Stuff You Should Know - Was Atlantis a real place?

Episode Date: April 10, 2012

While the search for Atlantis has been pushed to the fringes since the 19th century, archaeologists have quietly pursued cities that may have inspired Plato to fabricate the mythical city. It looks like a team in Greece has found it. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, back in the saddle again with Charles W. Chuck Bryant. We share a horse. We do. I have a horse sidecar, actually. It's a small mule that's

attached to your horse. Yeah. And I have to lean into the corners. It's more of a hay cart than a sidecar. Oh, okay. Back in the saddle, meaning we are back from Texas and back in the recording booth for the first time in what, two weeks? Yeah, it feels nice, dude. To be back in this smelly little dimly lit room. Yeah, it's strangely. At least it's not like blood colored, you know? Yeah, man. That'd be weird. So, Chuck. Yes. I guess we should get started, huh? You don't have an intro? Well, I mean, I was going to use the intro as the intro. Go ahead, then. Have you ever heard of a place called Atlantis? I have. You read, like, the Brunnery Triangle. The vacation getaway? No, we're like, Britney Spears stayed for free for like a month

when they opened to try to generate a buzz. Wow. I'm sure they were packing them in after that. I think they have been. I don't know. I can't discuss the financial estate of Atlantis, the resort in the Bahamas. But what I can discuss is Atlantis, the possibly fictitious place. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and go on record as fictitious. Are you? Well, after reading this, and by the way, this was awesome. I had no idea about the secret surprise that's coming. Which one? Well, the other place, the real place. Oh, got you. Okay. Which I meant to ask you before how we pronounce that, but we'll just get to that and I'll let you say it first. Okay. But yeah, I'm going to say it's fictitious and based on that.

Okay. I think I kind of go with that too. Mainly because one of the things about Plato is he was the only person ever mentioned Atlantis. Plenty of people have mentioned it after him. Yeah. But it was based on what he said. Right. Which kind of makes you think like, oh, okay, is this? This is an allegory, probably. It's about wickedness. Yeah. What was his book in Tameis? Yeah, that was the book. Right. Where he first mentioned it. Yeah. And it was written in 360 BC. And Tameis is one of his dialogues, I believe. And Plato has a thing where he likes to take real places, real people, real events, and then just kind of use some literary license. Sure. He's a philosopher. Okay. Yeah. He was not a documentarian of real things. Right.

Right. But along the way, somewhere, that idea got lost. Right. Right. So for example, Sodom and Gomorrah. I would wager that a lot of people think that Sodom and Gomorrah, I love those guys, something really happened. And then it was taken eventually. It was used as allegory that these people were punished by God. Right. But really, something really bad happened to him and somebody decided, hey, this is a great, great chance to use this as a life lesson for everyone. Yeah. So there's a really strong possibility that Plato did the same thing. Because as he describes Atlantis, they had gotten kind of a hubristic, I guess. It does mimic other things in the Bible, most for sure. It does. And the great God Poseidon,

who is the God of the sea and of earthquakes, decided that he was kind of tired of the people of Atlantis, which was the seat of a cult that worshipped him. Right. So he, using the techniques at hand, created an earthquake that generated a tsunami that sunk Atlantis beneath the waves lost forever. Yeah. I think the quote from the book was it sank into the sea in a single day and night of misfortune. Yeah. That's putting it lightly. So, and he placed it too, didn't he? Actually, yeah. It's where? Off Spain? The pillars of Hercules, which is now called the Strait of Gibraltar. And there's people looking in Spain now, right? Yeah, like legitimate, right. Bonafide archaeologists. They're fun. Yeah. So, um, so Plato, I guess part of the problem

