Bittersweet Infamy - #12 - The Well to Hell

Episode Date: April 4, 2021

Josie tells Taylor about the world's deepest manmade hole and the hellish hoax surrounding it. Plus: Pennsylvania's deepfake cheerleader mom.

Taylor here. At the beginning of this episode, we talk about the so-called Deep Fake Cheerleader Mom. What that combination of words means, you'll find out shortly. Since we recorded this episode, additional information has since come out about the case in an article called The World Thought This Cheer Mom Created a Deep Fake to Harass Her Daughter's Rival, but the real story is way more confusing and bizarre. By Kelly Maria Korducky for Cosmopolitan. We talk a bit about this update in episode 34 of Bitter Sweden for me, but the gist is, she likely didn't create any deep fakes. As you listen, please keep that context in mind. On with the show.

Hello and welcome to Bitter Sweden for me, the podcast about infamous people, places and things. I'm Taylor Basso. I'm Josie Mitchell. My friend Josie is going to tell me a story. I don't know what it'll be. The only rule? The subject matter must be infamous. So have we ever talked properly on air about our theme song? No, I don't think we have. No. So that's T Street by Brian Steele. Yes, the infamous Brian Steele. Right, the very same. So when we were initially setting out to do this, we wanted a theme song and the idea was that we would kind of just try to find something a chord off of Bitter Sweet Symphony by The Verve, which was my grad song. Was it? Yeah, at my suggestion. And I found out that later I was

hanging with my buddy Justin, and he was like, yeah, I hated that that was our grad song. And I was like, that was my suggestion. I don't give a shit, whatever. So we were thinking maybe do something along those lines. But then when I was prowling around the stock music websites, I heard T Street and I kind of fell in love. And you sent it to me and I was like, what is this? I hate it. But but you were willing to you were willing to take the risk with me and I appreciate that. Well, you know what it was. I was like, well, I can't just pop back to Taylor and be like, it's bad and not have anything to suggest. So then I was looking through libraries and trying to find a song that I thought made sense and liked. And then I was like, oh my God,

T Street by Brian Steele is it. The way that it was listed on the website, the description of the song was this song would indicate that T Street is a dark dimly lit street with a haze of cool and a coating of smooth. And I think that's right. I feel that coating of smooth. And to me, like, honestly, it's so stupid. Exactly. You're like that sexy green, you know, the hot Eminem. It's so weird. She's very attractive. She's so hot. And like, why, you know, why is the one girl Eminem such a fox? But I sent it to a bunch of friends. And everyone was like, yo, this is lit. This is tight. And so I was like, if we just use it, we can get the song over. And now I can't like, it's our interest song. I really like it. I know. Every time I hear it, I'm like, yeah.

Yeah. Minfa me time. A pencilvania mother of a cheerleader. Her daughter is a high school cheerleader. And she is facing multiple counts of harassment because she made deep fake videos of her daughter's cheerleading rivals. Like they were naked drinking and vaping and smoking. And she sent them to the coach. This is like an underaged girl. She deep faked them naked and doing things that underage, like, how is that? I guess it's just altering an image. It's not like she made them. But it's so weird. Why do you want to for our readers who don't live in the matrix as we do. Do you want to maybe describe what a deep fake is? This is what I understand a deep fake to be. Yeah. Is you alter an image, a moving image, you alter a video enough that you can put somebody else's

face on somebody else. Or you can like, I don't know, manipulate the image of their face so it looks like they're doing something when they have never done that. Like it's very convincing technology. Yeah. So my I don't know if this is way down. I'm like way down on the matrix. I'm not up in the I know you got I saw those I saw those green ones and zeros flying around you. It's fine. No, I think that deep deep fakes should be illegal. I don't know why we need to legally be able to incredibly convincingly fabricate incriminating video evidence against people. Yeah. My limited time doing this podcast has shown me many of the ways that that might be a bad idea if you, you know, if it falls into the hands of like a tickle predator or something like that. You know

what I mean? Yeah. Or of a cheerleading mom. Exactly. So I don't what I don't get is who is this cheerleading mom who is like who lives in the matrix who knows how to make really convincing deep fakes. Or do you pay somebody to do them? In my head, I want it to be like the daughters leaving in the morning and and she's like bye honey have a good day at school and then the camera pans back and the mom is sitting there with like deep faking for dummies open in a pencil in her mouth little notepad. Yeah. Yeah, I could see that. Yeah. Yeah. Oh man, just imagine being that daughter right now too. Oh man, imagine being the girls who were because apparently what she also did is she would use fake phone numbers to send abusive messages to the girls to their parents

to the people who own the gym. Oh my God. She would like pretend to be other people. Yeah, she is working some stuff out, I think. She's got years of therapy ahead of her. Don't we all? I mean, yeah, no, we do. I don't even get it. I don't sounds like a great movie though. I'm excited for the movie. I'll watch Deep Fake Mom and it should but you know what they need to do is they need to make it be like Scarlett Johansson or whoever is playing Deep Fake Mom but it's not really her. They just deep fake another actress to look like her. Oh, that's good. That's meta. I like that. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. And then maybe maybe Scar Joe gets an Oscar for a performance she didn't give. You know what I mean? I'm excited for that day. There you go. Just break the academy.

