Two In The Think Tank - 314 - The Oak Island Mystery

Episode Date: October 27, 2021

Off the coast of Nova Scotia lies Oak Island - wrapped in mystery, secrets and pirate treasure. Support the show and get rewards like bonus episodes: dogoonpod.com or patreon.com/DoGoOnPod Submit a topic idea directly to the hat: dogoonpod.com/Submit-a-Topic Twitter: @DoGoOnPodInstagram: @DoGoOnPodFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/DoGoOnPod/Email us: [e-mail] Check out our other podcasts:Book Cheat: https://play.acast.com/s/book-cheatPrime Mates: https://play.acast.com/s/prime-mates/Listen Now: https://play.acast.com/s/listen-now/ REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING:https://www.oakislandmoneypit.com/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/a36082822/the-real-story-of-the-oak-island-money-pit/  https://www.oakislandtours.ca/the-onslow-company.htmlhttps://www.history.co.uk/shows/the-curse-of-oak-island/articles/the-curse-of-oak-island-%25E2%2580%2593-season-six-finds-and-theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Island_mysteryhttps://www.history.co.uk/shows/the-curse-of-oak-island/articles/the-top-25-treasures-discovered-on-oak-island-so-farhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGsycyEd3FEhttps://www.oakislandmystery.com/the-mystery/popular-theories/william-phips-concepcionhttps://www.oakislandtreasure.co.uk/research-documents/research/william-s-crooker/https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a34676001/curse-of-oak-island-money-pit-william-phips-theory/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Just jumping in really quickly at the start of today's episode to tell you about some upcoming opportunities to see us live in the flesh. And you can see us live at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2024. We are doing three live podcasts on Sundays at 3.30 at Basement Comedy Club, April 7, 14 and 21. You can get tickets at dogo1pod.com. Matt, you're also doing some shows around the country. That's right. I'm doing shows with Saren Jayamana, who's been on the show before. We're going to be in Perth in January, Adelaide in February, Melbourne through the festival in April, and then Brisbane after that. I'm also doing Who Knew It's in Perth and Adelaide. Details for all that stuff at mattstuartcomedy.com.

We can wait for clean water solutions. Or we can engineer access to clean water. We can acknowledge indigenous cultures. Or we can learn from indigenous voices. We can demand more from the earth. Or we can demand more from ourselves. At York University, we work together to create positive change for a better tomorrow. Join us at yorku.ca slash write the future. Hello and welcome to another episode of Do Go On.

My name is Dave Warnke and as always I'm here with Jess Perkins and Matt Stewart. Hey Dave, hey Jess. Happy block to you both. Hi Matt, hi Dave and a happy block straight back. Happy block year as well people. For the new listeners, block is their happiest time of the year here at Do Go On where we go through the most requested and voted for topics of the year. We're up to episode four of block 2021. And for the first time ever, we're doing it for two months. We're hitting the halfway point after this one. But this topic today is going to be the fifth most voted for topic. We hit the top five, people. Yeah, we got through that trash, John Wayne Gacy, the double John F. Kennedy episode. Now we get to the good stuff.

There's a chance that every episode will be around John, someone called John and the Patreon, and the listeners have both voted to prank us. Could be. What a prank it would be as well. What a great prank. God, they got us. It's a subtle prank and they're the best kind.

When people potentially won't even know they're being pranked, that's fun. The number one choice is world surf champion John John Florence. The John so nice they named him twice. Maybe John Burgess. John Farnham. Oh, Farnsey will be up there for sure. An absolute classic. John from Robin Hood. Maybe he's Prince John,arnham. Oh, Farnsey will be up there for sure. An absolute classic. John from Robin Hood.

Maybe he's Prince John, I think. Little John, is he in there as well? A couple of Johns, maybe Robin Hood. We'd go Robin Hood, that's not a John, and then we'd realise there's multiple Johns in the story. They got us good. How do they do it? All right, Dave, how does this work for the new listeners?

Because I reckon whatever this topic is, it's going to have brought a few in. Well, Matt, what we do here at Do Go On is we take it in turns to report on a topic often suggested by one of the listeners. We go away, do a bit of research, bring it back to the group in the form of a report, and it is Jess's turn to report on the fifth most requested topic for Blocktober 2021. And usually we start with a question. I can't wait to hear Jess's question. Before we hear it, I just want to quickly let listeners know that we sold out our Christmas show super quick.

The day it went public, it sold out within an hour, think but we're hoping and thinking that there will be an increase in capacity at the venue so they've put a waiting list on the page there and there'll be a link in the show notes so if you're keen it's on december 19th i think so it's like christmas week it's going to be the most christmasy episode yet and yeah if you are keen to come along uh sign up on the waiting list that'll be your best chance to snag a ticket. Anyway, Jess, want to ask us a question to get on the topic? Yes, my question is where is the infamous money pit located? Oh, America.

No. Below Scrooge McDuck's pool. Yes. Europe? Not in Europe. Oh, okay. Okay, well, when you say america do you mean united states of or no i mean north and south america okay is it in canada it is in canada ontario he's in nova scotia nova scotia that was my next guess and if not then saskatchewan okay

more specifically it's sort of just off the coast of Nova Scotia, actually, on an island called Oak Island. Ooh, I've heard of this money pit. Mmm. Is it called Greg's Big Old Money Pit? It's called Greg's Discount Money Pit. Okay. If it's in the hole, it's out the door.

That doesn't quite work. But, yeah, great. Okay, the Oak Island Money Pit. Now, this has, of course, been Oak Island is essentially the topic. It's been voted on by, obviously, the listeners, but it's been suggested by a bunch of people. So strap yourselves in for a lot of names coming at you, okay? Is one of them John?

If so, don't read it out. It's a prank. It's not a real name. There is not a John but there is a Jack and Johns are sometimes called Jack. Cut it from the list. All right, fair. This has been suggested by Josh, David Koning, Luigi Delos Reyes, Liam Bolland, Stuart McEwen,

Barry Seddon, Paul Seddon, not sure if they're related but I think so, Matt Weaver, Josh Curry, Phil Ellis, Peter Kelly, Michael Daly, he who shall not be named Langman, no, Jack Langman, Noah Over, Jeff Wise, Tom Mitchell and Anna Sparth. Tom Mitchell, Brownlow medalist. Tom Mitchell. Also, slash former singer of Weed Hornet. So there's the double right there.

That's correct. And I had that same thought. I went, well, we know Tom. And I had a look at like when people suggest a topic, often they can put in like a a reference like a website you could we could check out something so having a look at all of those and i noticed that in the section where it says where did you hear about do go on tom has entered in from the weed hornet bass player that's very fun i think it's pretty good i was thinking he was going to put the Weed Hornet MySpace down for the

reference page. Yeah, check this website out. This will tell you all you need to know. We are so old that we're pre-MySpace, can you believe? Really? Oh my god. Back then, the websites were either .tk or.pixo. Those were you two. I don't

know what any of that is. Can you actually, a very very early side note, I'm so sorry, but I was in a conversation with some people the other day, one from Sydney, one from Perth, and they were saying, oh, you remember in the days before allocated seats at the movies? And I have no recollection of that at all. Oh. Was that a thing here?

Yeah, totally. Yeah, just grab a seat. Really? Do all of them do allocated seats now? Maybe not the really small. Oh, no, I reckon they pretty much all do now. I don't remember a time before that. They were saying as recently as like five years ago.

I'm like, no, definitely not in that time. Anyway, okay, so I'm the problem. Good to know. Myth busted. not in that time anyway okay so i'm the problem good to know myth busted let's get stuck into this report because it is a block special lots of people have voted for this one i already know a fun fact though sorry jess nova scotia that actually means new scotia in uh another language canadian french that probably actually sets a lot of context answers a lot of questions yeah i thought it might there was a real gap in my report and i was like i don't know what's missing

here and i think it's what does nova scotia mean yeah so there we go yeah remember old scotia yes of course yes well this is new scotia yeah well just off the shores of New Scotia, along Canada's Atlantic coast, sits Oak Island. Stories of secrets, unexplained objects, tragedy and pirate treasure surround the island. Legend has it that a curse was put on the island over a century ago, stating that seven men will die in search of treasure before it is found. Whoa.

So is there like just a bunch of ships off the coast and people just waiting for the seventh man to get there? No, you go. You go first. Well, so far six men have died in the search. Wow. So the seventh one will not die. He refuses.

Oh. Everyone's like, just die already. He's really old too. Yeah, it's like any day now. So most tellings of the story begin in 1795 with a teenager named Daniel McGuinness. McGuinness was at home at his parents' house when he noticed strange lights on an island offshore. When he went to investigate what those lights could have been, he noticed a peculiar depression approximately 13 feet in diameter, like little dints in the ground.

He noticed that several oak trees had been removed from the area and some sources say he saw a block and tackle hanging from a severed tree. But that is really disputed, whether or not a teenager in 1795 saw a block and tackle. Nah, I didn't see a block and tackle. They fired over it. What are the odds of that?

That's interesting. Yeah. It doesn't really have any relevance to anything else. Do you want to explain what a block and tackle is in case? Like a pulley system. So, yeah. I don't fully know. I can see why it's so controversial though.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, big time. Yeah. Did he say it? Did he not say it? I don't fully know. I can see why it's so controversial though. Yeah. Oh, yeah, big time. Yeah. Did he say it? Did he not say it? I don't know. He left the island and returned a couple of days later with two friends, John Smith.

Prank. It's a prank. And Anthony Vaughan. We're on a three-John streak. This is wild. Can we keep it up? Let's find a way. Let's definitely find a way.

Now, there was a pretty good reason why the boys wanted to explore the area a little more because this island had quite a mysterious past. The golden age of piracy had occurred between 1690 and 1730 and with Nova Scotia being quite close to Boston, pirates were known to frequent the area. Oak Island was unpopulated and its fairly rugged wilderness provided an ideal place to hide treasure. In fact, sometime before his capture in 1699, Captain Kidd, a very famous

pirate, admitted to burying an unspecified wealth of treasure in the area, although later discoveries offered an exact alluring figure, claiming it was two million pounds. Whoa. And this is in 1699. That'd be worth heaps now, like three or four million. Whoa, do you reckon that much? With inflation.

Well, two and a half. Two and a half. Probably, yeah. You did a whole report about Captain Kidd, didn't you, Bob? Or was that Dave? I think it was me, Jess. It did a whole report about Captain Kidd, didn't you, Bob? Was that Dave? I think it was me, Jess. It wasn't me. I'm sure you remember. Jess, do you not remember?

We have not done Captain Kidd. Yes, you did an episode on him. When? We haven't done Captain Kidd. I've done Blackbeard. Are you thinking of Blackbeard? No, I'm thinking of Captain Kidd, I'm sure. I haven't done.

