ZM's Fletch, Vaughan & Hayley - Fletch, Vaughan & Hayley's Fact of the Day (of the Week!) - Cave Week!

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

On This FOTD(OTW); Vaughan goes spelunking for some Cave Facts that you Stalag'MIGHT not have heard before!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The ZM Podcast Network. Play ZM's Fletch, Vaughn and Hayley. On today's Fact of the Day of the Week, Vaughn pulls on his harness and straps in for a week of cave facts. It's time for... Fact of the Day, Day really going to get the speleologists going Speleologists? Is it a cave-ologist?

It's a person that explores caves and specialises in them Speleologists I'm not a fan of those caves where I did one on a school camp in late Waitomo and you had to squeeze through. It's a no for me. And I was a fat kid and it was squishy and then you

in these caves and then you're like, it's too claustrophobic. Any place where you can get wedged. Yeah, yeah. And you're underground? Yeah, no thanks. Hello? We. And you're underground? Yeah. No, thanks. Hello. We're not meant to be down there. We're not meant to be down there.

Yeah. Get out of it. I don't mind a big cave, like underground. You know, you see that I've been to some caves overseas and you go down some stairs. And, you know, there's stairs. There's like a pool in there. And there's, yeah, pools and the light comes down.

Well, we will be exploring various types of caves through the week. Okay. And there are some, but I would like to firstly pop today to the Cave of Crystals. Okay. It is connected to a mine in Mexico, 300 metres below the surface. It was discovered by a mining company who were looking to put a new cave. They were exploring for various goods and elements and ores and such in the area. And they had a bit of a breakthrough.

And they're like, what's down here? And they went for a look. And it's the Cave of Crystals. Large gypsum crystals. I actually need some gypsum because you put gypsum on your garden, it breaks up the clay. Isn't that what's in, that's gyb board, right? Gyb board, yeah. Well, gypsum is a main ingredient in jib board. Plaster of Paris is gypsum plaster, effectively.

Well, this is beautiful, Vaughn. Well, isn't it amazing? So these gypsum crystals are massive. The longest one over 11 metres in one single crystal. Now, you'll remember as children, you'd mix up a solution and put a string with a popsicle stick and then you'd put it in the

hot water cupboard and as it dehydrated the crystals would grow up the string. Yes. Wow. That's effectively what this cave did. It was once upon a time filled with a very rich mixture of gypsum salts. God, it's so beautiful. And as the water. God, it's so beautiful. And as the water

receded, it left, it slowly did it, and it left behind these giant, giant crystals. They're like tower, like pillars. Yeah. Now, can we just get a quick check, because producer Jared has brought up that they prefer to be called travellers.

I don't know if we're allowed to say gypsum anymore. Oh, gypsums. No, no, no. Gypsums, they're completely different. You've got different things there. You're not allowed in the cave of crystals. And here's why. You're not allowed in. Wait, did you say this is in Mexico?

Yes. Because the one I'm looking at here in Spain, that's another cave of crystals. But that looks more like Superman's Fortress of Solitude. Yeah. Those look like ice. These are like long, shard, crystal, like jagged, pointy out. So cool.

And I looked and I said, are these technically stalagmites or stalactites? They are not because they didn't form from like dripping. Right. They just like slowly dried out and just. You can't go in there. It's very very deadly. You've got to be wearing special suit because just below it, it can

get up to like 54 degrees in there because there's a volcanic Oh yeah, like a vent or something. A vent underneath which can warm up the crystal cave as well as being at 98% humidity. It's a very very dangerous place. You have to be like an expert to get in there and it requires a whole lot of special gear.

Okay. But you can give that a Google because it is quite unusual. You see the pictures and you're like, wow. It just looks like out of this world. It looks like it's under a microscope. Yeah. You're like, that's amazing. And then you see a scale with a human standing in there

and you're like, oh, it's insane. It looks like the set of a sci-fi movie, eh? Correct. Like they've had to go under the ground to get the energy source. Yes. Or the magic pendant. All the proportions just feel off in my brain. Yeah.