Before we move on to my friend Josie telling me a story, one last thing. We now have an Instagram account. We did it. It's all deep faked though. Yeah, it's none of it is us. None of it is real but you know, if you still want to follow us in spite of that, we are at bittersweetinfamy on Instagram and we will give little previews of what the next show is going to be and Josie will post pictures of her dog. I agreed to the Instagram as long as I could post pictures of a small dog. That mancito. Yeah. Doesn't roll off the tongue quite the same way. What do you got for me? What do you got? Okay, today Taylor, I'm going to take you on this story. I'm going to tell you the story. I'm going to start

again. Yeah, good. The suspense is killing me. Okay, Taylor, today I'm going to tell you the story of the well to hell. The world's deepest man-made hole and it pierces the earth's surface 12,262 meters deep. For those of you playing the, what is it, the imperial system at home? That's about 40,000 feet or 7.6 miles. Jesus. Yeah. That's too deep. That's too deep, man. I know we were going to have this kind of deep conversation today. Exactly. I know, right? So in this story, I'm going to be telling you a series of truths and lies and the in-between, the sticky in-between of belief. I'm thinking that you're going to know exactly where all these lines intersect, but if you don't, then that's fine. I mean, as long as you're entertained and slightly confused,

that's where I'm going for. Okay. I think that's kind of the gimmick of our podcast. It's the sweet spot. Slightly confusing, the bittersweet spot. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that one gave me chills, the bittersweet spot. I like that. Makes me happy. So in order to go to hell, you're going to need a coat because we're headed to the remote northwestern corner of Russia on the northern border with Norway and Finland and Norway kind of like wraps over and around. So then it touches Russia, but then Finland's there. It's all in the Arctic circle. So it's cold as balls. And it's May, so it's still cold. It's still horrible, 1970. So we're still within the USSR. Remember that? Okay. So the Cold War is very hot these days, very steamy.

But the Soviets are losing at the space race, right? Sputnik came in the 50s. Everyone got really excited, but then the Americans pulled out ahead, went a little crazy and capitalist bastards. Americans based Cowboys landed on the moon, booted it 1969. So the Soviets in trying to keep up with the space race in some way or with this competition decided to go the other way. And they went down. They went up. They were going down. Yes. Good. No, that's that. Okay. That bought me right into this story. That's exactly in a similar position. I think I would come to the same conclusion. It's only logical. Yeah. If they're doing really good at up, we're going to kick the shit out of them down. Yeah, I think that's great. I mean,

that's what you tell like that little elementary school student who's getting picked on. It's like, don't worry about that. You'll show them. You'll show them. Right? Okay. The Soviets collected as many geologists and drilling experts as they could and put them all up on this remote site on the Kola Peninsula. And they picked that specific spot because it's where the Baltic Shield continental crust is located. And I know very little about geology. So when I was in high school and in university, earth science was exclusively the artists. Like none of the arts kids know the arts kids did bio. None of the arts kids did chem. We were all in earth science. Yeah. So okay, remind me again what piece of crust we're talking about here and let me see if I've got

anything sucked away. Baltic Shield continental crust. Fuck no. Yeah. Okay. How about what's at the very center of the earth? The core. Yeah. What's what's just would you move out from there? What's the next thing in the case? So as far as I remember, there's the there's the crust. Yeah. I know I know we're going crust mantle core, but there may be some other ones interspersed in there. I think they just I mean, in the like very elementary, there's way more like geological terms to that, but there's like upper mantle, lower mantle and then right then core. Yeah. So I think covered the bare bones. Sick. UBC did you right? Yeah. And thank you guys. Tamanua secondary too. Go Wildcats. That's true. There we go. That's the noise we made at Pepperellis.

Cute. Apologies to my Aunt Martita who is a geologist. Okay. And me trying to impart some type of knowledge of geology, which she's probably just biting her tongue real hard trying to listen to this, but she does listen and so sweet. So thank you. Love you, Martita. Thanks, Martita. We're lay people here and we'll never let you forget it. That's true. So you know what you're getting into. That's not even a tag line, my friend. Another tag line that I've thought of before is bitter sweetened for me, the podcast with no protagonists. That's nice. I like that. Yeah. Okay, so this particular part of the Earth's crust is some of the older rock that is on the surface. Right. So the Soviets

selected this particular area because one of the goals of the project was to get down into the oldest rock that they possibly could. So if they started with really old rock, the idea was that they could with less drilling, they could get to older rock faster. Does that make sense? Right. It does. And I assume that they're searching for these extremes, one for research purposes and two for the adaboi that comes with we found the oldest rock ever. Fuck you, America. Yeah, yeah. Sure. Exactly. Got you. Yeah. And to give you a sense of the geological time frame, this rock that's on the surface, the Baltic Shield crust stuff, is 2,000 million years old. My mind can't even do that. No. Uh-uh. No. There's no, no.

Too old. The timeline just, it's like across the street. I just don't get it. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. Nothing is more confusing than across the street. I have no clue what's happening with it. No, no. One of these white lines changes on the ground. Yeah. It's also an area of Russia that's not very populated, very, very sparsely populated. The only people who lived there were the indigenous people, the Sammy. Right. And even they in the 1970s had been pretty much run out and relocated because all the reindeer hunting had been collectivized in the 20s. Oh, I understand. Yeah. So the project was called the Kola Super Deep Boar Hole. Super Deep is one word, I think that needs to be. Super Deep Boar Hole is, yeah, that's like... I like that a lot. The Kola, K-O.

