Hollow be thy Earth

Chelsea, I found an interesting article from Vice, our favorite news source. It is our favorite. It really is. They have the best stuff. That actually, I found it way earlier on a different site and I was like, this, what was the name of that website? It was one of those like British tabloid ones. I was like, yeah, I'm not trusting it. And then it's on Vice. I was like, okay, now I can cover it. Now I can talk about it. This is incredibly recent.

It's January 30th, 2023, except when this comes out. That is not incredibly recent, but that's okay. It is from journalist Sarah Wells and it is titled AI has found potential alien techno signatures hidden in radio signals from space. Oh no. Oh yes. Mixed bag. Mixed bag. I'm not sure how to react. Okay. That is exactly what I see. NASA in the Brookings report says that we should be terrified and overthrow all government and structural hierarchies, which is why they don't tell us anything.

Okay. I'm kind of ready to hear what, what this is about. Okay. Searching the skies for UFOs or homesick aliens is practically an American pastime and no one does it better than SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. I mean, they're the only ones looking so. Nobody does it worse either. I guess nobody does it better, but we don't know. Oh yeah, we don't know for sure. Sorry. They're incredibly average at it. It's parcequente. Exactly. They are the only ones.

Actually China's looking to in a very separate way and they do not. They would never tell us. Yeah. No, they don't. Actually that might be a good episode at one point. Anyhow, let's focus back in on this. Okay. Established in 1984 SETI has made it their mission to scan the skies for radio signals comprised of non-Earth based techno signatures that may belong to alien tech.

Such signals, which may indicate communication technology in use and thus intelligence are sought after by scientists looking for signs of alien life. So far this decade long search has yet to turn up any convincing leads, but a new paper published Monday in the journal Astronomy is hoping to change that by using machine learning to tackle the problem. Using telescope data that was first collected in 2016, the machine learning algorithm analyzed VIR. I think it's called analyzed VIR.

Analyze DVER. Okay. Or it's a typo. It's a typo. The machine learning algorithm analyzed over 480 hours of data from 820 stars and identified eight signals of interest of previous algorithms that have not detected. Peter Ma is first author on the paper and an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto. He told Motherboarden in email that while AI has been applied to SETI's radio data in the past, this new approach takes the search completely out of the hands of humans.

Previously, people have inserted ML, machine learning components, into various pipelines to help with the search, Ma said. This work relies entirely on just the neural network without any traditional algorithms supporting it and produced results that traditional algorithms did not pick up. Radio data streaming in from outer space is an abundant resource, but it's also one that can be easily muddled with our own earth-based radio signals.

Ma said that signals of interest that are plucked from this haze are ones that are narrow-band, Doppler drifting signals originating from some extra-estrial source. In other words, radio signals that are moving and fall into a particular range of frequencies. However, how these signals may morph over time or distance is still an open question.

Looking for these signals in the data can be like looking for a needle in a haystack, time-consuming and tedious, but that's where machine learning can help. Ma and colleagues designed their neural network to identify and then classify what they think is the most important features of the SETI data while simultaneously trying to filter out earth-based interference.

In addition to being twice as fast as traditional algorithms, Ma said that using a neural network to study this data also allows for a type of out-of-the-box thinking that human dictated algorithms struggle to achieve. Traditional algorithms operate on a given set of instructions designed by us, thus the algorithm will only ever discover what we tell it to find, he said. The issue is that the nature of an ET signal is not completely known, hence our proposed approach is just to learn it.

Ma and colleagues' neural network was able to find eight unique signals hidden in the data that may potentially be from extraterrestrial sources, but research hasn't yet been done to confirm these. And while further analysis may be able to confirm these sources as non-earth based, that doesn't mean scientists will know exactly what kind of tech they're connected to, Ma said.

In the best case scenario, these signals may include embedded information about the engineering of the technology or even a collection of techno signatures from an alien civilization. We don't count on this, though, Ma said. And that's the end of the article. Sadly, I think it's sad that machines are taking more jobs from us and that being the search for aliens, because I was hoping that the machines would take my other shittier job so that I could go look for aliens.

Instead, they decided to do the other way. Yeah, they're taking the good job. Take the alien search away from me so I can't be distracted from my shittier job. We didn't think about this when we invented robots to do jobs. They may take the good jobs and leave us with the shitty jobs. They won't want the shitty ones and they'll be better at the good ones. Well, that's cool, other than the scary robot aspect of it. Yeah, AI technology is getting interesting right now.

It's still not actually artificial intelligence, but it's getting better every day. And some cities want them as police. Yeah, some cities want them as police. Some people want them writing science papers. Like, it's crazy what they're getting AIs to do. Yeah, it's true. But with that, let's get into this episode.

From the unexplained to the mundane, come join us on a Journey to the Fringe. Hello and welcome to Journey to the Fringe, where only sometimes you're first to learn about cannibalism. Is this one of those episodes? Probably not. Right, Chelsea? I don't know. I haven't read it fully through yet. Well, we are your sometimes, but not probably this time, cannibal informing hosts, Taylor and Chelsea. And today we're talking about a topic that I'm pretty sure won't involve cannibalism.

But let's face it, when it does come up, I don't expect it either. And that, of course, is Hollow Earth. Is it my turn now? And Chelsea has taken the lead on this one, so I'm going to let her talk about it now and hopefully avoid saying cannibalism anymore. No promises. It may come up again. Yeah, Hollow Earth. Now you just got it on the minds. Hollow Earth or cannibalism? Cannibalism. Hollow Earth. The surprisingly cannibalism filled history. The surprisingly earth is filled with cannibal.

That would be a good scary movie or horrible, probably horrible. OK, so Hollow Earth again for the last time. I think if I were to take a poll, a great majority of us modern people who have gone to school and do math think that Earth is a series of layers across liquid magma surrounding a dense hot core made primarily of iron and nickel. I said that straight from memory, not from my notes. It's specifically what I know of the Earth to be true.

Yeah. Well, it's because you're you're just a sane person who's constantly doing math, who just knows rational things about the Earth. Exactly, right off the top of my head. But what if I told you that Hollow Earth is a series of layers across liquid magma surrounding a dense hot core made primarily of iron and nickel. Hollow Earth has a lot more history than, well, at least I thought it did. It's not just assholes on ancient aliens speculating about what could be in the Hollow Earth.

