From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nola. They call me Ben.
We're joined with our guest producer, Ben the outlaw Hackett. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Guys, I guess this is sort of our real estate episode in a very dark way.
Oh fine, it's sounds six.
Yeah, it's our urban planning episode.
Let's flip some properties, y'all.
Oh gosh, yeah, you know, before we get started. Have you guys ever speculated on that. I don't think we've ever talked about it, but if you ever wanted to be a house slipper.
My girlfriend rely likes those shows, though I kind of can't stand them. Frankly, Yeah, it's kind of weird energy. I don't know what it is.
Weird energy is a good way to say it.
You have to have a certain amount of money in standing to get the first one, right. Then once you get that one, sure you can make some repairs, sell it, get another one. But when you're doing it with like ten twenty one hundred houses at a time, probably not as an individual, right, But that's one of these giant investment companies. We've talked about it just it verges on an ick factor that I am very much not comfortable.
Yeah, it sort of starts to get into slumlord territory after a certain point, right.
Very quickly. Yeah, and shout out to I'm not going to name him here, but shout out to one of my old favorite landlords who was a self professed slum lord, and he was like, a lot of people aren't going to be honest with you about that, Ben, I run slums. Hell, Yeah, that's what I do.
I never met a slum I didn't like.
Something we'd never well, I mean, I guess we've mentioned it before, but we don't talk very much about the massive corporations that have investments in real estate, both commercial and residential, and how those companies also have like five percent seven percent stakes in companies that manufacture cereal and other foods like that and own restaurants and chains, and it's all one big it becomes one big ownership thing.
And I think that's what that's what's at the heart of this episode, the concept of ownership.
Yes, indeed nailed it and shout out to Blackrock in the least polite way possible.
For sure, Halfaway and all these other we're like shouting at Blackrock. There we go.
And also, of course, as we mentioned in previous episodes with this, with these institutional investors are a big part of the drive to get people working back in offices. That's a big part of their calculus. And then also there are algorithms now that automate the pricing of things and it becomes a profit maximization thing, so it's going to have terrible results down the line.
But in offices that somebody at some point walked onto a piece of land, put a flag in the ground literally and said this mine.
Yeah, let's go, let's get to it land.
I think it came up briefly on a previous episode, just this idea of how it's so easy to take for granted, the idea that land. You know, people can't just walk up on your land anymore and say, hey, you got to go, this is mine now, I mean, but at the same time, you know, there is a tenuousness to the nature of like owning property, and it's all just your one document or misprint away from being dispossessed of your land. You know, it's all kind of
a bit of an illusion of security. So maybe I take back my whole thing where it's like, oh, we're all good now, we're past that.
I don't know. We're in kind of a despite all the dangers, we're in kind of a halcyon era of stability in that regard, you know.
And you have to be a citizen of a recognized sovereign country.
Yes, yes you do. And well we'll get to this, we'll get to micronations, we'll get to all kinds of things, but let's start. Let's start here with the idea that that we're we're hitting on the right to live on land, to move through it, to possess that land or the things found upon or under it, and to sell that stuff. It's one of the primary concerns of all human civilizations. And it's not just humans. A lot of animals are very territorial. Territorial as well.
It's a to me, yeah, yeah, they don't have attorneys and laws, right, well.
I can't wait.
Yeah, it's a law thing. That's all it is. That's a law thing.
Well, and that's what I was getting at the idea. The tenuousness of it is that we have these structures, these things built into society that we accept to be true, that give us certain guarantees. But it's all just kind of a concept at the end of the day. And if you're gonna get strong armed by someone who's got more legal firepower than you, then it's certainly possible.
Yeah, And just like the stock market or the global economy, it's a collective story humanity tells itself, and as long as the majority of people believe in that story, then the magic works. So we're talking today about this weird idea in this very crowded world. Fellow conspiracy realist, you may be surprised to find that there is still some land out there on planet Earth that officially nobody wants. Here are the facts. I mean, I love the point
you bring up. Know that right now, most borders are pretty set like there are tons of border disputes all over the world, but for most of human history, borders were likely to shift back and forth. And this always happened, especially if there wasn't a geographical barrier like a river or an ocean or a mountain range.
You know. A couple of months ago, construction started on this lot next to my property that it had like a burned out house on it, and they tore the house down. Now they're building something new. And I got a knock on the door and it was my neighbor or the guy that bought the property, and he goes, hey, this is kind of awkward, but looks like your fence line is about ten feet Oh no, in the wrong place.
Oh boy.
And I'm like, I had a surveyor come out. He's like, I know, it's a pain in the butt, but we don't have to worry about it now. We'll deal with it when the time is right. But in my mind, I'm like, I do I have to hire a counter surveyor to prove that this guy's telling the truth. And I did.
It's like a weird micro border, dude, I don't want to tell somebody that we work with. We all respect a lot. Just dealt with this in Massachusetts and it was really bad and it took a long time. No, so just just be prepared or just it's it's a.
Weird democrawt, I'll move the thing. He said he'd paid for the moving of the I'm not worried about it as long as it's accurate, you know. I just like I said, It's just it's just another little nuisance that I have to deal with to hire somebody to confirm what this guy's saying is true.
Well, let's shout out our Venezuela Giana episode, right, because that's exactly what we're talking about here. And did you guys see the news Exon Mobile has decided to go ahead and move forward with drilling explorations right on that area, like off the coast of that area, which is again it all ties back into this episode.
