Stuff You Should Know - The Georgia Guidestones: The Elite Have a Laugh

Episode Date: September 13, 2022

In 1980 the “rural as rural can be” town of Elberton, Georgia erected a granite monument with a bizarre set of instructions (commandments?) that touched on eugenics, population control, and living in harmony with nature. Conspiracy theorists went wild.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Spring classes are registering now. So frame your future visit eight ccs.edu Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeart radio Hey and welcome to the podcast I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here to the whole gang And this makes this an official episode of stuff you should know Please disregard some previous ones where it was just me and Chuck Just disregard him. Yeah, just don't even listen to him. And if you have listened to him actively forget what you learned Okay, uh, have you ever seen before? Well, let's not reveal what's happened. Did you ever see the Georgia guide stones? I was a bit of a schlub and assume that I would just be able to some other time

Okay, did you know I never had any interest I Wasn't like passionately interested, but I thought that'd be kind of cool. And then I looked on the map I was like, oh, that's where they are. I don't really feel like going over there. So I'm just gonna put it off and put it off I always thought it was kind of silly and I still do even more so probably but sure it's fun to talk about no for sure Like this is um, I think if you don't take it as partially silly you are Being a little too serious But that's also not to say like they were intended and as any sort of joke or with any sort of silliness

I think the earnestness with which they were put up Along with the earnestness which with which some people took them That's what really kind of makes it silly from like an outside observer's point of view. I think Yeah, I agree and what we're talking about are what's known as the Georgia guide stones Aka America's Stonehenge Are our ancient Going all the way back to the 1980s. Yeah That's why I always thought it was kind of silly anytime they say like something

Sort of hyperbolic like that. Mm-hmm. Like this is our stone hinge right erected in 1980, right circa 42 years before present What is that? Ghostbusters is six years before Ghostbusters. Oh, are we doing that again? No, maybe just this one time, you know, okay? I get why they call them America's Stonehenge though because They look a bit like Stonehenge these giant granite slabs Set on end with capstones and such But I think maybe we should go back now that we've at least told people what the heck these things are they're inscribed with words And that's all we'll give you for now And then let's go back and talk about the history because the story of it is is kind of interesting

I think definitely interesting. I mean, there's a lot of mystery that was Purposefully, I think kind of generated around the whole thing and that mystery starts at the very beginning When a guy named R. C. Christian showed up in Elberton, Georgia. I believe it's the county seat of Elbert County Which is in the I think extreme east of Georgia close to the South Carolina border, correct? It's it's about 35 miles Sort of east and north of Athens, Georgia. Mm-hmm, which is if you don't know where Athens is out there It's about a hundred miles Athens isn't but Elberton itself is about a hundred miles north and east of Atlanta So it's headed towards South Carolina, but it's not like on the border

Okay, and for those who aren't familiar with Atlanta Chuck, how far is Atlanta from from Montgomery, Alabama? Oh Boy, let me get up my map So it's in the east of Georgia It's in it as one I think the publisher of the local paper put it It's as rural as rural can be and there's like at the time that all this happened in 1979 when R. C. Christian showed up There were not even 6,000 people in the whole town 19,000 people in the entire county and it seems like the kind of place where there were probably more cows than people at the time Yeah, I mean Athens is a great city in a great college town classic and there's some the classic city

And there are some great little Towns outside of Athens, but you know, they're small towns in the further you creep outside of Athens It gets super rural. Have you ever been to Madison, Georgia? Sure Madison's great. It's gorgeous man. It is just this hidden little pretty houses and yeah Okay, so back to Elberton right and R. C. Christian in particular It's summer of 1979 and he shows up in Elberton and probably stuck out like a sore thumb He wore a very expensive suit. He had a certain error of refinement around him He seemed to be a little erudite and he showed up

He presented himself at the offices of Elberton granite finishing company And we should tell you a little bit about Elbert County and Elberton in particular They consider themselves the granite capital of the world and they make a pretty good case They are apparently sitting on some of the finest granite in the world in so fine in like fit right in like 50 different Cori's in the area. So if you wanted to get something done in granite say like America's Stonehenge This is where you would logically show up and R. C. Christian did show up and he talked to the president of Elberton Granite Finishing Company Joe Fenley who welcomed him with open arms and got on board immediately Yeah, I mean, I think Joe Fenley as he probably should have been was a little

Well, he was two things a like you said he was impressed with this sort of finely dressed intelligent gentleman But he was also once he started to hear what this gentleman wanted a little wary of him and thought alright This guy is a little weird to me here in Elberton and maybe some kind of crackpot Because mr. Christian who we would find out that's a pseudonym Said I represent a small group of loyal Americans and I would like on their behalf to be the liaison to commission a Massive structure built out of these huge granite stones that will be here for millions of years irony

upcoming just put a pin in that and it for the purpose of guiding humanity after the apocalypse and Finley was like you sent a little strange to me in his head, but here's what I'll do I'll do it for this price and I don't know. I mean he named a very expensive price apparently a few times Higher than anything he'd ever worked on and I think it was probably in part because it was one of the bigger jobs He'd ever worked on yes, and there may have been a little city boy country boy thing where he was like Oh, well, I can take this guy for some money Yeah, apparently it was far and away the biggest project that the that Elberton had ever seen the