It actually goes way, way back, appearing in mythology, folklore and legends of pretty much everyone, which actually makes sense. So you're saying it's more than 20 years old. Yeah. And when I say it that way, it kind of makes sense, right? It's that it's been around forever, basically. And especially like we've known about caves for pretty much the entire time humans have been around. And we've actually never been able to go that far into caves until very recently.

So why wouldn't you just think they go on for a long time? Exactly. And it's not just caves. And when I get into it, you're going to be like nodding along with me, like, of course, Hollow Earth. Why didn't I know this? And for the most part, it would have been intertwined with the concept of origin or the afterlife. And I'm just going to list a few examples of where a Hollow Earth has appeared. Some of these includes include the Nordics, Vatel, Fa, Haemer.

I just went with mouthfeel on that one straight up. Vatel Haemer? I know you've probably all heard of that. Christian Hell. Yeah, that makes sense. Because yeah, you're not just you're not stuck in rock or lava. Yes, there is lava there, but there's also like walking around. And these religions think that, well, Christianity, all the Western religions think that Hell is a place and Hell is usually under our feet in the Earth. Jewish Sheol, which has details in Kabbalistic literature.

The Greek underworld. So in the Greek underworld, they were, again, Hercules is coming up. We're all familiar with the Greek underworld in Hades and the River Styx. There were caverns under the surface, which were entrances, entrances leading into the underworld. Most of these entrances, why is entrance really hard to say right now? Now it's losing all meaning. I've said it so much.

Most of these entrances were located at various physical caverns in which I'm not going to name because there's a lot and my pronunciation is too perfect to handle. And we actually did an episode on entrance into Hell. We did. Exactly. So if you want to learn more about those, just go listen to that. And they don't specifically say Hollow Earth. That was a good episode, by the way. But it must be Hollow for... When we've brought up an old episode of Wipper Fit, that was a bad episode.

There are a few in my head that I wouldn't say... We're going to have to say that at one point just to make people believe us on those good episodes. No, there are a few that I don't bring up. They shouldn't be gone back and listened to. And one of them has skyrocketed in popularity, which is concerning to me, which is episode number one. And yet here everyone is listening to us. Episode one is not a good episode. Also, the calendar episode, in theory is a good episode. The audio quality sucks.

There's a few where the audio quality sucks. Anyhow, back to Hollow Earth. We're still talking about the Greek underworld. In some legends, it is said that there are caverns occupied by an ancient god, Zalmoxis. And here we are with the caverns that lead to the underworld. In the Mesopotamian religion, there is a story of a man who, after traveling through the darkness of a tunnel in the mountain of Masu, entered a subterranean garden in the earth.

It is also mentioned in Tibetan Buddhism, where it is believed that Shambhala is located inside the earth. Shambhala. Shambhala is the music festival. Shambhala is the utopia of Tibetan Buddhism. Well, it's both the same. I know. I know. In Celtic mythology, there's a legend of a cave called Kruquachin. Also, I'm not that good at that language. What is it that they speak? Celts? Gaelic. Gaelic, yeah.

Kruquachin, also known as Ireland's Gate to Hell, a mythical and ancient cave from which, according to legend, strange creatures would emerge and be seen on the surface of the earth. Now, that is some scary stuff. Is that where leprechauns come from? Or that Hellrider guy? This one is actually really cool, and I wouldn't mind doing an episode on this because it seems really freaky. There are also stories of medieval knights and saints who went on pilgrimages. Pilgrimages? Pilgrimages?

They would go on pilgrimage. Pilgrimages. To a cave. Just one pilgrimage. Multiple. To a cave located in Station Island, County Donegal in Ireland, where they made journeys inside the earth into a place of purgatory. In County Down, Northern Ireland, there is a myth which says tunnels lead to the land of the subterranean Twatha de Danann, a group of people who are believed to have introduced Druidism to Ireland and then went back underground. Isn't that like the coolest thing? I thought so.

That's not the only group that says that somebody comes from underground to enlighten them or save them. Yeah, it might come up here because it goes on. In Hindu mythology, the underworld is referred to as Patala. The Angami Naga tribes of India claim that their ancestors emerged in the ancient times from a subterranean land inside the earth. There you go. Another one. The Taino from Cuba believe their ancestors emerged in ancient times from two caves in a mountain underground.

Natives of the Trobriand Islands off the coast of New Guinea believe that their ancestors had come from a subterranean land through a cavern hold called Obukula. Mexican folklore also tells of a cave in the mountain five miles south of Ohinaga and that Mexico is possessed by devilish creatures who came from the inside of the earth. Like Mexico the country? Because like Mexico isn't that old as a country compared to that. Yeah, it just says Mexican folklore.

That would have been like either the Aztec Incan or the Ohmec Empire. It's not that specific. So it probably is Aztec or something like that. I would be assuming because this is all old stuff. In the Middle Ages an ancient German myth held that some mountains located between Isanq, Izanak and Gotha hold a portal to the inner earth. A Russian legend says the Simoites, an ancient Siberian tribe, traveled to a cavern city to live inside the earth. This is a cool poem.

The Italian writer Dante describes a hollow earth in his well-known 14th century work Inferno in which the fall of Lucifer from heaven caused an enormous funnel to appear in a previously solid and spherical earth as well as an enormous mountain opposite it Purgatory. In Native American mythology it is said that the ancestors of the Mandan people in ancient times emerged from a subterranean land through a cave at the north side of the Missouri River.

There is also a tale about a tunnel in the San Carlos Apache Indian Reserve in Arizona near Cedar Creek which is said to lead inside the earth to a land inhabited by a mysterious tribe. It is also the belief of the tribes of the Iroquois that their ancient ancestors emerged from the subterranean world inside the earth. The elders of the Hopi people believe that Sipapu entrance in the Grand Canyon exists which leads to the underworld. That just makes sense.

And lastly, but probably not last, just made it onto my list. Brazilian Indians who live alongside the Parima River in Brazil claim that their forefathers emerged in ancient times from an underground land and that many of their ancestors still remain inside the earth. Ancestors of the Inca supposedly came from caves which are located east of Cusco, Peru. So yeah, that's a lot of cultures where their origin story. That's many if not all of the continents.