Oh, wow. No, I'm into it. It's a lot happening. I know, it's nice. It maximalism in name form. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it was purely scientific research that was happening. There's some other stuff that we'll see that's akin to drilling for oil or natural gas or mineral extraction kind of stuff. But at least the goal of this, as stated by the Soviets, was that they would, they would be collecting scientific data. I think it's kind of a point of pride for the Russian scientists, because they're like, we're just doing it for curiosity's sake. Can I share with you a phrase that popped into my head just now and you won't judge me and we won't linger on it too long? Okay. Any holes a goal? Okay, so let's continue with your story, please. Oh my, okay.

So the Kola Super Deep Bore Hole, okay. I've seen a few Super Deep Bore Holes every time. Oh, I knew it. I knew it. It had to, I'm sorry, I was trying to be good. No, don't do it. I was trying to be good at Baltic Shields. Why? Exactly. Okay, so their goal was to collect all this data, blah, blah, blah, blah, but it was to get down so that they could study the mantle itself. Right, right. So go through the entire of the Earth's crust, which is about 35 kilometers. No. So I have a thought. Is it weird that like you're describing this makes me feel scared and uncomfortable? Do you know what I mean? Is this like a fear that people have? Because like the idea of anyone

just drilling this very, very, very deep hole and going down in the Earth, that sounds like frightening to me, like weirdly claustrophobic and cursed. You know, it sounds like they're drilling a hole to hell, a well to hell. You know what I mean? How does it feel to the idea of shooting people up into space? Does that make you feel less so? I think I don't know that the space life would be for me because so when I visited you in Houston, obviously, we went to the Johnson Space Center, which was a lot of fun, really, really enjoyed it. But and you can kind of get a look at the insides of the ships. They have a lot of like cross sectioned space capsules and stuff. And some terrifying dummies. Also that spinning in circles. Oh, that one guy. Yeah.

So it's quite close quarters when you're all bunched up in there. And I think that that more than the stinky is back. Yeah, you're you're just shitting like in whatever you're wearing. There is a bathroom. No, you just you just shit wherever. But the idea of like, oh, but the idea of space itself is more more desolate and sad to me than frightening. Okay, but I dig desolate and sad because I'm a little desolate and sad. So okay, no, that makes sense. I think I think you're right. There is something very like claustrophobic about it. And then also gaping, like if I'm sure if you were to stand at the lip of this thing, you your stomach would go down into your ankles, right? Well, the the drilling apparatus isn't that wide. I mean, of course, it's huge. It was housed. So the

drill itself kind of plugs. Yeah, the drill was housed in like a 20 story building, like it's very, very big. But the actual hole is no more than like nine inches across. Wow. Oh, it's very small. That's scarier because what if someone took the drill out and I was standing by it and like my sunglasses fell off into the hole? I would I would never see them again. In fact, if you were to just have the hole open, if it was just like a no no drill casing it and nothing like that, the difference in pressure between the surface and 12 kilometers deep is so great that it would create a whirlpool almost and it would pull you in. What? Yeah, and not to mention the crazy gases that would be emitted from it that would probably kill you if not make you ill and hallucinate and

stuff like that. This is horrifying. Yeah, dude. What a scary hole. Yeah, dude. This is the story of the scariest hole on earth. Okay, so of course, they wanted to get as deep as they could so that they could, you know, right, America was like measuring their dick in space and the Soviets were like, well, we'll just measure it underground. So right, you fuck this guy, we'll fuck the ground. Exactly. And but part of the project too was seismic research. So they were setting up like listening stations and like taking, you know, like the Richter scale measurements and da, da, da, da. And one of the things that they could do while digging into that old, old rock was be able to to track shifts in the Earth's crust that happened millennia ago, so that they could perhaps

use that information to predict future shifts in the Earth's crust. Right. I add this because there's this scientist who is still like unofficially working at the super deep borehole. And his job was the seismic measurement and stuff. And he has like such a crazy way of understanding everything. And it's this idea that like, the layers of the earth aren't stacked neatly on top of each other. It's not like a cake or anything like that. They're all folded and they reverse on each other. They have a very particular rhythm to themselves. So when he's talking about drilling into older and older rock to understand the history, he says that the drill is almost like a time machine. And the dirt in the earth is is time. But in this case, time is has been folded. Yeah.

And is like squished over. And I don't know, it's really, really interesting. That's a little romantic. Yeah, it's very romantic. Yeah. Very poetic. And I have to say that at a certain level with these really gnarly sciences, where the science is completely like, what the fuck? Pi? I don't know. I really don't know. But then when you get to that level, like they're just the number. The number. But not because I was gonna say they had a magic school bus about baking pie. It's not that tricky. If only they had a magic school bus about the numeral that would have been helpful to there you go. But yeah, you get to these levels of science. And then it just kind of like wraps back around to being poetic, you know, the only way to understand some of this stuff is to like

bend your imagination. For sure. And I think that there's a really, oh my god, I wish I could remember this man's name, because I liked him. I had a math teacher in the 11th grade, who really made me see the beauty in mathematics because he was one of those people who was clearly so into what he was teaching and was so into the way that you could use one random equation to prove another seemingly random equation if you just followed the breadcrumbs and whatever. And I'm not doing it justice, but he had a real way of just seeing mathematics from the top down and being impressed by the cooler things about it and able to communicate that in a compelling way. But yeah, all this to say, there's something really pleasant about being with a person who is

