefully executed over a long period of time. But the
Speaker 1: next entry on our list is the epitome of an afterthought,
Speaker 1: and it's a lot closer to home for us. It's
Speaker 1: actually Seattle, which was founded in the mid eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: and not exactly the best location as far as tidal
Speaker 1: flooding went. The city experienced major flooding problems right from
Speaker 1: the start, but it wasn't really bad enough for them
Speaker 1: to deal with the problem right away. But in the
Speaker 1: summer of eighteen eighty nine, a major fire burned the town,
Speaker 1: which was mostly would at that point, to the ground,
Speaker 1: and new building codes reasoned out the fire risks and
Speaker 1: ordered new construction to be done in brick or stone,
Speaker 1: but nobody really considered the flood issue still until many
Speaker 1: new buildings were already standing. It doesn't seem like the
Speaker 1: best time to figure out about the problem with that,
Speaker 1: especial when you're working in brick you're our stone. So
Speaker 1: finally those city engineers decided that to handle the flooding,
Speaker 1: they were just going to have to raise the streets.
Speaker 1: I mean, easy peasy, right, Not so much, But they
Speaker 1: started this massive undertaking in the nineties, and they did
Speaker 1: it by building these retaining walls that were just a
Speaker 1: few feet beyond the existing buildings, and then they would
Speaker 1: backfill between the walls and then pave the new raised
Speaker 1: surface as a road. This is the really crazy part.
Speaker 1: I mean, as as if that doesn't sound range enough,
Speaker 1: the city ran out of money before sidewalks could be completed,
Speaker 1: so in a lot of areas you ended up with
Speaker 1: this bizarre situation where you had a road with two
Speaker 1: deep channels running on either side. So if you wanted
Speaker 1: to cross the street, you might just imagine yourself walking
Speaker 1: out of a building. You're immediately face to face with
Speaker 1: a retaining wall, and then you turn walk in this
Speaker 1: little channel between the building and the retaining all until
Speaker 1: you got to a ladder. You would climb the ladder,
Speaker 1: according to Ken van Vechten in the l a time,
Speaker 1: somewhere as high as thirty five ft tall. I mean,
Speaker 1: don't buy too many supplies while you're out shopping, and
Speaker 1: then when you finally got to the top of the ladder,
Speaker 1: you could cross the street do it all again. It
Speaker 1: sounds like a chore, yeah, but I bet you stay
Speaker 1: in pretty good shape. Some vertical exercise from time to time.
Speaker 1: It took an entertainment tax on vice to raise enough
Speaker 1: money for sidewalks, though these weren't just backfilled like the streets. Instead,
Speaker 1: arches were built between the buildings and the retaining walls,
Speaker 1: with sidewalk roofs built on top. So for years people
Speaker 1: continued to use the underground storefronts and sidewalks until disease
Speaker 1: finally made it unsafe. And I think that is even
Speaker 1: stranger than the previous scenario I was describing that you
Speaker 1: would just have a two level sidewalk, essentially in two
Speaker 1: levels of storefronts. Yeah, it sounds more complicated to me. It, yes,
Speaker 1: you'd be I can imagine getting directions for a store
Speaker 1: and you're out on the street looking for it, and
Speaker 1: then you're like, oh, man must be in the lower level.
Speaker 1: Um okay. So Seattle, Washington certainly a strange entry on
Speaker 1: our list, and obviously, um the city's underground was the
Speaker 1: accidental result of handling a problem, certainly not anything the
Speaker 1: engineers set out to do. But the next entry on
Speaker 1: our list was an underground city that was very much intentional. Yeah. Actually,
Speaker 1: out of all the entries on this list, it might
Speaker 1: be the most legitimate underground city. So it's darren cooy
Speaker 1: You and it's in Turkey's historical Cappadocia region. Cappadocia has
Speaker 1: this really unusual terrain. Ancient volcanoes plus erosion has created
Speaker 1: strange conical mountains sometimes called fairy chimneys. And because like Petra,
Speaker 1: this region was once a trading hot spot, and because
Speaker 1: the rock is soft, it also has a lot of
Speaker 1: caves and underground areas which are perfect for avoiding looters
Speaker 1: and raiders if you are looking to do that from
Speaker 1: ancient merchant. So according to Travel Weekly, there are more
Speaker 1: than forty underground cities in the region, with darren coo
Speaker 1: You being the largest. It was discovered in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: three when a home renovation uncovered a hidden passage and
Speaker 1: it led to a thirteen story deep city with a
Speaker 1: room for up to twenty thousand people. Well with a
Speaker 1: series of rooms I mean just endless chambers and chambers
Speaker 1: and tunnels and passageways and and really not just living
Speaker 1: areas either. There were stables for livestock, line presses, storerooms
Speaker 1: I mean literally an underground city, numerous ventilation shafts to
Speaker 1: keep the city safe and and keep the air healthy
Speaker 1: and kind of ominously. Uh. These one thousand pound stone doors. Uh,
Speaker 1: they look like they'd be out of a cartoon or something,
Speaker 1: I mean, giant stone wheel. The apparently one person could
Speaker 1: move by himself, although they could only be moved from
Speaker 1: the inside only, so trying to keep somebody out of
Speaker 1: the underground city. Um. Most historians believe that this Darren
Speaker 1: cool you was built by Phrygians and about eight hundred BC.