I don't think I heard Africa, but most continents were covered in that. You best believe Africa believes it too, just as Mexico does. So, not such a foreign and crazy idea as you might think it would have been, at least to my knowledge. And I speak for everyone here because here, this is our podcast and we speak for everyone. And you speak for me apparently. Yes. Okay. At this point, yes. It then moves on and a- You speak for everyone including me, okay. That's the power I have at this moment.

It then moves on and evolves from these ancient legends to more modern times. And we'll pick it up back here in the 16th and 18th centuries where we see mention of hollow earth in Shakespeare, specifically in A Midsummer Night's Dream, circa 1595. Disclaimer, if you have never heard of Shakespeare, it is hard to understand sometimes. Yeah, for all we know, it's actually referenced in every one of his plays. It's true. We just- It's true. Don't fucking know what he's saying.

Here is a line from A Midsummer Night's Dream where Hermia, Herm-er-mia? Hermia? She says, he says, they say, I'll believe this soon. This whole earth may be bored and not the moon. May through the center creep and so displease. Her brothers noontide and antipodes. End quote from Hermia.

I'm going to quickly move on because I'm not so good at reciting Shakespeare that we have hollow earth further being popularized by Antacius Kertcher's nonfiction, Mundus Subterranius in 1665, which speculated that there is an intricate system of cavities and a channel of water connecting the poles. And somewhat- 1692, sorry, I was a little bit dyslexic in reading that. Someone we might all be a little familiar with and who in 1692 are we so familiar with, we might ask. Probably no one.

But I don't know anyone that would be alive back then. But someone you've probably heard of, Edmund Halley, as in Halley's Comet, is probably one of the first to scientifically speculate about the hollow earth and conjecture that the earth might consist of a hollow shell about 800 kilometers thick with two inner concentric shells and an innermost core. He said that atmospheres would separate these shells and each shell has its own magnetic poles and the spheres would rotate at different speeds.

And this theory was proposed to explain anomalous compass readings. He envisaged the atmosphere inside is luminous and probably inhabited and speculated that the escaping gas caused the aurora borealis. And I love it when a theory comes together like that. It just all makes sense. I know you're all nodding along with us, with Edmund and me reading it. Like, yes, that makes perfect sense.

In 1781, Leclerc Milford, love the name, led a journey with hundreds of Muskogee people to a series of caverns near the Red River above the junction of the Mississippi River. According to Milford, the original Muskogee people's ancestors are believed to have emerged out of the surface of the earth in the ancient time from the caverns. He also claimed that the caverns could easily claim 15,000 to 20,000 families. So there's that. Seems like a lot.

Modern times really have the hollow earth theory going downhill, and it only goes more downhill than the hollow earth glory days of ancient times. In the 19th century, in 1818, we have John Cleaves... Oh no, this guy again. Simis? Simis? What did we land on on the Antarctic episode? Sims, I think. We talked about... I think, yeah, you say Sims. Sims, I think it was Sims. We talked about him ever so briefly in the Antarctic episode, long enough for me to debate.

And we will talk about him ever so briefly in this episode as well, as he is ever but a fleeting talking about on Journey to the Fringe. Anyhow, as a reminder, he suggested that the earth consisted of a hollow shell about 13,000 km... 1300, sorry, kilometers thick, with openings about 2300 km across at both poles, with four inner shells each open at the poles. Sims was the first to put forth the theory that you could access the hollow earth through these holes.

They go by the Sims holes, which I don't think I referred to them as in the Antarctic episode. No, we changed it to North Pole holes. Yes, right. I knew it didn't sound right. I knew it. It just didn't click for me. Nobody wants to talk about Sims holes. No, but everyone wants to talk about the North Pole holes. It really gets ingrained into your brain, and then you can't get the North Pole hole out.

Sims became one of the most famous of the early hollow-earther people, which is why he made it into the Antarctic episode, and it's the only way he would have. I'm just wondering, technically isn't pretty much most of the world a hollow-earth person in that they believe in hell? Is the separation between somebody who's an early hollow-earther, somebody who says, well, it's not just hell, like it's an entire cavern that mortals couldn't have it as well.

They're starting to, at this point in the 18th and 19th century, starting with Edmundo, Edmond Haley. They're starting to scientifically go into a different category. Okay. Yes, technically you could call them all hollow-earthers. Technically, like most religions are hollow-earthers. It's true. It's true. Technically it is, but they're kind of coming away from like origin of cultures, and they have end times for religions where you go.

And they're kind of coming around into scientific now of an actual, well, I mean, origin would say it's a physical place, I guess. But we're getting more into... Philosophical, yeah. Yeah. And these guys aren't saying that, yeah, and just below this 2300 kilometer hole, hell. They're saying it's somewhere we can go and it won't be missing. Yeah. They're not like, we found all the damned souls. It exists.

So yeah, Sims is one of the most famous of the early hollow-earther peeps, and he declares that the inside of the earth would be, quote, stocked with thrifty vegetables and animals, if not men. Oh. Yeah, thrifty. That's something we want to hear these days. That is very hipster of him. Yes. Very. Like secondhand stores on every block. Yeah. He campaigned, gave lectures, and published letters about the hollow earth, always angling for an expedition to the North Pole that would prove his theory.

Sims was eventually able to convince enough people of the possibility of his hollow earth that in 1822, and his supporters actually got Congress to vote on funding for his expedition. It was shot down, but it still made it. I mean, that's better than we've ever done. But Sims' belief in the inner earth never died. He continued to campaign for the theory until his death in 1849, and he paved a road for this.

Though Sims himself never wrote a book on the subject, he touched enough lives with his hollow earth talk, chatter. There's a better word, but I can't think of it right now. With his holes. His holes were special in people's minds. Several authors published works discussing Sims' ideas. McBride wrote Sims' theory of concentric spheres, demonstrating that the earth is hollow, inhabitable within, and widely open about the poles in 1826. Now, who was McBride, you ask?

I have no idea because I googled the book and it says by a citizen of the United States. So that did not clarify it. It narrowed it down. So that was weird. Reynolds wrote an article that appeared in a booklet in 1827, which was Remarks of Sims Theory, which appeared in the American Quarterly Review. You'll notice I didn't tell you who Reynolds is because at this point after McBride, I just didn't care.