a scholar in some science or another and listening to them talk about what they like about it. Yeah, yeah, especially if they, I don't know, are well expressed. Yeah, yeah, because sometimes you can get so particular about it that I'm like, no, I don't know. Yeah, no, I also don't want to listen to a nerd drone at me about dinosaurs if they suck. So then I'm like, get lost, nerd, and then Josie gets on all fours behind them and I push them and they fall over Josie. I'm not a consenting party in this actionary situation. Let's beat up nerds together, Josie. That's all I want. So the Americans are trying to engage in this like earth science a la space race

scenario, of course. Yeah. And the deepest man made hole previous to the super deep Kola borehole was an exploratory hole. It's what's called in Washeeda County, Oklahoma, the hole. It's the hole, the hole. Keep saying hole. The hole. What's called Bertha Rogers. She had an eighth, not just a hole. She had an eighth. Yeah, Americans are built for this. I don't know. Bertha Rogers, she was 9,583 meters down. Repeat the number you just said and then tell me how big the Soviet one was by comparison. The Bertha Rogers hole was 9,583 meters and the Kola super deep borehole was 12,262 meters. So significantly deeper. Significantly deeper. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So the US had that going on

in Oklahoma, but that was an oil exploratory operation. Of course it was. Yeah, right. So to be part of this earth race, I don't know, Cold War, Sticker Dick in the ground kind of thing, the US went off the coast of Mexico, the Pacific coast and tried to drill as deep as possible there. They went to a spot where they had calculated that the crust was really thin because it's always a little thinner under the oceans. Okay. Because there's just so much pressure from the water as it is. So it was a deep sea rig and it was called Project Mohol. Seen a couple Moholes. Yeah. Or I don't know. I mean, there's a lot of ways to pronounce it. Maybe it's like Program Mohol. Program Mohol. Is that the whole reason? Hey! Is that the whole reason you chose this story? Because you'd

get to say whole like every fourth word. No, it's just telling me now what I'm loving. Oh, it's beautiful work. It's beautiful work. So nice. But the American program Mohol didn't work out. It lost funding in 66 because all the other funding most likely went to the space race. And they should try again in 69 though. But that's good. That was nice. Do you think NASA was like let's hold out for 69? 1969. Yeah, let's do it. Guys, that would be so lit. That's good. So in 70, that's when the cola super deep started to go in earnest. The project really got underway. Of course, years of planning, blah, blah, blah. But in 83 is when the Soviets got over the 12,000 meter mark. So at that point, they had the deepest manmade artificial hole.

So they were and they were doing this for 13 years at this point. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. The Soviets are elated. They've won. They did it. In 83, they have a huge geological convention and they invite all of these known scientists from around the world and they fly them from Moscow to cola, which is like second halfway around the world because Russia is huge. Yeah. And the drilling actually stopped for about a year because they wanted to all the scientists wanted to study the samples that had been brought up. But also they needed to like people need to be given awards and commemorative stamps needed to be licked and all that kind of stuff. So they got started doing it again, but they didn't get that much further, right? Because I think they hit the 12,000

mark, had a year long party, and then they only got like 262 meters further after that. Right. But very interestingly, the guy, the project leaders, so the head geologist who's in charge of all of this was a guy named Huberman, who honestly seemed pretty fucking chill. Okay. Apparently they had some issues through the drilling and they had to abandon one section of the borehole completely. They had to like retract all the equipment and start at another angle to get down because like, okay, a piece of the equipment had fallen and was lodged in the rock and they just couldn't go that route anymore. And everybody was freaking out because this was like a huge issue and a huge problem. And he was totally chill. He was like apparently laughing

the whole time because he was just like, if we had done this when Lennon was around, I'd be dead. You'd be in a camp. You'd be in a camp. This would be horrible. Oh no. We just like start over again. That's the right attitude. Yeah, that's the right attitude. When holes are your business, you got to have a good sense of humor. Exactly. No, that's cool. Yeah. And apparently, as well, there's like anecdotal evidence of him having befriended a Sammy man who came by the the rig often and they would have like tea and vodka and they would share stories and Huberman apparently was learning from this guy how to read the animals that were around the borehole, how it like the borehole and the changes of pressure affected the animals. Right. You know,

anecdotally, the story is that you could read like the eagles flying in the air. And if there was some seismic activity happening through the borehole, the change in pressure would have affected the eagles. Interesting. Yeah, which is really, really cool. And like in the same tradition as well, rocks are animate and they're alive. And so being able to like read rocks in that same way. And apparently the Sammy were really interested in the super deep borehole. It was on their land for one. Yeah. But they and this is of course anecdotal, but they had very little interest in the space race because their gods have been flying up in the cosmos for millennia. So what's the difference? But this was creating a new entrance to the underworld. Interesting. And so it had this like

a very sacred kind of space to them. Interesting. Yeah. And of course, this is anecdotal. There's most likely a faction of neighboring Sammy people who are like, what the fuck are you doing? Why is this hole so deep? Yes. Right. Yeah. That looks like what 12,000 stop. Yeah. Yeah. But they learned some really, really incredible stuff from what they pulled up and what they discovered like at the very bottom of the hole. They debunked a very popular geological belief that the crust switched from granite to basalt. Apparently that didn't happen at all. The granite just like changed form. You heard it here. You heard it here first, folks. Exactly. That all that shit you thought you knew about the granite and the basalt throw it out. It's over the window. There was way more water