is he's, he's saying like, yes, this was at the Strait of Gibraltar. Right. In his parlance at the time, he's saying is that the Strait of Gibraltar, the problem is, is that Atlantis was this magnificent ringed city. Yeah. Um, and it had like fantastic technology and architecture. Yeah. And it was just an amazingly advanced place. But he also says that this has happened 9,000 years ago. Right. Right. So 9,000 years before him. So they're aliens. Well, that was, that is thanks to a guy named Ignatius Donnelly. Yeah. So this guy, so Plato writes about Atlantis, goes about his business, right? Dies. And apparently nobody back then took it seriously. That's like modern man were the first people to say, ooh, maybe there wasn't Atlantis. Yeah. Back in the day, everyone's

like, nah, there's just Plato going off again. Right. It was this one guy, Ignatius Donnelly. Oh, he's the one. You can lay it all at his feet. Jerk. Because in 1882, he published a book called Atlantis, The Anti-Diluvian World. And in it, he's saying, okay, the Azores, the Azores, man, I wish I put that one up. I think that's right. The islands in the middle of the Atlantic. That's actually the highest peaks of the highest mountaintops of Atlantis. Yeah. And wait, there's more. The incredibly advanced civilizations in Egypt and high up in the Andes of Peru, pre-Inca, those were colonies set forth by Atlantis that survived because they weren't there for the sinking of Atlantis. So basically, we have civilization to thank. We have Atlantis

to thank for civilization. The problem is all of this is totally unfounded, but it just kicked off the occultization of Atlantis. Yeah, it's been placed everywhere from South China Sea, the Caribbean, the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, the Canary Islands, Antarctica, supposedly. Switzerland. Oh, really? Yeah, I didn't chase that one down, but I saw somewhere that somebody said Switzerland. Let's go ahead and say everywhere. Yeah, everywhere. Atlantis is everywhere. There's Edgar Cayce, who is known as the sleeping prophet of Virginia Beach, who's a psychic. He said that Atlantis stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to Spain. Yeah. And that the Bermuda Triangle, if there is mystery in the Bermuda Triangle, it's due to Atlantis' energy crystals.

I will say, though, he said it would rise off Bimini. And then when they discovered the Bimini Road, everyone was like, see there? Yeah. And then it's too bad Cheri's not here because she's like, I dove the Bimini Road. Yeah, guest producer Maddie is in the house. Hey, Matt. We didn't mention that. So once Donnelly comes along and kind of takes up the mantle of searching for Atlantis and making it as far out as possible, it just becomes more and more the domain of like fringe dwellers, right? Sure. But that is not to say that there aren't legitimate archaeologists searching for something like Atlantis. That doesn't mean that there isn't something that inspired Plato. Right. And we probably know what that is actually. That's where my money is. Yeah. And now you're

going to make me say it, even though I asked you to say it. Hileke? Hileke. Hileke. Hileke. Yeah. Okay. Hileke. Spelled he like. Yeah. I saw some weird pronunciation things that I didn't understand when I looked it up. Yeah. So I just figured I'd hear it from you. That was Greek to you. It was indeed. So yeah, the cat's out of the bag. As far as I'm concerned, it is Hileke. Well done. Case closed. End of podcast. It was a super interesting story though. This was well documented by lots of people, not like a single source like Plato. Single made up source. Exactly. And it was a lost Greek city. It suffered a fate much like Atlantis supposedly did. Yeah. So Hileke was this very powerful city in ancient Greece on the Gulf Corinth. Very nice in that area.

Yeah. I imagine. Have you been? No. I want to go. Glad to do. It was powerful enough to have its own colonies. So imagine if Atlanta had colonies in like Germany. This is very much the case for Hileke. And it was the seat of power for a 12-city league called the Achaean League, which is kind of like the Confederacy in the South. Yeah. So would that be like having a bar in a different city that's like your home bar? Like, you know, they have like, it's usually football based. There's like a New York Jets bar in Atlanta. Yeah, maybe. There's a Pittsburgh Steelers bar in Atlanta. Maybe. Is that the same thing? I thought it was more like the capital of like a number of states. Oh, okay. I don't think it's the same thing,