In 1868, a professor W.F. Lyons published the Hollow Globe, which put forth a Sims-like hollow earth hypothesis, but failed to mention Sims' self. That's just bad. What's the word when you credit someone? Plagiarism. Well, it's plagiarism when you don't. That's bad plagiarism. That's just plagiarism. Not bad. I mean, it's just plagiarism. It's not bad. It's just regular plagiarism. Would it be bad if you credit them, but like incorrectly? Just regular plagiarism. Sim's son, Americus. Americus.

That's right. Americus. Then published the Sims Theory of Concentric Spheres in 1878 to set the record straight. So let's move on from Sims. I've heard enough of him. Jeremiah Reynolds, who... So get this. Okay. Sometimes I don't look at who people are. Sometimes I look too much into who people are. And I looked at Jeremiah Reynolds just to get a feel of the guy, and I could not put this information in.

He was an American newspaper editor, lecturer, explorer, and author who became an influential advocate for scientific expeditions. His lectures on the possibility of a hollow earth appear to have influenced Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket and Reynolds' 1839 account of the whale Mocha Dick. Mocha Dick or the White Whale of the Pacific influenced Herman Melville's Moby Dick. That's right. Have you heard of Moka Dick? The book that inspired Moby Dick?

I understand why it's the forgotten Thor Runner. So now there's... Moka Dick. Now there's some more information. You can stand by the punch bowl at a party and just make good conversation about... And it'll go something like this. You know about the South Pole. You know about Moka Dick. You've got so much. Yeah. And you know about... Who was the guy in the cryptid? Vegetable Man or something. Oh, you have your different stations. So you stand at the vegetable place. You talk about vegetable man.

Then you move over to the punch bowl where you say, you know about the book that inspired Moby Dick. You know what it's called? Immediately you're going to make an enemy before Moka Dick even makes an enemy. Okay, I gotta go back to talk about the episode. And then you go to the bathroom and you talk about the holes. Just stand outside the bathroom. And there is a party you'll never be welcome back to. Jeremiah delivered lectures at the Hollow Earth and argued that there should be an expedition.

And that's literally all I have about Jeremiah Reynolds. So I'm not sure why... Moka Dick, we should go check it out. I'm not sure why I felt so compelled to look into this guy. You damn well know why. Those are my journalistic instincts taking me to good places. John Leslie, a Scottish mathematician and physicist proposed a Hollow Earth in his 1829 Elements of Natural Philosophy. If you open your book to page 449 to 453, you'll see those four whole pages on Hollow Earth. You can close it now.

In 1864, Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne describes an expedition into the Earth's interior via the fictional Icelandic volcano Skar Terris. They don't make it to the actual center. Oh, that's a spoiler. I'm sorry, guys. They've had 150 years to read it. But they also discover a subterranean ocean inhabited by creatures believed to be extinct. Spooky. It's later made into a movie with Brendan Fraser, in case we all didn't know about that stuff.

William Fairfield Warren, who in his book Paradise Found, The Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole, 1885, presented his belief that humanity originated on a continent in the Arctic called Hyperborea. Something else you'll recognize from the Antarctic episode. Aren't you glad you listened to all our episodes? This influenced some early Hollow Earth proponents.

According to Marshall Gardner, both the Eskimo and Mongolian peoples had come from the interior of the Earth through the entrance at the North Pole. So why? Huh. I mean, two peoples don't really share a lot of similarities in my mind. And also like, no, it's just weird that those are the only two and then they spread out the way they did. Yeah. And want to stick together. Mortal enemies, some might say. Yeah, actually hate each other.

You never want to see an Eskimo and a Mongolian see each other. It's bad luck and a lot of bad things can happen. So that's those centuries that I forgot what ones I was talking about. I think 19th. Now we move on to actual more modern times, the 20th century, and this is where it gets good in 1906. William Reed writes Phantom of the Pole supporting the idea of Hollow Earth. However, the interior shells or inner sun were ridiculous. Now that was old school news, outdated.

Who would even believe that? So he took it out of his book because he was also plagiarizing. Just kidding. Like most things in this field, they're just improving on old ideas, I guess. Then we get a spiritualist in on the Hollow Earth action. Okay, get this name. Walburga Irringard Helena Lady Paget, who was a German writer, occultist and intimate friend of Kareem Victoria. She had written a book. The Royals love their occultists. They do. They really do.

And what she comes out with in regards to the Hollow Earth and it's making it into this episode, you're going to be like, that is so occultist of her. So she had written a book called Colicuys with an unseen friend in 1907 mentioning the Hollow Earth as well. In her book, she claimed that cities exist beneath the desert, which is where people of Atlantis moved. She said an entrance to the subterranean kingdom will be discovered in the 21st century.

So it's an occultist of her because we all know kind of the roots of Atlantis and the Atlanteans. And they're budding. Yeah. If you don't go listen to our episode on Blavatsky. No, that wasn't Blavatsky. That was our, that was season one on Lemuria. Yeah. It was I, Brazil and Lemuria. Yeah, it's come up. And it's all the occultists all the time. And racists. Yeah. So it's not one, it's the other. I think. And oftentimes both. I was going to say one in the same.

They go together like peanut butter and jam. Okay. In 1913 along comes Marshall Gardner, who wrote a journey to the Earth's interior, not to be confused with journey to the center of the Earth as I had done. And who's clearly not plagiarized. Not at all. He changed it up a little. Just like Moby. Moby and Mocha. He then did a bunch of work and published an expanded version in 1920. So in those seven years, he went hard to work placing an interior sun in the Earth.

So this is where we see the first time there's like an interior lighting going on in there and built a working model of the hollow earth, which he patented. Yes. I said patented. U.S. patent number, I think that's 1,096,102. Which, like how the hell did he patent that? Patented May 12th, 1914. Okay. And what's the patent? I'm looking it up right now. Oh, I think it's actually the globe itself. Oh, a hollow globe, right? Yeah. There's a picture of it. Yeah. It doesn't make sense to me.

In this guy's book, Marshall Gardner, he criticizes Sims for what? I don't know. I didn't read the book. I already looked. It's a regular globe, but he appears to have painted the inside with the continents that would exist on the inside. But as far as I can tell, you can't see it because it's a regular globe on the outside. And there is a sun in the middle of it. Okay. There's a definite design flaw. Yeah, I had to do a little more searching.