Next biggest project was the town's Bicentennial Memorial Fountain that they put in the middle of town Which is nothing to sneeze at but compared to these Georgia guide stone projects. It's yes little appugian The compared to the Georgia guide stones. It's it is you could sneeze all over it So it was a big project. So it was smart that he was like I need a lot of money for this Because he ended up needing a lot of money for it, but I get the impression that he made out pretty well, too Yeah, so Finley of the Rock Query said go see my buddy Wyatt Martin He's the president of the local bank here the Granite City Bank and go talk to him about how we can finance this thing and Finley called ahead apparently and told Martin like this guy coming over is a little kooky, but

You ought to see the suit just wait. We'll just wait. Oh, you smell a guy so fine so fine and he's so intelligent and Martin apparently was also impressed with the guy as well and This is the the point in the story where We learned that Wyatt Martin of the president of this bank is Basically the only person who ever learned the truth about who are see Christian really was because You can't do banking and do this sort of high-profile transactions with pseudonyms

So he tells him his real name, but said here's the deal man. I got it. We got to keep this quiet I can never be known who I'm doing this on behalf of can never be known and you got to promise me You're never gonna tell anyone and once we get all this stuff done and it settled You got a you got to burn all these documents so it can remain a secret Yeah, and I mean he chose the right guy to confide in because Wyatt Martin later said in an interview I think in 2013 that even if you put a gun to its head, he wouldn't tell you the the actual I love that part Right the identity sure. I'm on board. Yeah, he really he really went full-bore from everything that I've ever read He didn't even tell his wife like he just took the secret to his grave. He died. I think in 2021

and He'd never told a single person and so after that RC Christian went back to the Elberton granite finishing company gave Joe Fenley a Shoebox with like a little wooden model of what they were looking for right with some Fisher price people in there for scale and Then there was like 10 pages of instructions that were that were Companyed it and he said to Fenley. You'll never see me again But he did keep in touch with Martin because Martin agreed to be his and then in turn that group of sponsors representative

overseeing the project as as well as the money man and so they ended up becoming pen pals over the years they kept in touch I love that and they would go to dinner every once in a while in Athens And yeah, they were they got to be pretty close actually But at the time it was just Martin who was running the show and just Fenley who was the only other person who had knowingly met This RC Christian guy Yeah, you know, I waited tables in Athens during the years of I guess that was probably 91 to 95 And I was wondering like did I serve this guy? Yeah, one night. Could I have met this mysterious stranger?

I do remember a man that smelled really nice in a suit one time right in Mexicali grill Did you yeah, did you ever serve a stone silver fox in like a nice suit once with another guy who seemed to be a bank president? I did any he signed his name anonymous so on his check. So it was very very weird You're like that seems suspicious, but it's college. So I don't care But here's what happened. This is a very big job for this company like we mentioned These stones were not small like you said they ended up having to jackhammer 14 feet into the pyramid quarry quarry, which is it quarry quarry All right, I always say like kw o r r y quarry

Yeah, cuz query sounds like a query that you send someone it sounds like the way RC Christian probably said it Yeah query, yeah, I don't know why I said it southern cuz we really have no idea where he was from He could have been from Boston for all I know we have Potentially an idea. Well, that's true. Put a pin in that too. Okay, so they had to jackhammer down 14 feet They had to use a hundred foot tall crane to put these stones where they needed to go And they needed a location and it turns out there was a local I don't know if he was a real farmer, but he had cattle at least in a lot of land Mm-hmm, and it was a point at the highest elevation in the county

It's not, you know, some big mountain or anything because it's pretty flat land over there But it is the highest elevation and very importantly had really clear views All around it because that'll come into play with sort of the purpose of what these things What they ended up needing them for and so we got five acres for five grand and said here You and your family forever more can still graze your cattle here. I just want to put these guide stones up Yeah And I think the guy the guy he bought it from his name was Mullen ax and he wasn't just a straight-up farmer He was a contractor and part of the deal was he his company got to

Build the base that the whole thing was put on just to swing in the mall nexus. Yeah, there's like a Mullen X for it I'm like, there's no way they're not related somehow. I don't know went to school some Mullen Xs You never know. Well, look them up Chuck on Facebook friend them and get to the bottom of this mystery I'm not on Facebook. I'll have to send a letter via carrier pigeon like I used There's one other thing I just want to point out real quick like this we said that this project was the biggest that this this county had ever undertaken and It served as like a point of civic pride from like that point on like no matter how anybody in town felt about the guide stones themselves They were probably prideful about the