Speaker 1: Others think it's older than that, in fact, much older,
Speaker 1: and was built by Zoroastians in this sort of Noah
Speaker 1: esque type undertaking to protect the chosen during a great disaster.
Speaker 1: And I checked out a History Channel segment on it
Speaker 1: and was even treated to some pretty fun theories. I mean,
Speaker 1: you've got to have amazing theory like this if you're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about underground cities, right, Uh, involving extraterrestrials,
Speaker 1: both as engineers planning the place and invaders who necessitated
Speaker 1: it being built in the first place. This reminds me
Speaker 1: of that South Park episode where they watched the History
Speaker 1: Channel to find out about the First Thanksgiving and it's
Speaker 1: all about extra terrestrials, but just an aside, it's regardless
Speaker 1: of who built it, it's a pretty impressive thing, and
Speaker 1: I definitely encourage you guys to look up a map
Speaker 1: of it. That sort of helps provide the scale we're
Speaker 1: talking about. I mean, if twenty people doesn't already do
Speaker 1: the trick. So the next city on our list is
Speaker 1: kind of the quintessential underground city, not only for its
Speaker 1: expansiveness but for its still unrevealed mysteries. It's Paris, which
Speaker 1: is filled with subway sewers, quarries, reservoirs, crips, and wine cellars.
Speaker 1: And once you look at a map of underground Paris,
Speaker 1: it's actually kind of amazing that the city doesn't just collapse,
Speaker 1: something that is actually sometimes kind of a problem. Has
Speaker 1: this disturbed me, Sorr, I learned about that. But Paris buildings,
Speaker 1: many of which are of course built of limestone, give
Speaker 1: a little bit of a clue about what's actually underneath Paris,
Speaker 1: or what used to be underneath Paris. More limestone of course,
Speaker 1: plus jeps them and a long time of the quarries
Speaker 1: were built far outside of the city, so it wasn't
Speaker 1: like there was a danger of massive stone buildings falling
Speaker 1: into empty quarries um. But eventually development caught up and
Speaker 1: new buildings would be placed over minds and quarries that
Speaker 1: had just been abandoned or filled with rubble, and nobody
Speaker 1: had a really good sense of where all this stuff
Speaker 1: was under the city and what was being built over it,
Speaker 1: and how stable everything was. And after the city's first
Speaker 1: major collapse in seventeen seventy four was followed quickly by
Speaker 1: a few other collapses, and Louis the sixteenth brought in
Speaker 1: an architect named Charles axel Mo to map the quarries,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out where everything was underground and come
Speaker 1: up with a plan to stabilize the city. Conveniently, though,
Speaker 1: this was around the same time Louie was ordering that
Speaker 1: paris Is overflowing cemeteries be emptied. And I went off
Speaker 1: on a research tangent on these gross cemeteries too. I mean, yikes,
Speaker 1: really really bad charnel houses, just rotten ball grounds of cemetery. Um.
Speaker 1: So they had a problem, all these all these bodies
Speaker 1: to deal with, what to do with with all the bones?
Speaker 1: You know, people couldn't live in these areas anymore near
Speaker 1: the cemetery. So the solution was to put them in
Speaker 1: some of the old tunnels. So that's how the Paris
Speaker 1: Catacombs came. About six million dead are interred within the
Speaker 1: Paris Catacombs. Um, I mean probably most folks know this already,
Speaker 1: but there of course not named in any way. They're
Speaker 1: not um grouped even as entire skeletons, just bone piles.