Around this time, Vladimir Abruchev, it's about time Vladimir showed up, wrote the novel Plutonia in which the hollow earth possessed an inner sun and was inhabited by prehistoric species. The interior was connected with the surface by an opening in the Arctic, which we all knew that. I mean, logically. Now, I love it. This point, we're seeing a lot of inner sun or light sources. I feel like it just adds an aspect of normalcy of what we know to be as mammals living on earth.

Just like, you know, we like gravity. You need light. Yeah. There's a sun. I know that creatures do not necessarily need a light source to thrive. There are tons of nocturnal creatures. And I mean, I've seen the movie The Cave. I'm pretty sure that's a documentary. And I think that- No, things seem just fine. They're thriving.

Exactly. And I think that adds a much creepier aspect to the hollow earth theory that probably all these people were trying to avoid with adding that sun being like, oh, look, it's just like up here. Like, it wouldn't be scary to go in there because they're all nocturnal weird creatures. Okay, sorry. I'm just looking at this patent a little bit more. One side, they have hinges and one side opens up as two doors so that you can see the inside. Okay. That's kind of cool.

Yeah. It probably doesn't sell very good, but- I mean, you don't see them very many places. No, you don't. I've never even heard of it. And I think the patent would have expired by now. So if anybody wants to get into making that, just send us one, please. Maybe we should pull Robert Bigelow's and just- We're in the wrong industry. Yeah, we are. We're not millionaires either. Maybe we should pull a Robert Bigelow and just start looking at expired patents and buying them.

Not that you- You don't have to buy expired patents. You don't? No, expired patents mean that- We have to re-patent them. You don't have to re-patent them. Just anybody could do it. Okay. Okay. So that's my plan out the window. I'm going to move on now. Well, nobody's doing it though. If everybody could do it, they're not. So I forget the actual lifetime of a patent, but it is much less than I remember. It's come up on the podcast before. It has. I'm sure it has. We've talked about it for sure.

Maximum of 20 years after the day on which you filed your patent application. Yeah, no, I remember it being a shocking number. It's not even the lifetime. That's Canada. So, oh no, that's copyrights. Copyrights are like your lifetime plus 70 years or something. Oh, that's the one we've talked about then. Yeah. Okay. So I was done, but you probably didn't because I didn't say I was done. Because this is why I thought you maybe thought that I was done, that I thought you thought that I was done.

This is a lot of fucking people talking about Holoworth, but guess what? There's more and we're only at 1920. Some people just arbitrarily said Chelsea must be done. That's been a lot of people. That's a lot of people. She must be wrapping it up soon. I speak for everyone. Okay? I speak for us. So yes. In 1922, Polish explorer Ferdinand Ozyndowski wrote a book titled Beast Men and Gods in which he states he was told about a subterranean kingdom that exists inside the earth.

This is known as Agarti to Buddhist, Aguharti to Buddhist. George Papashvili, a Georgian American writer and sculptor in his Anything Can Happen in 1940, claimed the discovery of the Caucasus Mountains of a cavern containing human skeletons with heads as big as bushel baskets. Not sure what that is. So it could be, it could be a little. Wow. Those are small heads. And an ancient tunnel leading to the center of the earth. One man entered the tunnel and never returned.

Again, we don't know much about caves still probably to this day. Why would you go in? I mean. It's really easy to get lost and die in a cave. Yeah. Haven't they seen the cave? That was a terrifying movie. So a bushel basket in my mind or like what they used to use for like picking peaches and whatnot. Okay. That's big. So like the size of basketball. Okay. And that's history. We all know. From our Canadian history.

Yes. Lobson Rampa said that there was an underground chamber system that existed beneath the Himalayas of Tibet, which are filled with ancient machinery, records, and treasure in his book, The Cave of the Agents. And to add up to all of this credibility, Michael Grumley, a cryptozoologist has linked Bigfoot and other hominin cryptids to the ancient tunnel system underground. Someone was bound to do that at some point or another. It actually came up fairly early. Damn if it wasn't. I know.

Unfortunately. It actually comes up earlier than I would have thought this is. Well, it's in the like 40s to 50s that he makes this connection. I think that's a little bit early. That's like and that's right after the Nazis were there. In the Hollow Earth. In Tibet. Okay. They had a weird fascination with Tibet. Yeah. The Nazis do come up. Spoiler alert. I kind of expected that.

Like I said, this is the first kind of mention of the paranormal aspect in regards to Hollow Earth popping up other than the occultist. It's a slow start, but it's coming around. It's coming around to what we know and love today. And this of course only gets added to by Dr. Raymond Bernard, who was an early 20th century American alternative health advocate and esoteric writer. He's credited with the merger of the Hollow Earth theory as well as religious beliefs about UFOs.

I wrote UFOs twice, so maybe I should say it twice about UFOs, UFOs. So I'm sure that's what I meant. He writes a book in 1964 called The Hollow Earth that basically says UFOs come from inside the earth and add the idea that the ring nebula proves the existence of hollow worlds as well as speculation on the fate of Atlantis and the origin of flying saucers. He also believed Brazil contained the entrances to the tunnels leading to the Hollow Earth.

Now I was like, pardon me as I was typing these notes. Did he say ring nebula? Like the connection he's making here just didn't seem to click right to me. I thought I was like, that seems weird. Because when I Googled it, what is the ring nebula? It's a planetary nebula in the northern constellation of Lyra.

Such a nebula is formed when a star during the last stages of its evolution before becoming a white dwarf expels a vast luminous envelope of ionized gas into the surrounding interstellar space. So that's weird. He probably has much more of why this is connected to the Hollow Earth. I think it's kind of like that what's so above so below, like the macro and the micro are the same. So therefore the earth is the same. And that it's a ring. So it's like, yeah, I don't know.

I think that's at least how I would understand him. It's wrong to view it that way. I also didn't read the book. So that's going to be my input into speculation on that because I don't know what he has to say about it all in all. So I might as well just say that and move on. If you read it, let us know. Is it weird? Is it weird that he brings up the ring nebula or does it make sense? Is it prove the Hollow Earth for all I know? I don't know.

Moving on between 1944, 45, excuse me, and 1949 science fiction magazine. That's right. Science fiction magazine. I was about to delete this all, but then I read it and I was like, well, I can't take this out. So there's this magazine called Amazing Stories and it runs a series of stories called the Shaver Mystery by Richard Shaver. Science fiction writing.

