Stuff You Should Know - UNESCO World Heritage: Preserving the Best of Humanity

Episode Date: April 23, 2026

Humanity’s created a lot of neat things over the eons and starting in the 1940s, the UN created an agency focused on preserving those things for the whole world and future people. But that mission is in danger of becoming only about branding and money.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is Stuff You Should Know. And this is a fairly rare edition where we do an episode that we decided to do within the last few episodes. We don't usually turn around that fast. Usually it's like seven to eight years. Yeah, this is a quick one. And Julia turned this around for us pretty staty. I just made that up.

Sure. But I get it. I think everyone knows what we mean. But we're talking about UNESCO World Heritage Sites. UNESCO standing for, which I never knew. I'm glad I know this now, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, whom in 1972 drafted this treaty

to preserve world heritage as a whole, whether it's, as we'll see, like a place or a thing, and they even expanded later into, like, you know, cultural processes and customs and traditions. Yeah, and that's where this idea came from. We were doing our episode on contortionism, and we found that Mongolia was turned down for getting world heritage protection for their contortionist history. Didn't make the count.

And they were like, what the age? So we started looking into this, and it is pretty interesting. One of the things that apparently is a fairly common misunderstanding is that if you have, like, a heritage site, like something is identified and labeled a world heritage site. site, that that is no longer sovereign territory in your country. Could not be wronger. That still belongs to you. But what's happened is that the world, essentially, everybody who's a member of UNESCO,

has agreed to say, like, we want to preserve this in your country. It's yours. But it really, we're all agreeing that this belongs to humanity because it's so important to human culture, so unique, that we need to preserve it. And it takes more than just one country to preserve things like this. So we're all going to get together and take shared responsibility for this important part of human culture. Yeah. And also a little bit of protection.

Like, you know you've got something valuable on your shelf there. We're all watching you. Right. As you juggle your way through the room. You want to leave it in mint condition. That's right. There's one quote here that I think kind of nails it is it's things that have outstanding universal value. So it's the universality of it all as far as, you know, needing to cherish and care for these

things. And I think it's kind of a cool deal. I mean, some people might criticize it as a big sort of political thing to get tourist dollars headed your way. But I'm not so cynical. I think it's actually pretty great. Oh, I do too. I think it's good, too. I think it's both, though. I think the ideal of it is awesome. I think that in practice lately, it's in trouble. The thing is the idea. The idea that it was an outstanding universal value, I get that, again, is an ideal, but in practice, that is not always the case. And I draw your attention to the Ustunkirki, which is horseback shrimp fishing in Belgium. And if that sounds obscure to you, you're right, because only 12 families practice this still. That is a protected and tangible heritage. That is not of universal value,

although it is super interesting, and I'm glad it's protected, because why not? But I just thought that there's a lot of different things that contradict the idea that it's of universal value. Yeah, for sure. This all got started post-World War II after the world got together and decided to wreck everything again for the second time in about 30 years. And everyone kind of looked up and were like, geez, you know, we lost a lot of museums and churches and monuments. and entire cities sometimes or huge portions of cities are just gone. And maybe we need as a world nation to get together and sort of start caring for these things a little bit more. So the UN kind of led the brigade on this, and UNESCO was formed in 1945.

I think I said that 1972 was when the World Heritage Treaty or whatever came about. So UNESCO was around quite a while before this case. came around. So starting in 1945 is when UNESCO was formed and they basically started a campaign to start protecting these places from a few things. It's not always just like war. That is definitely one of them, but also human development and natural disaster. Right, for sure. The first thing, I think they were really kind of focused on learning from like archaeology was a big thing they were into for a while, but it really started to take the shape that we understand it today. In 1959, when Egypt went to UNESCO and said, hey, man, like, we want to build this dam.

It's really important that we have a reservoir of water. But when we build the dam, there's a lot of, like, really old, like, Egyptian, pharaonic, Arab dynastic monuments that are going to be underwater. So can you help us figure this out? And UNESCO said, this is it. We've been waiting for this for 14 years. Yeah. They said, we need to raise some money. So they got about $80 million together and said,

all right, let's move these two temples specifically to higher ground. So they moved, they disassembled these temples, moved them about 650 feet, which it was higher, and out of harm's way. And that sort of, like you said, that just sort of started this idea of like, wait a minute, we can get together and make great things happen and protect great places.