Speaker 1: Some of them are around one thousand, two hundred years old.
Speaker 1: Pretty amazing fact. Um. I do think it's noted what
Speaker 1: cemetery they came from though, so that's one little nod
Speaker 1: to their original burial spot. So that was the most
Speaker 1: famous result probably of GMO's work. But they also made
Speaker 1: a lot of progress as far as engineering and mapping
Speaker 1: the tunnels goes, and the departments set up to examine
Speaker 1: the tunnels still exists today. And just a side note
Speaker 1: here which might be a scary thought for a lot
Speaker 1: of people, there are still cavens, though there hasn't really
Speaker 1: been a big one since nineteen sixty one. The maps
Speaker 1: drawn by GIMMO also serve as the basis for underground
Speaker 1: exploration today by people who are known as catophiles. According
Speaker 1: to Neil Shay in National Geographic some of these cataphiles
Speaker 1: are casual explorers who enter stewers or old utility tunnels
Speaker 1: to paint or even just to hang out. Others who
Speaker 1: are actually trained explorers, who go as far as underground
Speaker 1: diving to examine unknown parts of the map, which sounds
Speaker 1: so terrifying. I mean, you're already underground, it's dark, their wrath,
Speaker 1: their roaches, and then you dive into a pit of
Speaker 1: black water. No thanks, yeah, I'll skip it. So to
Speaker 1: combat the catophile, Paris has a special police unit which
Speaker 1: we mentioned in intro. We did mention that, and and
Speaker 1: it's interesting too. The I think it's the habitation of
Speaker 1: these tunnels which make underground Paris so fascinating. You know
Speaker 1: that they're not just completely abandoned. Um. One of the
Speaker 1: most interesting points to me was that during the war,
Speaker 1: of course, some of these old quarries were used by
Speaker 1: resistance fighters, some were used as Nazi bunkers, um. But
Speaker 1: just for normal sort of pursuits too, I mean, not
Speaker 1: hunkering down. For example, farmers would grow mushrooms and them
Speaker 1: because you know, perfect dark, chili wet environment, good for
Speaker 1: growing your market mushrooms, you know, not too close to
Speaker 1: the catacombs. I hope. I hope not always watch your vegetables.
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess. So that's the lesson to this story. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's the one. So like Paris, New York City is
Speaker 1: another city that's really famous for its under round, its sewers,
Speaker 1: its subway and so on. But for this we're going
Speaker 1: to keep it really specific and talk about something called
Speaker 1: Track sixty one, which once symbolized the height of luxury
Speaker 1: in the city. It didn't start that way, though, No,
Speaker 1: it really didn't. The original Grand Central Depot was a
Speaker 1: as you would imagine, a large train station built all
Speaker 1: above ground, the station, the tracks, the train yard, the
Speaker 1: whole deal. But between nineteen o three and nineteen thirteen,
Speaker 1: according to Joseph Brennan and Columbia University, the railway and
Speaker 1: the terminal moved largely underground. You know, this massive construction project,
Speaker 1: which of course opened up all this valuable real estate
Speaker 1: at street level. So the Waldorf His Historia Hotel and
Speaker 1: one of the most famous luxury hotels out there for
Speaker 1: anybody who's not in the know already, was built on
Speaker 1: one of these auctioned off lots between nineteen nine and
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one, and it was built right above railway
Speaker 1: sidings underneath and and shortly for the hotel's construction, and
Speaker 1: this is an important note for for what's actually under
Speaker 1: the hotel. Some electrical buildings had stood on the site,
Speaker 1: and one of them had necessitated an underground loading platform
Speaker 1: that was located by the sighting. So it wasn't a
Speaker 1: train station, so to speak, but there was a platform
Speaker 1: that existed underneath underneath the Walldor Historia. So eventually the
Speaker 1: hotel repurposed this old platform for its guests who were
Speaker 1: lucky enough to have their own private railway cars. You
Speaker 1: could basically exit your car and be whisked up by
Speaker 1: elevator to the hotel. FDR notably used the secret entrance
Speaker 1: for campaign stop, and the station is now in disrepair,
Speaker 1: but it did have one last hurrah when Andy Warhol
Speaker 1: held his underground party. There not too many people with
Speaker 1: private rail cars these days, I guess. Nope, So a
Speaker 1: special train terminal sounds kind of nice, or a train
Speaker 1: station a private train station you're in private car, um
Speaker 1: it really sound is pretty lovely. But the next entry
Speaker 1: on our list is more on the disturbing dark side
Speaker 1: of underground life, and it's in Portland, Oregon. Of all places.