but I like that analogy. I'm just being coy. So the Achaean League, now I've just realized that I've missed something. No, that's right. New York. Yeah. So the Hileke is the city or the center of the Achaean League. It controlled like the shipping around there. By the time Plato came about, it was hundreds of years old already. A very active port. They had their own coinage. Yeah. And it looked very cool too. I looked up the coins. Yeah. Like dolphins and Poseidon and pitch or not pitchforks, what do they call the tridents tridents? Yeah. And it was, it had Poseidon on the coin because this was like the seat of a cult of Poseidon. Yeah. Just like Atlantis. Exactly. And it was, it had a very prominent, well known statue

of Poseidon, just like Atlantis. Right? That's right. So the similarities are starting to mount up. They are. And they really mount in a big way in December of 373 BC. When the townspeople started noticing, wait a minute, all these small animals are scurrying for the hills. Yeah. And that's never a good sign because we did talk about in another podcast how animals can sense underground tremors. I had to have been in how earthquakes worked. Yeah. I think that's what it was. Yeah. And sure enough, earthquake came in the middle of the night on the fifth day. And that was followed by an enormous wave. And just like that overnight, just like Atlantis, it was submerged. Yeah. To the bottom of the sea. Well, not the bottom, but.

No. And not necessarily the sea either, as we'll see. Yes. This is getting more mysterious. So this really happened. This is pretty, it was a pretty well known event. One of the, I guess we should say there were no survivors. Like people from the surrounding cities got together like a search party. Yeah. A rescue party that set out at dawn just a few hours after this happened. And a boat, I guess. There was, well, I think they walked as far as they could and were like, oh, yeah. Well, there's now like a sea where there used to be this, this city. Yeah. Gone. There was no one there. Apparently the only thing visible were the tops of the trees in Poseidon's sacred grove. That's creepy. I would guess all of the trees. Yeah. And there were 10 ships and this

will come up later too from Sparta that were docked there in the port and they were gone as well. Just gone. And that will play an important part here coming up soon. Yeah. So imagine like there's a city. It's a very powerful, rich city and you live out in the boondocks and you just know something happened. There's an earthquake. So you go to check on the city and then the city's gone and it's just silence and there's 10 ships that aren't there anymore. Everything is just gone. Creepy. What was even creepier though is you could look down into the city underwater and see it all there still. Yeah. Including the statue of Poseidon which apparently still stood erect and in place. Right. And local fishermen and ferrymen reported

having their nets get caught in Poseidon's statue all the time, which is kind of ironic. Yeah. But so you could see Haleke for hundreds of years, which is one of the reasons why it's so well documented. Yeah. Because it was kind of like, have you heard of Thanatourism, Dark Tourism or Death Tourism? Yeah. Yeah. So it was kind of like an early version of a Dark Tourism site like comes this mass cemetery. Yeah, exactly. And you could go check it out and travelers and writers and scholars did and they documented what they saw pretty, pretty specifically to like in Stadia, they said, well, here's the, this is where the city is now. This is where it was in relation to, you know, this river or that river. Right. So like the sources are pretty,

pretty abundant and they're pretty specific. Speaking of abundant. Yeah. And rivers. Yeah. And sources. Okay. Look at you. That area was, was unique in that it had these three rivers that met there, bringing freshwater in. So you got some good freshwater. Right. You got some good seawater with tons of good seafood. You've got very rich land for crops. You've got irrigation because you got the freshwater. The weather is gorgeous. So it's right here on the lovely seaside and that's what made it an ideal spot for people to say, hey, maybe we should settle down here. Yeah. Let's hang out here for a while and get fat on shrimp. Unfortunately, it's also a bad spot because there are two fault lines that run parallel through the area and they haven't been known to

cause some major disruption for the years. Like the earthquake that destroyed Haleke. Exactly. And generated the tsunami. So it's, it's kind of like this whole place is like made to produce a lost city. Right. Yeah. Because there's other places around the world where there's violent, tectonic activity and it's coastal. So that means that it's in danger of a tsunami. California, not the tsunami. I don't think Japan. Yeah. The Malaysian tsunami in 2004. Yeah. There's a lot of places, but to produce a, so that's, that will ruin a coastal city. Right. Yes. But for it to become lost, it has to be covered up somehow. And Haleke is in a really unique situation for this because of those three rivers that formed the Haleke Delta.