And that kind of continued through the 60s until 1972. on November 16th at their 17th general conference when they adopted the convention concerning the protection of world cultural and natural heritage, which culminated the center of all that is basically this world heritage list. Yeah, and there was one other aspect of that 1959 Aswan Dam initiative, I guess.

Dozens of countries, like, donated to make this happen. Like, this was $80 million in 1959. dollars. This is a significant amount of money. Egypt was really the only country that was going to benefit from this, but countries around the world said, no, we want to help take responsibility for this because we think that these are that important. They transcend just Egyptian importance. Yeah, for sure. And that leads to the second part of that, what happened in 1972. There was the heritage list and the heritage fund. And that fund, you know, without money, none of this really matters that much. It takes a lot of dough sometimes to do things like this. Yeah, for sure, because like you said,

a lot of it's threatened and one of the big things is preservation, protection, and restoration. So that World Heritage Convention from 72, it created the World Heritage List, and now here finally, we have reached like the actual modern incarnation of what UNESCO's largely involved in or at least known for. That's right. As far as the nuts and bolts of it all goes, there is the World Heritage committee, which is 21 member countries at this point that are elected for six-year terms. And they're the ones that are sort of in charge of overseeing all this. The United States has been a member country before and not been a member country, depending on which politician is in the White House. You can probably figure that one out. Well, no, not surprised. There's some

surprising dates in there, if you ask me. Yeah, but we're not in there now. I think when did we drop off 20. 11. Yeah, but we were back on, then back off again in like 21, right? 2018. Is it 2018? Okay. I can't get my ears straight. That's because of COVID. So, you know, if you are, they call it hosting, but if you have a world heritage site in your country, you have to, you can't just say, give us all the money and don't worry about it after that. You have to provide annual report. You have to deliver reports on like how the property is, the state of the property, any concerns like moving forward, basically kind of how things are going. And if you're a member country, you get the whopping sum of $4 million a year from the World Heritage Fund.

Right. And that is, I mean, some of that is preservation, but I get the feeling a lot of that is like just sort of functioning and identifying places and promoting your own world heritage sites. Yeah, probably paying for docents is a chunk of. that too. Yeah, probably so. But also, if something happens, acute disaster from human or natural causes, you'll get some emergency assistance. And then this is another big one that I think probably really comes in handy. There are experts who work at UNESCO who can train your staff, right? You don't have to figure it. You don't have to reinvent the wheel every time and be like, this is an archaeological

site. Let's figure out how to train you, the staff, to preserve it and explain it and all that stuff. you can send them off to, I guess, New York and have them trained up to do those things. Yeah, for sure. And tourism. It's a big deal. If you're, if you get one of your, if you are a country when you have a site that you get put on this list, it's a big deal because people, I think, that don't know a ton about this, kind of look at it as like a seven wonders of the world list in some ways and like, oh, here's a place like, we got to visit before we die. Yeah, there's hundreds of wonders of the world as far as the world. heritage list is concerned.

Yeah. So originally, Chuck, there were just like physical places and features that were on the World Heritage list called sites. And they were divided essentially into two categories, cultural or natural. And you can kind of generally guess what the criteria was for each. Yeah. Like if it's a natural heritage site, that means there's just universal value. maybe scientifically or maybe even just aesthetically.

You know, we're talking about the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, or Serengeti National Park and Tanzania, stuff like that. And it's, you know, it's about protecting these natural wonders of the world generally. Yeah, and I mean, we just take for granted that the Serengeti National Park is, like, amazing. But the reason why specifically it was chosen is because it's one of the best examples of large predator prey interactions. Like you just do not see lions chasing down antelope in Kansas. You don't see it unless the zoo's going crazy. And that's one reason why it's protected.