Speaker 1: Underneath Old Town and Chinatown you'll find shafts and tiny
Speaker 1: rooms and tunnels that all hint at a very dark
Speaker 1: maritime past that happened in the city in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: Ship captains would have trouble finding enough crewmen for these
Speaker 1: multi year, very difficult voyages, and so unscrupulous Portlanders or
Speaker 1: if that's what you call people who live in Portlands,
Speaker 1: they would fill the demand for for these crewmen by
Speaker 1: opening up pubs, drugging able bodied patrons and then dropping
Speaker 1: them through trapdoors in the floor that were called dead falls.
Speaker 1: After that, you know, after the these unsuspecting patrons would
Speaker 1: awake in some creepy underground chamber. Uh, they would be
Speaker 1: eventually taken down onto the docks sold to captains for
Speaker 1: as much as fifty dollars ahead, which was a tidy
Speaker 1: profit for the bar owners um At the time, it
Speaker 1: was called being shanghaied or or crimping, and that's why
Speaker 1: still today the tunnels are called Shanghai tunnels. This was
Speaker 1: one that was a listener suggestion. Actually, I think the
Speaker 1: the lady had gone on one of these Portland Shanghai
Speaker 1: tunnel tours was quite impressed by it. Do you have
Speaker 1: to go through the trapdoors? Tunnels have a little drop,
Speaker 1: Maybe it'll be like Seattle and you climbed down a latter.
Speaker 1: So for the last spot on this list, we gave
Speaker 1: it to an underground city that extends layer by layer,
Speaker 1: deeper and deeper into the past, and that's of course Rome.
Speaker 1: A visitor to rome In described that if a man
Speaker 1: happened to dig on his property, he might easily uncover
Speaker 1: a column upright and extending from deep below ground, and
Speaker 1: even as far back as the classical period in Roman
Speaker 1: architects would raise the surface level by just taking the
Speaker 1: roofs off of old buildings, back filling them and starting
Speaker 1: new on top. The Great Fire of a D. Sixty
Speaker 1: four s entire neighborhoods buried, and natural erosion buried low
Speaker 1: lyne areas in the Middle Ages. So this is a
Speaker 1: little different from some of the other underground cities we've discussed,
Speaker 1: and that it wasn't necessarily intentional. I mean it was intentional,
Speaker 1: but it's just building on top of trash the year
Speaker 1: after year, and um churches especially are prime spots to
Speaker 1: find these layers of history underground. According to Tom Mueller
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic and that's partly because the ancient churches
Speaker 1: were built on pagan temples, you know, to try to
Speaker 1: completely erase them, but keep people coming back to their
Speaker 1: familiar worship location. Um. He used the example of San Clemente,
Speaker 1: which is near the coliseum, where there is a twelveth
Speaker 1: century church that sits on top of a fourth century
Speaker 1: church that sits on top of first century apartments, and
Speaker 1: a temple which sits on top of a building that
Speaker 1: was destroyed in the fire. And then crazy, there's still
Speaker 1: something else below that because they can tell the walls
Speaker 1: keep on extending. It just hasn't been excavated yet. Um.
Speaker 1: According to Mueller, though, there is a lot that's just
Speaker 1: under regular buildings too. And I've always read that building
Speaker 1: projects in Rome are kind of a nightmare because you
Speaker 1: just dig down a little bit and you've got to
Speaker 1: call the archaeologists, and because you've uncovered some priceless find.
Speaker 1: But apparently many apartment dwellers are aware, you know, especially
Speaker 1: if they've lived in the place for a long time,
Speaker 1: their families have lived there, they know of some trap
Speaker 1: door and the apartment basement or something like that will
Speaker 1: that will lead to old grapes or old villas or whatnot.