Amazing job that this this county the workers in this county came together to produce when they were called upon to do so And that was definitely part of it because it was a huge massive undertaking and it also not only does do you have like hats off to the People of Elbert County for having done this think about people who used to quarry stuff like the people who made Stonehenge Without like hundred foot cranes and jackhammers to go 14 feet into the ground like that. It's just mind-boggling when you think of it like that too absolutely and as far as Elbert County goes they got a A genuine tourist attraction, which they didn't have before right and so this was sort of one of the reasons apparently that Christian Picked this spot because he kind of figured and was right that they would be prideful and kind of take care of it Apparently he had some ancestors that were from the region too

But he also said, you know, our wish is that maybe one day the people of Elbert County will come together or maybe just conservationists in general and And and do some more big stone rings around this thing, right? That never happened. He never got that wish, but like you said, they did take care very good care of it Yeah And like he helped he helped establish that by by transferring the rights to that land over to the people of Elbert County So that that was like they would have even more pride in it because they owned it. It was public land from that point on Should we take a break?

Yeah, let's take a break and well then we'll talk about the monument, right? Yeah, and it's about to it's about to get a little sinister right after this Hey friends when you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could What could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba Who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home now the extra income helps pay her mortgage So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at air bnb.ca Slash host have you been telling yourself? It's time to dramatically change your life. Well, here's how you can do that

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Maybe I overstated it doesn't quite get sinister But from the beginning of this project the local townsfolk While prideful there were some that were a little worried about it and this said, you know, when you're out in the country in Georgia like that It's 1979 1980 like what do you mean? You're gonna build this big monument this sounds to me like, you know, the occult or the work of the devil or something and there was a Sandblaster that worked on the job named Charlie Clamp who will come up a little bit later But he for one said that when he was working on carving these characters in the stone that he heard strange music and disjointed voices

and you know once these things were up apparently some some Wiccans and some pagans did come out and do like some dancing and chanting every now and then which I'm sure was very harmless But would spook the locals. Oh, yeah, I mean good Lord. Yeah, like I think it happened almost immediately Like this thing went up in March of 80. I think like the Atlanta Pagan community had adopted it by 1981 They're like public land. What are you gonna do exactly? So another thing that makes this whole feat So amazing is that, you know, RC Christian showed up with the idea in the summer of 1979 And they dedicated the thing on March 22nd 1980 two days after the spring equinox No, that is fast turn around because not only do they have to quarry it

They had to do a lot of other stuff to it. These are not shlubby slabs Slubby slabs. They are they were they were pretty neat They required a lot of extra work rather than just quarrying and cutting and polishing There was more to it wasn't there Yeah, absolutely. They they had a big grand opening. There were, you know, quite a few people like three three to four hundred folks apparently showed up for the christening and Like you said, it was it was a big deal. They were Not only large

They were, you know, very I believe like 19 feet tall each. Is that how tall they stood? Yeah, which is I mean that's taller than Stonehenge. So take that England Stonehenge Take that ancient people. So 19 feet tall. They weighed about close to 120 tons And like we mentioned earlier, 4000 sandblasted Letters and characters about four inches high piece that we'll get to what these all said, but There are also some cool astrological features, right? Yeah, so Fendley went to the University of Georgia and said I need an astronomer because I'm being asked to do some stuff that I

Do not know how to do um And the guide stones were considered a clock calendar and compass all kind of ingeniously built into one Because you've got those four slabs that were arranged in an x like you said There's a center stone known as the nomen stone And then on top of it all is a capstone a square capstone that covered the nomen and parts of all four Of the other slabs that radiated out from the nomen and so they had um, you could tell what day of the year it was and that it was noon

um, you could see the um summer solstice and I believe the winter solstice as well Like the x's were the like the the x or the edges of the x were positioned so that it followed the sun or the moon's migration Annual migration across the sky There was a lot going on that like the average person including fendley could not just just you know guess at it needed to be really precise Yeah, absolutely. Uh, they're cutting these holes basically Uh, and these little slots all around this thing to where you can peek through and see those Uh, sunrises and things during the solstice Uh, winter and summer you can look through one hole and look at the north star

So like you said, it's super exact. Um, there was a plaque on site that, uh, listed rc christian As the author of these words and it said a small group of americans who seek the age of reason Uh, and then basically says there's like a time capsule here. Here's where the time capsule is And they left this central message that said Let these be guide stones to an age of reason And that was in egyptian hieroglyphics Babylonian cuneiform Uh classical greek and sanskrit

And then it listed and we're going to read these out, but it listed 10 guides In eight different languages, uh, arabic, chinese, hebrew, english, russian, hindi, spanish, and swahili Yeah, and so each side of those four slabs that radiated from the nomen the center stone Uh had a language so all four had two languages on each side, right? And in english These were what these these rules or guidelines or guides however you want to call them that were inscribed on the stone Uh, what they said the first one chuck was maintain humanity under 500 million in perpetual balance with nature you