And in it, it claims that a superior prehistoric race had built a honeycomb of caves in the earth and that their degenerate descendants known as Duro lived there still using the fantastic machines abandoned by the ancient times to torment those of us living on the surface. As one of the characteristics of this torment, Shaver described voices that purportedly came from no explainable source. Science fiction story from a science fiction magazine. I mean, that's it.

Like there's nothing more to that. That's made up. But thousands of readers wrote to affirm that they also hear these voices from inside the earth. This goes on. You needed this setup. It continues from here. David Hatcher Childress, whom you know from ancient aliens. That's the most famous thing I would know him from or anybody would probably know him from.

Unless you know it from this book that he wrote based on the scientific, sorry, not scientific, the opposite of scientific, science fiction article. He authors the book The Lost Continents and the Hollow Earth in 1998 in which he reprints the stories found in said science fiction magazine and defends the Hollow Earth idea based on alleged tunnel systems beneath South America and Central Asia, literally based on the science fiction magazine. And now he's on ancient aliens. Like what the fuck?

I mean, that's actually at least more of a saner version of some of the people that we've talked about and could talk about in the future as to how they got involved. Yeah, he's definitely going on the list after this. So here we see it really taking form to what we're knowing and loving about the Hollow Earth today. It actually starts in an interesting place. I mean, the Nazis, isn't the Nazi? I mean, obviously he's just trying to profit off of this.

There's no way any sane person, no, I don't get it. Why not just, it's really hard to say, why not just do the research on these alleged tunnel systems he thinks it is? Why does he have to tie it back to a fricking science fiction magazine? Like what the fuck is that about? Ah, yeah. So this is essentially, yeah, like I said, how it gets to be the Hollow Earth it is today. We saw it evolve. We were there with it from the beginning, from its origins, from the origins of the earth.

We saw it come and take shape into this. But I also need to mention a good Nazi conspiracy because every good episode has a Nazi conspiracy, whether it's one or not. You might just start making them up because you guys love them so much. We didn't say it. They are definitely implied. Yes, exactly. In every, every good episode. They are always implied. Karl Unger, a crew member of the German U-209, which is a U-boat, confirms that earth is indeed hollow.

He visited it and he wrote a letter in German about his misadventures into the earth. It might've just been an adventure. That was just my assumption. Well, he was missing. Yeah. I took you all along with my assumption. So I'm going to read the translation. I won't bless you with the exact German letter that he wrote. So he says, among those things aboard the U-209 was an old friend. Oh, hold on. I'm not reading the letter. I'm starting it before the letter starts.

I'm reading the letter of the guy who translated it. Okay. So dear old comrade, this news will be a surprise for you. The U-209 under sea boat. That doesn't seem like it was translated very well. Made it. And he's so excited. There's so many exclamation marks. The earth is hollow. Dr. Hachoffer and Hess were right. The whole crew as well, but they cannot come back. We are no prisoners. I am sure this news will reach you. It is the last connection with the U-boat 209. We will meet again, comrade.

I am worried for everyone who has spent his life on the surface of the earth since the fear is gone. Oh God. God bless our Germany always with hearty greetings. That letter is a little disturbing. That just says that Germans escaped to hollow earth. And it was a confirmation of that. With so many exclamation marks. Yeah, so many. He was so excited that he made it. How did the letter get back? I don't know. Hold on. Okay. Does this mean?

I just feel like there's not a good mail system in the hollow earth. It had to have been pigeon. It had to have. I'm not sure. It just says. What are the birds that people hypothesize fly through the hollow earth? Is it terns that only live at the north and south pole? So they're like, oh, they must fly through the hollow earth. We've talked about that before, haven't we? Well, I don't know if it's been on the show, but we've talked about it. And we will be talking about Mokitic in the future.

To everyone. In person, most of us. I don't know. I couldn't tell you. I didn't read the introduction of this letter. I will be posting it on the social media. So I don't know how we got the letter. All it says is it was sent from the hollow earth. It proves somebody actually went to the hollow earth and never came back. And it has a robust postal system. Yes, it does. So that's the Nazi conspiracy because Nazis.

Is it like a postcard of like an inner son and somebody laying down on the beach and saying we made it? See ya. That would be nice. It doesn't show the front of the postcard. It just shows that it's an actual letter. I have it here. I'll post it up to the social medias, but they don't show the front of it. So it could be. It could be some scary creature that's nocturnal and lives in the hollow earth. But who would want to stay there if it's freaky and you can't see?

So anyway, then there's Admiral Richard Bird, which was talked about on the Antarctic conspiracy theory episode again. He comes up a lot. Do you think the Nazi gave his letter to a bird to deliver? It could have. Yeah, because this would make a lot of sense. Because they kind of come together again. And just as a reminder, he was the naval officer. I can't remember his exact designation again on this one. I didn't read it down. Admiral. He's an admiral. It's in his name. That's his name.

That's just his first name. Really weird. Couldn't get promoted again. So if you remember, there's the purported document that Richard Bird had, Admiral, had provided to the government written by him, which tells of his trip to the Antarctic in which he was attacked. There he was confronted by a member of alien civilization.

In some cases, it's Nazis because they either have a base in Antarctica, they entered Antarctica's hollow earth, South Pole hole, and they inhabited the middle with their UFOs or the inside with their UFOs. And anyhow, and all in all, they attack them. It's Nazis. Well, no, it's not necessarily Nazis in this one. That was the other one. We're excited to Nazis. And this one. This one, it's people that live inside the earth. It could be anything.

Alien civilization that lives inside the earth, Nazis that live inside the earth. All in all, he's attacked by UFOs. Who's piloting them? Nobody knows. That's a mystery. Yeah, they come out to the surface, they get him. That's the end of the story. It was quite confusing this time around. I feel like I did a better job on the Antarctic episode, but let's move on kind of.

Rodney Cuff. And now in our day and age, prominent hollow earth theorist published as a book in 2014 titled Our Living Hollow Earth. And in the book, he says, of course the earth isn't flat. It's a globe, but it is hollow. And then he goes on to say, based on my research, I would say the earth is around 800 miles thick from the outside to the inner surface.

Rodney and many others believe there's a whole other civilization complete with giant animals, eight feet tall people, rivers, a sun, and a multitude of exotic plants. Rodney describes it as a paradise and a utopia. Perhaps tying it back to like origin stories, maybe. I don't know. He seems to be pulling from a little bit of everything I've talked about.