They're too big. Crazy. That's why it is beautiful but deadly. So today's fact of the day is in Mexico, 300 metres under the surface, there's a cave full of giant, giant crystals. Today's fact of the day is the interesting cave fact. I was telling Georgie yesterday and she ignored me, so I stole her shoe and put it on the top of the basketball hoop in the studio and she's not listening today either, so she's about to lose her shoe.

It's cave week here at fact of the day. And today I want to talk about the great stalactite pipe organ. You might be thinking, stalactite pipe organ, is that a word? It's not. It's a compound word of stalactite. Yeah. Stalagmite, because it uses both, and pipe organ. Even though there's no pipes like a traditional pipe organ,

but the base of the instrument looks like a pipe organ. It is located in the Luray Caverns in Virginia in the USA. A man was on a trip. These caverns, you've been able to go into these caverns forever in a day. Beautiful stalagmites, like the limestone stalagmites and the stalactites from the ceiling because they hold on tight. Mites, they grow like a mighty mountain. Oh, that's good.

That's the way to remember that. His child, as they do, was running around playing silly buggers when he turned and donged into a stalactite. And it made a dong. It reverberated throughout. And that was when he came up with the idea. And I'm guessing this was before any sort of, his name was Leroy Sprinkle? Great name. Sprinkle.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've never heard of someone with the last name Sprinkle. What was the last name Sprinkle? I don't know. Sprinkle. Haley Jane Sprinkle. I was like Lilo Sprinkle or Leroy Sprinkle. Okay.

Hell of a name. Hell of a man. And the sound made throughout it, he was like, that's pretty good. And then he went around banging on tongan on other ones. And he was like, individually owned cave. He said to the cave owner, I've got a bit of an idea, but I'm going to need to be able to have access. How do you own a cave?

He just owned the land that the cave was on. Oh, wow. And in America, that's why if you own the land that oil's found underneath, you own down, I believe, and the minerals underneath. But in New Zealand, you don't. You only own a certain amount at the top. So should you be paying for the water that you take from your land underneath the ground?

I paid the boring fee. Yeah, but I feel like you should give something because Hayley's people had the land first. You could just give a little donation every year. I do. I bring her a couple of glasses of water. It's good water. I'm happy with that. She's been in the spa once and I believe that's duty paid.

That's duty paid enough. So he spent the next three years inventing an organ basically that would play the different stalactites and mites around the cave. Some of them weren't exactly to pitch. You know, tuning forks,

how they tune a piano? Hayley would know, but they bang it and they listen and then they adjust the tightness of the strings. He basically did that and he would go around and find ones that made the right sound when he hit them. And then when he cut it off and put them together.

No, no, no, no, no. He'd leave them where they are and if it was a bit sharp, he'd shave it. He'd shave a bit off and dong it again until it was the right frequency. Right pitch. So then he got an organ bass. And through that, basically, every time he pushed a key, it sent an electrical surge up to a little rubber-ended prong

that would go dong and, like like punch at the stalactite and then it would doink and it would doink like when you kind of kick a pedal on a drum yes drum kit

it just goes boom yeah it goes but it was like electrically it had going down the wire do you have a video

I do yeah oh thank god this is an official recording so because I found some other ones where news stories went but people were constantly

talking over it being played. Really? So I have found Midnight in the Caverns. Montel Maxwell is playing here the great Stalactite orb, and he's playing the Moonlight Sonata. Oh, I can play that. Okay, well, here it is. Lovely.