Here's another one if you don't like that one, you're not going to like this one either Guide reproduction wisely improving fitness and diversity Yeah problematic. Okay. Well, how about this one? You're gonna love this unite humanity with a living new language Uh, it could be problematic unless we're talking, uh What was that one language we did on the Years ago, uh, esparano Esperanto did we do one on I think we did a video on it. I don't think we ever did a video Did we do yeah, it gets confusing once you get back to 2011 12 that kind of thing

We were all confused. Shall I go on or you want to take over? No, go ahead. This is fun. Okay. Um, the next one says rule passion faith tradition and all things with tempered reason Down with that Protect down meaning like you're down with it or down the opposite. I'm down with it. I see no that sounds great up with that I'm down with that protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts Sure, they wouldn't let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court That sounds a little creepy potentially the next one is something the libertarian and all of us can appreciate Avoid petty laws and useless officials

Yeah, I love that one. Uh-huh. I wonder what that sounds like in hindi Uh drain the swamp Right. There's also balanced personal rights with social duties. That's a great one too Yeah, if you balance it correctly Uh, the next one is prized truth beauty love seeking harmony with the infinite pretty new agey Yeah, I like it though and then be not a cancer on earth leave room for nature leave room for nature and then the last one Sabbath rules

for the z I thought you're gonna say mega death rules metallica drools metallica does not drool Well, I thought mega death fans didn't like metallica. I think that an old beef. Sure, but it's totally unnecessary because both are great Okay Especially 80s both were great. How about that? Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah, we're going back in time. Yeah, absolutely So I'm talking about give me some credit Um So from the beginning the people that heard about this and uh, sort of took it as maybe

What to do after the apocalypse, but apparently uh, christian had written a little pamphlet like guidebook kind of thing that talked about, um Not necessarily after the apocalypse, but here's how we might can avoid Catastrophe more along those lines. Yeah, I found a quote from one of the from that book that he wrote that said We are like a fleet of overcrowded life boats confronted with an approaching tempest Then he says there are alternatives to Armageddon and I couldn't find out what those alternatives were

Um, but if he didn't provide alternatives, then that's just letting everybody's imagination run wild The other thing that a lot of people point out too is that this was these were inscribed in 1979 1980 smack dab in the middle of the cold war which at that time had no ending in sight Um, and a lot of people were very worried about a nuclear winner So if he did mean it like, um, you know that that it was meant to rebuild humanity after a nuclear war You can understand how he would have been coming from that way The other way though makes a lot of sense too because at the time That whole idea that humanity was going to keep growing exponentially was really popular still

Do you remember our zero population growth episode where we talked a lot about that? Yeah, there was that big book in 68 the population bomb Which really scared a lot of people Uh, and I don't think we mentioned too that um, christian initially said that they had been He and his people had been working on this idea for 20 years So it would have been all through the cold war and all through this sort of Population scare if he was telling the truth that they were coming up with these ideas, right? But even even though the population bomb came out in 1968 this this kind of thought was going around

Because remember our friend norman borlaug he saved the world in the 1940s and people were predicting like exponential growth I mean mouth has been predicting exponential growth since the 18th century So the population bomb really kind of presented it in stark contrast Um, and it turned out to not be correct at all But at the time again people were worried about it, but if you were really into that kind of thing You were probably At least a little xenophobic Um, you were possibly outright racist and your concerns were not about how how fast america's population was growing

You were probably concerned about how fast bangladesh's population was growing right or how fast some sub-saharan african nations Populations were growing and ultimately you might not have said it What that meant for the white race and the white races access to all the resources we need to keep being happy Yeah, and you'll see this pop up a little bit throughout this that some of these notions were possibly guided by um White supremacy or xenophobia at least, you know, it it sort of danced around those fringes Um, not the least of which was that first, you know limit the world population to 500 million There were close to four and a half billion people on the planet in 1980. So that's a pretty drastic reduction

That's an 88 percent reduction. Um, so that's a that's a pretty foreboding thing to list as your first guideline I think right exactly, but yeah, especially if you don't mean it as like a post apocalyptic guide but something we need to do in the future that is Just downright scary because first of all that means a lot of people are gonna die But also who exactly is calling the shots about who lives and who dies and who are these people to say or do something like that So it takes a pretty pretty large amount of just entitlement in general To to choose that and then inscribe it as your first guide on some rocks that you leave standing ostensibly for hundreds of years Yeah, and so you couple that with guide reproduction wisely

improving fitness and diversity that's Improving fitness is sort of the key line that sort of reeks of eugenics, obviously Uh, and then also unite humanity with the new living language and the idea of a world court all these things are sort of ideas that have been bandied about and on the fringes of the internet and conspiracy-minded sites about The new world order and things like that and we're not going to dive too deep into that world but

Suffice to say that these are the kind of alarm bells that are going off when certain people read the georgia guide stones Yeah, because i'm not i couldn't find out who originally Interpreted as such but the book of revelations apparently has been interpreted to talk about A world government and be wary of a world government because that's the anti christ Who's going to be leading it and they they will lead, you know The the world into darkness and the final fight with god and all that stuff So um, if you read the quotes, you're like, I don't quite know how you got here But there's a lot of people who subscribe to that right so when they were talking about