It's basically the main reason why it's protected. But then there's also an intersecting thing, too, that it's also gorgeous. So this fulfills a couple of things. It's biologically important to science, but it's also aesthetically amazing, too. Yeah, for sure. And this goes, you know, every single one of these things, and we're not just going to go through and list a ton of different places. But if you're talking about the Yellowstone National Park or the Galapagos Islands,

or like I mentioned, the Great Barrier Reef, these all seem like pretty obvious inclusions. For sure. And they were probably included pretty early on in the list's existence. Oh, geez. So that's the natural site. There's also the cultural site. And these are essentially, you know, human-made environments or structures or places of human occupation where humans did something impressive, important,

or it was just part of a larger culture. For example, there was a crossroads, and I think, oh, I don't remember where it was, but it was just a crossroads back in the, like, the third century CE. And it was just really important at the time. It doesn't seem all that important now, but it was and you want to preserve it because future generations can learn from it

and experience it and appreciate it. Yeah, for sure. And it can also be a building or a sculpture, like the Statue of Liberty is on there under cultural heritage, under that. But so is like Venice, Italy. So it can be a whole city that's sort of a ancient, modern, well, maybe not ancient, but a modern wonder, you know. Right. And then it can be ancient too. And then also like how the aesthetics and scientific importance intersect in the Serengeti National Park, that can happen in cultural sites too. Like it can be where archaeology and intersects with, you know, humans like making, shaping the natural environment. Like the Kahuki amounts are on the list. Yeah. To where like all these different boxes can be checked. And those are, they call the money sites where there's just a bunch of different criteria going on. Yeah. And when I said not ancient, I'm at Venice specifically.

Oh, I see. I see. Have you been to Venice? I've never been there. It's on a big time on the list, but I also just realized I don't know when all that was engineered. I wanted to say like the 16th century, but it could be later. Is that ancient? That's not ancient.

It's ancient-ish. No, no. I don't even know what ancient means. now they think about it. But you're going to love it. You will love Venice. And when you do go there, go to Harry's bar. It's where the Bellini was invented.

Okay, love a Blaney. They save Hemingway's seat, like at the bar. It's preserved. But their martinis are really, really good. They're outrageously expensive just because they know that you'll pay it because you're a tourist. But it's still worth getting. Well, maybe I can grow the beer back out and put some weight back on and convince everyone on the ghost of Hemingway

and take that seat, finally. Well, bring a multi-extra-toed cat with you. Or are they cross-eyed? What is it about those cats? Two-tails? Oh, I don't know. Are they polydactyl? I think so.

There's some unique feature that the Hemingway cats on Key West all share. Oh, okay. I want to say it's an extra toe. I'm not sure. Well, moving on, we'll figure that out. Okay. There are total of 1,248 world heritage sites right now.

The vast amount of those are cultural, I think 78%, 19% are natural, and 3% are mixed. And Europe and North America have almost half of them. They have 46% compared to Latin and the Caribbean, Latin America and Caribbean at 12%. Asia and the Pacific, 25%, the Arab states, 8%. And Africa 9%, although we should say Africa holds 20% of all the natural sites, which is pretty impressive and not surprising. That is cool. I say we take a break, but first I also wanted to point out that not all of these are, you know,

just like up with humanity. Like they also preserve some pretty dark stuff, too. One good example is the Navy School of Mechanics in Argentina, which has turned into a site of memory, a museum where they basically preserved the fact that this was a place where people were abducted, tortured, and murdered by dictatorships in Latin America in the 1970s and 80s, and this is a world heritage site because it's important to remember people will do this. Like people will vote people like this into office and keep them there, and those people can turn on their own people, and you can be abducted and disappeared and murdered by the state.

That happens. That, to me, is like one of the big driving, I guess it drives home, the point. of the world heritage list more than some of these others to remember. Not just pretty things. Right. But you don't have to just remember the dark stuff. You can remember all the stuff. But you can't ignore the dark stuff, I guess, is what I mean.

Well said, just like Lord Vader himself. What do you say? Like, come on over, baby. The dark side's feeling great. I think so. That was the line. Should we take that break? Yeah, I think we should. All right back, everybody. Pride is like love.

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Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. All right. So we mentioned early, we're back, by the way, that UNESCO would eventually adopt stuff like oral traditions and performing arts and social rituals and practices and things like that. That happened in 2003 specifically. And, you know, this was a very valuable ad, I think,

like a skill set or a knowledge or just some irreplaceable custom or traditional craft or skill or something that could be in danger of being lost, if not for stuff like this. Yeah, and again, it can be 12 families shrimp fishing on horseback in Belgium. I want to see that.