Well, you're both searching now. Just to confirm because it feels it feels right episode 80 what i thought when you said it well-known pirate captain kid i'm like yeah well known because we talked about him for an hour and a half what we've done captain kid yeah okay well can you blame me episode 80 was was 100 years ago. Yeah, that's true. I mean, you don't even remember when movie theatres were. Fuck. An unallocated seating. Do you think there might be something wrong with me?

Specific to this. Specific to memory? Let's not get into other stuff right now. Nah. Nah. I mean, like this is our 314th episode plus bonus episodes. We've done like more than 500 episodes with web series and stuff. I think it's okay to forget some things.

If it was like last year, it would be concerning. Yeah. Far out. I've done Captain Kidd. Unless it was Dave. I know it wasn't. I'm pretty sure it wasn't me. Anyway.

Okay. Well, there you go. I'm staying very quiet just in case it was me. Yeah, smart. Back in the day, I think we used to sort of even say in the description of the episode like who did the report but anyway well yeah if you want to know more about captain kid maybe i even mentioned or whoever did the report mentioned oak island in great detail we're just doubling up go back and have a listen to that obviously thrilling

and memorable podcast episode. There's rumours or there's stories that a huge chunk of treasure has been buried there. So I guess these teenagers were hoping they may have stumbled upon some buried pirate treasure and perhaps they're about to be very, very rich. So it wasn't long before the young excavators came across buried evidence to further convince their imaginations. Two feet beneath the topsoil, McGuinness and his friends

uncovered a layer of flagstone extending across the surface of the opening. So just like bits of stone. They continued to dig. I think I found something. I found some rock. Keep going. You're on to something.

How much does this rock worth? There's heaps of it. Rock. Keep going. You're on to something. How much does this rock worth? There's heaps of it. As they continue to dig, they uncover a pit that narrowed to seven feet in diameter.

They notice marks from pickaxes in the clay, and as they dug further to around ten feet in depth, they discovered a layer of rotting timber planks. They lifted the timber planks, assuming they'd found the treasure, only to be disappointed. Nothing there. Oh. I mean, unless you're looking for rotting timber.

Yeah, in which case, jackpot. They continued on and at 20 feet in depth found another layer of plank, again with nothing underneath, and they gave up. That is so deep. Yeah. So what made them think to dig here? It was because the trees disappeared. He saw some strange lights, went over to see what was going on

and noticed that there was sort of like indentations in there. Little sinkholes almost. Yeah, in the ground. Yeah, that's right. So, yeah, they dug to 20 feet. Another source says they dug to 30 feet and gave up because of superstitious dread. Oh, yeah.

The 30-foot dread. Fad that. We've all been there. 30- because of superstitious dread. Oh, yeah. The 30-foot dread. Had that. We've all been there. 30-odd foot of dread. A few years later in 1803, a group of men, Simeon Lins, Robert Archibald, Captain David Archibald, no idea if they're related, and Sheriff Thomas Harris, established the Onslow Company, whose sole purpose was

to recover the treasure on Oak Island. By the next year in 1804, they were making what they hoped would be their third and final attempt at uncovering the riches that they believed were hidden under the pit the teenagers had uncovered a few years earlier. So just to set the scene here, so we've had a few teenagers do some digging. What follows is just a bunch of different groups of people trying to find this treasure. So the Onslow group's one of the earlier ones. And they're a business. They formed a company to do this. Yeah, yep. That's awesome. Their sole purpose of this company they formed is just to search for treasure on Oak Island. They excavated further down than the teenagers had managed,

finding layers of timber every 10 feet. They also discovered layers of charcoal, putty and coconut fibre. The coconut was particularly exciting to them because coconuts were not native to Canada, so the fibres must have originated probably in the Caribbean. So they're like pirates. It's a super elaborate, whatever it is, very elaborate. Yeah.

It's almost like they're finding ruins. Yeah, that's a good way to think about it, yeah. So at approximately 90 feet in depth, very deep. Wow. I know. They made a pretty exciting find. It was a large stone inscribed with symbols and strange markings. It was about two feet long and a foot thick

with several characters cut onto it. For decades, the encoded message on the face of the rock was thought to be indecipherable. Researchers and treasure hunters dismissed the markings as being made by the excavators' tools by mistake. Oh, this one looks like a shovel. What does it mean? This one looks just like the end of my pickaxe. Oh, coincidence. Others were certain that it was a secret code leading to buried treasure. Has anyone ever mentioned aliens? Because he's seen weird lights at night and now they've found code on a stone. Like that's classic X-Files stuff to me. Hmm. Doesn't it feel like you can tell the difference

between accidental scrapings and someone cutting in characters? Yeah, you would think that, but it is still heavily disputed. And so that was in like the early 1800s. It wasn't until the 1860s that an academic was able to provide a credible translation. Again. Are they an academic or a pick-academic? Thank you so much.

Goodbye. You are the pun king. Thank you. Is that a pun? Was that a pun? Pick-academic? No. It's hard to say too.

Or is that a portmanteau? And can they both be the same thing? Punmanteau. There's still so many. Punmanteau. Have we gone through this before? We must have. It just doesn't stick.

Any of this word smithery stuff. We did a full story last week and we got a tweet by someone saying, yeah, you said that story before and Matt had the exact same reaction last time. Right. What story was it? Tell it again. Let me react the same. My mum joining a knitting club or trying to.

Oh, you had told that before. I did vaguely. It vaguely rang a bell. Oh, he says that now. The problem is, which I explained in my reply, was, look, we've done 450 episodes now, but also we're friends in real life, so I can't remember what's on the podcast and what's just chat dave i would really rather you not tell people we're

friends in real life okay i'll delete that reply that's our little secret yeah i don't i want that to just be our thing don't let anyone else in yeah so with the the markings on the stones 1860s there was a credible translation which of course heavily disputed but uh they believed that the message on the stone the stone said 40 feet below two million pounds are buried which is captain kid's hole well isn't that so convenient that that's the exact amount that people reckon captain kid had buried was that like an unheard of amount back then that must be fucking richest people in the world sort of thing yeah that must be like the equivalent of a trillion dollars now whoa like mind-blowing money a side note here since the tablet was discovered 90 feet below ground, later excavators who subscribed to this translation set their sights

on a depth of 130 feet. They're like, well, at 90 it says 40 feet lower. Later in the 1970s, another attempted translation interpreted the code as Coptic Christian warning not to forget your duty to the Lord. So quite different. That is quite a bit different. Quite different. 40 feet below 2 million pounds are buried.

Don't forget your duty to your Lord. Very different. So hard to say there. But back to the Onslow Company. At the end of each day, the workers used a metal rod to test if there was another wooden platform 10 feet below. Rod method of testing. I've used that. It's when I get my mate Rod and I say, this curry smells a bit sus.

Want to try it first? Yeah. He'll have a few bites. Yep. You wait half an hour. Wait half an hour. If he's still standing, I tuck in. Dinner time for Matty.

Never had a hot meal in your life. Work ended for the week, and when they resumed on Monday, the shaft, the hole that they had dug, had filled with 60 feet of water. Oh. A steam-powered pump was brought in but it couldn't handle the volume of the water and the pump burst. The following year in 1805, a second shaft was dug 14 feet east

of the money pit to a depth of 110 feet. Their plan was to tunnel between shaft two and the money pit and remove the treasure from below the 90-foot level. So they're essentially trying to like, okay, we can't dig directly down. We'll dig down over a bit and then tunnel across. So now they're like trying to like do a bank heist. Yeah.

Of a hole. Of a hole that they've dug. They've got disguises. Yeah. One of them's wearing a fake moust've dug. They've got disguises. Yeah. One of them's wearing a fake moustache. One of them's doing like theme music. Darren, shut up. One of them's wearing a grey suit.

Remember that guy? Yeah. You mean the man in the grey suit as he was nicknamed? Yeah. From the Argentina. It's a good nickname. Vice of the century. I've said it before, I'll say it again.

Fantastic nickname. So they managed to get within a few feet of their objective before the tunnel began to flood, barely allowing the men to escape with their lives and leaving the Onslow Company with two shafts full of water and no treasure. I wonder what they can maybe, I mean, they've already got this company, right?

They can't get to the treasure. Maybe they need to pivot and start letting people have a dip in the wet shaft or whatever. Yes, the Oak Island Water World. Come and have fun. We've got two different water pits. Have a dip in the pit. Have a dip in the pit.

$4 entry. Kids dip for free. Yes. Then you make your two mil. Yeah, you start a kiosk on the side selling Spanish donuts or something. Yum. Maybe at a Popsicle stand. Yeah, perfect for hot days.

Spanish donuts. Money for jam. You'd also sell jam. Unfortunately, Matt, they didn't have your business savvy because this marked the end of operations for the Onslow company. No. This happens a bit as well. Like a lot of people putting a lot of effort into it,

running out of money. They, like many others after them, thought that the flooding was due to a very sophisticated booby trap. Whoa. Laid out by the presumably pirates who had buried the treasure. So they're like, oh, they don't want us to get that treasure. Hmm. Causing flooding.

This is a real physical manifestation of the sunk cost fallacy or whatever it's called. They're losing that money and tools probably. Yep. Down under the water. It's all under there. And then, like, even if you get it back, it's all muddy. Yeah.

Ugh. I'd rather start fresh. Yeah, muddy money. Not for Ugh. I'd rather start fresh. Yeah, muddy money. Not for me. Not for me, thanks. So moving forward a few years to 1849 and the beginning of the Truro Company. Truro was a town nearby to Oak Island and the first notions of a curse.

The Truro crew were apparently able to bail out the water in the pit and reinforce its walls before drilling further down. Truro crew, very good. Truro crew were apparently able to bail out the water in the pit and reinforce its walls before drilling further down. Truro crew, very good. Truro crew, fun to say. I mean, they should also sell Spanish doughnuts on the side. Yeah. I think there's no place that Spanish doughnuts aren't appropriate. I'm so glad that Spanish doughnuts exist.

I just threw a couple, I threw a place together with a food and I landed on a real one. And that's, makes me feel good. Yeah. Are they the stick ones? It's churros, yeah. Churros, okay. And this is true row. Oh my God. Have we stumbled upon the curve? That was the line that I was drawing. Dave picked up on that five minutes ago. Matt and I were like, whoa. That's crazy, man. We're the worst. By the way, I'm being really proud of you for not laughing at shaft. That's going to come up a bit as is drilling. And I'm about to say penetrated. And I'm really proud of you guys. Dave's struggling, but I'm proud of you for being mature grown-ups,

which we are, because all we're talking about here, mate, is a bit of excavation. All right? Well, if you heard my internal monologue, you wouldn't be quite so proud. Mine just said sexcavation, so. The drill penetrated successive layers of wood and something described as metal in pieces.

Hell yeah. Suggesting a treasure chest. Oh, but they just drilled into it. Shit. I know. That means water's getting in there. And according to a newspaper account published years later, they found three small links of gold chain could that be

the treasure i hope that chain's worth a lot of money because it's got to pay for a lot of stuff a lot of stuff but before the crew could access the vault the vault comes up a fair bit i i think it's how they refer to the space where they assume the treasure is they refer to the vault quite a bit the bottom of the month so before they could get to it, the bottom of the money pit collapsed and flooded again, taking the presumed treasure with it. Whoa. They're going to end up in the centre of the earth the way they're going.

They just keep on digging. Undeterred, the crew believed they had found a flood tunnel that channelled water into the pit from a man-made cove called Smith's Cove, approximately 500 feet east of the dig site. Oh, so it is a booby trap then. That's what they think. So they do some digging at Smith's Cove and that reveals five rock-lined sluices. Anyone know what a sluice is? Because I had to look it up. Uh, sluice, yeah a i think it's one of uh peter's uh ice creams isn't it i'll have a rainbow sluice thank you is it like a tunnel it's not bad a sluice is like a sliding gate or other device for controlling the flow of water it's got five rock lined sort of gates that's obviously pointing

to something something's happening here yeah they all sort of gates. I was obviously pointing to something. Something's happening here. Yeah. They all sort of come together in one single drain that appears to lead to the money pit. The Truro group dug shafts to intercept this drain with no success. They continued to try more ways of getting to the treasure, mostly by digging other shafts and trying to tunnel to the original one. by digging other shafts and try to tunnel to the original one.

So assuming that there is treasure down here, whoever buried it by this stage is probably long dead, right? This is quite a while later. So they never successfully came back to get it. They spent so much time booby trapping it and building all these timber floors. The job sounds like it would have taken years to do in the first place. Yeah. Maybe just hold on to your own treasure, you know. Yeah.

Just keep your valuables on you. That's the advice we always get. They probably died building this thing, you know, of old age. Yeah. Somewhere around there they did find a bunch of skeletons, but I don't think it's related. And also why would they, if it is the case why would they give instructions 90 foot further down if it's you'd think they'd remember unless i guess

that's a that's just for themselves or whatever yeah but then like you just put the you just put the um the stone 90 or whatever yeah you put the stone in and like you'd be like, ah, yes, I found the right spot, I guess. So the Truro Company then ran out of funds and was dissolved sometime in 1851. Same sort of thing as the Onslow Group. Around this time, the first reports of the Oak Island Curse appear. The origins of the curse are a bit muddled. The decades between the search's beginning and the curse's first mention confuse the story a little bit, but the first recorded fatality tied to the Oak Island treasure is dated to the early 1860s when a steam-powered pump used to drain the money pit exploded, killing one unknown man. We don't know his name. I bet it was John.

Probably. This fatality, the first of six, came during the excavation attempt of the Oak Island Association, another group. Beginning in 1861, they encountered similar problems and despite recovering tools that had been used by the Onslow and Truro companies before them, nothing of note was discovered. This seems to happen a bit. They'll be like digging and finding stuff. They're like, oh, we found something. This seems to happen a bit. They'll be like digging and finding stuff. They're like, oh, we found something.

It's probably from a pirate. Oh, no, it's just from the people just before us. The highs and lows of that situation. Yes. At one point, one of the platforms placed in the original shaft at 98 feet collapsed and dropped to a lower level this effect caused the next two platforms to drop as well with the treasure now resting at some 119 feet or 36 meters below ground with a shit ton of timber on top so it just got even harder that's where they think the treasure is based on one translation

of the stone which has been heavily disputed. So a bit of fun. Yeah, maybe it's just saying be good to God or whatever. Yeah. Don't forget your duty to the Lord. Have a good day. It was a preacher set this all up to teach people the good word of the Lord. Yeah.

And they're just misinterpreting it. If you want to teach people the good word of the Lord, make the word of the Lord a little more accessible than having to dig 40 feet down, you know, or 90 feet down. The real treasure is God's love. That's right. Have you heard of books? Is there a possibility that it's some sort of mole person?

Oh. Oh, that makes some sense. And they're talking about their mole god, I assume. Okay. Keep digging to the fortunes of the moles. Mole god. Come on in. Take a load off.

Shoes at the door, please. We might be moles, but we're not animals. Actually. Actually, Jess, I think you'll find that a mole is an animal. Well, joke's on you because this whole time when I've been saying mole people, I'm imagining people that are just big skin moles. Two separate groups followed to round out the 1800s. There was the Oak Island El Dorado Company.

Oh, that's cool. Pretty good. It means the Dorado, I think. Does that mean gold? I'm not sure. But they were commonly known as the Halifax Company, so I'm not really sure why the two names. The Halifax Explosion, Jess, you remember that episode?

Yes, I do. I do. That was in Canada? It was. I remember that. Hooray. I'm guessing that was in the same area. Was your Halifax explosion episode, Dave, set around Nova Scotia?

I was in Halifax. Oh, okay. That makes some sense. Fact check me, people. Fact check me. It is in Nova Scotia, Halifax. Halifax Regional Municipality, city in Nova scotia there we go anada so that makes sense so yeah there was the oak island elder rider company or halifax company and another unknown

group from a like in the very late 1800s like 1897 the latter group took samples of the ground and one of the samples brought, so essentially like the earth where they were digging, one of the samples brought a tiny piece of sheepskin parchment to the surface. Ooh. The parchment had two letters, VI or WI, written in India ink, type of ink. Specialists at Harvard University confirmed the parchment's authenticity as parchment this is definitely parchment definitely i've seen parchment before

this is it yeah but they're sort of like where did this come from 1897 is also notable for bringing about the second hunt related death when a worker worker named Maynard Kaiser fell to his death. Oh, terrible. So that's two. Terrible death but also an amazing name. Maynard Kaiser. Yeah. Very good.

That's a fantastic name. Then we move on to another group, the Old Gold Salvage Group. Honestly, he had me at Maynard. Maynard, I know. But then when he brought it home strong with kaiser i was speechless until i interrupted you then jumping ahead a few years so now we're in 1909 captain henry l bowdoin arrived on oak island in august as a representative of the old gold salvage group by this, the area now known as the Money Pit,

I don't know what they were calling it before that, but it's now commonly known as the Money Pit, was cleared out to 113 feet or 34 metres and divers were sent down to investigate. Wow, so it's massive. Yeah, it's big. I love that it's now divers, so it's just a full waterhole now. Yeah, they've embraced that they cannot control the water,

so they're like, get some divers in there. And is it nicknamed the money pit because there's money at the bottom or because it is literally a money pit for the people looking? Yeah. And they're just tossing cash at the problem. It's probably that they're very confident there's a big chunk of money at the bottom, but more realistically, yeah, a lot of companies

are going broke oh this renovation has become a real money pit oh my god although multiple drillings were taken in and around the pit none of their digs revealed anything of interest and like a lot of groups found because the site had already been investigated by so many other parties a lot of the time if they found anything it was just some equipment left behind by the groups before them like i was saying before so then we jumped forward quite a few more years. That was back in like 1909. Now we're going to 1959, when a man named Robert Restall, his 18-year-old son, also Robert, and work partner Carl Grazer, went to Oak Island after signing a contract with one of the property owners and spent the next few years investigating and exploring.

On August 17, 1965, Robert Restore was working in the shaft when he was overcome by hydrogen sulfide fumes. His son then went down the shaft to help and also lost consciousness. Carl Grazer and two others, Cyril Hiltz and Andy DeMont, then attempted to save the two Restall men. There was another guy there, Edward White. He had himself lowered on a rope into the shaft but was only able to bring out DeMont, Andy DeMont.

Restall and his son plus Carl Grazer and Cyril Hiltz all died. Oh, shit. So that was the majority of the six. Yeah, there's a big chunk right there. Well, with those four, the total is six, six deaths while searching for the Oak Island treasure. So that was in 1965 and there was also that same year an article on Reader's Digest about Oak Island, the treasure, the history,

the mystery, and that article led to renewed public fascination with the mystery. And this would pique the interest of many generations to come, including some that we're going to talk about very soon. Also in 1965, 65, a really big year for Oak Island, a man named Robert Dunfield leased several portions of the island. He dug the pit area to a depth of 134 feet and a width of 100 feet. And he did that by using a 70 tonne digging crane. Now,

how do you get a crane onto a small island? Well, that required the construction of a causeway, which still exists, from the western end of the island to Crandall's Point on the mainland, from the western end of the island to Crandall's Point on the mainland, which is 200 metres away. And his lease, Dunfield, his lease ended in August of 1966. All right. Saints won the premiership that year. Because he kept saying 65.

I'm like, oh, the Saints were on us up that year. But they made up for it the very next year. They really did. When they won the premiership. They're only actually to this day, hopefully people are seeing in the future, not their only premiership anymore. Yeah. Do you think that they were waiting for the lease to end before they finally won? Yeah.

Yeah. That's reasonable. So he's brought a huge, I mean, that doesn't even sound like a pit anymore. It's that wide. It's huge. It's more just like a step down in the ground, you know? Yeah. It's absolutely massive.

Like an in-ground pool. And he went to all that effort. He got the crane across and it was only there for maybe a year. I don't think he made any discoveries in that time, but he did build a causeway. It's very interesting. In January of 67, Robert Dunfield was back in the habit, this time alongside Daniel C. Blankenship,

David Tobias and Fred Nolan, and they formed a syndicate of exploration on Oak Island. Two years later, Blankenship and Tobias formed Triton Alliance after purchasing most of the island. So again, they're just like, it's absolutely nuts. So they've bought the entire island? Yeah, pretty much a lot of it, yeah. You really want that to pay off, don't you, once you've bought most of the island? Get set up this fricking churro stand. Yeah.

And just start, get some cash flow going. It's not that hard. You just need like dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate, give people options, make a shit ton of churros. It's good for all weather. I really hope that the money they're searching for isn't paper money under all that water. Yeah, I hope it's doubloons, whatever they are.

I hope it's in dong. Yes, the sexiest currency. So, yeah, this is Triton Alliance. Triton workers excavated a 235-foot shaft, 72 metres, and it's known as Borehole 10X. Oh, that is hot. Get to the end of the shaft and let's find that dong. So apparently they lowered cameras down the shaft into a cave

and they recorded possible chests. I'm guessing treasure chests. Oh, okay. Not Captain Kidd's rotting corpse. Well, human remains in there as well. Wooden cribbing and tools. However, the images were unclear and none of the claims have been independently confirmed. In fact, divers were sent to the bottom of that hole in 2016 and found nothing. So it's a lot of that. It's a lot of we found something. Oh, no, we didn't.

Imagine being hired for that job as a diver. Oh, what do you want me to do today? We want you to dive to the bottom of this hole. Have a look around. Have a look. I guess that's probably what they do for the most part. Yeah, get down that hole there. Have a little bit of a look.

Have a squeeze. Let us know if you see anything interesting. Maybe some cribbage. Let us know if you see any money. Let us know if you see any money. Any rand. Well, the shaft later collapsed and the excavation was abandoned. Work was eventually halted due to lack of funds

and the collapse of another partnership. So it's just there's like five groups of people, turn up, do some digging, run out of money. Most recently, in April 2006, Michigan brothers Rick and Marty Lagina purchased 50% of Oak Island from David Tobias for an undisclosed sum. The rest of the company is still owned by Daniel C. Blankenship. Elder brother Rick had read the January 1965 Reader's Digest

and told his younger brother all about it, starting a lifelong interest in the mystery of Oak Island for the brothers. In July 2010, the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources and Department of Tourism, Culture and Heritage granted them a treasure trove licence. Ooh, what's that mean? It allows them to resume excavation activities on the island.

And after a year or so of that, they just replaced the license with an Oak Island Treasure Act. Like it's just seems like a lot of paperwork getting involved now, more recent times. The exploration by the Lagina brothers was documented in a reality tv show named the curse of oak island airing on the history channel starting in 2014 the ninth season will premiere on november 2nd 2021 what wow they're getting in a gray's anatomy territory yeah i started i like i looked it up because i was like oh cool there's like a whole show about it these guys exploring and it was on sbs because I was like, oh, cool, there's like a whole show about it, these guys exploring. And it was on SBS and I was like, perfect, I'll have a look at that.

And then I saw that it had five seasons available on SBS and I was like, oh, Lord, because I did not have time to watch five seasons of TV. Like you get to five seasons, you're like, well, I reckon they don't figure it out in the first four at least. That's a spoiler alert for the next eight seasons. I know. They're about to start their ninth season. Did you know this, Jess, that Grey's Anatomy is still going?

Yeah, I did know. Oh, I didn't know. Yeah. How many seasons? It's like 20 or something. It's ridiculous. I think it's like 20. Yeah, it seems like a real six-season kind of show.

Yeah, but no. They've been bubbling along under the surface. They keep dying. They keep fucking. That's Grey's Anatomy, baby. Is Dr Grey still in it, if there ever was a dr gray yes yes yep dr gray is still there so anyway yep they're about to have their ninth season at the time of recording ninth season will be starting soon there's uh a big thing in the start of season six which begins with the fellowship of the dig, which is what they call themselves, building a cofferdam in Smith's Cove,

which is a structure which lets them excavate without worrying about the tide. I know nothing else about it. They eventually uncover a wooden U-shaped structure. Closer inspection revealed Roman numerals. VI. As a result of tree ring testing, the structure was dated to 1769, which was 25 years before the money pit was even discovered.

Whoa. With the team speculating that this could be the remains of an early cofferdam erected by the people who deposited the treasure. So they made a cofferdam and found a cofferdam. Wow. You've got to spend cofferdam to make cofferdam. So was that around Captain Kidd era? I'm looking him up.

He died in 1701. Yeah, he was captured in 1699. You remember that from when you did the whole report on him? Yeah, obviously. And it was you i reckon i looked at the the following reports i did glasgow ice cream wars the next week and then dave did uh something the week after that i'm pretty sure at dave you did time and shard didn't you dave yes i did yeah so i think it must have been you bopper that's absolutely baff. You occasionally forget that one of us has done a

report. Well, not occasionally. You often forget one of us has done a report. But yeah, you rarely forget your own ones. I would love to say on the record that I love your reports. Thank you so much. Love to listen to you guys tell a great story. Love to enjoy this podcast. Clearly something wrong with my memory. I don't remember many details of of the reports in general at least you remember they exist i normally remember they exist yeah captain kid was right on the fringe of my memory i was so sure you were thinking of like the the web series you did and i was like that was blackbeard and i thought i fucking had you and i didn't at all i feel like a fool um so essentially so far i've talked about

all the different groups of people that have that have you know had different sort of search parties excavations have really tried to find this treasure lots of different little bits and pieces have been found along the way and i'll talk about some of them now, but what I want to talk about now is some of the most popular theories as to what's actually going on on this mysterious island. We can wait for clean water solutions. Or we can engineer access to clean water. We can acknowledge Indigenous cultures. Or we can learn from Indigenous voices. We can demand more from the earth. Or we can demand more from ourselves. At York University, we work together to create positive change for a better tomorrow. Join us at yorku.ca slash write the future. There's a really wide range of theories as to who constructed the money pit

and then a few bits and pieces have been found, but they're never fully sure where it's sort of come from, how it came to be on Oak Island. Pirate treasure by Captain Kidd was the foremost driver of interest. People were like, he's buried two million pound there. And if it wasn't Captain Kidd, then it was like a community bank shared by Kidd and another pirate, Englishman Henry Avery. So they're like, there's pirate treasure here. But if it wasn't pirates, then people have speculated that it was warring nations or secret societies and ancient orders were responsible for a huge amount of treasure.

So they're just like it feels a lot of the time like a whole bunch of like confirmation bias. It's like people are like there's definitely treasure there and then somebody will kind of prove that it wasn't pirates and they'll go, well, I reckon it wasn't pirates. It was the ancient secret society and there'll be no evidence of that and they'll go, well, actually. I think whether or not there's treasure there,

it's still whatever it was is fascinating. Like such a full-on structure under the ground on this unpopulated island. Yeah. Pretty amazing and interesting. Well, there might be some explanations of that. The complexities of the money pit with, you know, a flood tunnel system and booby traps have furthered these theories that not just anyone could have done it.

It must have been pirates, secret societies, you know, spies, all that sort of stuff. According to William S. Kruka, author of Oak Island Gold, it was more likely that British engineers and sailors dug the pit to store loot acquired in the British invasion of Cuba during the Seven Years' War, valued at around a million pounds. So he's like, nah, it was British sailors. Also related to the Seven Years' War, writer John Goodwin wrote that given the apparent size and complexity of the pit, it was probably dug

by the French Army engineers hiding the treasury of the fortress of Louisborough in Nova Scotia after British forces captured the fortress during the Seven Year War. So it was definitely English or French. Yeah. I think we're getting close now. Yeah. We're on the scent.

We're at the pointy end, baby. They're sniffing it out. I think we're getting close now. Yeah. We're on the scent. We're at the pointy end, baby. They're sniffing it out. I can feel it. It's definitely English, French, pirates. Yeah. Engineers. Yeah. Secret societies.

Sailors. Sailors. Aliens. Small people. Or mole people. With treasure. With treasure. Or something else we haven't thought of yet.

I hadn't considered that, but it could also be something else. You're not able to rule that out? No, I'm not ruling it out. Once we know everything that isn't possible, what remains is what's possible. Oh, my God. Someone said that, I think. That's beautiful.

Who said that? Who came up with that? Was that a Joe Biden quote? Someone like that? Maybe a Trump? Someone like a president i reckon another very popular theory is a william phipps theory now this theory claims explorer sir william phipps acted as part of a conspiracy by protestants to overthrow catholic king james ii who was

terribly unpopular with the Protestant majority. So William Phipps salvaged treasure from the sunken Spanish Concepcion, which sunk in the Bahamas, it was a ship, returning with 68,000 pounds of silver or, you know, like 4 million in today's currency. Two different sources, one said 68,000 pounds of silver, the other said 4 million in today's currency, somewhere in there. Phipps was knighted for his efforts and returned to the wreckage with additional ships, but returned empty-handed. He said the sunken wreckage had already been looted by locals and whatever treasure was on board was gone. But this William Phipps theory argues that in actual fact, significant additional treasure was found and taken to the Netherlands where a massive portion

of that was given to King William III who used it to fund his successful overthrowing of the unpopular King James II. And then Phipps and his crew went to hide the rest of the treasure for safekeeping on Oak Island. Obviously there his crew dug to hide the rest of the treasure for safekeeping on Oak Island. Obviously, there his crew dug up the infamous money pit. And the theory has it that while digging, an underground cavern gave way, flooding the pit with water and leaving the treasure in a precarious and unretrievable state. Phipps and his men sealed the money pit, went to inform England of the big

problem, and secret engineering squads were deployed to the island many times but couldn't retrieve the treasure. By the 1750s, the British crown decided if they couldn't have the treasure, then no one could. So the British then booby-trapped the island, creating shafts and flood tunnels that modern-day explorers have since discovered. But the treasure still remains untouched. So they're like, it's impossible to get to.

So what we'll do is make it impossible to get to. Yeah, impossibler. We'll make it impossibler. Yeah, even more impossibler. That's one theory, that all of that happened. That's one theory. Right. How many theories are there?

Seven? There's a few. There's a few. Ten? Fifteen? Let me have a look. 20 theories? What are we talking, 25 theories here, Bob?

Two, three, four. 30 theories? There's at least six. Okay. Six that I've got. At least six. There's at least six. Hard to count that high, but.

I lost interest. The next theory is a Francis Bacon theory. Dave, Francis Bacon was who? Seven Degrees of Francis Bacon. I've played that game. A famous 20th century artist. And the alleged true author of Shakespeare. Shakespeare.

Ah. There is also a famous artist. Thank God I was like, oh, but look who's that. Oh, right, yeah. Oh. There is also a famous artist. Thank God. I was like, oh, but what was that? Oh, right, yeah. Well, another theory holds that the Rosicrucians, which is a spiritual and cultural movement that arose in Europe in the early 17th century, and their reported leader, Francis Bacon,

the alleged true author of plays attributed to Shakespeare, attributed to Shakespeare, he fucking stole it all, organised a secret project to make Oak Island the home of its legendary vault with ingenious means to conceal ancient manuscripts and artefacts. Like we're going to hide, we're going to bury the original Shakespeare's. Oh, okay. So people, the believers inis bacon reckon he was both

like a genius writer or at least he was really good at zhuzhing up old stories that's what shakespeare did really isn't it he could build a great tunnel yeah and lead a spiritual cultural movement he's a busy guy oh triple threat. So when we were talking about parchment before, the History Channel website also noted that the Lagina brothers discovered small pieces of parchment with leather binding near the pit. Could these be further pieces of Shakespeare's lost manuscripts? What? What an amazing treasure that would be.

Waterproof manuscripts of Shakespeare's original works. Yeah. Researchers and cryptographers such as Petter Amundsen and Daniel Ronstam claim to have found codes hidden in Shakespeare, also in rock formations on the island, and clues hidden in other 16th and 17th century art and historical documents. How do you explain that? Well, let's not remember, let's not forget, I should say,

the parchment that was dug up and it had either VI or WI. Could VI, could that be part of Henry VI, a play attributed to Shakespeare? Or could it be WI, William, Shakespeare? Or could it be W.I. William Shakespeare? Varonis probably starts V.I. or V.E. maybe, but how do you do an E? You start a capital E. That's right, they've cut it off.

They've cut off the V.E. Yeah. Dave, I really couldn't remember who said that once you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains is possible. That's your man, Arthur Conan Doyle. Oh, there you go. Apparently.

He said that in like one of the Sherlock stories, I think. Don't at me. Something like that. I'm sorry. Don't at me. So paranoid. It happens so rarely that I get fact-checked on Twitter or something, but I spend way more time being paranoid.

But it hurts every time. And I'm like, not again! No, please! It hurts the most on the rare times that I did it accidentally. It happens way more frequently when I get fact-checked on something I said. On purpose. When I was trying to be silly.

Yeah. That's what you've got to learn, Matt. This is a history podcast and we have no business being funny buggers. Okay? Okay. I'll be good. We are academics. Okay? It's not like this is a podcast hosted by comedians.

Okay? Thank you so much for finally recognizing me as the academic I am. Uh-huh. I'm going to go back and study again now that you've given me that sort of confidence. Hmm. Bacon. Okay.

Baking. Bacon. Your man, the guy you're talking about. Yeah, I know. I was making a joke. I want to find out about him and how many other things he did. He wrote Shakespeare. Yeah.

Hits. Imagine that. He's got a day job and then at night he's moonlighting as Shakespeare. Because a lot of people do think about this, and we have done a Shakespeare episode, and you've probably talked about this, Jess or Dave, whoever did it. Have we done Shakespeare?

You are kidding. You remember that one, surely. I'm sure, Dave, at the time you would have talked about, isn't there a series that multiple people wrote? He had like a writer's room or something and there's all these theories that he couldn't possibly have all been one man and maybe he didn't even exist and stuff like that. But I'm sure I learned that from you in that episode.

Lots of theories. Anyway, that's not what we're here to talk about. We're here to talk about Oak Island. Jess, I never asked, is it named Oak Island after, was it named that already? I'm guessing there's a lot of oaks, but at the start of the story, oak trees disappeared. I thought it was going to be, the whole story was going to be

about someone stealing oak trees. No, sadly. So are you asking if it was already called Oak Island? But when? When do you mean? I mean, like, because no one even really went there. But is that all it was? It was just an island full of oak trees.

Yeah, it was just, like, it's pretty, it's small. People weren't living there. It's pretty rugged. So, yes, it was named Oak Island. Thank you so much for clearing that up. It should be Money Pit Island or something by now. Yeah, that's what I feel like, Pit Island. Great.

Okay, so the next, that was a Francis Bacon theory. The next one is the Holy Grail and Ark of the Covenant. Hi, man. It's a short one. The religious military order known as the knights templar amassed great treasure said to contain the holy grail and the ark of the covenant so there have been templar symbolism discovered on the island including a christian cross formation of rocks so there are some that believe oak island became the final resting place of the templar treasure. Look at the Holy Grails there.

Because they found Christian cross formation of rocks. And was this Christian cross, was that a symbol specifically used by the templar crew? It was a templar cross, that's right. Yeah. Because I think it's spread since then at least. It's used pretty commonly now. But up until that point, it was kind of specifically a sign

of the Templar society. Wow. So some people argue that the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail. If you saw a cross back then, you thought, whoop, that's Templar. Whoop, Templar. That's Templar work. Is it the kind of rock formation you've sort of got to squint at to sort of see the cross?

Kind of like the Southern Cross star formation. Like, oh, yeah, the cross up there. You mean that sort of kind of diamond shape? Yeah, no. If you don't look at that one but you look at that one and then you draw a line for that one or that one, look, it's a cross. It's a cross.

Yeah, I love star formations, the things they're meant to look like. The saucepan. Now, the saucepan looks like a saucepan. I'll give you that. But I could draw a cross. You need any four stars. I can make a cross out of it. Give me four stars in the sky.

I'll give you a cross. Okay. The Southern Cross. I mean, it's five stars. What's it to do with that little star? What's its business? How close? Get rid of it.

It's dragging us all down. It's embarrassing. The New Zealand flag got rid of it, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, they cut it. They only have the four. They've got four. Cut it loose. Cut it loose.

They've got the idea. You guys are so smart. Another theory is during the French Revolution of the 1700s, it's said that Marie Antoinette instructed her lady-in-waiting to take her jewels and flee. Most of those jewels have been missing ever since. Ooh. Some believe the maid fled to Nova Scotia and, aided by the French Navy,

constructed the money pit as an elaborate vault to house the jewels. Wow. So that kind of makes sense, don't you think? Yeah. That Marie Antoinette's lady-in-waiting took her jewels, fled to, naturally, Nova Scotia, dug a pit to hide the jewels in. Well, they haven't been found, have they? So it's like Schrodinger's cat.

The jewels are both in there and not in there. Well said. Know what in there. Well said. Know what I mean? Well said. Also, another sort of noteworthy discovery on the island is a Roman sword. It was discovered in 2015 by a fisherman, and this discovery would have rewritten history because it meant Romans were in North America.

Oh, okay. Fucking massive. That's cool. But the discovery turned out to be too good to be true. In fact, the sword was a modern replica and not 2,000 years old. What, time-travelling Romans? Yeah. Because that actually, that makes it even a bigger discovery

if we found that Romans. Yeah, they've been in North America, and they've been in North America recently. What? And if you are a Roman time traveller and you're looking for a sword in the future, you're going to try and get one that feels natural to you, aren't you? So you're going to try and seek out a replica.

There is only one or whatever that can be only one. Yeah, I think it's there can be only one. But I'm basing that off a tripod joke. So I could also be wrong. Yeah. I think I'm basing it off uh maybe something that cam and alexi said on one of their movie podcasts so obviously like some of these series have been pretty wild and i've been taking the piss a little bit there are two most likely scenarios though are

you ready to hear those yes oh wait so what you said so far, they're not even the most likely scenarios. Yeah, those are just some theories that are thrown around. It's fine. Everyone you've said so far has knocked off the other one for me. I'm like, wait, I really believed the first one about those guys, but now you've said this newer one. I believe it's Mary Antoinette's Lady in Waiting or whatever. Okay.

That doesn't tell me much. It just tells me that you've got this newer one. I believe it's Mary Antoinette's Lady in Waiting or whatever. Okay. That doesn't tell me much. It just tells me that you've got a short memory. No, no, no. You're thinking of you, Bob. I just, I'm very easily persuaded. Yeah. Well, let me see if I can persuade you further. Research conducted by a historian named Joy A. Steele

and retired marine geologist Gordon Fader demonstrated that Oak Island housed a covert British industrial centre. They examined business records and correspondence to conclude that in 1720 the Crown chartered private companies together with the British military to do business on Oak Island, including pine tar works, brass making, and wire drawing. It was the largest industrial development in Canada at the time, and Fader said there were a million reasons to go to Oak Island. Closest to fresh water, closest to shore, safe, good anchorage, it's the biggest island in the bay. There's like a cluster of islands. Steele and Fader are certain that the money pit was a natural geological feature on the island,

one that the Brits used as a pine tar kiln to produce tar and pitch for coating their ships. It's a little anticlimactic. The excavated layers of the money pit, the wood, charcoal and putty, align with what would be expected in an old tar kiln. So they point out that the U-shaped structure buried on Smith's Cove was likely part of a storage shed for keeping the pine tar in barrels and out of the sun. Has anyone told the fellas going into their sixth season about this? No.

No, I'm sorry. And it was a quote from them. They say, in those days, pine tar was of equal importance to oil today. Your ship didn't go to sea unless it was soaked in pine tar. That's what they were doing on the island. All the artefacts we see fit that theory exactly. Wow.

So even the stuff where it's like wood buried every 10 feet. Yeah. I have an explanation for that as well. There are, this is pretty funny though like it all kind of makes sense what they're saying you're like oh yeah i guess that makes sense and then it says high ranking banking officials of the day often referred to the secret in their correspondence steel says that is surely the oak island project how how is okay no the secret is if you want a red bike you really hope to get it and then you want a red bike, you really hope to get it.

Yeah. And then you get a red bike. That's the secret. Red bike, red bike, red bike, red bike. And then your birthday rolls around. You've been saying red bike in your sleep a lot. Bring, bring. And your family get it for you.

You got yourself a red bike. So that one's one of the most likely scenarios. The other one, according to Joe Nickel, there is no treasure. The pit is a natural phenomenon, probably a sinkhole connected to limestone passages or caverns. Suggestions that the pit is a natural phenomenon, which is just like accumulated debris in a sinkhole,

date to at least 1911. A number of sinkholes and caves to which the booby traps are attributed exist on the mainland near the island. So similar sinkholes and caves exist very close by. Its resemblance to a human-made pit has been suggested as partly due to the texture of natural accumulated debris in sinkholes. So there's a quote saying this filling would be softer than the surrounding ground and give the impression that it had been dug up before. Six people died for this.

Yeah. The platforms of rotten logs, because Dave, you were sort of saying like but there's wood every 10 feet. That seems so exact that they can every, you know, the same depth every time. Well, that's been attributed to trees damaged by blowdowns like a hoe like a hoe down it's nature having a hoe down yeah have a blow down if trees are damaged by fire or wind they would periodically fall or wash into

a hollow yeah about every uh 10 yards every 10 feet or so, yeah. It's pretty impressive. And also remember they're measuring that with like a wooden rod, so it's hard to say maybe how exact it is. But another pit similar to the early description of the money pit was discovered in the area in 1949 when workmen were digging a well on the shore of Mahoney Bay. So there's another pit just like this money pit. More treasure. On Oak Island.

More treasure, baby. There's a geoscientist named Stephen Aitken. He has over 25 years of experience studying the Oak Island area and he says natural evidence points to the money pit itself being a sinkhole. He sort of agrees with Fader's assertions. He says the bedrock beneath that side of the island has locally dissolved and some of that system's caves have collapsed and formed sinkholes, including the money pit. Flooding of the money pit, which the

legend claims to be evidence of booby traps, actually occurs naturally on that part of Oak Island due to the influx of fresh water from sands on the island's subsurface. I want to just make known maths and geography my worst subject, so I don't understand a lot of what I'm saying, but it sounds like it makes sense. I don't know if geography has really come into a lot of what you said, so you're all good on that one. I'm sorry.