Speaker 1: Pretty interesting stuff. Sounds like we could do an entire
Speaker 1: episode on Haunted Rome or something. I think we could
Speaker 1: definitely do that, And that's one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: I didn't put London on the Short Lived too, because
Speaker 1: another city with great underground culture, um Rome. I've got
Speaker 1: to experience a little bit of underground realm. When I
Speaker 1: visited after college. I went to the Captain Monastery, which
Speaker 1: has all of the I've probably mentioned this on the
Speaker 1: podcast before. It has the bones arranged into these terrifying
Speaker 1: I guess baroque sort of designs. I mean, it's very
Speaker 1: beautiful on the one hand, but a little bit disturbing
Speaker 1: to a little bit scary. But I think that just
Speaker 1: I mean, you mentioned London, and it just shows how
Speaker 1: much potential I guess there is to talk about some
Speaker 1: more of these underground cities and areas of cities. Certainly
Speaker 1: plus for London, we could talk about the Great Stink,
Speaker 1: which is another favorite listener suggestion. And interestingly, there are
Speaker 1: some possibilities for underground cities or areas of cities in
Speaker 1: the future. Yeah, and not just hiding away all of
Speaker 1: our ugly staff like like sewers and all that um.
Speaker 1: One example I read about in Smithsonian was something called
Speaker 1: the Earth Scraper, which is a sixty five story underground
Speaker 1: pyramid planned for Mexico City, and it sounds pretty elaborate.
Speaker 1: According to the architect este Ben Suarez, the plaza above
Speaker 1: would be glassed over, and so you would have this
Speaker 1: natural light flooding into what I presume would be in
Speaker 1: reverse atrium almost inside uh. And then every ten floors
Speaker 1: you would have what he called an earth lobby, so
Speaker 1: green space, so you wouldn't feel too horrible working in
Speaker 1: the depth of the earth all day. And then other
Speaker 1: cities already have real underground situations already in action. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Helsinki is an example of a city that already has
Speaker 1: an underground hockey rank, a church, a mall, a water
Speaker 1: treatment plant, but they also have an underground data center,
Speaker 1: which is kind of interesting. Usually these are really hot
Speaker 1: and require a lot of energy to keep them cool,
Speaker 1: but this center is kept cool by using sea water,
Speaker 1: which in turn is then used to warm homes that
Speaker 1: are above ground. And this model is being explored by
Speaker 1: several large Asian cities who are hoping to push some
Speaker 1: of I guess they're less attractive or kind of things
Speaker 1: you don't want about things don't really want to look
Speaker 1: at fage treatment plants that sort of thing, or or
Speaker 1: even data centers like this. So pretty interesting underground cities
Speaker 1: of the future. I mean, who knows, maybe we'll lots
Speaker 1: of possibilities. We'll have some yeah, some interesting underground things
Speaker 1: to talk about in a few years. M h. So
Speaker 1: we have some listener mail here today. It's an email
Speaker 1: from listener Jason, and he says, I am a huge
Speaker 1: fan of your show and have recently listened to the
Speaker 1: podcast about William Randolph Hurst. I'm a history major at
Speaker 1: Townsend University, and about a year ago I wrote a
Speaker 1: research paper or on the history of marijuana legislation for
Speaker 1: a political science class. While researching the beginnings of the
Speaker 1: marijuana prohibition, I discovered that Hearst was instrumental in the
Speaker 1: passage of anti hemp legislation. I became curious about the subject,
Speaker 1: but did not go into depth with my Hearst research
Speaker 1: due to the nature of the assignment. I was wondering
Speaker 1: if you could dedicate a podcast to Hearst and marijuana.
Speaker 1: And I get this quest a lot, don't we, Sarah,
Speaker 1: But we do because people listen to the Herst episode
Speaker 1: in the Nating. I actually wrote a blog post on
Speaker 1: it for the Science blog a few years ago now
Speaker 1: trying to do multipurpose stuff there with history and ciant um.
Speaker 1: But it is a really fascinating story and it could
Speaker 1: make a great podcast too. It was to spend for
Speaker 1: me at the time to be able to find a
Speaker 1: picture of hers, you know, doing a podcast on him,
Speaker 1: and then writing a blog. But um, a very interesting story.
Speaker 1: So thank you for the suggestion, and you can still
Speaker 1: check out that blog post on our site. Perhaps, yeah,
Speaker 1: you might be able to find that if you type
Speaker 1: in some combination of person figure big around in the blogs,
Speaker 1: just like it's an underground city. Um. If you want
Speaker 1: to send us any other suggestions, you can email us
Speaker 1: at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Misston History and we're on Facebook. And if
Speaker 1: you want to learn a little bit more about urban exploration,
Speaker 1: which we talked about in the intro to this podcast,
Speaker 1: it's a really kind of fascinating topic. You can read
Speaker 1: a little bit more about that by looking up our
Speaker 1: story ten Cities for Urban Exploration, and you can look
Speaker 1: that at by visiting on our homepage at www dot
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: Com in a DA