You know world courts that really kind of raised the antenna of some fundamentalists and fringe christians Yeah, that's a good way to say it. Um, thank you, but we We can talk about some of the theories as to Um, maybe who this group might have been right because again christian said that he represented A group of people and it wasn't just like his you know, this idea of some, you know, rich billionaire Although you never know it could have been the case Uh, because we don't know the truth, but the rosa crucians and I believe we talked about them

In one of our episodes at some point really rings a bell, uh, but they were Uh, the society a secret society. Those are always fun that started in 15th century germany and It the person who started it may or may not have even existed. Uh, it's a gentleman named christian rosen crates Um, maybe a fictional human, maybe not, but was the founder of the rosa crucians or the rose cross society Yeah, so um, the the founder rosen crates Um supposedly got together some turkish sufi persian mystical knowledge Put it all in like a nice three ring binder

Turned to some doctor friends and said let's form a society based on this mystical knowledge and do all sorts of neat like Incantations and stuff like that and I don't know. Let's just take over the world while we're at it, too and I don't even Get the impression that we're a hundred percent certain that any of this ever existed that it was written about years later maybe centuries later Um, but that it was possibly one of those things where it was like a self-fulfilling prophecy Like new groups actually did establish themselves after right the fiction came out. I'm not sure But um, it definitely did whatever those books were that introduced rose accrucianism to

europe They definitely did influence the enlightenment and enlightenment thinkers including thomas pain and Thomas pain is kind of one of the overlooked founding fathers Uh, and he really was a founding father. He was um, he was he founded the or he came up with the idea for the declaration of independence he really kind of Lobbied for a constitution in america, but he also wrote age of reason being an investigation

Of the true and fabulous theology He was a deist and he thought you could use rationalization or rationalism To investigate religion and that a lot of it was just superstition So if you're like a hardcore christian, you don't really think very highly of thomas pain But that age of reason thing Remember on the capstone it said let this be a way into the age of reason on the guide stones That's how a lot of people connect the rose accrucians to the georgia guide stones Right because thomas pain was apparently connected to them, right? Yes

Okay, so the rose uh, it's hard to say that word for me the rose accrucians I keep wanting to say the rose of christians for some reason Uh, like you said they popped up before the enlightenment And then kind of went away and then later popped back up in the 19th century When there was a big revival in the european the us of these sort of occult slash secret societies Couple of them are still around today apparently the ancient mystical order rose crucis Uh, and the rose accrucian fellowship are still around But again, who knows if any of the original stuff was actually real or just the work of fiction

Either way, um People, you know, some people think it might have been the rose accrucians behind these guide stones and again like the the rose accrucians is It's a secret mystical society, but it also is potentially engaged in trying to take over the world So that's what would give it a really ominous association, right? Yeah, and or uh, it also has been theorized that it was just a uh, a red herring To make people think it it was the rose accrucians when it really wasn't at all just to get people to sniff them off the case Right. And so the rose accrucians, they're a widely held suspect And then of course that, um, logically leads to the next suspect ted turner

This is very tenuous to me I guess because ted turner was really rich Um, maybe a little eccentric, but not really, um in the grand scheme of things, right? But he did create what's known as the turner doomsday video Uh, which was this video that he created just and said basically this is the last thing cnn should air If the world was ending and then you think oh my god, what was the turner doomsday video? It's just this one minute, um video of a military band playing the hymn near my god to thee One of the loveliest hymns out there. It's one of my favorites, but that's all it is. That's it. That's it

There's no instruction for surviving the apocalypse. Nothing like that. It's the lamest doomsday video of all time It just has a network sign off is what it is Right, but he the reason they called the doomsday videos because when he brought cnn onto the air He said that um, it would keep it would stay on the air until you know, the end of the world So that's where the doomsday thing came from and then the other thing that like you said ted turners Maybe was a little out there or whatever at least for his time Like he did oversee captain planet that cartoon on tbs in the early 90s Um, but he also gave a billion dollars, which at the time was a third of his wealth

Oh, yeah to the un to to Establish the un foundation which was involved in gender equality Which I think might have had some aspects of family planning to it So maybe that's where the eugenics tie in comes from or the population control and then also has really engaged in environmentalism too So that whole harmony with be not a cancer on the earth Thing just really implicates ted turner Yeah, if you if you grew up in atlanta in the 70s and 80s ted turner was

a big deal It was a name you heard a lot. He owned the braves. He owned the falcons for or no, I think he owned the braves in the hawks yeah, um for a long time and Was our sort of most famous Uh, dude in town and I remember seeing him uh at a willy nelson concert at chastain like It was a while ago, but it wasn't way back then it was in the probably early 2000s Uh, and I got a real kick out of it. I was like, I'd never seen him out in atlanta before