Yeah. Where Haleke was situated. Right. So you've got the earthquake, you've got the tsunami. So you have a ruined city. Yeah. It's now submerged. And then these three rivers bring a lot of silt to the area. And so eventually Haleke was covered up over, over the centuries. Yeah. You put it in the article about how if you bought a house or not bought a house, let's say built a house, along the shore in 1890, it would be a thousand feet inland, which I imagine is quite a rub for people that build that lovely house right on the water. Yeah. Because within a century or so, it's going to be a couple of streets back. And there's like 10 jerks in front of you that have built houses. Exactly. And it's kind of like, what's that game where you like leapfrog?

Oh yeah. I thought you were going to say Monopoly, where you build bigger houses than the other guy. Oh yeah. That would work too. Sure. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute a 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops,

are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. How's that New Year's resolution coming along? You know the one you made about paying off your pesky credit card debt and finally starting to save a retirement? Well, you're not alone if you haven't made progress yet. Roughly four in five New Year's resolutions fail within the first month or two. But that doesn't have to be the case for you and your goals. Our podcast, How to Money, can help. That's right. We're two best buds who've been at it for more than five

years now and we want to see you achieve your money goals. And it's our goal to provide the information and encouragement you need to do it. We keep the show fresh by answering list of questions, interviewing experts and focusing on the relevant financial news that you need to know about. Our show is chock full of the personal finance knowledge that you need with guidance three times a week and we talk about debt payoff. If let's say you've had a particularly spend thrift holiday season, we also talk about building up your savings, intelligent investing and growing your income. No matter where you are on your financial journey, How to Money has got your back. Millions of listeners have trusted us to help them achieve their financial goals. Ensure that

your resolution turns into ongoing progress. Listen to How to Money on the iHeart radio app, apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So you've got the tsunamis, you've got the river, you've got the silt. You also have the delta itself because of this violent activity is moving up their finding. Over time it's rising. So you have a rising delta which is low. It's like right at sea level. But it's getting bigger and silt is piling it up and making dry ground even further jut out into the coast. Well what it made was a nice little surprise for archaeologists. And I imagine archaeologists just went berserk with this place. Yeah, they had no idea. They just thought Haliki itself was there. They knew it was there. And they

suspected it would be kind of like a Pompeii. But even more, they considered it even more vital to archaeology or the archaeological record than Pompeii even. Well what they found though, as you know Josh, but we're going to spring it on you now, is six other distinct occupied horizons besides six other ones or seven total? Six total. Six total. Five others besides Haliki. Yeah. Underneath one on top of the other that had been settled and civilized and wiped out and covered up. And just kind of captured in time. That is crazy. Yeah. What were they? So there was one from the Byzantine period which was pretty long. I think it ran from like 200 AD to the 15th century. Yeah. And then beneath that there is a Roman ruin which is from the 2nd to the 4th AD.

And that one even features a Roman road which is the road that travelers and writers use to come look at Haliki, the ruins. And that one also, Chuck, this just blows my mind, it's so captured in time that there's a human skeleton atop a like a cattle skull that like it was knocked on top of this beast and killed like by rock and rubble and just kept there. So their skeletons are intertwined now. Isn't that nuts? So the Roman cities on top of Haliki, then beneath Haliki they found even more stuff. They found a settlement from the Bronze Age, 2600 to 2300 BC. And before that they kept digging and found a prehistoric Neolithic period civilization possibly as old as 12,000 years. I wonder if there's something beneath that even. I don't know. This makes me think they should