than what they had thought down there. Okay. Apparently somebody called it Pepsi Cola. It looked like cola. Like it was like gross, but it was water. It's the cola super deep borehole too. There we go. Yeah. If you weren't drilling for cola, maybe you shouldn't have dug a cola hole, man. That's real truth. Real truth. And if this were America, Pepsi would have been all over this. Oh my god. Pepsi Cola, super deep borehole. Finally proof that the core of our earth thinks young, they'd say. Exactly. They discovered microscopic plankton fossils that were found six kilometers below the surface. They never thought there would be that like living organisms that far down. And they recorded temperatures of 180 degrees Celsius, which is twice of what they had expected

to be at that depth. And that's actually partly why they couldn't continue drilling because it was too hot. All the stuff wouldn't work because they had no projections of that. They also discovered hell. So there was that as well. H-E-Govel hockey sticks, Taylor. Let's go. Take me to hell, baby. So according to a Finnish newspaper called Amens... Oh, good luck. Amens... Amenusatia. Amenusatia. I'm pretty sure you're reading from the book of the dead right now. Yeah, I think that's what I'm talking about. So according to this well-known Finnish newspaper, after the Soviet geological crew had drilled several kilometers through the Earth's crust, the drill bit suddenly began to rotate wildly. It's a drill. Right, but

yeah, but like wrong. Okay, I'm gonna need a bit more convincing than this, but go ahead. It went wild because it had hit a cavity, a hollow spot. Okay. They were shocked to record temperatures that were 1,000 degrees Celsius. Jesus, that's pretty hot. Real hot. Real hot. The lead geologist was reported to have said, it seems almost like an inferno of hell is brutally going on in the center of the Earth. That's what I would say in a similar situation. It seems almost like an inferno of hell. This world's brutally under our feet. Save us. Instead of, shit, what? No. Fuck, fuck. Why is it blinking? Okay. Yeah, so of course, 1,000 degrees Celsius is way too hot, so they had to stop the mission,

but they had a heat-resistant microphone that they just like lowered down the hole. 1,000 degrees. No disrespect to my blue snowball, but where can I pick that guy up? It's terrible. And they recorded what was at the bottom of the hole, or the start of this cavern. Right. Screams of the damned? Perhaps. Perhaps you are not incorrect. Dr. Asakoff said, what we heard turned those logically-thinking scientists into trembling ruins. We could hardly believe our own ears. We heard a human voice screaming in pain. Even though one voice was discernible, we could hear thousands, perhaps millions. Whoa. Okay. Suffering souls. Oh fuck. And after this ghastly discovery, about half of the scientists quit because of fear. I bet that

they all became like priests. Yeah, yeah. Cool. And Dr. Asakoff just hoped that whatever was down there would stay down there. Yeah. That wasn't to be, Taylor. Oh no, it comes out. That same night! Fuck. A fountain head of luminous gas geysered from the drill site, and a form began to take shape in the sky. A form incandescent in the dark sky. Yo. A towering form that appeared to have bat wings. Are you lighting a joint? I'm lighting it. It's never been better. It's never been a better time. Fair enough. Bat wings and behind this awesome and terrifying bat winged being and blazoned on the Russian night sky were the words in Russian, I have conquered. Yo. Okay. Later that night ambulances were spotted throughout the community and they visited the

scientific teams at the drilling site. They administered a medication to everyone who had heard the recording or seen the figure in the night sky because everybody was so stricken with fear. They all need some type of medical attention. And the medication is a medication known to cause short-term memory. Yes. And it is routinely used by the Soviet government. KGB. That is why there are no first-hand accounts of the voices from hell and the divin that escaped. It's hell, baby. And the Russians found it. Okay. Do you want to hear what hell sounds like? Yes, I do. Okay. I'm gonna play it. Okay. This is what they recorded when they lowered the microphone into hell. The heat-resistant microphone.

I can't hear anything, you know. Can you not hear anything? No, because you're wearing headphones. Oh, yeah. Okay, okay. So I'm gonna take off my headphones and play it. Yeah, there you go. That'll work, right? Okay, yes, yes. Okay, here we go. That's Jurassic Park. Yeah, that is hell. Okay, that is undeniably, indisputably hell. Yeah, a lot of people screaming, very cavernous. Yeah, sounded maybe like some fire going on. Hell, I believe is known to have fire. Yes, yes. Yeah, no, I guess that makes sense. Well, it's, I mean, it's funny because I was saying to you that when you told me this, my initial reaction was fright, right? Like, I was like,

yeah, this unsettles me the idea of doing this really deep hole. I had like logistical concerns, for example, by drilling into this particular piece of the Earth's crust, does it make us more, does it change anything tectonically down there, the fact that we're doing vibrations into the Earth and blah, blah, blah. And I'm sure that like, I'm sure that a well-spoken scientist could, you know, give me the the 411 on that in a convincing way. But I imagine for a lot of people, their anxiety translates more into like a guttural, this isn't something that man should be doing to nature. Do you know what I mean? Like that maybe there's some kind of environmental, you know, demons to it. But then also maybe like, if you're a spiritual person, it's easy for that anxiety

to translate into like, these are, we're going to encounter the devil if you keep digging. If you keep digging, you will get to hell. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just, I'm so fascinated by the difference between going into space and going deeper into the Earth. Yeah. They both present crazy engineering feats that the Soviets and the Americans had to figure out. There's something that's like, very visual about going into space. And I think maybe there's something visual about it, but it's also like the heaven. Yeah. You know, and it's, but then going into the Earth, of course has the connotations of going to hell. Yeah. But it has the claustrophobia. Yeah. It has like, you can't. It's not scenic. It's not scenic. Have you seen the core? Yeah. You've seen the film?