Oh, my God. Was that Drippy Water? Drippy Water. Oh, my God. Well, that's nice, isn't it? That's beautiful. And the good thing about this is they had microphones at every part, so it sounds right, whereas the other ones also,

they're like, I couldn't hear that one. He's like, you've got to be sitting over there to hear it. Right. Because it's obviously reverberates in the area. Oh, so they put all the files together. Yeah, yeah, yeah, layered them. That's stunning. And that's what it sounds like when a cab is files together. Yeah, yeah, yeah, layered them. That's stunning. And that's what it sounds like when a cabin can be played.

You could go to sleep with that. That's quite a nice going. The drips are a bit much. A little jarring. Because it feels like someone's left just hasn't turned the tap off quite tight enough in the bathroom. Yeah. Hey, babe, when you get up to pee, can you tighten that faucet?

It's really keeping me awake. It's really going to. I mean, I could get up and deal with it myself, but I'm just going to push the pillow over my ear and listen to the sounds of the cabin being played. Isn't it? Beautiful sound. I don't think you get away with it these days,

rocking into like a cave full of like really old stalagmites and stalactites and be like, let's turn it into a piano. Let's boing them. Let's get them boing and happening. And if one's too big, I'm going to shave it down a little bit. So today's fact of the day is there is a cave that can be played like a musical

instrument. Play ZM's Fletch Vaughan and Hayley. Play ZM. Cave week here at fact of the day. Yeah, boy. Good stuff. It's been fascinating so far. It's been a good week. I'm really enjoying

it. I hope today's is fascinating as well. Okay. Because we're going to Kentucky. Okay. In the United States of America. Right. Kentucky is the home of the Mammoth Cave. It is the world's longest known cave system.

420 miles of subterranean wonder has been mapped. That's a no thanks from me. Some of it's massive though, because mammoth, the name doesn't refer to bones of the prehistoric elephant-like creature being found. Mammoth refers to the scale of things. There's some huge, they're so big, they're called vast theaters

of cave, like underground massive openings. Avenues where you could literally drive a car down some of these caves, because they're so massive, as well as some much tighter. When it gets to the end of things, things get a little bit tighter. And there are tours that can take up to and over six hours. Wow. Where you can walk around the caves.

Multiple day tours. It's a massive amount of things. But the most interesting thing about the Mammoth Cave that I found out is that in a quest to cure, I guess, tuberculosis, Dr. John Krognon of Kentucky, who also had tuberculosis, purchased Mammoth Cave for $10,000 in the 1830s. They didn't know a lot about what they were calling the white plague, tuberculosis then, consumption. They started calling it a lot about what they were calling the white plague, tuberculosis then. Consumption, they started calling it a little later in the century. And he said that visitors and miners in the caves had reported feeling well after spending time in the cave.

The air is slightly exhilarating, sustains one. And it's exciting being down there. And when you're down there, you hardly feel any sense of fatigue. And he's like, well, these are all the things that you experience with the consumption, with the white plague. With the consumption. So he invited 16 patients to take up residence in the cave. Okay. In the winter of 1842.

They had some lovely slaves build them some houses down there. Wow. Shout out to the slaves. Shout out to the slaves who built stone cabins and simple wooden structures and everything. So they had watches. They would sink them to the outside world and then of course go in because there was no natural light.

Yeah, they wouldn't know. And they kind of kept up life as per in the cave. But you'll be thinking if it was dark and in the 1800s you wouldn't have had solar powered torches or batteries or anything like that. Of course, they had to have oil lanterns and a large fire in the middle. Now, one other thing you'll be familiar about caves is that the smoke coming off that fire

probably couldn't get out because caves aren't chimneys. No, no. They go straight up. They kind of go down. There's pockets where it would get caught. Oh, that'd be awful. Yeah, so whilst immediately when they went down there, all of the victims began to feel better. The people that

suffered from tuberculosis, they began to feel better. Soon after, the smoke and ash from the lanterns and the large fire used to continuously light the cave made them all feel a whole lot worse and degraded and also damaged their lungs. So a few people died and then they decided to cease the experiment.