start digging in Los Angeles or other like seaside retreats. Yeah. To see what you could find. Well there's this whole idea especially among Atlantis hunters that it's extremely intuitive because of rising sea levels that anything that was established around the last Ice Age or even about the end of it, the sea levels have ridden like more than 100 feet since then. So any coastal cities now underwater. Right. That's like a big thing that they hunt for now or that archaeologists are kind of starting to try to get into is looking for human habitation underwater. Wow. Like there's this whole area off of Wales I think, Northern Wales, Northern Ireland maybe or Scotland. Anyways, it's called Doggerland and it's like just this submerged area that used to be above

ground and they're finding like Neolithic settlements there. Isn't that cool? Well, and you know the earth has changed so much over the course of its existence that what's here didn't used to be here and what was there was something else. So yeah, I think there's no telling what's down there. But that idea and the fact that you can find Neolithic settlements underwater supports ironically the notion that there could be something like Atlantis that's lost somewhere. Like Heliki. Right. So yeah, so these guys they found this this area and once they found Heliki it all started to they just it was like jackpot jackpot jackpot. But finding Heliki itself proved a little more difficult than they thought especially considering all the

documentation they had. Yeah, they knew supposedly knew where it was quote unquote. Right. Like it's not like they were searching for a needle in a haystack. Right. They were searching for like a like a pool cue in a haystack. Okay, you know, sure. So in the late 80s, a couple of Cornell professors started looking for it for realsies and they had a little bit of misinterpretation for the word for the translation for body of water and lucky enough that a Greek woman with them. Well, she's one of the Cornell professors. Oh, she was. Yeah. Well, then lucky that she was Greek. Well, yeah, because she'd translate. She was like, wait a minute. She's like, it may not be in the Gulf. After all, it may be inland. Yeah. And they were like, what? Yeah, everybody had

been thinking that this was the the Gulf had swallowed them up swallowed up the city, which would make sense. Right. It turns out it was an inland lagoon that did. So I think it was very much akin to the, you know, the Noah's Ark episode we just did. Yeah. What is it? The Dead Sea, I think, where they think that the Dead Sea used to be fresh water. Right. Now it's salt water. Right. Because that's evidence of the flood happening. Right. And probably what they think is the Mediterranean overwhelmed the straight. I can't remember what straight it was. You're searching the reaches. Yeah. Anyway, I think it was much the same way like the city used to be around a lagoon. And then the lagoon got a lot bigger, thus swallowing the city. Right. So they

looked under land and all of a sudden they had to ditch their scuba gear for shovels. And they found the first Roman city, the first ruins. We're like, wait a minute, 12 feet, just 12 feet below the land, which doesn't seem like that far at all. No, it's not. Because the Roman ruins were like four or five feet. Yeah, I would think that someone would have accidentally found it before that even, you know. Well, that kicked it off. There was a German archaeologist who was traveling in the area and found a haleke coin with Poseidon on it. It was like, holy cow, this is significant. Right. So I think that's kind of how it started. Gotcha. Yeah. So they found, have found a lot of stuff since then. Buildings, industrial buildings, kilns, looms, intersecting

streets. Yeah, with buildings along these streets. Yeah, like a real city. Yeah. What else? The coins, of course, jugs. Jugs with the original contents. And those are from the Bronze Age. Right. They found a storehouse of like jugs of different sizes and types from the Bronze Age. So we're talking like 5000 years old. Crazy. They don't have any idea about these civilizations, but this was contemporary to like ancient Troy, right, which itself was considered a legendary city until Hiram Shleeman found it. Right. So just finding this stuff is amazingly awesome. Well, and there's more. Yeah, there is supposedly. Yes. So they think that they found the outskirts of Haleke, and that they there's a lot more left and that it's intact. Oh, they're not actually at Haleke yet?