The core. Yeah. Yeah. I have. Of course. We watched that very recently actually. And I think part of why it feels so ridiculous is that it's trying to make drilling and digging. Sexy. Sexy and like a very visual thing. Well, the best thing they, the best thing they got going is the word hole and they need to lean into that. Lean hard. Lean into the hole. What have I learned? Lean into the hole. Lean into the hole, baby. We don't do morals of stories anymore, but that's the moral of the story. Lean in. So the story of burrowing into hell and the recording and the demon that admitted that story was shared widely on a U.S. broadcasting network called Trinity Broadcasting Network, which is Christian. It's like Christian news and networking and blah, blah, blah. Yeah.

So there was a little digging into like where this story came from because it was reported as news, like drilling to hell. Okay. Yeah. And so this particular guy, he's a radio host, like a Christian radio host, pastor, author and like Christian entrepreneur. His name is Rich Bueller. And so he kind of did all this digging and he went to Trinity Broadcasting and he's like, where the fuck did this come from? He probably didn't say fuck. And they said there was a Texas Evangelist who gave him the story. And then that Evangelist got it from a very reputable and respected Finnish scientific journal. Okay. But the Trinity Broadcasting Network also got this information from a Norwegian educator, Aghe Rindelen, who had access to an

eyewitness account. So our Christian entrepreneur investigator. So a friend of a friend. A friend of a friend. Okay. Where all the best stories come from. Uh-huh. So I have a short transcript to share of Bueller. So the Christian entrepreneur interviewing Aghe Rindelen, the Norwegian educator. And you be Aghe. I'll be Aghe. Okay. So which one's Aghe for a second? I'm gonna start. Okay. Are you the one who sent information to a Christian television network in the United States about scientists drilling to hell? Yes. Well, do you have any way of knowing whether it is true? Yes, I do. Can you, can you tell me about it? None of it is true. I fabricated every word. That's how that went down. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Okay. So he's, he's, he's, he's really like,

yeah, I lied, man. That was not real. My goats. Rindelen visits the US to see some friends and he hears this being reported as news on Trinity Broadcasting Network. And he's like, Americans are dumb. What the heck. And so he goes home and he trolls hard. He sends a letter to Trinity Broadcasting Network documenting the demon account. So the, the story of the microphone was already like in circulation, urban myth style. But he, he put some embellishments on it. He added the whole story of the demon flying out and the medication being administered and all that. That's too on the nose, man. But my friend, he sent a copy of the newspaper clipping in which he read this, but it's from a very respectable, well-known

Finnish newspaper. So very luckily he translated it for Trinity Broadcasting Network. This is the, this is the a manifest. Yeah. Oh, so you, you sneaked me there. I didn't, I was expecting that to be an actual newspaper. You got me. So the real well to hell is your heart. Yeah, dude. Lean into the hole. Okay. So he falsely translates this article that's actually about a building inspector. Like it's, there's, it's totally banal. Like there's nothing. So the whole plan was that he was, he sent, he sent this letter with his name, with his personal and correct address, with his own correct telephone number. Like this is legit, legit, legit. And it's, you know, it's coming from Norway. It seems legit. He also has a,

like a source that he names as well. So that if they, when they, Dr. Asimov or whatever his name was. No, no, no. It's a pastor friend in Southern California. Oh, okay. Okay. Right. So he's, you know, he says like, if you don't believe me, call up so and so, he's a pastor, but of mine, he will, you know, verify this information. And the idea was to troll the network really to see if they would actually fact check it because the pastor friend knew all about the hoax. And if they had actually done their work and checked in with him, he would have said, this is not at all true. You cannot. Okay. Oh wow. Sneaky pastor. Okay. But they never fact checked. They never contacted anything. They never had an outsider translator for that. So

they just like, sloppy journalism, rip the story. And it goes all over the US. People fucking love it because it's hell. People love it. So there is a book called, I forget what it's called, but something like The Boy Who Saw Heaven or something like this. And it was a young boy who had had some sort of accident, been in, I think, coma in a coma in the hospital. And while he was there, like, or maybe he died and came back or something. And he went to heaven, had come back, and now is doing and you can find interviews of like, this kid doing the GMA circuit, you know, whatever, hawking his book about here's what I saw when I went to heaven and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And people loved it because especially if you're a believer and you are looking for things

that confirm your view of the world, which is that the afterlife is inevitable, you know, good living will get you to heaven, godly living will get you to heaven. And that the kind of the smug atheists of the world are in for a reckoning or whatever. And later on down the line, when he was older, the boy came out and said like, yo, this didn't happen, like this, I didn't see heaven, but my parents, I think it was a parent thing, I don't, I apologize if I'm misreporting that, but I think like my parents were like really into it and da, da, da, da, da. So my point in this digression being, it's easy to want to look for these sensational stories that really righteously confirm your bias. And it goes the other way too, you can see all of these like