I just said sands on the island's subsurface okay okay i'm talking about caves okay i mean sinkholes yeah it's fucking geography baby i may not understand what geography means and i i'm willing to admit geography is more than longitude and latitude my boy okay i gotta go i told you i gotta go back and study it's about the earth you know in so many ways yeah it is sure longitude latitude comes into it but it's so much more than that dave am i right or am i digging a hole ah you are digging a hole as deep as the oak island money pit how is this not geography? How? This guy's a geoscientist.

That's geography. Now, my question is, and maybe the geologist slash geographist can answer this one, that is, is the theory here that it's all a sinkhole? And are we led to believe that this sinkhole has somehow, somehow buried wood every 10 feet but also 90 feet down inscribed a rock saying 40 feet more and you'll get the treasure? It sounds to me like this guy or this group of people are in some sort of conspiracy to make everyone stop looking so they can keep the treasure for themselves.

Yeah, that every 10 feet thing sounds too... I literally had one more sentence and then the thing after that was, sounds like someone's found the treasure and wants other people to stop looking. Damn right. Yeah. Great minds, eh? Yeah, because he's like, oh, the idea of pirates hewing

out treasure vaults with pickaxes in bedrock is ridiculous. I don't want to diminish anyone's dreams, but there's no treasure vault or booby trap designed to protect buried treasure at the money pit. All these features can be explained with basic science. That's what he says. Feels like bullshit. Which one are you thinking, Bob? Sounds like the second last one made sense where it was like a...

The tar kiln? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not that I at all know that that's what a tar kiln is, but assuming that that is what a tar kiln is and what it would look like. Yeah, there's still obviously a fair bit of mystery surrounding it. No, you know, big bountiful treasure has been found yet. As for the curse and the deaths attached to it,

Christina Downs, PhD, the managing editor for the Journal of Folklore Research at Indiana University, urges treasure hunters to treat these events with scepticism. She points out that curses and cryptic ciphers are often manufactured in service of legitimising unproven claims. So there's essentially no answer. This is a mystery episode. Whoa.

Kept it right till the end. The island and the mystery surrounding it attracted the attention from some rather famous people as well and I wanted to end on that because it's kind of wild. So Australian-American actor Errol Flynn invested in an Oak Island treasure dig. Actor

John Wayne also invested in the drilling equipment used on the island and offered his equipment to be used to help solve the mystery. Oh wow, there's another John. William Vincent Astor, heir to the Astor family fortune after his father died on the Titanic, was a passive investor in digging for treasure on the island. And the biggest name, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Whoa. F-D-R. Yeah. Apparently stirred by family stories originating from his sailing and trading grandfather, Warren Delano Jr., Franklin began following the mystery in late 1909 and early 1910 and he continued to follow it until his death in 1945. Throughout his political career, he monitored the island's recovery

attempts and development. And although the president secretly planned to visit Oak Island in 1939 while he was in Halifax, fog and the international, it says the international situation prevented him from doing so. War? Maybe that little world war? Go to some sightseeing, unfortunately? Furious.

Wouldn't that be just piss you right off? Oh, my God. Just let me go look at this fucking island. I want to have a look at this pit. I want to look at it. So potentially a bit of an unsatisfying ending. And what are you guys leaning towards? What are your theories?

I think I'm leaning towards, and like I say, I don't understand 1700s tar pits or tar kilns or whatever, but if what you've read says that that all lines up, then that feels like that's the most obvious one. There's something a little hard to believe about every 10 metres such a big pit would have wooden platforms and things inscribed and stuff and that all just to be, oh, it just naturally occurred. Yeah.

Yeah, a tree, that rock marked itself. Yeah, exactly, because even if you subscribe to one or a couple of these series, there's still a lot of things that you don't really have an explanation for. Where did that stone come from? What does it actually mean? Unless it was that possibly just scratches from the pickaxe. Maybe.

Well, like my hero, Fox Mulder, I want to believe. And frankly, I refer to Bacon, Francis Bacon. I reckon it's just a big Shakespeare pit. Yeah. That's my opinion. Me, I'm leaning towards Marie Antoinette Jules. Is there a possibility that it's both? There's a possibility it's all of these and none of these.

Whoa. It's Schrodinger's mystery. Yeah. And there's like heaps of different resources on it. Obviously, as always, there'll be what I've looked at will be listed in the show notes. And it's a really like, it's quite a messy, very tangled kind of topic. So I've done my very best. If this is something that you know a lot about, I'm sorry if I've missed something that you think is absolutely crucial. But, yeah, that's kind of a bit of an introduction

to the Oak Island mystery. Well, that sounded pretty comprehensive to me. It sounds like you went through many, many theories. It was long and boring is what I'm hearing from that. No, no, I loved it. Was it fun to research? No, because it was incredibly tangled and messy and it was really hard to, like, put stuff in some sort of order.

It wasn't that it was not enjoyable. It was just that it was complicated. In the end, you went with chronological and I liked that. Yeah, I love that about myself as well. I love things to be vaguely linear. And so six people have died and we're waiting for the seventh is that right yeah well that's what the curse says nobody really knows where that curse came from yeah or why it specifically says seven people will seven men will die

and then the treasure will magically present itself but yeah we are kind of waiting on one more death so someone if someone's getting close to the end, you know, you're looking at natural causes taking you, just go have a dig. Have a dig in your final days. Sort of sacrifice yourself to the pit. That's what the pit demands, a sacrifice. Yeah. The curse didn't specify age or how healthy the sacrifices need to be.

I don't think so. But virginity status, nothing like that. Why are you asking? Are you volunteering? I'm just wondering about it. I know a few really old people. You are both old and a virgin. I think you're perfect.

Really old virgins? No, that was the thing because I'm not a virgin. Okay. That's the only thing that ruled me out. Okay. I definitely have fucked. Fucked. Perfect. That's how people say it if you've done it.

You probably wouldn't understand that. And I thought, you know, talking about people who tweet me later when I say something wrong or slightly being silly, I know Scotia is Scotland. Oh, my God, you've said that far too late. They've already tweeted. They've already tweeted. There's no going back. They've already tweeted. They've already tweeted. There's no going back.

They've tweeted and now they're hearing. Oh, what if somebody's listened to this in two halves and they don't hear that for like a week? Oh, they're going to feel like such a dick. Oh, no, I'm sorry. Edit that bit out. Edit everything I've said out, actually. That's how I feel tonight and after most episodes. Could you just

edit, cut the bits how I talk out? Absolutely not. I refuse. You're going to throw me under the bus like that, Bob? So that was a fantastic block report. Worthy of a fifth most voted for topic. I hope all

those names you read out before were happy. I'm doing next week's report won't tell you what it's about but it is the fourth most voted for and i'm gonna see if i can't squeeze in a john there somewhere please there's no obvious johns from my research so far but i'll dig i'll dig like i'm the the bloody spanish donut company having a go at that big old hole in the ground. So this does bring us to everyone's favorite part of the show, the part where we get to thank a bunch of our great supporters. And you can become a supporter of the show at patreon.com slash do go on pod

or do go on pod.com. And once you're on there, there's a bunch of different levels you can go on and it sort of explains what you what sort of rewards or whatever you get from the different levels including we do three bonus episodes each month uh and we're up to we'll be up to getting something like 125 bonus episodes and they're all available to you when you sign up uh you get shout outs like we're going to do in a minute. You also get to vote on topics and all these sorts of things. So a lot of fun if you want to get involved.

The Facebook group is also one of the sweeter parts of the internet where, for the most part, people get on really well. And I would say nearly all the time. So the first thing I want to do today, though, is the Fat Quota Question section. And I think, is the fact, quote, or question section. And I think this section has a little jingle, goes something like this. Fact, quote, or question.

Ding. He always remembers the ding. And to get involved in this, you sign up to the Sydney Scharnberg level. And once you're there, on that level, to be honest, you get pretty much all the rewards. So you get the bonus episodes, voting rights, Facebook and all that stuff. Plus you get to give us a fact, a quote or a question. And I read them out on the show.

That makes sense, I'm assuming. So first up, we've got Aidan Coghlan this week. And Aidan also gets to give himself a title. Everyone whoidan also gets to give himself a title. Everyone who writes in gets to give themselves a title. Aidan's called himself Associate Executive of Procrastina. I guess that's the land of procrastination. And it's a place I visit regularly. So it's great to have someone looking after that.

Aidan. And Aidan asks us a question and here is the question you ready for this yep is there anything you're associated with or interested in to the point where people always buy gifts based on this thing regardless of whether it's gift buying occasion or not he's got an example do you want to hear the example yes I know I don't think I'm not off the top of my head but i have friends my cousin used to tell people he his favorite animal is a duck so he'd just get all these duck presents all the time he's like i mean i like ducks but not enough to fill my house

with so many ducks i got a neighbor who's had the same thing with um flamingos i don't know if it's just birds that that happens with. Anyway, so Aidan's example is, for instance, my friend is a marine biologist. And when I was in his house recently, I noticed his bookshelf was host to about 15 dolphin statues. 15 dolphin statues, figurines, pennants, and cuddly toys, all gifted either on occasions or just in a saw this and thought of you sort of way.

A few years ago, I set up my company called Far From Avocados. And in the time since then, I've accrued a Mexican farm's worth of avocado themed loot, an avocado cookbook, an avocado shower sponge, a whole assortment of avocado lapel pins and cufflinks, an avocado hat, an avocado phone cover, an entire drawer full of avocado socks, and even a book of avocado themed puns called you've guac to be joking. Hasterical avocado puns. I love it. But also I'm going to call my next company Money and Pints and see how that works. Yeah, so do you two have anything like this? Yeah, mine is pies, not surprisingly. People buy me pies, send me pie-themed stuff,

tag me in pie-related things, also baked bean things because I started the Labine Boy Twitter account. I frequently get tagged in there. If anything even goes slightly viral, a bean-related product, I am tagged in there. But physical stuff, it is pies, which I don't mind at all because I do love pies. Yeah.

When Sophie, one of our great Patreon supporters, sent us over key rings. Yours was a pie. That's right. Remember when we were in Bristol, listener Marisol also made me a handmade pie key ring, which was really cool. So I've got a, can you believe it, two pie key rings. I got a, she gave me a Saint's one and Sophie gave me a scone with cream then jam on top.

As God intended. scone with cream then jam on top as god intended and i got a pizza and it's still in my keys yeah mine's still in my keys too but i um i reckon you you sort of drug my memory there i reckon mine would be monkeys and apes because of the primates oh yeah definitely not heaps not like a room full or anything but i've definitely got a couple of like little i got a donkey kong someone gave me a little donkey kong toy and a few books and dvds and stuff like that yeah how about you papa i get um and not to a ridiculous amount so it's not a an issue yet but quokkas um i we've been sent a stuffed quokka and I've got a quokka magnet.

And just for my birthday this year, my partner gave me a top that has quokkas all over it and it's cute as shit. That sounds sick. I love it. And also Dolly Parton stuff and that is always welcome. So, yeah, that's nice stuff. My dad, though, my dad is he really only drinks bundaberg rum and birthdays father's day christmas whatever everybody is just giving him bottles of rum right like he gets nothing else for

but it's like it's been 40 years of you just having one thing. And that sets him up for, so he just like never has to buy it. Yeah. I don't think he's had to buy Bundy in a very long time. That's handy. I think people, I do get beers occasionally when people have one that they're involved with or something they want me to try. Yeah. And I've got a bunch of beer books that I get for Christmas or whatever,

you know, 101 great Australian beers and those sort of books which are fun when we're in uh I was talking to Dave about this last night or chatting when um we maybe our last UK tour one of their early gigs was in Leeds and three different brewers or people who worked at breweries gave me beers and I'm'm like, this is going to be the best tour ever. Like just a couple of shows in, three different breweries have given me beers and they were the only three breweries. So something about Leeds where they must have a lot of cool craft breweries.

I follow all those breweries on Instagram. I can't wait to get back to try to see what they've been up to. Anyway, that was a very good question. Thank you, Aidan. The next one comes from Paul Jacob, who's given himself the title of Director of Which Way Did They Go? And Paul has given us a fact, which is finally moved into our home in North Carolina.

Quick fun fact about North Carolina. I don't know if this will come up, but their fire trucks are actually blue, not red over there. Did you guys know that? I did not. So Paul says they ended up in Holy Springs, about 40 minutes south of Chapel Hill, and wanted to let us know it's been our reports

that kept him laughing through all the minutiae, the failings of the moving company and wear and tear on his family's mental status. Without the weekly reports and the bonus episodes, pretty sure, I don't know, I've changed, I'm reading it like I've changed all the used to hymns and stuff like that. I'll just go back to how he fucking wrote it. Without the weekly reports and the bonus episodes,

pretty sure I would have lost my mind. I wouldn't have been centred nearly enough to get all of us through this. Thanks, guys. You're the best. A North Carolina food delicacy that I've come to love is fried green tomatoes with pimento cheese topping. It is very good and I believe something you would all enjoy. Cheese and fried veggie, what could go wrong?

Looking forward to the US tour, I'll post some pictures of the blue fire engines very soon. Also, Ohio sucks. Michigan forever. Well, I mean, Michigan is fine. Don't get me wrong, but Ohio is God's country. Let's be honest. Paul, I love that there's rivalries and people trying to drag Ohio down

from the top of the podium where it belongs, but fair enough. Michigan's not too far from the Golden Mile there. Gary, Indiana is really close to the Michigan border, I'm pretty sure. Is that right? No. No, Illinois border. I'm not great with geology.

Thank you very much for that fact. I did know it was geology. Great, Jess. Now after they've all tweeted at me. it was geology. Great, Jess. Now after they've all tweeted. People have tweeted at me. I was joking. They don't listen to the bit at the end where we're saying people,

they're never going to hear it. Jess, honey, sweetie. Dave, what's your thing? I don't remember what I said, but I know I was wrong. I was doing it on purpose. You said El Dorado meant gold, but it actually means golden. I looked it up. You fool.

Idiot. But you know that Spanish people are going to message me and go, actually, not quite. And I hope they do. And I hope I remember what they're talking about. The next one comes from Logan Husky, who's given himself the title of Delivery Man No. 2 and Secretary of Get This References. Oh, fantastic.

Logan would understand a lot of things that I say, I imagine. I'm pretty sure that's where the Shane Warne, what's your favourite? Can't play someone's a scientist. Pretty sure that's where I heard it. I'm sure Tony Martin played it a bunch on Get This. Logan's got a fact. Pretty sure that's where I heard it. I'm sure Tony Martin played it a bunch on Get This. Logan's got a fact. Here it is. Fun fact about Germany.

There are none. Okay. I don't know if that's a Get This reference or he's just having a real go at Germany. Is that a reference that I'm missing? I don't know. I love it either way, Logan. Logan's possibly a German man.

Thank you very much, Logan. And finally this week from Vincenzo Giovanni Bonadonna. Vincenzo says his title is Osnechniv Anod Anob. That's my name backwards. You dastardly bastard, Vincenzo. Mine's Akisej Snikrup. Wow. Mine is Ekinror Semaj Divad.

How do you know these things? That's locked and loaded in my brain since I was a kid. In primary school, everyone went around and worked out what it is. No. Tam. No. Tam. No, too hard. Can't do it. Tam Stewart.

So Vincenzo's got a question for us. Here it is. We all love music in its many forms. I especially love musical artists who can perform well while playing live. A couple of years ago, I was at a local music festival in Las Vegas called Life is Beautiful. The band Foster the People were one of the headliners. Knowing their music, I was not expecting them to be so amazing. They were truly great and I would describe their energy similar to metal shows that I've been to.

Who are some artists who you did not expect to play a great live show or just general artists you've seen who are great live um i did not expect uh justin from the darkness to sound so good live uh when i saw the darkness which a show we're pretty sure you were also at matt yeah at the old palace or the new palace which is now we're pretty sure you were also at, Matt. Yeah, at the old palace or the new palace, which is now also old. Is there a palace curse? Because both of them have been, one got lost in a fire and the next one got the developers sort of vandalised under the cover of darkness.

Speaking. But, yeah, seeing I believe in a thing called love and him hitting those high notes perfectly i was like i was uh i'm pleasantly surprised unpleasantly all right the first time i saw them was at a big day out and they played like a 40 minute set and he had a costume change halfway through, which I thought was. That makes sense. Real good. He wore a pink, like a pink and white striped jumpsuit.

Yeah. Good stuff. Yeah, it was great. I reckon I remember being at a, there's a few times, you know, you go to a festival there, normally the times you'll see a band where you go, I'm not expecting much from them, but. Yeah. I want to stay at this main stage for the next band or whatever uh and that happened to me at um splendor in the grass cold play we're on no i think they're a headline in

the main stage one of the nights i'm like you know i don't i don't hate i don't love them but i don't and then it was one of those things where I, like, halfway through the set I realised that I'm, like, doing what he's telling me to, you know, putting your hands up in the air and all that sort of stuff. I'm like, wait, what happened? I got sucked in by Chris Martin. By the way, my favourite song is the last one. Yeah, Coldplay by definitely one of the best live shows I've ever seen.

Yeah. I don't know why. I think they're just one of, sometimes i get sucked in by you know how bands get um get sort of become an easy joke and that sort of happened with them and i normally i normally start to feel the opposite you know like someone uh called me out on at one point i'm like i just i kind of feel bad for him so i give him a better chance i'll listen to him more and I'll really get into them. I'm like, no, they're good.

And they're like, I think they're doing okay, those bands. Yeah. They're all right. I think Coldplay and The Killers will be okay without you, you know. No, I'm going to support them. I'm going to support these bloody guys as they just happen to go. Yes. Dave, do you have an answer to that one?

I guess it's pretty similar. I also have seen Coldplay live and thought that they were surprisingly, like it was just a phenomenally great live show. Maybe also, not that I thought that would be bad, but I saw the White Stripes at Big Day out once, and for two people they made, it was an awesome amount of noise. I was there for that, if you were at the Melbourne one. Yeah.

Yeah, that was cool. Big stage too for a twosome enough bill. Yeah. First ever time I saw Paul Kelly was at Sound Relief, which was at the MCG, and there'd been like a bunch of bands playing that day and full bands. Paul Kelly comes out alone, just a guitar, and plays to the whole MCG. And, I mean, that's not that I was expecting him to not be great

because he's my everything. But that's pretty cool to like play such a big sporting venue and just come out alone and be amazing. It's pretty cool. Yes. I remember Neil Finn did that at Meredith when it was, like, one of the great sets. He just played an acoustic set of classics of Split Ends

and Crowded House and all that stuff. And it was just amazing. Spine-tingling sort of stuff. Yeah. And then Paul Kelly played the same time sort of the year after and was similarly great I think Cold Chisel seeing them earlier in the year I was a bit nervous about Barnsley's voice oh yeah that's fair yep but it was great I had no reason to worry um because yeah you hate you know when a band's getting on a bit yeah singing especially singing the way he does yeah that doesn't get

easier as you get older i'm pretty sure but i had the same concern when john farnham played my work christmas party i was like can he still hit these high notes and no not really but he still has a good time puts on a good show and he just lets the audience sing it because everyone knows the words yeah so he sort of starts and then he's like, you have a go. And I was like, I see what you're doing, John, but I respect the fuck that you're here. Because you see clips of him in like the 90s or whenever and it's just like how does he do that?

Yeah. How does he still have a voice? Anyway, another long answer to a question. A great question though. It's a great question, yeah. But, you know know like i think often the those sort of ones are going to be bands you don't necessarily like that much because you're yeah that's they're the ones who surprise you but yeah so many bands that i do like who ended up

being really good as well anyway um so another thing we like to uh thank a few of our other great supporters uh just you normally come up with a bit of a game that's related to the old topic that we've just done. Yeah. What about where they've buried treasure? Oh, fantastic. Well, if I can kick it off. Please. I'd love to thank from Manchester in Great Britain, Tess Matthews.

written Tess Matthews. Tess Matthews has buried two million pounds under Mount Rushmore. Oh. Fantastic. Yeah, I have no other thing to look there. It's going to be hard to get. Talk about having to dig through big rocks. It's going to take ages. Yeah, that's going to take quite a while.

I don't know how Tess did it. Straight through one of the four president's heads. One of the four, which we could name all of them, but. Don't, I mean, don't test me on it. Straight through one of the four presidents' heads. One of the four, which we could name all of them, but. Don't, I mean, don't test me on it, but I definitely know them all. I know. I don't want to give it, I don't want to spoil it in case anyone's still working their way through. Yeah.

From the first, looking from the left to the right, you know. Slowly, but surely. Thank you, Tess. I'd also love to thank from Verona in Pennsylvania, I think, in the United States, mysteriously named Ten, or maybe not mysteriously named. Maybe Ten's treasure is buried in Dave's ass, which is the name of our shared folder where we put our files

when we record on Zoom. We just upload it to Dave's ass. The treasure that you found buried is individual audio files from these podcasts. Wow. Worth about $2 million. Yeah, I don't want that to be released. The bit where we clap to sync up, all that stuff, that's private.

The bit where at the end we say, I love you, goodnight, I love you, I love you, goodnight. Yeah, we don't want that, get really. Don't want that out there. People will spew up. Oh, my God, it's just going to be a spew epidemic. In my ass. Oh, that's no good.

Somehow you made it worse, Dave. Thank you, Tan. And finally from me, I'd love to thank from Maroubra in New South Wales, Australia, Lee Perrette or Perrette, Lee Perrette. I was going to say what's in Lee's ass, but the question is, where is Lee's treasure buried? Oh, under the big banana. Oh.

Which is in, what's that place again? Coffs Harbour, right? Coffs Harbour. Coffs Harbour, under the big banana. We buried the treasure under the big banana. Banana marks the spot. Yeah, well, good luck finding that. It's a fair way down.

It could be anywhere. Whether it's directly under the actual banana or if it's at, well, good luck finding that. It's a fair way down. It could be anywhere, whether it's directly under the actual banana or if it's at, like, the water park that's at the big banana or the freaking go-karts. It's in the games room. It's in the cafe. It could be anywhere. No, it's under the cafe. No.

To figure it out, you're going to have to read the works of Shakespeare. There are clues withheld inside the texts. Reread the works of Shakespeare or Bacon. Yeah, one of the two. Can I thank some people? Please do. I would love to thank from Beach Island in South Carolina, Stephanie Ventura.

Stephanie Ventura in South Carolina has the treasure buried underneath the hallowed turf that is the Moorabbin football ground, Linton Street. They're actually currently re-turfing the surface. So it's probably a great opportunity to get in there and dig down to the treasure. That would be very convenient yeah that's what they say oh we're you know we're just fixing it up yeah okay okay oh yeah so you now

it won't be an obvious mark in the in the law in the grass where you've dug yeah very clever you're trying to get you're trying to get stephanie treasure. I think they can get it over us. Well, they can't. Good luck. Thank you, Stephanie. Also, I would love to thank From Bath in Somerset. Somerset. Have a cider in Somerset.

I would love to thank Alex Knight. Alex Knight. Alex Knight. Dave, where's Alex's treasure buried? Buried under the Sydney Olympics Olympic-sized swimming pool. Oh, that's already a waterlogged pit. That's right, but the only person strong enough to dive that deep? Thorpey.

Thorpey, you know it, you know it. Is that what you were going to say or are you just yes-ending me? No, a yes, yes-end. We're going to set up Thorpey with a jackhammer, get him to see what he can do. There's not much that Thorpey can't do, to be honest. So you're like, Alex, we're coming for your treasure. He can swim.

He can host a show called Thorpey's Angels that didn't last very long. That's right. He can be on Celebrity MasterChef. Yes, he can do. He can do it all special comments about swimming yep he's got a broad range of talent range got real big feet and that's great because you know so many people especially in swimming and a lot of sports they retire kind of young and then it's like what do you do with your life afterwards so it's great that he has

so many skills looks great in a tux looks great in a tux um and finally for me i would love to thank from location unknown so we can only assume the depths of oak island nathan brown yeah what well maybe his should have been in dave's ass um nathan brown i think nathan brown we've all've mainly been Australian ones. Let's go up to the North Pole. I said Mount Rushmore, but okay. North Pole. That's a good one because that's pretty hard to access, I believe. But once you get there, it will be worth it.

Be bountiful. Yeah. It's a whole bunch of bounties. Chocolate bars. Oh, too coconutty. I don't like them. What, these coconut bars are too coconutty for you? Maybe that's what that coconut level was at the Oak Island Pit.

Oh, it was just bounty. Bounties. That was the bounty they were after. That makes sense. What about Cherry Ripes? They're more coconut than cherry. Love a Cherry Ripe. What a lie.

Should be a Coconut Ripe with a hint of cherry. Love a cherry ripe. What a lie. Should be a coconut ripe with a hint of cherry. You've been following Josh Earle's, he's doing tournaments about different things. Cherry ripe bundled out in the third round, I think. Very disappointing. Kit Kat won. What? Yuck.

I love a Kit Kat. Like the colour tournament being won by beige. I love beige. Dave also likes English cuisine. And much like Poirot said in the recent episode I watched, England does not have cuisine. England has food. And I think, yes, I did nail the accent.

Food. Food. Food. England has food. Food. I love your food, England, even your terrible, terrible pizza. Fucking shocking. We have upset the English with that.

They're like, you didn't go to good pizza places, and that is true. Someone said you didn't go to Domino's. That wasn't seriously a response, was it? Well, I think it was. The problem is, you know how we're like obviously we're saying something silly we get a response in the same way i'd be like yeah we were obviously saying something silly too but it's very hard to tell especially when i speak in a monotone anyway well a big shout out to this next person who is from the capital of pizza and also beer from Leeds.

Leeds, Leeds, Leeds. Leeds, Leeds, Leeds, Leeds, Leeds, Leeds. That was our favourite pizza by far, wasn't it? That wasn't our favourite pizza. Our favourite pizza was in. Leeds, backstage at Leeds. No. I had a baked potato in Leeds.

Good stuff. I think both of you said, I wish I got that. Yeah. No, our favourite pizza, we had wood fire pizza in. When we were staying out of town somewhere. That one? I don't know. That was pretty good.

I'm remembering all these great times we ate out now. We had good food. We did have some good food. But anyway, where is the treasure buried? Under the Pizza Hut headquarters. Whoa, which is where, I wonder? They've still got an all-you-can-eat menu at the HQ. Yeah, that's right.

All-you-can-eat soft serves. Wow. Wow. Hey, Mason. Hey, Mason. All right. Thank you so much. Lovely.

Can't wait to get back to Leeds. We will be there soon, hopefully. Thank you so much to the next person from Calgary in Alberta in Canada, Harrison Willing. Well, famous for the stampede in Calgary, famous for the Calgary Flames in the NHL. So I think, obviously, putting those two together, the treasure is buried under a burning horse.

Wow. But I think in like one of those sort of like mythological. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've added a syllable in there, sort of horse that is like, sort of like, you know, when Nicolas Cage played that character who was on fire and rode a motorbike. Like that. Doesn't hurt him. He's just on fire. you know, when Nicolas Cage played that character who was on fire and rode a motorbike. Like that. It doesn't hurt him.

He's just on fire. Unless that does hurt Nicolas Cage. Is the horse also riding a motorbike? Yes. That's awesome. Which makes it really hard to pin him down to get the treasure. Yeah, but also hard to miss. You're going to notice that.

You're going to notice that. And finally, I would like to thank from Ashmore in Queensland, Damien Miller. On you, Damo. Yeah, Damien's treasure is buried on satin. Oh, that's a great hiding place. Agreed. Firm agree.

And only very cool people would have it tattooed on their body. Oh, you got a satin tattoo. Love that for you. Oh, my God, I love that for you. So, yeah, Damien, you're pretty safe that your treasure is not getting found anytime soon. Oh, right. I was thinking this is where they were finding the treasure,

but this is where they buried their treasure to protect it. Very clever stuff. Yeah. So thank you very much to Damien Harrison, A, Mason, Nathan, Alex, Stephanie, Lee, Ten and Tess. The last thing we've got to do is welcome in a few people, five to be exact, into the Triptych Club. This is the club where people who have been supporting us

on the shout-out level or above for three straight years get welcomed into the Triptych or Triptych Club. And I'm standing on the door, you know, in your mind. It's Triptych Club, and I'm standing on the door. You know, in your mind. It's a club in your mind, but picture me on the door. I've got the velvet rope ready to lift it up. I've got the clipboard. I'm going to read out the five names.

Once I welcome you in, Dave will hype you up. You're running into the club. Everyone's applauding. Dave's hyping you up. Jess then hypes Dave up a little bit because he's a sensitive boy, and he runs out of confidence pretty quick. Dave, you've also normally booked a band for the night. Yeah, absolutely.

Tonight we will be enjoying the music of New Hampshire-based post-hardcore band Our Last Night and their EP from 2013 in its entirety, Oak Island. Wow. How do you search these things? How do you find them? God, you're good. I just know them.

I love that EP. Yeah, great. Wow, it's very relevant though, Dave. That's why it's so amazing, so impressive. I actually book these months if not sometimes years in advance. So this is just amazingly fortunate. It's how you do it. So, Jess, you also normally have a little something there as well?

Yeah. So what we're actually doing, something a little special this week, is I've got the gang in the kitchen and we're making a food replica of the money pit. It's mostly like a pizza dough kind of thing, but then we've we've dug down into it filled that with cheese um it's essentially like a weird shaped pizza that sounds really cool all right now dave you ready you ready to welcome in like someone who

did not listen to anything just well what. Well, what a beautiful sounding drink or food that you just mentioned. I was not distracted at all by a technical issue. I'm going to read out five names. Are you ready to go, Dave? I'm not sure, but, you know, we'll find out. What do you mean, David? David, you look at me. If there's anyone, anyone on this earth who can do this task,

it is you with ease, my friend. You can do this in your sleep. Are you kidding me? All right. Thank you. Yes, I'm warming up. All right, here we go. So five inductees into the Triptych Club are from Carmarthenshire

in Great Britain. It's Sam Andreessen. Oh, the Andreessen, I need to have a good night, is here, Sam. Yes. You're my Andreessen for a good night. From Harrisonburg in Virginia, I reckon in the United States, it's Zach Dobrin. Zach-a-tack-tack-tack-tack-tack.

Yes, Zach's here. From what would MD be in America? Maryland? From Owings Mills in Maryland, United States, it's Shabab Haider. Oh, Shabab Haider, Maida, good night. Yes. Thank you. From Sacramento in California, United States, it's Keith Barnes.

Come, Keith Barnes. Yes. Come, Barnes. From the ashes, the phoenix rises. And finally, from Preston in Great Britain, it's Alex Dunhill. Well, this night's not going Dunhill, it's going uphill. Uphill from here, baby. Alex is here.

Thank you. So welcome, Alex, Keith, Shabab, Zach and Sam, into the Triptych Club. Make yourselves at home. Enjoy the band. Enjoy the food or drink that Jess mentioned before. And have yourselves a great time. Thanks so much, everyone, for joining us for another big block episode.

Dave, anything else we need to say before we wrap it up? No. If you just want to get involved with supporting the show, again, you just go to dogoonpod.com or patreon.com slash dogoonpod. And we truly appreciate you all doing that. Thank you so much. Tell a friend if you want. Get in the block spirit.

There's no greater gift to give someone than the gift of knowledge of this podcast. Correct. Couldn't have said it better myself. Pick an episode they might like, put it on and go we can wait for clean water solutions or we can engineer access to clean water we can acknowledge indigenous cultures or we can learn from indigenous voices we can demand more from the earth or we can demand more from ourselves at york university we work together to create positive change for

a better tomorrow. Join us at yorku.ca slash write the future. You're welcome. Now, Dave, you want to boot us home? That's right. Get in contact with us at dogoonpod.com or at dogoonpod on all the social medias. But until next week when we'll have the fourth most requested topic of the year, I'll say thank you so much and goodbye. Later. Bye.