Yeah, yeah, we kind of set it up with Venezuela and Guiana, and Exon has some very important friends in the US military industrial complex, so they gave they pretty much gave Venezuela a f a FO. Notice, we'll trying to keep us a family show on this one. But since we have company over since Ben's.
Here uation, yes, sir, And it's weird because too if for anybody speaking of going to the northeast map for anybody who is uh living or traveling near the US Canadian border, especially in rural areas.
You'll see the way that borders used to be for most of human history. There's a there's a gradient, there's a gradual change in culture. Like people who live on the US side of the of the Canadian border often they we saw this in our Maple Syrup episode. They work in Canada. So every day they get up they are an international traveler. They pass by like a little equivalent of a phone booth, and then some very nice customs officers like oh, hey Jerry, or hey Aaron or whatever, and then they drive.
Back, especially as you get towards the Pacific, the Pacific Northwest, My gosh, that's a quagmire of property rights issues and like who gets to claim land out there, and which sovereign country that once planted a flag now gets to sell it to the United States.
And shout out to the dispossessed First Nations and Native American communities who struggle today in the court system to regain the land that was stolen from them under manifest destiny. I mean back in the day. It might surprise a lot of us to learn how recent modern borders are. As more and more people populated the world, like, here's how it used to work. You would travel probably by foot, maybe on some animal, and the languages would start to
get mixed up. Different currencies would start to be accepted, think of like the Silk Road. And then all of a sudden, at some point that is not clearly demarcated, you have left ancient land one. Now you're an ancient land two. And it's there's not really unless there's a river, unless there's a mountain or a desert, there's not a way to have a hard border, which is what we have today. The Roman Empire didn't even really fortify their
borders militarily. They were trading posts. They were there to like make sure the taxes were paid. And if you went to a place like England where there weren't a ton of distinctive landmarks, that's where people built walls, like Hadrian's Wall is where he said, okay, here, this is going to be the spot.
Well, I mean, you know, there are certain elements in modern politics that are all about bringing back walls. It's like they think it's a surefire and history tested technology and totally foolproof. Dare we say, impenetrable by something like the common ladder.
Right, they haven't heard of the asymmetrical warfare called the ladder. They're catching up with that one. But also, without getting too political, I think a lot of people in the US don't realize there have already been walls for a long long time.
There was a big one in Berlin. I heard for a long time.
I've got a little piece of it too. Yeah, yes, waits, I didn't get one of the cool I'm sure that was like a premium thing.
But they were getting wallchunk.
Yeah, they were getting traded all around when the wall fell. It was kind of like how in the military they hand people challenge coins and things like that. So you got a little piece of wall. That was because capitalism came in immediately when the wall fell, Like as soon as the wall fell, a bunch of German people ran up and grabbed little pieces of it and started selling
them on the streets side side hustle, gig economy. Right, So most modern borders actually date back from just a couple of centuries ago, like the modern versions of them, and many only count their ages in decades. So to the earlier point you made. As permanent as these things may look, they're actually quite ephemeral. They have great capacity fluidity. You know, borders blur, and even now borders are defined as much by their disputes as they're agreed upon limits.
Right Like the hard borders that used to exist or that still exist. A lot of those came from the Cold War, the DMZ on the Korean Peninsula, Kashmir, the Berlin Wall. Like you mentioned, we found a really cool quote from a writer named Joshua Jelly Shapiro who talks about borders writing for The New Yorker. As a matter of fact, let's just summarize this and please read jelly
Shapiro's full article here. Joshua points out that these Cold War scenarios are replicated with borders dividing countries who still have, you know, the shared system of democracy. Their armies are at peace, and they still really really want these borders, Like look at the border between India Bangladesh, the way that South Africa handles the Zimbabwe and border and I didn't know this. In Hungary for a time, they lace
the potato fields with barriers to keep out refugees. And then, like you mentioned, Noo, there's the cyclical US Mexico border panic, which somehow seems to gain attention only during elections. Do you guys notice that?
You know, I know, you're like a good poetry reference. But Robert I didn't realize this until just now when I was looking at up. But Robert Frost is actually the originator of the line good fences make good neighbors comes from a poem literally about mending a wall.
From something there is that doesn't love a wall.
That's right.
Yeah, let's talk a little bit just about why governments feel these borders are so important and why they feel it's important to control the human beings migrating across a border. And it goes back to law. Right, if you are a citizen of a country, you are beholden through contract, essentially to the laws of that country. If you're a citizen of another and you enter into a new country,
you're not necessarily subject to laws in the same way. Often, you know, the there would be an extradition process to get you out of a country rather than charged with a major crime or something if you if you were to do it across the border. Right, So it's about.
Tidiness, right, It's sort of about like keeping things from getting to messiuh, legally, I guess that's part of it.
But you're also not an economic battery for that country that you're operating in in the form of taxes. Right, So there's all there are, all of these legal reasons and legal apparatus. Is the apparatus that are created to make sure that the trafficking of humans across borders is controlled.
Yeah, and it's resource extraction, I think is the primary, the primary thing, and it's treating humans as a resource.
And I'm not really up on all of the minutia of this, but I just got to wonder how something like Brexit figures into this where exit you know, there was all of this free movement, you know of United Kingdom citizens throughout Europe. You know, bands that live there could tour all throughout Spain and Amsterdam and all of the countries that are connected, you know by rail, and
it was a very easy answer. And now with Brexit, all that stuff's out the window and there's like basically new borders that were like did not previously exist, even though the UK is its own country.