fake internet posts about like an atheist owning a right winger with facts and logic that like very clearly never really happened, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's, it's pretty wild. And then the other messy thing about these situations too, though, is that the moment you try and come out and say, actually, no, that's not true. It gets turned around as like, no, someone's just covered, they don't want you, the Russians don't want you to know or like whatever, you know, your story has already taken on a life of its own. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, yeah. And then Bueller, the Christian entrepreneur radio host dude, he shared this, the investigation on his radio show. And he got letters from all over the country. One was from a pastor in Flagstaff, Arizona, who said,

no, this is real, one of my parishioners went to MIT and was a scientist who worked on the heat resistant microphone. Yeah. And he was in Russia for a year. He met Gorbachev. He met Gorbachev. Story checks though, he was in Russia. He met Gorbachev. He was in Russia. And, you know, the first recording was only 17 seconds because the microphone was damaged. So they're working on building a new microphone. And he's, he's, he's on that project. This is a real story. I know who knew this. Right. And then about six months after that letter, Bueller got another letter from somebody who also went to that church saying that the man, the scientists who was working on the microphone, never was a graduate from MIT, nor was he a scientist. In fact,

he had skipped town with $20,000 collected from the church to fund his research back in Russia. You know what? Everyone's got a hustle. You know. You know what? How's your hustle? Yeah. Leaning into the hole. Yeah. Leaning into the hole. Absolutely. And the recording we listen to at Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park, you'll be happy to know that it's screaming sampled from a 1970s horror film, an Italian horror film called Blood Baron. Sick. I want to watch Blood Baron. I know. Sounds pretty cool. But it's definitely on loop too. So it's like, there's like debunking videos of the sound of hell. Right. Oh, interesting. Because they can like show exactly how it loops. Right. Okay. Now with the actual super deep borehole.

Yes. Back to reality. Back to, we were, we were a science podcast for a minute. Then we, then we got back to our bullshit. And now we're back in science. It is no longer a site. It is no longer open for business. So I can't lose my sunglasses down there. No. Okay. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there's no money to fund it anymore. And so in 92, the site was open for more international research. So other scientists came and did their thing. But then just three years later, the whole thing permanently closed. And in 2008, it was abandoned. Meaning there's absolutely like, nobody goes by to check or anything. Like, it's the whole site is more or less trashed. It's really harsh weather and terrain up there. So the building has been even, even though

hasn't been that long, the building has been like torn apart. And there's just like rusted sheet metal everywhere. And within all of that mess is a nine inch around what you might think is like a a pipe cover or a hole that's bolted with 12 bolts all around it and rusted into the ground. That is the deepest hole in the world. Wow. Yeah. There is still a scientist who unofficially works there works. He pretty much camps out and like, there's like listening tubes that go down next to the borehole. And his work was with with that. So he continues to do that, which is pretty wild. That must be the assignment that being the one and only guy at the rusted shut hole. That's like, I don't know if that's a great assignment. No, he's still like it. His

name is Victor Koslovsky. Okay. When asked what happened, why did the site shut down? He responded, capitalism happened. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Escapitalism. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, do you want to hear what the borehole sounds like actually? Yeah, I do. According to Victor and his like listening apparatus. Okay. Okay. Cool. Just play the hell clip again. Right? We get a little of Victor in this. Okay. Nice to hear his Russian accent. It's not going to play it. Just listen. See how far how far you can hear. Let me show you here. I'll put the tubes to your ears. Is this hole noise? Yeah. Cool.

That's interesting. Yeah. That's what it actually sounds like. That's what hell actually sounds like. It's just. Yeah, sounds like one of those rainstakes a bit. Yeah. It's a shame to me to hear that the place had fallen into such disrepair given that you mentioned that like the local indigenous folks had kind of a spiritual interest in it. That's a little sad. Cool. What made you, how did you hear about this story? I actually found it on that list of stories that you gave me. Right, right. So there's this list out there that how many like hundreds of just like rando weird Wikipedia articles for you to fucking fall into, super deep holes for you to fall into on a rainy day. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. So if you are into this podcast,

you might also be into this list. And if you don't look at the list, then great news because I'm sure we'll cover a bunch of them. Yeah, but I don't know. I think there's something really interesting about this story in terms of like, there's the hoax, but then there's also the science of it is very science of what happened. The nonfiction story that's involved is really interesting to me too. Because I mean, I think about the space race a lot, like thinking of, you know, Johnson Space Center and what that and like you live in. What do you space city? I live in space city. Exactly. Yeah. So I think about that a lot, but I don't think about drilling into the earth. And yeah, I don't think about holes very much. You say that like it's a personal failing

of yours. It really is. We get ensconced in our own bubbles and we forget that you can dig very far into the earth with the right equipment. With the right equipment, you can reach out. You can do. So yeah, no, I like that part of the story though as well, obviously, because I think that like, so much of what we do here is these kind of like, just strange human behavior stories. And I think that very neatly falls into the realm of like strange human behavior. Because when I heard it, like the way that we think or don't critically think about things we hear can dictate a lot of our worldviews. And so obviously, when you were reading that off to me, and you were being like, they, you know, they wiped the KGB wiped everyone's mind. So that's