What does that look like? It looks like somebody with a horse and a shrimp net on a beach. I saw a picture of it. I mean, I kind of figured that, but, you know, I bet the shrimp are good. But I think this is, it's worth, preserving too because

this is important to like these people. It's not saying like, well, this is what America thinks is cool or this is what, you know, Zimbabwe thinks is cool. Like this is, this is important to this culture. There's a culture on planet Earth and this is important to them and we should preserve it just for that

very reason. Plus also really, what is supporting horseback shrimp fishing among 12 families in Belgium really costing the world to support, you know? Agreed. One part about being included on this part of the list is that, and I think this is kind of cool, is it can be inherited from the past, but it also is applied to a contemporary setting. And so that means, you know, it can't be the lost art of whatever if it's like truly, really no one is even doing this at all anymore.

Like you can be D listed, and we're going to talk about that in a minute. Not D listed as in D-Dash, but D-E-Dash. Oh, you know that site? Well, no, wasn't that a TV show? I don't know. There's a really mean, like, burn blog, or there used to be called Delisted. That was hilarious, but also really cruel.

No, I was never on that. But if you are included, that means this practice or this ritual or custom is passed through generations and communities, and very community-based overall. Like, it's recognized within that community and outside. that community is something of value, kind of like the shrimp people,

shrimp people. Just because it's interesting, you know? Yeah. Let's talk about, we dug up some other ones. You want to just kind of throw a few of these out? I found basically all these interesting movies. You should probably just pick some.

Yeah, I'll go with the bagpipes. Bulgarian bagpipe making and bagpipe playing. Apparently is a very big thing in Bulgaria, passed down through the families for generations. And it used to be like a father-to-son thing. now they will teach all genders, which is kind of great. And, you know, it's in social clubs. They teach it in schools.

And they're like, we need to protect this. And it is on that list. It's also, there's some very famous ones, too, that it's not just as obscure as horseback shrimp fishing. Artisanal baguette making in France is protected. Turkish coffee is protected. Sauna culture in Finland's protected. Yeah, baby.

Gingerbread crafting in Croatia. And then it does get a little more niche. Loin cloth. weaving in Cote d'Ivoire. Human Tower creation, they're called castles in Spain, to where people just stack up on other people. And then there's also an annual grass mowing competition in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and it is using a scythe. They're not just like riding John Deere tractors or anything like that. And it's exactly what it sounds like. It's a grass-mowing competition. That's protected. Also, so is yodeling in Switzerland.

Yeah, great list. Thank you. So, Chuck, I don't know if you said there's a danger list. Did you mention that? I don't think we have yet. No, I talked about being delisted, but before you're delisted, you can be in danger. Yeah, and you can be in danger from, we did kind of talk about it. You can be in danger from armed conflict war, from climate change, from all, like,

just a complete change of the surrounding area can get you de-listed. And danger is where this is the step before delisting. And essentially, UNESCO steps in and says, hey, we need to do something about this because this site is deteriorating or we need to figure out how to lift the Statue of Liberty 100 feet so that sea level rise doesn't, you know, wash it away. And there's two kinds. There's ascertain danger, which is like, this is going to happen. And then there's potential danger, like, say, stuff coming from climate change or if it's, you know,

a civil conflict is starting to heat up, and it looks like a civil war is going to break out, and there's a heritage site right in the crossfire. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, one good example of something they might do is they are these national parks, and I guess they're all national parks in the Democratic Republic of Congo that was,

they were all made the danger list between 94 and 97, so they, you know, kind of put up the warning flag, and UNESCO came in with their fat bank account. There were some NGOs involved that wanted to get involved and donate some money, and they had a four-year rehabilitation campaign for these parks. And then a second campaign, and this kind of goes to show how the international community comes together. These are all in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But in 2004, the second campaign got funded from Belgium and Japan.

They're like, let's take care of these places. Yeah. there's another site the remains of Bamian Valley in Afghanistan is what it's called it went from not on any world heritage list immediately to the danger list

the Taliban back in 2001 blew up these two I think 10 and 15 story tall cliff carved I guess statues or reliefs of Buddha

from the 6th century they were beautiful and the Taliban blew them up by shooting them with shoulder launched rocket launchers that were probably provided by the CIA back in the 80s when they were fighting the Russians. And this was an enormous thing. Like, people were like, what are you doing? Like, what is the problem here? Is this part of this kind of ethnic cleansing campaign against the Hazara people who live in the area? And so they're like, I guess UNESCO was like, right, we can't let anything like that happen again. Let's get in here

and try to preserve this valley. And it was put on the danger list. And they started a campaign in 2009 to just basically go in there and figure out how to move forward and keep this valley from getting worse off than it was. Yeah, I think landmines there is a big deal. So part of their, you know, UNESCO getting involved there

is identifying and getting rid of those landmines, first and foremost. Yep. Let's see. Everglades National Park. Florida's Treasure. That's on there. Yeah.