Yeah. Well, Brexit is interesting because it was talking with some folks about it and the change was electric. It's a Machavelian super move in the way that conspiracy was orchestrated. The only people who support Brexit now are the very wealthy who made a lot of money off of it and then immediately relocated their assets to tax friendly.
Countries, which is so hypocritical because that's like the antithesis of what the whole thing was supposed to be about.
Right, Yeah, well they manifested it. It works a lot of people. Yeah, a lot of people who supported Brexit didn't really know what they were getting into, so hoping wishing them the best as the cost of living skyrockets and.
The but the argument was in some way to keep that those economic batteries, you know, more benefiting the United Kingdom rather than all of this free passage back and forth throughout the other surrounding countries, right right.
The idea was that by being a member of the EU, you are sacrificing your sovereignty as a country. And they were feeling like, hey, we're an independent country. We don't want to be treated like a state of a larger country. And then you know, honestly, the vote hinged on a ton of racism in theocraty English, right, very very v for vendetta, very children of men. But this, with all these things, and this is almost a separate episode itself,
it leads us to this other question. In a world that's more crowded than ever before, with so many bored disputes, so many things just on the tip of becoming hot wars, is there really still land that nobody wants? Well answer the question after a word from our sponsors, here's where it gets crazy. Yes, this is our this is our phrase for the evening. The concept is terra nullius, land without a master or unclaimed land. We mentioned this in
a previous episode. It's an odd, sometimes conspiracy laden concept that feels nerdy and, past a certain point, incredibly dangerous. It's a group term. It can describe a couple of things. It can describe land that nobody wants. It can also describe the idea of sovereign powers exercising squatter rights like literally as we as we said at the top of the show, coming into a place, say dibbs for England.
Yeah, I know we're gonna get there, but it's gotta have something to do with If nobody wants it, it's probably because it's inconvenient to own or to possess or it's just not strategically of value, or perhaps it's you know, Baron or something like that. I don't know. This is a new concept for me, so we're kind.
Of well, it's the it's the thing England used to roll into Georgia and say Tara Knowles under the doctrine of discovery, this is now ours.
Yeah, manifest destiny is another example.
But that's this is the legal right that was claimed by the Crown when they rolled into the New World for the first time, and then as they contend, Thomas Jefferson claimed Tara Nollis in doctrine of discovery as he went as he sent people westward who was.
In clerk style. And also that's another example, like also that is going to be spoiler, folks, that's kind of our conspiratorial turn, and that's going to be one of the most important parts of the exploration tonight because this
can be weaponized. I thought we would enjoy just a little bit of the background of how humans got to Tara nullius, because it's pretty recent relatively, like the phrase being written in international law that only happens in the late eighteen hundreds, but in practice it's obviously so much older. And it's related to a concept I had never heard of res nullius. That it's a Roman idea from Roman law, and it literally means nobody's thing. What's that nobody's thing? Do you want it?
It's nobody's yeah, exactly, So, I mean, if you wanted to take it back to those earliest origins in the Roman days, stuff that was considered res nulius was legally up for grabs by anyone who happens upon it. And this was a little tricky because Roman law only saw certain people as people. And this is going to apply to a lot of the manifest destiny stuff and some other stories you know, from other parts of the world
that we're going to get to. It's very common that the invading forces only recognize people who look like them as being, you know, worthy of possessing things and anyone else. Nah, you might as well just be livestock, you know, get out of here. This is mine.
Yeah. And my understanding is it really did relate to do you have an army that can tell us no when we roll in?
Right?
Is there a small French occupation in a part of this land? Right? If we're England rolling through. If there is, then we've got a problem. If there's not, then we get to claim it, right.
Or we'll have a war, why not?
Yeah, yeah, but.
It is weird, like I don't I know, it's not directly related to Christianity in any way, but it does seem like the Christian based powers that were practicing colonization really were the ones that were out there claiming this stuff.
Yeah, using that term and ideology. Ideology has always been a tremendously powerful tool of rationalization. You know, in the dawn of the Great Caliphates or in the heyday of the Great Caliphates, they did very much the same thing. They just didn't call it terr nulius. They said, you know, we are the people in the right right. Our belief in Islam is justifies our expansionist tendencies and all the violence we may enact upon the infidels.
That was certainly the case with Spanish as well, like Spanish conquistadors, you know, who were out there murdering and pillaging as well, in the name of God, because they felt as though they were imbued with some sort of like mystical power from God that gave them the right to do this.
And if we if we look at the modern day. This is a pretty surprising thing, because this is a very dark topic. If you look at the modern day, you can still do terra nullius. You can still claim this like if we for some reason had a boat, just for some reason, let's call it the USS Conspiracy, and we're sailing the high seas, and our guest producer Ben Hackett is like, you, guys, I would did not sign up for all this, but we've conscripted him. We're all in our tiny four person navy or five person
with you listening. D of course, why not. It has all the stuff. And as we're sailing in international waters that no one state controls, we see a newly formed volcanic island. Maybe it's like way out in the Pacific, like Round Point Nemo or something. And so we can sail up to this island, we can occupy it ourselves, or which more likely, we can claim it in the name of another nation, another established state. And with just that explanation and nothing else, we can we go around
and pitch the idea to other world powers. And I'm like, hey, you know us, we found this island, we got your flag in it, We put your flag in it. We thought you would be cool with that. Is that all right? Like, are you going to arrest us? Or do we get a medal?
You know, it's so weird.
It is, and it's pretty uncool because we see examples of it in the modern day and earlier. The question was like, can you guess what parts of the world are most likely to be quote unquote unclaimed today? Like, and I say this as in parts of the world that don't have people actively living on them. You Narctica, You nailed it, You nailed it, nailed it. Yes, Antarctica. It's not the coolest place to live, or I guess technically it is one of the quallest places to live.
It's quite cool. Yeah, there's a place called marie Bird Island. It's the largest case of ter Nulius on the planet. It's huge. It's like sixty two hundred thousand square miles in west Antarctica, and nobody wants it.
I want it, I'll claim it.
You got it?
Do that ice is gonna melt soon. Let's go. Let's see, let's see what we find under there.
There's there's there's one guy who has tried to claim it. There there are two guys instrumental in history. One is Admiral Richard E. Byrd might be familiar, right Operation Hijump shout out New Schwapia.
Yes, when when German forces went down and occupied some land in Antarctica. And dude, we've talked about this many times in the past. But look at some point when you've got some free time, look at the territorial divides that exist in Antarctica. Uh mostly, I guess the closest part is that is that right towards South America looking after I'm trying to imagine the map in my head where it divide it up in these weird little pie It's a pie basically.
Yeah, yeah, And this is this discovery goes before quote unquote discovery. Every time we say discovery, folks, please picture a lot of air quotes and caveats because other people are clearly aware of this and you don't need the Piirees map to prove it. So Admiral Richard E. Bird is flying over this territory in nineteen twenty nine and he sees this expanse of desolate Arctic desert that is just horrible, like it's impossible to live there even now.
It's so inhospitable that they can't even camp there temporarily, so they have to go to the nearby Ross Eyeself and sleep there. It makes you wonder why he named it after his wife, What was going on there?
I guess we'll never know.
Yeah, I mean we can side with optimism and say maybe he just wanted to impress her, which is what I think we all do in relationships. You want to impress your part. Right, So hopefully it was happy, but not much has changed. The climate is warming. It's a
good time to get in early. Some people might say, but it's so much trouble to occupy this place, and there aren't really proven resources that justify it, and you would be gambling against the Antarctica treaties, so you would run the risk of other nations getting really mad at you. Even if you were like you guys weren't using it. Then they might say, hey, but you signed a piece of paper and then, like you said, Matt, it comes
down to the armies. There have been a couple of expeditions since twenty nine, but most of the observation has to be from the air, and Noel. If Matt does tried to take over and declare a micro nation. He's going to have one dissenting voice that we know of. One guy is going to be like, hey, I already called DIBs.
Is it the guy that runs the ice cube observation thing? That's nuts? Not there that we're talked about, because all that exploration is in the name of science, right, at least most of it is the army slash scientific exploration.
Yeah, what happens if someone gets murdered in McMurdo, Right, there's that episode. No, there's a guy just learned about in two thousand and one and a seaman weird adults for the US Navy named Travis McHenry. He said, I'm gonna declare this my own nation. It is the Grand Duchy of West Arctica.
I love a grand duchy. Yeah, I do love a grand duchy. Yeah, this story is super weird. He did this while serving as a seaman. I'm a child in the United States Navy. When the Navy found out that he was contacting foreign governments and you know, floating this new nation to them, they quickly told him to knock it out. Yeah. I mean seriously, Today, this cro nation has somewhere around three and fifty six citizens though none actually lived there. I guess they're what citizens like in spirit.
Yeah, he's got the right idea. It's for them. It's post melt, post melt society, that's what it's gonna be. And everybody's gonna move there. About two hundred of them will make it there, and uh, it'll it'll prosper you guys. I can see it.
Yeah, Yeah, Travis is a forward looking dude. He also I don't like to recommend Wikipedia, but his Wikipedia page is very interesting himself.
He's like the kind of guy that would edited himself.
He might maybe in the talk section. So whenever you whenever you have to look at a Wikipedia article, I can't recommend enough, go to the talk tab. That's where you see the Wikipedia wars. That's where you see the editors beefed up with each other and mentioning very weird things.
I'm gonna do that.
Yeah, I bet you'll find some cool stuff. But so yeah, the US Navy says, hey, Bud, no, you know, stop writing to these other countries trying to get them to recognize you. And he bought some land in the Carolinas.
I believe you know, if you reach out to him, you can petition to become a citizen of this sort of like what's that place off the coast of the UK Sealand right, like you can it's an old fort that a guy made into a micronation and you can apply to be a member of the citizen of the Principality of Sealand.
That sounds familiar. But I cannot confirm.
Micro nor I micronations will get there one day. If this US citizens.
Trigulous history about it, that's for sure. It's been quite a minute. Yeah, I know there was one. There was one story about a guy who established a micronation like on a raft. Yes, I do remember that one vaguely, but the details are escaping me.
I think micronations might be big for us in Q four, as they say. But there is a happy ending with this one because mckenry he turned West Arctica into a nonprofit and they advocate for biodiversity and Antarctic wildlife in the face of climate change.
So that there is a highly nerdy looking board game called Sealand and the tag is cleverly placed crops and windmills to become the wealthiest burger in the Netherlands. It is all about claiming new land. Though.
It sounds like Settlers to me.
But what it looks like Settlers, it looks exactly what. Everybody's not targonal.
And everybody's not a board game nerd. We're talking about Settlers of Katak, which I have never.
Played, but I've heard it's good. I am. I'm a wingspan man. I think I've mentioned.
Yeah, yeah, I saw it on your table.
Damn right, it was unopened though. I actually just purchased the actual board game. We play it with our friends and also the online additions. But I just got the actual physical board game versus I'm gonna bust that out this weekend, y'all.