No, they're in Haleke, but they're not in the city center. They don't. Okay, I got you. Yeah. So there's out in the outskirts. That's what they think. Wow. Yeah. And when they were looking for Haleke out in the Gulf, they found something cool, didn't they? I don't think I know this. You do know it. They found the seawall. Oh, I thought seawall of the city. Oh, really? And they also found what they think are the 10 Spartan ships. Oh, yeah, that's right. I thought you were going to say the statue of Poseidon, that would be like. Well, they'll find it eventually. The mother load, if they found that thing still standing upright under the earth. So they keep following, they started by following the Roman road. Right. So they're basically they're unearthing like imagine

this dude, they're unearthing like three lost cities at once. That's crazy. Isn't that insane? Do you know what like an archaeological treasure trove that is? Yeah. So they're unearthing them, and as long as they don't intersect, right, as long as like the Roman town isn't built directly over the statue of Poseidon, right, to where getting to Poseidon would undermine the Roman town, yeah, yeah, then they should be able to get it all. And they're going to be doing it. They'll excavate this for decades. So this has been ongoing since the late 80s. Well, no, they really started uncovering stuff in like 2000. Wow. But they started in 1988. So awesome. Yeah. Very cool. So that's a haleke. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's

public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid.

Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. How's that New Year's resolution coming along? You know, the one you made about paying off your pesky credit card debt and finally starting to save for retirement. Well, you're not alone if you haven't made progress yet. Roughly four in five New Year's resolutions fail within the first month or two. But that doesn't have to be the case for you and your goals. Our podcast, How to Money, can help. That's right. We're two best buds who've been at it for more than five years now, and we want to see you achieve your money goals. And it's our goal to provide the information

and encouragement you need to do it. We keep the show fresh by answering list of questions, interviewing experts, and focusing on the relevant financial news that you need to know about. Our show is chock full of the personal finance knowledge that you need with guidance three times a week. And we talk about debt payoff. If let's say you've had a particularly spend thrift holiday season, we also talk about building up your savings, intelligent investing, and growing your income. No matter where you are on your financial journey, How to Money's got your back. Millions of listeners have trusted us to help them achieve their financial goals. Ensure that your resolution turns into ongoing progress. Listen to How to

Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So of course, Chuck, this doesn't mean that anybody has stopped searching for Atlantis. Like the archaeologist in Spain. Yeah, he's looking inland, though, which comes from this theory. So maybe he's on this one. It's possible. He's going to start digging up in Barcelona. Yeah. And people are going to say, What are you doing? Yeah. Drink some wine. So you were saying that you think that Plato was inspired by Halecki. Sure. I think there's substantial evidence in what we said. But also keep in mind, Halecki happened in 373. Plato wrote his book in 360 13 years later. And he lived in the area. This is a pretty well known catastrophe. So I think you're probably

right. But we would not have had the awesome TV show Man From Atlantis had it not been for Plato. No, I guess that's true. Did you watch that? No, that was a little before your time. And there's an awesome HP Lovecraft short story about a German U-boat that ends up in Atlantis. It's awesome. I tried to find YouTube stuff of Man From Atlantis. There's plenty out there. You know, he had the webbed hands when I was a kid. Oh, really? Yeah, he had webbed hands and feet. It's not Prince Nemo, is it? The Submariner? Prince Nemo? No, Prince Nemo. No. He's a Marvel comic guy. No, no, no. It was a schlocky. It ran for like one year. Was he like a detective? Was he his mom? He had superhuman strength and could breathe underwater, had gills,

and he had webbed feet and hands. And I think like some government agency snapped him up to do like investigative undersea work for them. Oh, I know you're talking about welcome back, Cotter. He was a dude from Dallas. Patrick, what's his face? Patrick Ewing. Patrick Duffy. You're thinking Jerry Ewing. Patrick Ewing is a basketball player. Patrick Duffy, yeah. This is good stuff. I have never heard of that show. Yeah, it was only around for one year, I think. But boy, I was into it when I was like seven. Good stuff. You had webbed hands. Yeah, it got me into Play-Doh. Play-Doh, you hadn't been eating it for years. Funny guy. All right, so that's it. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Thank you for doing this one with me.