Very sadly on the danger list. Yeah, there's also like civil conflicts really target stuff or endanger sites like the historic center of Odessa and Ukraine is on the list. Ancient Aleppo in Syria is on the list. Yeah, that's a big, it seems like armed conflict and climate change are the two biggest threats to world heritage sites. Yeah, I think so. You know, we did talk about being delisted. And thankfully, that's only happened a few times because if you're deleted from the list, that means like, that means you're probably done as a thing and that like there's no point in protecting you anymore because it doesn't exist. And one good example of that is the Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City who's delisted in 2021. This was the historic docklands of Liverpool, a very big port town, obviously, in England. And they built a stadium there.

Everton Stadium was built, and it was, it basically kind of wiped all that out. So they were like, well, there's no reason for this being on the list anymore. Yeah, the Tower of London is not on the danger list, but it's on the pre-danger list for the same reason. The development that's going on in the area threatens to basically take away its natural or historic, I mean, identity. Even just being built around. They're not talking about knocking down the Tower of London, but just building around it can change. the built environment enough that UNESCO's like it's done. Yeah.

Sometimes it's very sad in this case in Oman. The Arabian orix sanctuary was delisted in 2007. That had a population of Arabian oryx antelope. And that, you know, that was decimated so much that population such that I believe it fell down to like 65 of them in 2007. And I guess that was, and this was because of poaching, obviously. and habitat destruction, which makes it super sad. But I guess that was low enough to where they were like, all right, you know, no more protection from us.

I know, and that's sad because it seems like that's when they should swoop in and be like, we're going to occupy this area, Oman. We are, this is no longer sovereign Oman. Yeah, I mean, I think there are other organizations that do and protect species like that. So hopefully they weren't just sort of left out in the wind. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure that they were on the danger list first, and then they just didn't. follow through. But that's, um, that we should say it's not a, um, it's pretty dishonorable for a country, um, to let one of its sites end up on the danger list. It's even worse to have it delisted.

So countries tend to, um, work hard to get off of the danger list. And that does actually happen. That happened in, um, 20, 25 to three different spots. The rainforest of Attena Nana, um, in Madaasgar. Abu Mena in Egypt, I think that was the crossroads. And then in the old town of Gadamis in Libya, that was the crossroads. It was the crossroads between Africa and the Mediterranean a couple thousand years ago. But those were all for different various reasons on the danger list, and those countries worked very hard and aggressively to address all of those issues and get them back off of the danger list. So it is possible to get off the danger list and certainly not be delisted. And usually countries who take this stuff seriously will work hard to do that.

Yeah, you don't want to be on the naughty list. Exactly. Earlier when you said Crossroads, I thought, genuinely thought you were going to say the Mississippi Crossroads where Robert Johnson sold a soul to the devil. Do they have that one crossroad identified? I don't know. It sure seems like it should be a world heritage. site?

Yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure if they had the actual crossroads or if it's more of a not apocryphal, or maybe it is apocryphal. It could be both. Yeah, or ephemeral.

Could be all three. Right. Have we taken our second break? I don't think we have. No, let's take our, it's perfect timing. Look at us, 30 minutes in. Okay, we'll be right back.

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And they don't always play super well together. Or when they do play super well together, it's often like gaming the system. And that seems to be what is going on today with UNESCO and the world. the World Heritage Convention, that it's basically been creeping slowly toward a way for countries to make more money through their tourism industry. Get some sites on the World Heritage List. You can go promote it worldwide and bring more people to your country where they're going to spend a bunch of drachmas.

Yeah, for sure. There is a professor of anthropology at Stanford named Lynn Meskell, who basically said it's entirely about political and economic gain at this point, just a tool in a little. in a much larger arsenal of non of sorry of nation state politics and you know the politics of it all can't be ignored these days it's um you know there's there's an interesting thing that happens you know in terms of like um repatriation you know we've talked at some point here and there about like you know when there's plundering from wars and things like that uh and all of a sudden that um countries own things or at least have possession of them and place them in museums.