why no one can talk about it. And I'm saying they're being like, mm-hmm. But for some people, they would hear that and they would be like, that makes fucking perfect sense to me. And I think there's the other interesting element of this, too, is that the Cold War element, how how like it just fueled all these opposites, you know, like Americans go up, Russians go down, Americans find the heavens, Russian finds hell, you know, it's like, yeah, the hoax story kind of intersects in the US because there's nowhere else. I mean, I think in Scandinavia, the story, the hell story kind of took took root there too, just because of proximity. But in the US, it like spread like wildfire and yeah, it confirms a very, you know, evangelical

fire and brimstone interpretation of heaven and hell. And I was thinking about this too, like in the 90s, there's a lot of, you know, beginning of internet kind of stuff, but a lot of American Christianity evangelical stuff that was using silent majority, well, and using science to kind of like, like Jesus did exist, you know, the Dead Sea Scrolls, they found this and it's like very loose use of science to explain some religious beliefs, which I don't really get, but this would make sense how they are using the science of this deep war drill to kind of like to their own purposes. But I don't know, it's kind of another intersection of that, which I think is cool. Is that, uh, is that you? That's me. That's me going down the whole hell, hell hole.

Welcome back. Thank you. What are you gonna do now that you're back on the surface? You've come 12,000 miles in a nine inch hole, 12,000 kilometers. Listen, caught myself. What do you get? What's the first thing you're gonna do now that you're back to the surface? Drink a Pepsi, I think. For those you think, yeah. No, I'll probably like hang out with Victor and listen to some eagles. Like the bird's not the, not the band. I don't like the band very much. Victor, do you like the eagles? I don't like capitalism. Yeah, okay, okay, cool. Yeah, he's actually one of the sources that I found was the site specific interview with him, where you're meant to like be at the site at the drilling site and like listen to him talking.

I highly recommend it because it's a cool piece of like sound art, but then it's an interview as well. It's almost like being at the planetarium, but down. Yeah, but down. Yeah, and Victor's this really cool guy. He has a very robotic English. I couldn't tell if it was a robot speaking for a long time, which is, I'll take that. Yeah, yeah. He lives by himself doing science next to the deepest hole in the world. Like cut the guy some slack. I know, I know. Yeah, exactly. In like a very frozen unforgiving landscape as well. Yeah, pretty gnarly. In fact, he's so unofficial with his work that if any Russian government officials do come by, he makes himself scarce. And he's like interesting. He even said in the interview, he's like, I'm here unofficially, so if they can't

find me, then I was never here. And I was like, oh, shit. Sneaky, sneaky. Shit. Yeah. Yeah. Does he just hide in the hole? I think he has some like pops his umbrella open and just jumps down. He has, I think he more has some like, of course, he's by himself out there. I think he has some strange relationship with the hole. Not like he sticks his dick in it, but like, that's probably the first question. He's like, I feel dizzy when I'm around it. It's like, maybe some gases are leaking through. I feel like I'm hallucinating or something. But there's like, there's a magnetism, there's a power to it. Have you ever read the comic? I think it's like the mystery of amigara fault or it's, it's, I forget the name of the fault, but it's the mystery of

something fault. It's a Japanese manga by a guy named Junji Ito. And the premise is people are like, kind of magnetically called to a mountain where there's all these body shaped holes in it. And eventually once you look, you'll find a hole in the exact shape of you and then like magnetically you're drawn into it. It's really scary. It's good. Maybe that's where my, my whole nervousness came from. Because we describe that like part of me is like, oh, no, no, no. And then the other part was like, oh, that sounds really beautiful to find. It's, it's a horror movie. It's like plateaus, plateaus like halves. We're halves and we come around and we're whole, but no, it's, you're like you're dead. And then we're whole. And then we're whole. Thank you, Josie, for that story and to all

of you for listening. If you want more info me, we release episodes every other Sunday on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and at bittersweetinfo.com. Stay sweet. The sources that I used for this episode were the Wikipedia articles and Wikipedia, on the Kolo Superdeep borehole, and the Well to Hell hoax. I also looked at an article called Drilling Deep Slash Knowledge from the Underground by Ari Altena, published on a website called Dark Ecology. I also looked at a article called The Deepest Hole We Have Ever Dug by Mark Picing and the BBC Science Edition called BBC Future. I looked at Justin Bennett's Sound Walk and I'll try and get this Sammy word right. This is the Sound Walk site specific to the Kolo Superdeep borehole

and the surrounding buildings. And it's where I got all my information from the geologist who's working there, Victor, and the sound that we heard of the actual borehole that comes from this project. It's really interesting. I highly recommend it. I also looked at Drilling to Hell Facts, an article posted by Rich Bueller, the Christian entrepreneur and radio host, who did all the sleuthing on the hoax itself. The sound from Deep Fake Well to Hell was from the haunted Deep Fake Cheerleader Mom. What that combination of words means, you'll find out shortly. Since we recorded this episode, additional information has since come out about the case in an article called The World Thought This Cheer Mom Created a Deep Fake to Rass Your Daughter's

Rival, but the real story is way more confusing and bizarre by Kelly Maria Corduckini for Cosmopolitan. We talk a bit about this update in episode 34 of Bitter Sweden for me, but the gist is, she likely didn't create any more books. As you listen, please keep that context in mind. On with the show!