It was awesome. Thank you for opening my eyes to coolness. Anytime. If you want to know more about Haliki, you should search for Was There a Real Atlantis by typing that into the search bar at House of Works dot com. And I said that, which means it's time for a listener main. That's right. Josh, remember when we did a little TV pilot recently? We tried to get these bookings onto the show. They arrived a little late. We weren't able to. But I want to tell everyone about this project because that sounds very cryptic. This is from Mike. Hey, guys. I've been a big fan for a couple of years. And I especially like that some of your causes you have taken on and considered and done podcasts about. Kiva and the cooperative for education in particular.

So our Guatemala podcast gave him an idea for a Facebook fundraising idea to raise awareness for co-op or buddies cooperative for education. So Cincinnati, who do the awesome textbook programs and computer center labs in Guatemala. And he proposed to them and they said, hey, let's do this. So his idea was to create quote unquote celebrity bookends with just this basic idea, take an ordinary set of bookends although they are pretty fancy looking. I got to admit and make them super famous pop culture icons through social media and then sell them for a million bucks and give it all to co-ed. So that's the plan. It's a good plan. I don't know if we added anything to that. We added it at least 70 cents. Okay, good. He says, I know it sounds crazy, but crazy is

usually what it takes to get people to notice things. The rational thinking behind this is that to get famous, all you need to have are a ton of people believing that you're famous. You know? Yeah. I mean, what else is celebrity? Yeah, exactly. So they're trying to drum up celebrity for these bookends to raise awareness. They have sent them around the world to meet people and to be on TV shows and in movies. They're documenting this on Facebook, the travels of these bookends and Twitter and blogs for people to follow. And our big audacious goal is to get as many Facebook fans as Kim Kardashian. She has nine million fans. Can you believe that? Stanley, yes. Wow. So what we're hoping for your listeners is that they will like the idea enough

to want to help. All you have to do, it can be as simple as going to the Facebook page, follow you on Twitter, the celebrity bookends, that is, tweet about us, blog about us, tell your friends to like us and hook us up with any celebrity friends that you might have. They have been in the hands of Danny DeVito, Matt Burninger of The National. Right. I didn't know how to pronounce that, but I do love The National. And I believe I saw Jeff Bridges holding these things. Did you really? Yeah. Wow. Is that before us? Yeah. Sweet. So we actually got a little DeVito Bridges stank on our hands. Yeah. Unless they clean these things. And they sent it to us and originally to get it in our cubicles on the TV pilot, but they arrived a little late. We weren't

able to. So we just did some pictures and maybe on down the road, if we do any more TV stuff, we can get them on television and do our part to help raise awareness. Nice, man. So Facebook.com slash celebrity bookends or Twitter at celebrity bookends or send an email to celebrity bookends at Gmail. And that raises awareness to eventually sell these things to Danny DeVito to raise money for Coed for a million bucks. Well, I certainly don't have a million bucks. Well, we also have our own Twitter handle. And you can get in touch with us too. While you're talking to celebrity bookends, you can tweet to us whatever you want. There's no rules, except there has to be 140 characters or less to that rule. That's sysk podcast. We're also on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash stuff

you should know. And you can send us an email as well at stuff podcast at discovery dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast stuff from the future. Join House to work staff as we explore them as promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you the war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff stuff that'll piss you off the cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil asset. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the I heart radio Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

I'm Langston Kermit. Sometimes I'm on TV. I'm David boring. I'm probably on TV right now. David and I are going to take a deep dive every week into the most exciting groundbreaking and sometimes problematic black conspiracy theories. We've had amazing past notable guests like Brandon Kyle Goodman, Sam J. Quinta Brunson and so many more new episodes around every Tuesday. Many episodes out on Thursdays where we answer you the listeners conspiracy theories. Listen to my mama told me on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.