They weren't there to begin with, like giving this stuff back. There's big movement for that. But there's also this sort of idea on the other side of like, well, we will take care of that stuff because it is in London or New York City. Right. And we're not going to give it back to you. And that same sort of mentality has been sort of, the same thing is sort of applied to World Heritage Sites, I think, a little bit where

indigenous peoples are kind of moved out of the conversation because the attitude is like, well, you just don't know what's best for your stuff. Right. It's kind of like if you're a bunch of Westerners coming along as tourists to tour this world heritage site that's of immense cultural value to this local group, if current people from the local group show up, they kind of push out of their way by their face and they're like, out of the way, you're ruining the diorama. This took place a thousand years ago.

We don't care what's going on with you today, even though you're directly related to this. I think is that mentality, right? Yeah, that's a good way to say to, I think, sadly. There's also like a whole... I talked about gaming the system. One of the ways that you can game the system is essentially withdraw, like the United States has done twice now

in the 80s and in 2018. You can withdraw from UNESCO and this convention, but you can still. still nominate sites, including sites in your own country, right? Yeah. So you're getting the best of both worlds where you can get those tourism dollars for getting new world heritage sites. And you're also not paying dues or you're not spending any of your own money to support

other sites. But if you need help with your sites, because it's World Heritage Site, you can get other country's money who are doing the right thing and paying their dues. Yeah, for sure. Not a cool thing to do, if you asked me. The other thing that they've seen, I think, kind of starting into like the 1990s, it seems like, is when countries are getting together and voting together,

like forming packs and voting blocks to either get listed or to block maybe a site from getting on the danger list because we said that's kind of like being on the naughty list. Yeah, exactly. So like Latin American countries will frequently band together and vote in one another's best. interests. Or also, I think, even countries that aren't members anymore, say the U.S., can basically be like, hey, vote for us for this thing and, you know, we'll make sure that we up our oil imports from

your country by 10% or something like that. Oh, interesting. You know, so I think the more, the more juice you have, the more you can get stuff done, even if you're not a member anymore. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, like you said, this is big money. Like, if you're included on this list, they will, you'll be a part of their advertising campaign. And then you can also create your own around that, you know, touting inclusion, you know? Yeah, I can tell you that I want to go see the Minoan palatial centers in Greece, six Bronze Age sites that were part of the late Bronze Age collapsed. They're about to be, or they were just in 2025 put on, so that's, the tourism's working already. So you might not have known about that had it not been included, probably? Yes.

I did not know those sites existed. Yeah. I'm sure they have a robust website with lots of pretty pictures. So, yeah, and that's basically like being there in person, right? But it's free. Yeah, exactly. Speaking of the Danger List, there are a few sites that, you know, you can be removed from the Danger List. That's the goal, I guess, before being delisted.

And that happened last year. The Rainforest and Madagascar, those, the ones that you're talking about? Yeah, they're not on the Danger list. and then that town in Libya. Was that where the Crossroads was? That's the Crossroads. So I guess what do you do? Just raise enough hay or prove that you're actually protecting it in such a way?

Well, I'll give you the example of the Crossroads. The old town of Gametes, I believe, is what it is. Gadamese. Gatamese, thank you. Their irrigation techniques were raising the water table and some of the very ancient buildings were. in danger of crumbling from the water exposure. So Libya went in and basically came up with different irrigation techniques that they taught to the locals,

lowered the water table, and now the site is no longer in jeopardy, and it's off of the danger list. All right. It's essentially just a question of the host country having the will to spend a few bucks to remedy the situation. That's all it is. I wonder if one member country has enough places like that make that danger list if there's any sort of maybe not even official penalty, but like, hey, hey, listen, guys, you need to, you got three on the danger list now. You need to get it together. It's a really bad look. It is a bad look. Kind of talking about the politics of this, too. There was a really startling turn of events in 2020.

where Recep Erdogan, the president of Turkey, unilaterally said, hey, the Hagia Sophia, this part of world heritage, it was a cathedral, then a mosque, and now it's a museum. We're turning it back into a mosque. And UNESCO's like, we didn't talk about this. And Erdogan said, it doesn't matter. We're doing that. And this is like, I mean, this thing was built in the 530s.