But when it first went down and everyone started feeling better, he immediately had plans drawn up for an underground hotel where you would come and stay when you had tuberculosis. Did they figure out why that was good for tuberculosis? In the cave. Yeah. So there was suspicion that it was like less, because people were all living in polluted cities.

Yeah, right. A lot of people with tuberculosis, it was exasperated by the fact that they were living in places where coal was burning 24-7. They had fires burning in their houses. It was dusty. Yeah. So when they went to these faraway places,

often it was just getting out of the, so it was down there. It was kind of fresh air. It was cooler, it was a consistent temperature it didn't go up and down, up and down in the caves underground Wowzers Now if he'd done it in modern times granted tuberculosis is not the problem it once was

in the western world John Green, author of many books and movies loves a bit of tuberculosis facts, so I know it's not completely gone. Yeah, right. From following him online and listening to his podcast. Tuberculosis is still a problem,

but in modern times it could have been a different story. Wow. So today's fact of the day is the longest known cave network in the world was also home to a once and evidently failed tuberculosis hotel. Today's Fact of the Day is Cave Week here at Fact of the Day and today's Fact of the Day is about the deepest cave from point of

entry to lowest point explored to present day. I feel like this is going to make me feel sick. It will. Yeah. The very of Kena Cave is in the Republic of Abskhazia. I've never heard of. How's it spelled?

A-B-K-H-A-Z-I-A. K-H-A-Z-I-A. Oh, wow. Abkhazia. It's an ex-Soviet state. It has at some stage been part of Russia, but now is its own state. Well, no doubt they'll want that back in a few years. Internationally recognised as a part of Russia, but now has its own state. Well, no doubt they'll want that back in a few years. Internationally recognised as a part of Georgia.

Right. Which is still on Russia's team, I think. Yeah. Last time I checked. Not our Georgia, Georgia Burt. I'm not sure of her stance on Russia. I'm imagining she's not as pro-Russia as the country of her name. She's getting a no. Your silence speaks volumes.

Don't be a coward. So this cave was only discovered in 1968. It is 2,223 metres up. So up in a mountain range, some people in 1968 find a four by three metre hole. Okay. And they're like, what are you doing here? Hole? What are you doing here, hole?

So they stick their head in the hole, and they find out it is a 23-meter straight-down drop. Yeah. So they're like, not my bag, baby, but I know some speleologists. Yeah, you'll remember that. I do remember it. It'll be right into that. Cave nerds.

In 1968, the cave was discovered and subsequently explored to the depth of 115 metres. 1982, so some time later. Yeah. The cave was discovered for a second time because, I mean, Russia had bigger things to worry about at the time. Yeah. I'll be honest, in the 60s. Through to the 80s, it was discovered again and marked and it was then explored to a depth of 440 metres.

So it went from 150 metres to 440. They're like, you know what? This is a deep cave. And then from 1986 to the year 2000, nothing happened at the cave. And they were like,

we're going back to the cave. Okay. And we're going to see how deep this thing goes. So then the deepest they got from 2000 to 2015 was just past 440

metres, which is what they got to in 1986. Wowzers. Then of course, everybody's just like, well, there's a challenge and a world record and a YouTube thing and a TikTok. I'll probably get that on TikTok. So further exploration started. As of August 2023, the cave depth had increased to, from 440, 2,223 metres.

Good Lord. Yeah, no thanks. No thank you. I'm all good. It's a no thanks from me. Yeah, I'll sit this one out. So in 2019, they got to 2,212 metres. Not straight down.

Obviously, you curve. Yeah. It curves around. But they got that far, and they got to what is called a siphon. Now, a siphon is what I imagine to be my worst nightmare. It's where a cave goes underwater but comes up again, you think. Like an S-bend that your toilet or your drain has. Yes.

Yeah. So the water's there. You've got to go through the water. Now, the first time you go through, you don't know that there's going to be another end. Yeah. So they didn't know. And at that depth, obviously insanely dangerous.

They took an underwater drone. Oh, okay. And went under and found out that it is indeed a siphon and it is called Captain Nemo's Last Stand, due to the fact that it's so far under the sea. And Captain Nemo was the captain and 20,000 legs under the sea, sorry, under the surface.

So it's that far down. That's how far down they've got, 2,223 metres, which if you're thinking about how high is Mount Taranaki at the top? Two and a half. So just shy of how far that is above the surface of the earth is how far below the earth

this cave goes. I don't like that. No thanks. I'm all good. You know what I mean? I'm not a huge fan of it. Why do we need to explore this? Leave it be.

It has the deepest permanent camp set up at 600 metres below the surface. There's a permanent camp set up. And in 2021 when some explorers got their anonymity in the cave for a while a permanent camp set up. And in 2021, when some explorers got there and known about it in the cave for a while,

they found signs of life. What do you mean? Spooky. Some belongings. Like a squatting. A squatter. A squatter was squatting at 600 metres below.

During like COVID, this guy, as the story goes, was just like, I'm in lockdown. I'm just going to go caving. I went to this cave. Not really. Not a great thing to do by yourself. Got, was just like, I'm in lockdown. I'm just going to go caving. I went to this cave. Not really.

Not a great thing to do by yourself. Got there and was like, I'm going to go in a little bit further. Got to 1,100 metres deep when he was going down his rope and he had an equipment failure where he hung on the rope as he died of hypothermia. At 1,100 metres, all by himself. Oh, I don't like that for him now. Just hanging out.

Hanging on a rope. Goodness. I'm all good. Does it grim in to today's fact of the day, Vaughn? at 1100 metres all by himself just hanging out hanging on a rope goodness I'm all good does it grim in to today's fact of the day Vaughn well it's no it comes with a moral

can you pep it up a bit it comes with a moral what's the moral when I was a child don't always go caving with friends we were all trying to go into the sewers to be ninja turtles

yes and it was dangerous and it was silly and it was dark I'm gonna move you on now you can get into a lot of trouble same thing happens to grown upsups in caves.

Don't go caving by yourself. Always take a buddy. So today's fact of the day is that the deepest cave in the world currently, and they believe it goes lower, is 2,200 metres below its entry point, Upper Mountain. It's cave week here at Fact of the Day

We're learning all about caves And I just want to give a quick shout out To the caves under Nottingham Nottingham, the city of caves in the UK I've never been to Nottingham It was actually really, really charming I really loved it It was 2010 when we went there

But it just popped up in my Facebook memories That the people we went with uploaded an album So it must be around this time of the year It was May, it was there, but it just popped up in my Facebook memories that the people we went with uploaded an album, so it must be around this time of the year. It was May, it was. You just go into this Westfield, like any Westfield you go to, and then you go down that little alley that usually takes you to the parent rooms and the toilets and stuff, and then there's Margaret sitting there, and she's the guardian of the caves.

Well, I mean, I don't know if Margaret's dead at the end. But it was 14 years ago and Michael wasn't young. So, and you go on this amazing tour of these caves that have been there for hundreds and hundreds of years. And they'd hide in World War II. They'd shelter there from the bombings. Yeah, because it's this limestone and it was safe. But then they built the Westfield on top. Right.

Yeah. This limestone that's underneath is kind of, Nottingham's built on it. Yeah. And it's just amazing. And I just looked. It's amazing because it's a history lesson, but it's also like how did they do this? And they brewed cider down there and they tanned sheepskins

into like coats and stuff and leather. I was going to say they got tans down there. I saw tans down there. No suns. £8.75 per ticket per adult if you're in the area. We got a free one because we were going with

like UK tourism we were with a guy dressed up as Robin Hood do you remember yeah we did we actually had a tour of Nottingham with a guy

because of the sheriff of Nottingham and the Sherwood Forest nearby where we went to how bizarre and the sheriff was a woman

which I was not okay with how advanced how is she going to protect yeah I actually think it's pronounced Sharif it's a female yeah Sharif Which I was not okay with. How advanced. How is she going to protect? Yeah, I actually think it's pronounced Sharif. Sharif. Yeah, Sharif. The Sharif nodding them.