He thinks the people are far more advanced than us, not just in terms of technology, but they also have a deeper understanding on music and a thirst for knowledge. I don't know how you would get a deeper understanding of music, but they know all about us surface dwellers for the most part. Well, yeah, you always know about your upstairs name. It's true. It's fucking noisy. Good thing I'm the upstairs neighbor. They don't want to interact with us, though. I can't blame them.

However, Rodney says they do get pretty pissed off with us when we set off nukes. Again, I can't blame them as it has an impact on their lives. It's probably pretty fucking noisy, too. He continues. That's more than dropping a plate on the ground. Oh, yeah. If it was hollow, that would be so fucking noisy. It would probably echo. He continues. It has its own sun, which is obviously smaller than ours. Obviously, but it actually looks bigger to the inhabitants because it's nearer.

And animals such as mammoths still exist inside. That's right. You heard it here first, folks. The mammoth just went to the North Pole hole and went inside the earth. All the animals are much bigger than what we have here, as are the people. It's also reverse. So our north is their south and vice versa. Does that make sense? I don't know. That hurt my brain. I don't. Does it really matter? Like, isn't that just for directional purposes? I guess you're right.

So he quotes, if anyone has the means to go, I really can't encourage them enough. So on Rodney's website. Well, this doesn't exist anymore. But at one time I have a screenshot. Probably we'll try and post it on the socials. He had a voyage to hollow earth. He had the full itinerary and everything. It was planned. It was set. It was between 18,950 to 20,950. I mean, for two thousand dollars extra, I'd probably go for the 20,950. I'm not sure what the difference in view would be.

I'm assuming it's a balcony versus an ocean view. I'm also assuming USD. If it's going on, you only have so many chances to go to the hollow earth. Why not go in some? I mean, the percentage between those two is small. You want to get the best view possible. Pay the higher amount. You're only going to do this once. You may or may not come back. That is our view on Journey to the Bridge. That is our opinion as professional podcast bridge hosts. And we speak for you today and most days.

So this trip was set to go June 26 to July 19, 2007. That doesn't seem like enough time in the hollow earth. You don't think? It seems like a pretty long trip to me. It does. But like you got to think you don't move as fast back then as we do today. And especially like to get to the bottom of the hollow earth. I mean, it's a long trip. It's a long trip. It's a long trip. It's a long trip. It's a long trip. It's a long trip. It's a long trip. It's a long trip. It's a long trip.

So Steve Curry, who has never come up until this point, and I'm not sure the connection to this trip, but he was apparently organizing the trip, found out he had an inoperable brain tumor just weeks before the journey was due to start and he died months later. Apparently just canceled the whole thing. Even with people booked on it. I mean, I'd be pissed. I don't know where this went. I don't know why it didn't still go, even though Steve had to pull out. Was he the only one who bought a ticket?

He might have been. That's the only reason I could think that the whole thing would be canceled. So I just want to give you a brief idea of the itinerary. So on day one, you depart for Moscow, Russia, and you need to arrange your own airfare. It's not included in that price tag. So day two, you arrive in Moscow and you'll be staying at the Hotel Ruseva, Russia, located in St. Basil's Cathedral. Oh, bye. Okay. It's bye. Not in the cathedral. And spend the first day sightseeing in Moscow.

It's already day three. Finish your sightseeing of Moscow in the morning. So you've been up all night touring Moscow. You will take an afternoon flight to Murmansk, Russia, where we will board the Russian icebreaker Yamal. Day four through seven, enjoy yourself and row to the North Pole on the Yamal, which seems like a Russian ship. Day eight, spend the day at the North Pole and even call home to talk to family or friends.

Day nine through 11, start the search for the North Polar opening to the inner continent. Wait, they got a search for it? This is outdated terms. They meant North Pole hole. Yeah, you have to search. I would probably have wanted that done for me. There's the hole. Yeah, if you're paying and Chelsea, what year is this? Just 2007. Oh, yeah. Okay. I'm surprised. I thought this was way too previous. I'm surprised you missed that because you said everything was slower back then.

And I said, yeah, 2007 was. Oh, okay. Yeah, that it is slower back then. So they specifically put two days in this itinerary, nine through 11 to search for the hole. So I don't know if that's overly ambitious or like not allocating enough time or if you really should know if you're putting this. We'll never know now because Steve Curry was in charge of it, I guess. I mean, he puts together a really nice itinerary.

Days 12 through 14, once found, travel up a Hiddick Hill River to the city of Jehu. Days 12 through 14, they found that hole. Technically, it only takes those two days, a 15 through 16, take a monorail trip to the city of Eden to visit Palace of the King of the Inner World. That's two days that they put for that monorail trip. And I'm just wondering, you happen to find like the hole immediately. How are hotel rates? Like last minute hotel bookings. In the inner earth.

Yeah, because like you didn't plan to be there. It took you two days. Plus, you'll notice that there's no hotel. Are they still in the ship at this point? No, they're taking monorail. Well, no, they're on the monorail. Yeah. It doesn't mention what hotel they're staying in either. So that seems like an oversight. Well, and then after that, aren't they staying at the King's Palace to visit? It's a visit, not a stay. Oh, no. So your monorail is included. But I'm finding some gaps.

We're finding the gaps. Day 17 through 18, the return trip back to the city of. So you're staying in the city of Eden, just where we're not sure. You're returning back to the city of Jihoo on the monorail. And we will then continue our journey through the North Polar opening on board the Yamal for the return trip home. OK, so they're docking somewhere. And through all of this searching through the hole and traveling into the inner earth, you only have four days in the inner earth.

And would you want more? Would you want less? I don't. It depends on if there is actually a sun, I feel like, in the inner earth. Is there a sun? How's the food? Are there actually hotels? Or are we just literally staying awake for four days? Or just pitch in a tent. Because it kind of sounds like they don't have any sleep based on how they're talking about this. And once they arrive into the hollow earth, it's going to be like abliming. Outside of that visit.

Which I guess there's no night, right? Because like the sun's always up there. It's always in the middle. Yeah, it wouldn't set. We never talked about that. It wouldn't set unless they just like pull the cord and it turns off at night. Or if it like turns because like it's the entire inner earth. So maybe only half of it's actually lit up. I don't know. But how I'm picturing it is just always sunny. That's exactly what I'm picturing as well. So days 9 through 23, enjoy the trip back to Murmansk.

And day 24, catch a flight from Murmansk to Moscow. And then you can then catch your connecting flight back to your hometown. Please note if we are unable to find the polar opening, we will be returning via the new Siberian islands to visit skeleton remains of exotic animals thought to originate from inner earth. So they got that base covered. So yeah, that's the journey of the hollow earth. I have another couple things to touch on.

That was the real journey to the center of the earth that was supposed to happen, but never happened. There are many places claimed to be the entrance to the hollow earth. Obviously, other than the very popular North South Potholes. We have Paris, France, Staffordshire, England. Of course, Paris is just logical. Montreal, Canada, again, logical. Hang Chow, China. I feel like that's wrong. Is there a Hang Chow, China? I didn't even look at this. I've never heard of it.

I spent all my time Googling Jeremiah. Oh, Hang Chow? Yeah, it is not spelled like that in wherever my source came from. It is literally Hang Chow, which that's why I saved it. There is a Hang Chow. Hang Chow is a very big city. The Himalayan Mountains and the Amazon rainforest, which a few of those came up. Now last thing I'm going to touch on is taking the hollow earth to the next level, which is concave earth. Not sure if you ever heard of it. I haven't.

This is actually really hard for me to wrap my mind around. This hypothesis says that we're as surface dwellers actually hollow earth. We're in the hollow earth so that our universe itself lies in the world's interior. It's like I alluded to. This has been called the concave hollow earth hypothesis or sky centrism.

This is put forth by Cirrus Teed, a doctor from upstate New York proposed that such a concave hollow earth in 1869 call this came out weird, but I'm just going to continue at this point. He proposed such a concave hollow earth in 1869 calling his schemes cellular cosmogony cosmogony Cirrus Teed, a doctor from upstate New York, which I'm pretty sure I just said proposed here I am reading that again. Teed founded a group called the core Shan unity based on his notion, which he called core Shanity.

The main colony survives as a preserved Florida state historic site in Estero, Florida, but all of Teed's followers have now died because this is a long time ago, not because it was a cult and he killed them. Well, that's good. Thanks for saying that. You're welcome. This was a good call. Teed's followers claims you have experimentally verified the concavity of the earth's curvature through surveys of the Florida coastline making use of the rectilinear equipment. Not sure if that's a real thing.

It has been reported, although apparently without historical documentation, that Adolf Hitler, here we are again, was influenced by the concave hollow earth ideas and sent an expedition in unsuccessful attempt to spy on the British fleet by pointing infrared cameras up at the sky. This is where it loses me. The Egyptian mathematician Mostafa Ad-Bel-Kadar wrote several scholarly papers working out a detailed mapping of the concave earth model.

In one chapter of his book on the wild side in 1992, Martin Gardner, we talked about him, can't remember why, discusses the hollow earth model articulated by Abdel-Kadar, Egyptian. According to Gardner, this hypothesis posits that rays of light travel in circular paths and slows as they approach the center of the spherical star-filled cavern. No energy can reach the center of the cavern, which corresponds to no point of finite distance away from earth in the widely accepted scientific cosmology.

A drill, Gardner says, would lengthen as it traveled away from the cavern and eventually pass through the point at infinity, corresponding to the center of the earth in the widely accepted scientific cosmology. Supposedly, no experiment can distinguish between the two cosmologies. I have no fucking idea what this guy is talking about. But I must give you all the information. And that's concave earth. I don't know. Like, that seems not real to me. Like it might not be able to exist.

But they're talking about a lot of science and math. And while I understand all math. Plus, nobody set up an itinerary to go visit the exterior of the earth. It's true. So I'm just not buying it. Plus, we're all so convinced we live on the exterior that it's the greatest scheme ever put forth by anyone. There's also the people that say that the government doesn't want us to know about the inner earth because various reasons. I just got to keep secrets.

Now winding down the Hollow Earth episode, it seems as if there's much more chatter about the Hollow Earth than we ever thought possible. But can we prove it? Apparently, there are some who have been there. But most importantly, may we disprove the Hollow Earth? Might be easier to do that than prove that there is one. Quite easily, in fact. With seismic waves, as well as gravity.

And just the simple fact that ordinary matter is not strong enough to support a hollow shape of planetary size against the force of gravity. And with that, it is the end of the episode. A very long episode with two simple facts that can disprove the Hollow Earth. Yeah, I mean, that is kind of something that will always destroy it. And that is just it can't exist within our current understanding of gravity without collapsing it on itself. And they just keep adding spheres within the sphere.

Like, support it. But that's not helping. They took away the spheres. It started with spheres. I know. The spheres made sense. It supported the Hollow Earth. The spheres did support the whole thing. And it's evolved. It was quite an expedition to the journey of the center of the Earth that we went on today. We saw it evolve. We grew attached to it. And then it all shattered at the end. We saw a whale. Yeah. It's like in Moka Dick. Moka Dick. I'll never forget him. Yeah. Any thoughts?

I kind of want to read the book now. I don't know if that intrigues me at all. It's got to be shorter than Moby. It can't be better than the name of the book. No. I'm happy just knowing it exists. Do you have any closing thoughts on Hollow Earth? Not on that? No. I have many thoughts, but they're all on many different things. That's okay. I think it's a good place to end. Okay. Well, yeah, Chelsea, thank you for that very enlightening time.

Our listeners are going to be the best party guests like anyone has ever seen. Both in what they can talk about and how they attempt to talk about it. Because they just know all the spots to grab. Let us know how it goes if anybody tries our tips. Yeah. And in the meantime, I have been Taylor here with Chelsea. We are Journey to the Fringe. Thank you all for listening and we'll see you next week. Bye. Thank you for listening to Journey to the Fringe.

If you have liked what you have listened to, please like, share, subscribe or follow, depending on what venue you are listening to us through. Also please, if possible, leave a five star review as that really helps us in the algorithms. Should you wish to interact with us, please check us out on your social media of choice. I bet you we are there.

And if you really want to communicate with us and give us ideas for new episodes or tell us that we're wrong and terrible, either way, please send us an email at journeytothefringe.gmail.com. For now, I'll see you in the next episode.