Maybe one day I'll be lucky enough to play with you guys.
We still have we o Matta a game night with his fancy new gaming table. Yeah, so much room for activity, boatload of cash to dump out in the middle of that sucker, So much room for activities.
Uh so, Okay, So there's another thing here that mckenry teaches us, which is a lot of people hear this idea of Tarinolius or some version of it, and they kind of take it as a challenge or an invitation, and it almost never works out. But here we get to this guy's is one of my favorite ones. Here we get to the most surreal and ridiculous and kind of funny, uh story of Taraanlius beer ta Will, which I am almost certainly mispronouncing because we are not native speakers.
In my mind, I'm picturing a beer towel, you know, for that nice dabbing your mouth when you spill a little layer beer.
Yeah, it's it's tiny. It's like less than eight hundred square miles. And if you pull up the map you'll see it looks like a postage stamp. It doesn't make sense it would be such a big deal. It's like a little quadrilateral area.
Well, isn't that interesting, though, Ben, Because a lot of these things are almost more symbolic than they are actually like of significance, you know, in terms of like you know, commerce or whatever it might be. It's because that's the point that these borders, what they represent sometimes is more meaningful than where the actual borders are.
Yeah, I think that's a good observation.
So this thing, this tiny little thing, was a map mishap. I guess that's also disagreement.
And for more than a century, Egypt and Saidan have both been constantly saying no, you you take that one. They're constantly trying to foist this eight hundred like they beef up over it. They're trying to force the other nation to say, okay, I'll take this eight hundred square miles because of the map discrepancy in like eighteen ninety nine and nineteen oh two or two maps that came out, and one said Beard ta Will is the land of Sudan, and this other piece of land called the Halib Triangle
is Egypt's. And the Hallib Triangle is way cooler, it's much more attractive real estate, it's got access to the Red Sea, it's much bigger, it's more friendly if you want to live there. So each country, as like those in the second map, by the way, reversed it. So we have one map that says Egypt controls Beer ta Will but not the other triangle, and then the other map says Sudan controls Beard ta Will but not the
other triangle. So if either nation takes ownership of this one little tiny piece of land, then they automatically lose the land they really want. It's ridiculous.
Well, then who controls the land they all really want right now, nobody, but the triangle is also the same.
The triangle is well, if you ask them, they both they both will say they control it.
Well, which army is in there? Somebody's got military officers somewhere.
I think it's like the line of actual control in China and India and the Himalayas. I feel like they have uneasy standoffs and the people living in the area are just kind of hoping the shoe doesn't drop in their generation.
And just to kind of like hammer home. What a big deal some of this stuff is, you know, for the countries that are kind of disputing them. Barbie. The movie was unceremoniously pulled from release in China because of a basically like crayon doodle of a map depicting a version of China in that part of the country that I believe was not to the liking of China these officials because of something to do with their claim on Vietnam or or part of like something that violates their sovereignty,
something called the the nine dash line. Oh my mistake. It was Vietnam that had the issue because they believe this claim of China on parts of the South China Sea violates their size. See, so they were like, no, no, this is not cool, Barbie. We're not letting you release your movie here.
Mm so, guys, are we gonna travel over there? Should we plant a flag and just say no? Hey, guys, we understand. We'll take it well because I know it's hard to live there, but we if you put a building on there that's got some hydroponics and I say, glue, we can come on, let's do this.
Yeah. Oh man, let's say we'll have to set up Wi Fi too so we can record.
But uh, you see that show Murder at the End of the World.
Yes, I think there's like.
An Elon Musk type figure, like you know, like it's like a big tech mogul good gajillionaire, and that he has this hotel that he builds. It's basically like, you know, part of it is above ground level and I forget some really really frozen tundra part of the world, but the rest of it is underground, like so far down that would protect you from like nuclear blasts. Basically like a really really fancy fallout shelter. So we can get the funds together to build something like that count me in. Boys.
Okay, let's ride to it county. Let's just let's just pitch it right, there's nothing wrong with brainstorming.
Asking costs nothing, and then.
You know, maybe we can be actually, you know what, I'll do it as long as we can call it the El Tovar Hotel.
Oh like it also be Bentopia.
Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, come on, that's got a rink in just because there are two bins in the in the founding fathers here. I don't think we should lean into that. We got to find a better name.
It's just the pitheist name. It's fine. Okay, we can work shop. We can work shop.
We could call it beer tell will plus there you go. So to this question, you're you're absolutely right, Matt. There are no permanent residents. There are kind of desperate prospectors who set up temporary mining camps to hunt for gold, and then there are nomadic communities that move through that area in their migration. But no, there's no static community living there because it's very hot. It's a desert. There's not any surface water. It's like ad max style.
But no wait, wait, well it's the perfect location for where humanity sets up the first AI controlled sovereign area.
There we go. Yeah, right, let the robots figure out the waters like that.
It's Animatrix, Baby, it's going to happen. It's just like that.
Oh man, I mean I did you just reference the Animatrix. Yeah, it's goods just funny. It's just like that's a deep slightly deeper cut part one.
Yeah. Also, uh, I'm I'm legitimately concerned about listening to this episode a few years from now and realizing how prescy that statement was, because that is good casting.
As long as we don't accidentally turn on people's alexa.
Oh boy, yeah god, thanks everybody wrote.
In so god, No, you're right, it's gonna be. It's gonna be West Antarctica, isn't it because the cold temperatures are actually will be beneficial for the computing power they'll be Oh god, Okay.