That's not today's cave. No, that's not today's fact. Not today's fact. Today's fact is in Romania, there is a cave, the Movil Cave, that was only discovered in 1986. And for the last five and a half million years, it has been isolated from the rest of the world. Maybe yesterday we talked about the sump or the siphon where you have to go into a cave and you have to go underwater and come up into the cave. For the last five and a half million years, it's been shut off from the rest of the... So it's not getting

anything. It's not getting oxygen. So the animals in there are completely different. And rather than relying on photosynthesis, which is taking the sun's light, like plants do, and turning it into the energy that they need, they rely on chemosynthesis. Which is chemicals that are in there. And it's

hydrothermal waters. There's warm water in there. That's where the chemicals come out of that these things live on. In there, there are 57 unique animal species found nowhere else on Earth. Leeches, spiders, pseudoscorpions. Pseudoscorpions. That's what he was singing about. Woodlice, a centipede, a water scorpion, which is apparently a very real area,

and also a type of snail. None of those interest me or I'd want to run into in a cave. You want a mammal down there. Yeah. Like an otter. Do you'd want to run into in a cave. You want a mammal down there. Like an otter. Oh my god, a cute otter. Wait, now, have we watched that otter documentary yet? No. No. I don't know if I've got the

emotional, you know, capabilities. Did we talk about that on air? I know we talked about it a lot off air. Yeah, there's an otter documentary. An otter turns up and basically saves a man Who was in the middle of a dark period of his life Billy and Molly An Otter love story

Is it Nat Geo or something? It's on Disney Plus It looks beautifully shot It looks gorgeous But this cave Scientists are only allowed to go into it a couple of times a year It's super hard to get on the list to go in. You've got to be like a top-end scientist.

You can't just be like, I do science, now I can't go in the cave. I've got school, see science. Yeah, no, I'm sorry. You can't say that. Can you say that? I've done science. No. I've done science.

And they recently could date one of the animals in there. The snail has lived in the cave for more than, not the same snail. Oh, I thought you meant go in for a day's sake. For a little pasta and red wine. A couple of water scorpions hooked up in the cave for more than, not the same snail. Oh, I thought you meant going for a day's stay. For a little pasta and red wine. A couple of water scorpions hooked up and they caught it on camera. No, one of the snails, not the exact snail,

but the species of snail has inhabited the cave for over two million years and never left. Holy. And evolved to the condition. They should just take one out and plop it in a park and see if it's like, whoa. What if it went crazy though? Like possums in New Zealand.

They're like, I'll bring them down, bit of fur, bit of fun. Sorry to shoot. And now they're everywhere. Yeah. Maybe. Also, do yourself a favour this weekend and look up mink hunting,

the mink that hunts rats. Why? This mink killed 350 rats in a day. We should mink them out everywhere. No. That's another problem. This is a mink on a leash. We do this to ourselves a lot, don't we?

Main con a leash. My favourite Korn song. Does sound like a death metal band, doesn't it? Main con a leash. Main con a leash. Get ready for a song 350 raps in a day. Today's fact of the day is that there is an isolated cave in Romania that has been isolated from the rest of the world for the last

5.5 million years. Fact of the day day day day day do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do

do. Shivers guys 10 out of 10 podcast that one. Yeah. I think two of us were 10 out of 10 podcast that one yeah I think two of us were 10 out of 10 and one of us wasn't or who was that

which one we'll just leave that we'll just leave that there well if you enjoyed today's podcast give us a rating and review please do unless it's a bad one

oh yeah don't bother yeah no don't don't bother ZM's Fletch Vaughan and Hayley