It's one of the more amazing buildings in the world. And in the 1930s, a court in Turkey said, this is a museum. This is no longer a mosque. Turkey is secular. And that's all there is to it. So it's a museum until Erdogan came along in 2020 and changed it back. Yeah. And, you know, unilaterally decided this on his own.

And UNESCO was like, hey, not only did you shouldn't have done this, but you didn't tell us you were doing this. And you're using this as like, this is a world heritage site now. You can't use it for your own political gain. You can't try and curry favor with the Turkish Islamic Turkish conservatives. And he was like, well, you know, what do you say? It's not a museum anymore. And we're not charging entry fees anymore?

Yep. Was that as like comeback? I guess it was a comeback of sorts or a defense or something. He's like, you don't have to pay to get in anymore. Yeah, this is pretty weak. But that was 2020 and absolutely nothing happened. That's the other problem. This is a problem with almost everything that has to do with the U.N.

There's like, what are you going to do? Really? Yeah. Like, I'm fine. I don't care about peer pressure, you know, the international community being mad at me. That's all it takes. And there's nothing that can be done about it. Yeah, for sure.

Let me see. What else is on the danger list? You mentioned the Statue of Liberty, right, as far as some of the big dogs. Mm-hmm. Sea level rise. And, of course, the great barrier reef. That's been threatened for a long time as our reefs all over the world. Very, very sad.

Ocean bleaching. Also, the Sydney Opera House is coming close to the danger list because of sea level rise as well. Oh, man. It's right there on the water. You've got to protect that thing. I know, man. I say we go out, I just want to throw out a couple more of these amazing and tangible ones that are protected. Okay.

Great. Midwifery, from Germany to Togo. Sometimes this can cross cultures. And midwifery is one of them. It should have been from like Albania to Zaire. That's how you got to do those. That would have been great. I called Tiki horse breeding in Turkmenistan.

Yeah, I like that one. Here's a good one. Civeche preparation in Peru. I'm all about that. I am too. You'll also like this one, the Dia de los Mueros in Mexico, the Day of the Dead. Yeah, for sure. Hey, you know what?

Here's a tip, especially for you. and me and Emily, if you love that savica, you just got to make sure, you got to say no pulpo. Oh, really? Yeah, I think we, you don't need octopus, right?

Oh, is that what that is? No, I definitely do not. They're too intelligent. Yeah. It's cruel. Yeah, we learned that in Mexico City that pulpo is the word. So we're like, oh, okay,

so that's what we need to avoid. So you say, hold the pulpo. Yeah, or just get the one without it. Okay. Like, I would never go to another country and say, Can you not put this thing in there that you traditionally eat?

Like, you can find a savvice that's probably just a fish or shrimp or scallop or whatever. Oh, really? I feel like I take the Burger King approach to tourism where I was like, I'll have it my way. Oh, really? You got anything else? I got nothing else. This is a fun one. I know this is something I knew nothing about.

And now I feel like I know enough, which is our charge as a show, to like talk a little bit about it intelligently around a dinner table. And to attend UNESCO World Heritage meetings and speak up. Yeah, where do they have those, New York? Yeah, let's go. All right. I'm sure anybody can just walk in. If you want to know more about UNESCO World Heritage, go check out some sites. You can tour the world from your computer again for free.

And in the meantime, I think it's time for listener mail. Yeah, this is from Stephen Cook from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Okay. Who visited the Kowloon-Walled City. Oh, cool. Or at least the park. Hey guys, visited that Calhoun Wall City Park this past December on our first trip to Hong Kong, and it's a delightful spot with sports facilities for nearby residents,

some remnants of the original building foundations as a reminder of its past, and the one original building that is now a museum. That's the one we talked about. Yeah. Plus, there's a special exhibit that recreates a streetscape in the community using sets from the 2024 film Twilight of the Warriors, colon, walled in, which stars Hong Kong action legend Samo Hung as a local crime boss named Mr. Big.

I guess when you're this big, they call you Mr. The set recreates a whole block with a barbershop convenience store, shoe repair stand, and a fish ball making factory, with period props and decor. A visit is highly recommended, and Stephen included a few photos, which are great. Oh, I can't wait to see this,

because I looked all over for the exhibit, and I couldn't find any photos. I saw mention of it at some point. Yeah, search that email, buddy, and it'll come up. Thanks, Stephen. That's a great one. Yeah, if you have been to Calhoun, Walt City, let us know. We want to hear from all of you.

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