I was like, holy cow. There's ted turner. Was he with jane fonda? I tip my scotch to you. No, he was with a couple of uh uh younger women These are the couple of younger ladies, but I think they were um, I think they might have been family members or something Is what someone told me. I don't think he was like out fox trotting with with a couple of gotcha Young young girls. He was no stone silver fox like arcy christian Oh, sure. He was you kidding me now. He was a handsome man, but the upshot of ted turner's uh involvement as one of the suspects is basically Strictly because of his proximity to elberton. That's it. Yeah

That is it if ted turner was a billionaire in kansas His name would have nothing to do with this whatsoever. So that makes him a very lame suspect I think we're gonna say suspect denied We need a little sound effect there we do Uh, if jerry listened to these episodes and we might actually get I know it's gonna be great though Because we're gonna say all this and she's gonna pass by silently uh, all right, so uh, who else we could talk about Um, some religious gobbity book because uh from the beginning there were

Uh christians nearby that said this is the work of the devil. Uh, and this is like satanic occultist stuff Um, there was a christian minister named reagan r davis Who visited in 2000 to the guide stones and said these are the 10 commandments of the antichrist And this is a culling of the human population by Uh, the antichristians Is basically what we're looking at right and then of course all kinds of right wing conspiracy crackpots Uh get involved and start calling them You know satan-based or luciferian secret societies and the new world order is coming and all of that fun stuff that exists on the fringe right

Yeah, and so I mean there's some holes in those theories that this is a the new world order Headed by the elite who are actually following the antichrist who is being powered by lucifer himself. Yeah Where the holes right the holes are that This monument which is it was impressive right is a neat feat especially for the people of alberton But it objectively pales in comparison to even the ruins of stonehenge That yeah, this is the best that the luciferian elite of the new world world order, right? The richest of the rich the most powerful of the powerful. This is this is the best they could do

Elberton and they put it in elberton georgia. Yeah, and there's just the one And this is how they revealed their plans, right? They wouldn't just go ahead and carry out like mass sterilization projects or actually go ahead and create the one world currency in government They would just erect this relatively small monument in the most rural of rural georgia and just leave it at that Yeah, and wait decades for the news to trickle out from the elberton county times to The elberton six o'clock news and then the atlanta six o'clock news and So on and so on until it takes over the world Yes, so and I saw it like put as like that really it was the new world order like having a laugh by making it

Just so blatant and it's just even more ridiculous like you know I didn't when I when I was like we should do one on the georgia guide stones It didn't even occur to me that it was going to take us down the path of conspiracy theorists I know right, but it really did because they latched on to this and so I was thinking about this chuck I was like why why you know, what is it about that? I mean, obviously it's mysterious and you know some of the stuff It's talking about is kind of weird and scary and possibly downright immoral, right? But I think more than anything. It's like people who are into conspiracy theories are

Unsettled by uncertainty and so they need like it's way scarier to have An indifferent world that that couldn't care less about you that doesn't even know you exist And that is so complex. It can't possibly make sense to anybody Yeah, that's way scarier than no, there's actually a A cabal led by the antichrist that it probably involves Nancy Pelosi That we can like focus all of our attention and energy on It makes it less scary. It gives it a form whenever you give something form It becomes less scary and then also this is my own theory

It also puts the conspiracy theorists on some sort of equal footing So it gives them importance because they are a sworn enemy of that antichrist led cabal And so they're important as well. So I think for all of those reasons It's that's that's why things like the guide stones attract conspiracy theorists And I think that's why conspiracy theorists exist in general. They're afraid of the world They're afraid of the world So they make it what seems to the rest of us like a far scarier place because they can't accept that it's Just not that way at all that things just aren't that neat and tidy and black and white. They're basically all gray

Yeah, and they're also fed a steady diet of paranoia and doomsday News and paranoia news right and it infiltrates their brain. So, you know, you could also go outside and Plan a flower and drink in some sunshine. Take a walk. Yeah Yeah, I did. I said it's very sad. Like I don't I don't I'm not mad at them I feel bad for them. I'm mad at like the the people who profit off of it the ones who like stoke those flames I consider them they're like expansive thinkers with small minds That's what like the leaders of conspiracy theorists kind of world remind me of, you know No, but otherwise you're right. It's a very sad life

It is because you're just scared or mad all the time all the time. All right, that's my soapbox All right, we'll mention Freemasons and take a break and reveal some some clues here But obviously the Freemasons are gonna pop up Uh, anytime you talk about the New World Order, uh, Elberton itself, um, of course, is a small town in Georgia So there are Freemasons there. Uh, Samuel Elbert who founded Elberton Built a Masonic Lodge A lot of people say that Finley and Martin were both masons, which is no big surprise in a small town That's a very common thing for the civic and business leaders to be masons. So

Uh, but Freemasons are always targeted with, uh, conspiracy-minded stuff So of course they were going to be mentioned as well You can go listen to our episode on masons that we did years and years ago Many years. Um, so let's take that break and we'll come back and perhaps reveal the real identity of, uh, R.C. Christian right after this Hey everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren and Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning

at airbnb.ca slash host Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new iHeart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road Ah, okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you Oh, God. Seriously, I swear and you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you Oh, man. And so my husband Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step Oh, not another one. Kids relationships life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life

Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye Listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts Okay Chuck, so we're back and I think it's high time that we revealed the possible identity of RC Christian and it is Head turner not nearly as um, earth shaking as you'd think because it's possible. Yeah, there's a crank from Iowa Maybe, um, there's a documentary from about seven years ago called Dark Clouds over Elberton, colon colon The true story of the Georgia guide stones. It's a Christian documentary filmmaker named Christian Pinto That's as Christian as a kid

Yeah, very much and this filmmaker basically said there's a gentleman named Herbert Hensie Kirsten from Fort Dodge, Iowa He was a doctor born in 1920 and he was outed as and there's some pretty pretty good little convincing clues here Yeah, for sure that this might have been the dude So, um, he was a Republican check. He was into the environment. He was a conservationist. Um, he supposedly in a 1992 letter to the South Florida Sun Sentinel Um, talked about like he how David Duke was one of the few politicians representing America Um, and the thing is though is he's saying like David Duke is leading America and remember David Duke was like the head of the Ku Klux Klan Who kind of supposedly disavowed the Klan and tried to run for public office many times in the 80s I think he won at some point, right? Did he? Please tell me he did and I thought he was unsuccessful every time

I'm pretty sure What? Okay. This is off the dome, but I'm pretty sure he won at one point. Well, that is pretty shameful. Whatever state elected David Duke That's pretty shameful. Would have been Louisiana Okay, okay, so um, but he was supporting David Duke in this quote new era of internationalism So it sounds like he wasn't down with internationalism which would kind of go against the whole idea of creating world courts and the like Uh, I had to look it up David Duke. Yeah, he was in the Louisiana State House of Representatives. Okay. Well, um, yeah, that's a good point Also in his obituary when Kirsten died in 2005 it said that he was very involved in environmental and world population issues and held a quote broad vision of humanity So I guess some stuff kind of checks out some stuff kind of doesn't one of the things that links him though to at least Martin Wyatt Martin

The banker from the Granite State Bank who was the one person who knew who RC Christian was was that there was definitely correspondence That was I guess it was written down in a log or something but that Herbert Kirsten and Wyatt Martin did correspond at some point So that's I think what really kind of links them more than anything Oh, okay. I see what you mean. Um, interesting and I don't think we mentioned too when Christian RC Christian corresponded with Martin They were letters sent from kind of all over the United States, I guess in a bid to keep the identity a secret Yeah, that's what I took it as too Okay, I didn't know that Kirsten actually was in touch. So yeah, I mean pretty pretty good clue there But we should also say that that South Florida Sun Sentinel columnist said that his letter from 1992 was full of exclamation points and underlined words

Which automatically says don't take me seriously There's another theory that I think is pretty lame basically is that the Elberton Granite Association kind of surreptitiously or at least under the table ordered this thing To stir up a lot of maybe not conspiracy but just interest as a tourist attraction And it was just sort of an inside job for the county to begin with and it ended up, you know, a lot of people from around the world eventually would come and see this thing And check it out in person. So it did work but I just don't know if that holds up Well, even at first, internally in the town, Fenley and Martin, the granite finisher and the banker were accused of being the ones behind it And they actually took very publicly lie detector tests, I think at Elberton City Hall and both passed. So after that, the cloud of suspicion they were under kind of passed But yeah, that was I guess kind of a bit of a controversy from the outset because, you know, Fenley really kind of made out with this job and it just kind of dropped into his lap

So I think some of the other granite finishers were suspicious of it So the guy, Charlie Clamp, this carver who heard the voices and stuff, his son, Mark Clamp, which is a great name They would like propose the idea for like week-long festivals and they would use that as evidence that it was an inside thing But I just saw that as like a younger generation saying like, hey, we got this thing. Let's like try and make some money off of it Yeah, I think there are plenty of people in town. I saw in a, there was a Wired article that in 2009, it was like the definitive story for a long time And they said that it literally put Elberton on the map because it was first included in 2005 in National Geographic's Geotourism Map Guide to Appalachia There you have it Yeah, and like Elberton would not have been included in that had it not been for the Georgia Guidestones

So yeah, like it definitely had an impact on the local economy for decades because it just brought people who otherwise would not have shown up Alright, so the Guidestones are there for quite a long time, beginning in sort of the mid-2000s There was some vandalism that started popping up here and there, spray painting them, Jesus will beat you, Satanist, the letter you No one world government, some of them talked about 9-11 being an inside job, some talked about Obama like Obama birthers and saying that he was a Muslim My favorite joke, can I share? Yeah, you're about, yeah, go ahead My favorite was the Council on Foreign Relations is ran by the devil Talk about sticking it to the New World Order, am I right?