Well, also North Pole because a lot of islands are coming out from under the ice. It's a great one. Yeah. What we're saying is invest in the polls. Guys, forget we're playing small time. If we're trying to flip houses, let's start flipping poles.
Yeah, pull shift.
This is the whole thing, baby square God, oh man, I'm waiting in fear for an expert in magnet to write to us. But anyway, the thing about this is Berta will. Although it is not paradise on Earth, and it is very hot and somewhat in the hospitable, it's the most habitable quote unquote Terranolius around and multiple people have tried to create a micronation there, but the vast
majority of never visited. They post online, they start a website and they're like the nation butte will with your buddy Johnny Bluejays.
Yeah, keyboard warriors, go take a trip plant actual flag nerds.
Right, oh man, I wonder what our flag would look like too.
But okay.
There are other examples of this, especially around the Danube post Serbia Croatian conflicts. There will probably be more examples in the future. Like you said, the idea of borders, although they seem permanent, they're quite ephemeral. But there's a darker side to the story, and I think it's one that we all really wanted to talk about. This is the most important aspect of Terranulius, past all the weird
jokes and the Joseph Heller kind of stuff. I propose we pause for word from our sponsor and then get into the deep water. What do you say, Yes, we've returned, and you know we're fun. We're fun at parties. We like a good joke. We did the thing with beer to Will. That's kind of ridiculous. But the more important part, the frankly terrifying part, and the very real conspiracy is this. The idea of Terranulius in name and or in practice has often been used by very powerful expansionist forces to
justify atrocities, occupation, colonization. You think gentrification in your city is bad, imagine that wide scale on a nation, right on a land somewhat, you know, one of the like Apocalypto right an amazing film and one of the most frightening parts of Apocalypto, despite all of the crazy graphic violence in action, one of the most frightening parts is the very very end. Spoilers, folks, three to one, the real monster comes at the end. It's the Spanish colquistadors.
Yeah. I know I'm gonna sound like total like you know, woke white dude or whatever, but I'm just so happy to see how much representation indigenous people are getting in pop culture over the last handful of years. I just feel like I just didn't see that much of it. And now you've got like shows like Reservation Dogs and even like The Curse, which is, you know, a weird, cringe worthy kind of satire. It deals with some of
this stuff of cultural appropriation. And then specifically, I just watched Killers of the Flower Moon, which is about what happened after it stopped being okay just to kill Native Americans outright and take their land. So they had to do it a little more low key and covertly, but
nothing actually changed. It was just kind of everything went underground, you know, in terms of like the awful, despicable things that white people did in order to rob these folks of their livelihood and property and land.
Absolutely right, I would say, because the methods may change, but the aim remains constant and the same. You know, it's still the days of rest nullius. Nobody's thing, And if you can convince yourself another powerful forces that something is nobody's thing, then you will you will get very quickly to an argument of might makes right, which is evil and unethical but happens all the time. And when we talk about this. Obviously, you know there are multiple examples.
One of the most notorious of terra nullius as a conspiracy occurs in Australia, and Australian friends in the audience, fellow conspiracy realists, you are doubtlessly very well aware of this and know more about it than we do. But we're surprised to find that in the early days of what we call modern Australia, the governor Captain Arthur Philip proclaimed the creation of the Penal Colony right of New South Wales and really leaned on the concept of terranulius
and said, look, we found this big empty continent. There are no real humans here, so we claim this. We're going to make it a prison camp for the British Empire. At the time, Aboriginal communities had lived on the continent for more than fifty thousand years. I can't even imagine how long of a time that is. That hundreds of
different languages, they had a long, rich history. In what we call Sydney alone, there were like eight thousand people and the British said, well, they didn't call dibbs, so now we are doing that.
Yeah, and they don't look like us. Yeah, As far as we're concerned that they don't deserve this land that they've you know, settled and and made their home for generations.
Well, again, I think it goes back to that concept of we do not recognize anybody that could claim sovereignty over this land, so we therefore do claim it. And the human beings that we're encountering do not have the weapons that we have, so we can exert force and we can decide that it's ours. And it's really important to remember that they only legally claim sovereignty over the land right according to the laws recognized in the country
that's claiming right. And then any and Ben, as you said, any, what is it the anyone who recognizes the authority of that authority is then buying into this fiction that they now own this land. It's just and it's so infuriating, and this is the definitely the best example of it.
Then it comes to mind. But then when you start to peel back the onion and you look at the whole, but the whole of the world, and how this basic concept has created everything that we everything that I as a human being love, this horrible concept created it.
Yeah, the benefits that carry down you know, we often don't realize the origin of those things.
Right.
The reason that you can live so far inland in the United States and get pretty much anything you want so long as you can afford it, that comes from that. The reason that the national parks are so awesome is because the indigenous communities that lived here thousands and thousands of years ago didn't wreck.
It, to say, yeah, And it goes to show too with the westward expansion, like how the idea, idea of getting in on the ground floor like that and getting your piece of the pie when it was all being divvied up. You know, it was such an important thing, you know, because land is everything, you know, like, that's where you build your home, that's where you stake your claim, that's where you make your legacy.
It's very interesting to read. You know, we are of a generation folks where the three of us I don't know about you, Benh, but we grew up playing a game called Oregon Trail in school and it was very much a romanticization of manifest destiny, right, and in different versions of this game, some things didn't age well, let's put it that way. It's also very interesting to read early advertisements for settlers or for pioneers, right that were saying,
travel from the west coast. We'll have a lottery on this new territory, right and for peanuts. Hen he's on the dollar. You can get this massive homestead and all you have to do is get out there and live there.
And I think I've mentioned this show from BBC the English It's it's it's a very very epic, sweeping kind of period piece. But there's a character who's who's a Native American and his whole deal is that he is he has been promised this land that he is owed. That was land that was taken away from his you know, his tribe. But it becomes abundantly clear that they are never going to pay him what he's owed because he is not in that club and they will never see
him in that way. And he kind of finally has to make that realization, you know that like, no, I'm never going to be treated fairly. I have to make my own way and and and realize that what's been taken from me is never going to be given back to me because it is might makes right.
And you know Kissinger would agree, right. So the again, the methods and the rationalisations may change, but the aim has always been the same. It also reminds me in the world of fiction of the excellent series Taboo. Do you guys remember that one came out of the years?
I mentioned that recently too with Tom Hardy Boy. Is that good? Dark dark dark dark start?
And there is a storyline there about trying to acquire land in the so called New World. We don't know how it'll work because it's been years and years since season two, but it's worth tuning in. And it's something it's a conspiracy that really, without high hyperbole, Ternalius affects everyone. Is a very successful set of conspiracies, intergenerational with ramifications that continue today. And one of the questions I have and this is something that kind of honestly keeps me
awake at night. I mean I'm already awakened that, you know what I mean. I think about it a lot. What happens in the future. You know what happens is humanity expands into the moon. You know the first asteroid mind startup?
Oh yeah, dude. It's hard to plant a flag in space because there's really nothing to plant it on unless you've got something flying around up.
We did it the USA.
But isn't there sort of a gentleman's agreement that like nobody can own space? Sure, okay, yeah, we're good then, right, that's got teeth.
Can I do it? Okay? Can I do one hot take on that one, because I don't want to sound like a negative Nelson or whatever, But that to me has always felt very well intentioned, and people worked very hard on the various treaties against the militarization of space
or against owning land on the moon. But I am increasingly confident after several conversations, I'm increasingly confident that the powers, the world powers that agreed to that simply did it as a stop gap, as a wit baking in a waiting time, and the moment that it becomes possibology arrived at such a point that they act will.
And then whoever has the biggest flag in mine now. We just did that project on the project for the New American Century episode where we talked about in the year two thousand that think tank was calling for the United States to create a space force so that we might exercise sovereignty over all of space. And then guess what we created, guys, Just a couple of years ago.
Have you seen the Badges?
Yes, and I've also seen the TV show, which I very much enjoyed.
Out I was runny.
Yeah, I don't think I got renewed, but I thought it was very good.
It was too close to the truth. It got cut down like that K Street.
But then, okay, so I'm going to quote somebody here, Robert J. Miller, who's writing in the Wyoming Law Review. This was from volume eleven, number two in the year twenty eleven, Total Banker.
I haven't read it, I obviously read it.
Well, he's just shouting out two very specific uses recent legal uses. We're talking international courts legal uses of Terra nolius. That is, in August of two thousand and seven, when Russia evoked well, they didn't invoke terrainulius. They involved the discovery doctrine, which is like directly tied to this contant they placed. According to Robert, they placed a titanium flag on the floor of the Arctic Ocean to claim the estimated ten billion tons of oil and gas that is
right under the surface there. And then in twenty ten, China did the same thing essentially by claiming sovereign rights over the South China Sea by planting a flag at the bottom of the ocean in the center of the area that they are claiming.
You got a real flag this, Yes they did. There's another there's an episode we did related to this where I think we mentioned it, which is who will control the North Pole as the as the northern passages become navigable? Right, A lot of countries, I don't know if we need to beat me here, ben, but a lot of countries are getting left ass out because they didn't invest in their ice breakers and they didn't put some teeth behind
their territorial claims. And if you look at the map, just like you're describing with the South Pole, the North Pole has a bunch of very ambitious pie slices, I will say, because you know, the US is only real attempted a claim to sovereignity in the North Pole is Alaska, and they tried to They tried to slice that pizza slice bigger than it should be, just being honest. And then Russia was all about putting down some flags. You know,
subs and icebreakers. They have the best ones, They have the best ice breakers.
US has the best subs and sorry, sorry, this is maybe a silly question, but like, are their territorial claims on like deep parts of the ocean, like other than we're talking about here, like for resource extraction. But like, you know what, what if technology comes uh to light that will allow us to build some sort of giant under sea dome, you know, civilization? Like when do we start having those arguments and disputes?
Man, we had those millions of years ago, back in the first civilization, when we had the domes underwater.
People are flipping domes. That's how everything went wrong.
Do you know, like the Gundam, the Gungam, the Gungan city in the bad Star Wars movies, Boss Nass.
Oh, Sequest DSV Sequest was cool?
Yeah, hell sea Lab.
Yeah, I mean I think Also, I know we're sorry, Ben, because we're now we're cooking with guests. Like we mentioned we might, we do have to end. But I love this direction because I got to ask, how likely do you think it is that modern undersea cities or metropolis will exist? I think it's increasingly likely as the surface world gets more and more untenable, Like why wouldn't you if you could make.
It work, just got to show up and say this mine, this my gun, I might have that.
Everybody study vexillology. Clearly you need a flag. We have to have flag. If you want to send a flag to us, pitch a flag. Idea for conspiracy stuff, for stuff they don't want you to know. I'd be interesting. I'd be in to seeing that.
I don't know. I think it'd be the creepy, drippy six fingered hand. Oh no, we.
Gave away the secret.
Can I just get this out really fast?
Guys? Okay, good?
So the United States begins to form as a conspiracy against the British Crown.
True.
Yeah, with the colonists who all came over here with the doctrine of discovery at it like in their pocket from the Crown. The Crown in England said, go over there, here's our doctrine of discovery concept. Use it when you encounter anyone or anything. You claim this land and all the peoples who occupy that land it's yours. Now operate in this way. Right, The thirteen original colonies are formed
through that doctrine of discovery. Then Thomas Jefferson, one of the guys that wrote the Constitution, that fought against the Crown and all those powers, looks in his pocket and goes, oh, here's this doctrine of discovery concept that the Crown, you know, sent us over here with let's go west and let's use this same idea and we'll do we'll do it all over and we're going to claim all of this for hours, just as they did. There's something so horrifying
about that to me. I just look at some point when you get a chance look through the history, and again it's that you guys have talked about the Lewis and Clark expedition at length. I know you have on ridiculous history, right, and we've talked about it a little bit on this show and maybe for some other shows. I just remember having conversations with you guys off air about those expeditions. The Louisiana Territory a Storia, which is a whole insane story on its own, John Asters, isn't
it John Aster? Maybe I'm wrong, the guy who founded Astoria, the first thing in the Pacific north northwest. It was like a settlement that became the reasoning behind oh, this is the United States territory now right right, Like the story behind all of that and the core of northwestern just discovery, It all just It really is horrifying, and I do not like looking at it or thinking about it.
What can we devil's advocate?
Like?
What is the alternative? Like?
What what could have.
Led us to have the civilization that we have today that involved playing nice and auditor conies?
Okay, fair enough, which the US absolutely did, But then.
We wouldn't I don't think we wouldn't be what we are today if we had just played nice, you know. I just think it's I think it would it would be it would be something completely different, not resembling, you know, the world that we see today, which I'm not saying is good or bad.
It could be different, but being different doesn't mean it would be unequal to the current day, right, Like there's I I understand the allure of zero sum calculation, and it does occur pretty often, but maybe it's kind of Pollyanna, Like I hear you, man, and I think you're right.
I just wish there was a better way, you know, And just like the stock market, just like the current geopolitical order, that kind of better way is another collective fiction, and it only works if the majority of civilization participates.
That's right now, That's well said, Ben.
I think to get what we have now, you need armies and or people with weapons to go into a territory to claim land that holds resources that some entity can then use to turn into goods, right, and services and all of that stuff to then build power to make more guns, do that in more places. Idea it is it feels like that has to happen.
Well, a justification for the government saying your tax money has to be spent on all these tanks has to be spent and make our military the best military, because otherwise everything you have is you know, question.
People hate when I say it, but there is a little bit of validity to that. The global economy works because the US Navy in particular ensures the passage of goods. It's not a good thing necess but it does work. And I would say one thing we're forgetting here too, is that you know how sometimes in a strategy game or a video game of any sort, you can find a loophole and you can sort of break your character
or break a battle. The US has kind of done that with the feedback loop of armament, and combined with the enormous geographical barriers, it is incredibly difficult to get all the way over the Pacific, all the way over the Atlantic right, let alone get inside the interior of the US, or it has been for quite some time, which is part of why the US benefited so greatly
from the post World War two economic boom. The game was broken for a minute, right, and it led to a superpower that was able to exercise a feedback loop in a way that was unparalleled since maybe the Mongol Empire when they figured out horses and cavalry attack. I mean, we can say the US made a lot of terrible missteps, and that's true. We can say the US had a
lot of well intentioned things, that's also true. But the one thing we have to point out is that the US was very, very lucky, just like in game, like in the game Civilization, where you sometimes luck out and you get you know, your civilization starts on a continent by itself. But the US didn't, obviously, because they committed genocide. I don't know, wheels within.
Wheels, oh exactly. Let's point out just one thing that this website rule of law dot org dot au points out. Ben, you shared this link, but there's a I don't know much about this, but according to that website, under European Settlement and Terranolius. In nineteen ninety two, the Australian High Court saw a case that basically legally overturned what that site calls the Tera Nolius fiction, right, which I think we've kind of pointed out it's all one big fiction.
And they actually recognized in that year nineteen ninety two that indigenous peoples of Australia have a deep connection to the land and that led to this thing called the Native Title Act of nineteen ninety three that went through parliament there in Australia. So at least one good thing occurred, right, But you know, as we know, that's one happy little moment in a sea of tragedy.
Yeah, sort of like how we discovered new species because the ecology of the world is on fire. I don't know, you got to take the winds right and with this, you know, we went in a lot of directions, folks. I think we could argue we're also setting up some episodes in the future regarding borders, regarding hidden history for lack of a better term. We would love to hear
from you, to hear your opinions on this. We'd love to hear your whether you think this is a zero sum world and somebody else's win is inherently someone else's loss, or whether there's a better way possible, perhaps most importantly, pitch us the flag. If this episode has proven anything, we are sorely in need of a flag.
You know.
Isn't that the term pitching a flag to raise a flag?
It's both, it's both. I'm doing levels, we're doing on a love it and I think you know, personally, I think all you're right. I think we got a winner with the hand that just makes a big impression. Right, So we'll get to the moon, we'll get to the ocean. We can't wait to hear from you.
That's right. And you can reach out to us in many different ways, innumerable ways, first and foremost via your social media platform of choice, where we exist in the handle conspiracy stuff, on Facebook, where we have our Facebook group Here's where it gets crazy. On YouTube, where we're chocol block with video content every single week, and also on x FKA Twitter.
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