My favorite was the ISIS one, which was reported to the FBI in 2013, but it said, I am ISIS goddess of love Which is, you know, talking about the Egyptian goddess ISIS, not ISIS ISIS, not ISIL ISIS Whoever alerted the FBI makes no distinction between those two apparently That's right, and so these things have been sort of vandalized over the years And this culminated in just a little over a month ago, July 6th this year At 4 a.m. in the morning, a bomb went off and destroyed enough of the Georgia guide stones to call them dangerous and call for their complete demolition by the county They have it on video because they did have cameras kind of monitoring this thing And there was a, you know, kind of a blurry video that you can look it up online, you can see the bomb going off

You don't really get a very clear look at the car, you don't get a very clear look at a human It's a silver sedan, I looked up just today to see if there are any new leads And I think they're kind of coming up empty so far on who actually demolished this thing Yeah, I saw that the ATF is trying to figure out what explosive was used and the GBI is looking for this person It's going to charge them with a terroristic act or whatever, but sadly, Elberton voted to give the remains over to the granite council And the granite council voted not to rebuild, so the Georgia guide stones are gone forever Because when there's fundamentalist conspiracy theorists around, we just can't have nice things Can't have nice things

You got anything else? I got zero nice things left Alright, well, since Chuck said that, everybody, it's time for Listener Mail I'm going to call this a couple of breakfast emails That episode just dropped today, IRL, about our breakfast foods and people seem to like it The first thing I'm going to say is I misspoke and said sour cream on my bagel instead of cream cheese Is that what everybody's been talking about? Yeah, I didn't, obviously it was just a verbal typo and you didn't even catch it

No, I didn't The people that said, hey, you clearly misspoke, thank you The people that are like, what? You eat sour cream on bagels? I'm like, come on Come on Come on Alright, so there's a couple of them

Hello, chaps, really enjoyed your show about breakfast, but have you ever had a great British fry up, a.k.a. a full English breakfast? It's basically a heart attack on a plate, bacon sausage, grilled tomatoes, baked beans, mushrooms, black pudding, toast and or fried bread, hash brown, patty style and at least two fried eggs The ultimate hangover cure and the greatest meal of all time, washed down with copious cups of hot tea and complimented with HP brown sauce That is from Donna Kay in the U.K. And yeah, Donna, I've had that, I don't like the mushroom part and I'm not really big on grilled tomatoes What about the beans? Do you like the beans? I do, I love them, I'm down with all the rest Do you really? Because you know, you see those beans and you're like, man, that's going to be low-tooth brown sugar and then you take a bite and you're like, oh

Nope, they're not like Georgia barbecued beans They taste like Roger Daltry That's good What a great who reference Thanks man, I'm pretty proud of that one too Did you write that down and you just think of it? Of course you didn't, because you didn't even know this was coming I didn't

Very, very well done Alright, here's the other one Hey guys, breakfast episode is wonderful We're going to do a little Judge John Hodgman here We're going to actually intervene here and make a decision I keep having to pause the episode to text my partner new mind-blowing facts that I learned And I was hoping you would say something that would validate my opinions on brunch But alas, you did not

Brunch is breakfast food at lunch time and this is the hill I will die on I start this debate regularly as my in-laws like to plan brunch No lunch food at all for 9 a.m. And I argue that the word they're looking for is just breakfast I have no leg to stand on, thanks for all you do and this is from Stephanie And so I asked Stephanie a couple of follow-up questions Basically I was like, do they serve alcohol at this 9 a.m. quote unquote brunch And do they usually eat at like 5 a.m.

Right And so this would be much much much later for them Right And Stephanie said, my mother and father-in-law don't really eat breakfast normally Everyone else probably does have something and possibly early Since most of them are teachers But nothing egregious I think Mamosas are a fair game

So maybe that's fair enough to get it classified as brunch But most of these mamosas are mostly OJ unless I'm in charge of making them So I'm gonna rule this is just breakfast Yeah, I would call that boozy breakfast Yeah, and that ain't brunch Brunch, you gotta eat it after 10.30 at least More like 11 Yeah, no, I would say 10.30 is the earliest

You'll walk past a rooster crowing Maybe Yeah At that time So 9 a.m. is just, I'm sorry Stephanie's in-laws It's breakfast Yeah, and we have ruled on it I'm Jesse Thorne

I mean, throw a tuna melt on there Maybe you have a case, but If you're just serving breakfast items at 9 a.m. then it's breakfast It really is But then also Stephanie, I want to put in a word for your in-laws like Just lay off You know I want to call it brunch if they want to, but

You're right Yeah You are correct If you want to be like Stephanie and Make us solve a dispute? No, we can't do that No, John Dodgeman does that best The other person, what's the other person's name? The first guy Oh, I gotcha

The first person was I like that swinging in though, Chuck, that was great stuff Donna Kay Okay, so if you want to be like Stephanie and Donna Kay And get in touch with us, we would love that You can send us an email to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio For more podcasts on my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app

Or wherever you listen to your favorite shows Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass And my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life Tell everybody, ya everybody

About my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say Bye bye bye Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast Or wherever you listen to podcasts I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me And my whole view on astrology changed

Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts