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The End of Martin Butler's Tunnel (Vision)
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Josh and M conclude their discussion of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd editions of "Tunnel Vision" by Martin Butler.
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Transcript
Emerging from the Underground
00:00:00
Speaker
Is that a light? Is that daylight? Well, thank the gods we're finally out of those tunnels. We've been down here for weeks, I thought we'd never find our way out. It has been a time, hasn't it?
00:00:11
Speaker
Endless chapters about planes, tunnels, geriatric witnesses, but no more. We are done with Tunnel Vision and Martin Butler. We can finally set that whole book aside and go back to regular podcasting content.
00:00:25
Speaker
So what should we do next? What the conspiracy? Paper review? could do something new. have a look what's in the news.
Theories and Revelations
00:00:33
Speaker
Oh! Well, they found MH370. Apparently it was just off the coast of Indonesia the entire time.
00:00:39
Speaker
The crew passengers have been Gilligan's Islanding it the entire time. They built a coconut-based radio and finally got in contact with the mainland with... ah The message seems to be the tonic has run out. Come and fetch us.
00:00:50
Speaker
And according to this, all of Palms' assassin has come forward and revealed they acted alone and there was no conspiracy. Oh, and chemtrails are real.
00:01:01
Speaker
They're made by shapeshifting aliens farting mid-flight when abducting people. Hmm. Now this seems a bit... unreal. Hmm? You know the ending of The Descent? The UK ending, not the US ending, where the the the hero thinks she got away, but really she's still trapped in the caves with bloodthirsty cannibals coming to get her?
00:01:21
Speaker
Feels a bit like that. That means you're probably hallucinating. Well, bugger.
Podcast Admission and Commitment
00:01:33
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Edison
00:01:52
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy in Auckland, New Zealand. i am Josh Edison. I'm Guangzhou, China. They are Dr M Denteth. This is it. i I said it last time, and I meant it last time, but I was a liar. I was a filthy goddamn liar, and I lied to you all. That wasn't the last we'd be going to talk about tunnel vision, but this definitely is.
00:02:12
Speaker
If it's not, I will murder one or both of us. I mean, technically... It's only around about 40 pages left of the book, according to the volume that I'm holding.
00:02:24
Speaker
So we should be able to deal with four chapters in the space of about an hour. I say we should. mean, we've planned to do... Less chapters and more, or more chapters and less. I'm not quite sure how the math works there.
00:02:39
Speaker
And we've failed in the past, so you know, this could be kind of Zeno's paradox. it Always getting closer to the end of tunnel vision, and but never quite actually exiting the tunnel. So less like Zeno's paradox, and more like Zeno's cave digger.
00:02:54
Speaker
Yes, that's exactly what it's like. Right, no messing around. We're going to do this. We're going to do it do it fast, as the actress said to someone or other. Going play a chime, and it's all on, as the actress also said to another person.
00:03:14
Speaker
But enough talk of actresses. I don't why you're obsessed with them. We're talking about Tunnel Vision, the book by Martin Butler. It's all about about hidden tunnels and and the things that might be in them. Maybe they're planes. Maybe they're in ammunition. Nobody knows.
00:03:26
Speaker
Maybe they're Superman. they? What? I mean, planes. Maybe it's a dog. Maybe it's a plane. Maybe it's Superman. I don't know. yes, once again, this is...
00:03:38
Speaker
This episode four of our series looking at Tunnel Vision, which I think actually might be our longest book review series. Very much so. That's not true. think well by in terms of episodes, it's our longest. In terms of time, we had two-hour episodes or so when we were doing the Michael Shermer books.
00:03:57
Speaker
So actually, by terms of time, I think we spent more time on other books. But this one, because of our fortnightly schedule, does mean it has been going on for months. It really has.
00:04:09
Speaker
So, quick recap. Martin Butler, first interested in the history of aviation in New Zealand, being behind himself. Wanted to know what happened to a couple of old Boeing aircraft that were a brought into New Zealand around the end of the 1800s, thought they might have been hidden that they might have been stored away in tunnels under North Head in Devonport, Auckland, New Zealand, which has since been hidden.
Unrecognized Discoveries
00:04:32
Speaker
After a bit more fishing around, the planes kind of went to one side and the concern was more about the the possibility that old decaying ammunition is stored in hidden tunnels underneath ah North Head.
00:04:46
Speaker
Where we were last time, he'd gone through all the history, all the court cases that had been, started looking into his own data, doing his own research, started getting overtly conspiratorial. So where we were, he was basically, he is now at the point where he's saying, yes, there are hidden tunnels.
00:05:00
Speaker
The military and the government know there are hidden tunnels. They were deliberately hidden from us, presumably because they have old ammunition than in them and they don't want anybody to know about it. and And basically where we were is having exhausted various sort of official channels of finding out information. He was now about to do some investigating on his own with a bit of ground penetrating radar.
00:05:22
Speaker
who ah You like the word penetration there, don't you? Really pushing the plosives on those P's. It's the best kind of penetration, ground radar penetration. Well, yes. So, once again, there are three editions of this book. So Josh has only read the first edition, and the first edition ends on the promissory note of work is going to be done.
00:05:43
Speaker
Editions two and three were written after the initial ground-penetrating radar surveys were undertaken. which is why we now go on to chapter 14 in the second and third edition. And listeners to previous episodes will know that chapter numbers no longer make any sense because the chapters that Josh is reading are completely different numbering to the chapters that I'm now looking at.
00:06:09
Speaker
So chapter 14 only appears as the ground radar survey chapter in the second and third edition of the book. And this is the new material. This is the stuff that Butler talks about after he has engaged in the ground-penetrating radar survey.
00:06:28
Speaker
And this is one of these things where, no matter what I think about Butler's arguments for the existence of a hidden tunnel complex... the survival of the Boeing seaplanes, or the idea that North Head was an ammunition dumping ground for the military, you have to say he does put his money where his mouth is, because this ground-penetrating radar survey is entirely funded by him.
00:06:59
Speaker
He got permission from the Department of Conservation, and he got permission from the Mona Authority, who now look after North Head, to engage in a survey of North Head to find if there is any evidence for a a hidden tunnel complex and b any reason to believe there's decaying ammunition and storage within tunnels which are no longer accessible to the public.
00:07:26
Speaker
And he pays for this. He hires someone to do the work, and he produces a report. So no matter what we think about his argument, he is willing to put, as they say, money on the line, put money where his mouth is, and every other cliché you can possibly imagine where money is involved, wages, bets, etc., etc.
00:07:50
Speaker
Yes, certainly has the courage of his and his convictions. Yes, that's another canard we can use. He's not a no not not ah not a desktop warrior. He's actually out there trying to genuinely look for these things in the real world. He's out there...
00:08:05
Speaker
where he would like to be digging holes in North Head to find these tunnels. But the Department of Conservation and the Mona Authority don't really want a dig on the site.
00:08:17
Speaker
This is in part because as far as the Department of Conservation is concerned, they think the area is safe. and thus they aren't worried about hidden tunnels and undisposed of ammunition.
00:08:28
Speaker
And as far as the Munna Authority is concerned, they've consulted Doc, who were the last people to be looking after North Head, and Doc doesn't think that the place is unsafe because of the aforementioned reasons.
00:08:41
Speaker
So they don't want him to dig any holes, in part because as soon as the Munna Authority took over... control, guidance, guardianship, that's what i'm looking for, of North Head.
00:08:54
Speaker
Their focus is much more on the Maori past of the Head rather it is in the military past of the Head. So they don't really want any further disturbance of the hillside given it's been pretty much disturbed by Europeans since occupation because they built a bloody big military fort on what used to be a defensive power in Devonport.
00:09:19
Speaker
However, they are allowing him, or they did allow him, to engage in a ground radar survey it's non-penetrative, or to say it is a non-invasive investigation of the Hill.
Challenges in Tunnel Exploration
00:09:33
Speaker
Right, so and this is this, I assume, is the results and and chronicle of that whole survey? Right. Basically, yes. So Butler motivates his discussion by saying, look, he wants to look for the missing command and control center at the summit because the structure is referenced in the history and nobody knows where it is.
00:09:56
Speaker
Some people think that the reason why it's referenced in the history but can't be found is that it was an above-ground structure, so basically a wooden building on the top of North Head.
00:10:06
Speaker
and that was dismantled at some point or destroyed but as we discussed in the world war ii chapter butler is of the opinion that this missing command and control centre should have been built underground if the builders of the fort were following the official instructions So if he can find evidence for the command and control structure beneath the summit of North Head, then that provides evidence that there are indeed missing and possibly, because ah no one knows where it is, hidden tunnels.
00:10:43
Speaker
And the command and control center would have been connected to other parts of the hill. And thus this would give evidence, if found, for a multi-level structure found within the hill face.
00:10:56
Speaker
So he decides to employ Matt Watson, who works for Scantech. And Matt Watson is a geophysicist who is apt to use ground radar survey to locate things underground. He has a record of doing work both for private commercial interests and also, i believe, ah aiding the military in looking for things as well.
00:11:21
Speaker
And the interesting thing about Matt Watson, according to Butler, is that Matt Watson is a skeptic when he comes onto Butler's team.
00:11:32
Speaker
So Butler employs him to engage in ground radar penetrating surveys of the summit of North Head. Matt Watson has looked at the existing reports by the Department of Conservation. And when he starts the job,
00:11:45
Speaker
He doesn't think there's much to Martin Butler's story at all, but by the end of the job, he is convinced that there is at least something unexplained beneath the surface of North Head.
00:11:58
Speaker
Right. yeah Now, i actually, skipping ahead slightly, edition one that I have has a little epilogue at the end, and that does contain just a little bit of what you've been talking about. So I think he just sort of just conducted it but hadn't hadn't had time to summarise it properly. So it does mention a couple of these things. He says they found what looked like tunnels, possibly a large room, and then this metallic mass.
00:12:25
Speaker
which got him to um contact the Ministry of Defence, which he doesn't really go into lot more detail than that. I assume that's what you're going to be spelling out here. Yeah. So in this chapter, we get a potted account of what they found. And this is all done with a ground radar that has a depth range of five meters. So essentially, has the ability to penetrate five meters of soil and give you feedback as to what is found at each particular part of that five meter depth, which is
00:13:00
Speaker
Basically sufficient to work out whether there's the top of a tunnel or a structure beneath a piece of earth. Torpedo Yard doesn't get scanned, even though, as I've said in previous episodes, the missing tunnel that's meant to be off Torpedo Yard, or the hidden tunnel that's meant to be off Torpedo Yard,
00:13:19
Speaker
and appears to actually be the most plausible part of the story. The reason why a Torpedo Yard is not scanned is that there's a lack of permission from the Navy who have control of Torpedo Yard up to this day.
00:13:31
Speaker
So it's a shame they can't investigate the area I think has the most promise, but they weren't able to because the Navy didn't really want someone wandering around with a scanning device on an active military site.
00:13:45
Speaker
So on the 16th of February, back in the year of our Lord, 2012, they start. And by the 18th of February, so two days later, they'd found traces of what Butler takes to be three tunnels and a room.
00:14:01
Speaker
So essentially they're going around with their grain radar server. I don't even grain radar is. I bet it's to detect serial boxes beneath the ground. They're going around with the ground radar survey, basically scanning the surface, getting a readout, and then getting a kind of three-dimensional map of what is beneath the ground.
00:14:23
Speaker
A fun fact, when I was doing archaeology at the University of Auckland, I got to use a ground radar survey in Albert Park. And if people know anything about Albert Park, it was a fortified place during World War II. It has tunnel structures beneath it, so you can find evidence of tunnels in Albert Park with a ground radar. It's a very effective way of basically doing a non-intrusive survey of a site in preparation for an archaeological dig.
00:14:53
Speaker
So yeah, by the 18th they've found what Butler takes to be, three tunnels and a room. And by the 19th they've found metallic objects or an underground bunker and two other potential tunnels.
00:15:09
Speaker
By the 20th, the magnetic mass they found the previous day is assumed to be a metal roof or even evidence of munitions.
00:15:22
Speaker
And that is why they decide to contact the Minister of Defence, Jonathan Coleman. And what does he have to say for himself? Well, let me let me read out the summary of what was sent.
00:15:36
Speaker
So, the conclusion of the Scantech report stated, this is page 346 of the second edition of Tunnel Vision. Preliminary ground penetrating, GPR scanning and data processing has been carried out on a small number of sites at North Head.
00:15:52
Speaker
Anomalies are present in the GPR images that have been interpreted as possible cavities and underground structures. These appear to be additional to the existing underground structures.
00:16:03
Speaker
Generally, all GPR data collected at this stage is in the 3 to 4 meter depth range. Each of the three areas sampled so far with GPR indicate numerous anomalies that show the waveform characteristics of underground workings.
00:16:18
Speaker
Some of the features observed appear to be extensions of existing underground structures. Other features have the signal characteristics of air-filled cavities, and in some
Revealing the Unseen
00:16:29
Speaker
cases, high-intensity reflected signal may be due to the presence of metallic objects or steel reinforced structures.
00:16:38
Speaker
It is recommended that the clarification of the anomalies identified by the GPR scanning results is carried out by excavation. As this is a former military site, the possible presence of unexploded ordnance should be taken into consideration. And this is a report written by Matt Watson, BSC, MSC, Honors.
00:17:02
Speaker
And they get a response from Jonathan Coleman, who, Basically a month later, so it's the 20th of March, when Coleman responds with... the advice i received from the new zealand defence force is that it does not consider there being any risk to the public from decaying munitions at either the torpedo yard or north head If any risk was thought to exist, it would have been resolved prior to the opening of the land to the public.
00:17:28
Speaker
The DTA, the Defence Technology Agency, raised concern over the accuracy of the preliminary survey completed for North Head, as there is no mention of soil conditions in the report.
00:17:39
Speaker
The soil conditions at North Head and Torpedo Bay need to be factored, being close to the sea, as the conductivity of the soil can significantly influence results.
00:17:50
Speaker
Now, Minister Coleman's response gets a scathing response from Butler in the text. Did the DTA really think that Matt Watson, a professional geophysicist who makes us living with ground radar, would not factor a soil conductivity into his equations?
00:18:07
Speaker
They continued. this is the This is Minister Coleman's report. It gives an approximate resolution of 0.75 to 1.5 meters, which should... Oh, actually, this is one of these things where I think...
00:18:20
Speaker
No, no, no, this is the de this is the DTA. way that Butler excerpts particular bits of text sometimes is a bit confusing. So it gives an approximate resolution of 0.75 to 1.5 meters, which should be sufficient to discern tunnels or large underground features.
00:18:39
Speaker
However, it is doubted whether these frequencies will be able to resolve anything small, like ordnance, and that then leads SCANTEC to provide a detailed technical response to the DTA to say that, look, I've done work for the military before, particularly the New Zealand Defence Force, and I know what I'm doing. Of course, I took into account soil conditions.
00:19:03
Speaker
Right. to any any Any response from that or...? No, there doesn't need to be any. i mean, Butler says, however, Mr. Coleman had his report from the DTA and made his decision based upon it.
00:19:16
Speaker
There are no tunnels or explosives at North Head. Therefore, I was free to continue my investigation, but not at Torpedo Yard, where the military continued to refuse permission for a GPR survey.
00:19:29
Speaker
So basically, Jonathan Coleman is going, sorry, I'm just not convinced. And the New Zealand Defence Force isn't convinced either. Okay. Is that it for the scans then?
00:19:40
Speaker
Well, we get a lot of images and I know how much you love a diagram in a book. You're a big fan of diagrams. It is actually a shame that you don't have this edition of the book because you get... ah Actually, um'm I'm going to hold this image up to the camera here. This is really great podcasting material.
00:20:02
Speaker
ah But Josh can just... ah There is a so scan of the Summit of North Head around the two extant gun batteries we know exist there. And you've got this scanned area with bits in red, bits in yellow, and bits in green.
00:20:17
Speaker
Yeah, so we have an aerial photograph with the two batteries and the structure below it. It makes it look like a funny face, I have to say. It does. doesn't like It does look like said robot. And is the is this dance games so but where where it has two um sort of predominant red areas that kind of look like like angry eyebrows.
00:20:40
Speaker
But I assume the purpose of it is not to provide a diverting image for me. It is supposed to be saying, here are the areas where we found stuff. so So the red... Yellow is everywhere they scanned, and the red of the is what is what what looked like. Yeah, so yellow-green is the areas... Well, is the total area scan. The red are the anomalies.
00:21:04
Speaker
And so as you can see, you have excavation evidence around the gun pit, which you probably expect to find if you were building a gun pit, there would be disturbance around the soil there.
00:21:15
Speaker
There is the interesting thing that there are, and you I don't know whether you can see this particularly well on camera, they've drawn a tunnel line based upon three sets of red dots, which they take to be evidence of a tunnel there.
00:21:28
Speaker
That looks like the kind of thing where if you have three points on a piece of paper, you can make any structure appear there. I'm not quite... I don't see... Why is it a straight line as opposed to a cosine curve? I mean, you could draw that in as well.
00:21:42
Speaker
So you get a lot of diagrams of this particular type, which I guess... Because Matt Watson thinks they indicate something, Butler ends up thinking they're kind of self-evident, except that they're they're really not. Let me show you another one of these apparently self-evident diagrams here.
00:22:02
Speaker
This is the metallic mass, which is meant to indicate the top, the roof of the structure or ammunition. which is basically they found a cluster of anomalies within the ground and from that inferred the shape of a room and from that then inferred that that is a is a structure beneath the ground.
00:22:22
Speaker
Yes, I mean, looking at the picture, it's red blobs. Yeah. so i mean no bitley I mean, I've done ground penetrating radar stuff at university. and know so I know to extent how it works.
00:22:35
Speaker
I am, of course, not an expert like Matt Watson. So, of course, I don't have the ability to read these scans in the same way a professional does. But Butler doesn't describe these in a way to give you confidence that these are anything other than anomalies beneath the ground, given the fact that as we know North Head is a welded scoria cone, we know it has air bubbles in the scoria makeup.
00:23:04
Speaker
So if you're doing scans of North Head, you are going to find pockets of air which will appear like anomalies according to a scan. So by itself, it's not particularly meaningful.
00:23:19
Speaker
And these are examples of diagrams that are taken to be self-evident, even though they're really not. Right. Now, he mentions the GCSB scans at this point, ah according to your notes, which i mean you would have come up And they've never really made much of them, I think mostly because according to the GCSB, they have no data. There was nothing to say about them.
00:23:43
Speaker
Or at least they're not willing to reveal. They claim to have no data. So what does he say about it? Well, he just he takes a lot of the fact that the GCSB did a scan and then denied there being any record of it.
00:23:59
Speaker
And he does point out, and this is interesting, that the site that the GCSB scanned is also the site of the anomalous toll-end readings.
00:24:11
Speaker
So there a whole bunch of guess readings over known and extant tunnel structures. And the standard line, as put forward by the Department of Conservation, is that these...
00:24:25
Speaker
Gases are the artifact of the fact that the coal tar that was used to line the tunnels when they were built in the 19th century is still wet and thus is still giving off gas.
00:24:38
Speaker
The problem with the anomalous Tolean reading is that it's at a location where there is no known tunnel structure. So it is unusual. You've got a gas reading being located at that place.
00:24:50
Speaker
Various explanations have been put forward over the years, from petrol dumping at a location, um refuse being located there to explain why the gas And yeah, there is something interesting about the fact that the GCSB apparently scanned in that very location.
00:25:11
Speaker
But of course, we don't actually know whether that is meaningful in any way, shape or form. But... What is interesting is that the Department of Conservation does agree, based upon the evidence that Martin Butler produces with the help of Scott Watson, that this is sufficient reason to allow further investigation of the site.
00:25:39
Speaker
So they go, yes, you have provided us with scans of anomalies on the head, And those scans are certainly indicative of something.
00:25:51
Speaker
And thus there's no reason why you can't continue to investigate. Now, the interesting thing here is that when I read the second edition of the book,
00:26:03
Speaker
I had both a meeting with Martin Butler and I was in correspondence with Dave Vert about the claims that Butler made. because I did feel that I should at least ask Dave, what do you think about Martin Butler's findings?
00:26:19
Speaker
And Dave Vert's response was, yes, these are very interesting discoveries, but Some of which are things which we probably knew about but thought were lost. So as Dave Virk points out, during, i think it was World War I, it may have also been World War II, there was a trench set up for bayoneting practice.
00:26:42
Speaker
And as far as anyone is concerned, that trench was then filled in at some further point, and they were never able to find evidence of the trench. But ground-penetrating radar would find evidence of that, because the soil composition where the trench was would be different from the surrounding land. It would come up as a kind of anomaly.
00:27:05
Speaker
And so Dave was going, look, some of these structures are things that we know existed, weren't tunnels and this is good evidence that maybe further archaeological investigation will discover those sites so it's not as if the department of conservation went poo poo no what you've discovered here is all rubbish go away they were going look there's no harm in continuing the investigation However, it's probably worth reading how will the chapter ends.
00:27:39
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And by the way, when you when you say continue the investigation, I assume that means more ground surveys, not actual digging. or Yeah. Yeah. yeah it's ah No one actually wants anyone to dig there.
00:27:50
Speaker
They just want to, they they want there to be more accurate surveying work. So the very end of the chapter ends with a letter from Matt Watson, dated the 25th of November, 2013.
00:28:03
Speaker
twenty thirteen To whom it may concern, I'm a geophysicist and director of a small company, Scantech Limited, specializing in shallow, high-resolution geophysical imaging techniques.
00:28:15
Speaker
Scantec provides services to many high-level engineering projects around New Zealand, including the Waterview Tunnel, Mighty River, Meridian and Contact Energy Power Station sites, and prefer ah proposed wind farm sites, bridge and tunnel lining investigations for the New Zealand Transport association as would those say new zealand transport Authority so i'm reading up the acronym rather than saying in indeedta and kiwi rail We also provide scanning of archaeological sites involving numerous high-profile sites around New Zealand.
00:28:48
Speaker
Over the last two years, I've carried out GPR scanning at North Head for Martin Butler. Detailed analysis of the GPR data collected to date at North Head indicates a large number of unusual and regular-shaped radial planar and linear features that are very likely to relate to underground workings.
00:29:07
Speaker
These appear not to be part of the current open network of tunnels. It is my professional opinion that verification of these features should be carried out by physical investigation, drilling, or excavation.
00:29:20
Speaker
As a member of the public using North Head, I would also like assurance that there are no buried UXO or hazardous military refuse contained within the, in brackets, possible sealed underground workings,
00:29:33
Speaker
that may cause personal injury or environmental issues in future. Yours sincerely, Matt Watson, Geophysicist, Director, BSc MSC Ons, Scantec Limited.
00:29:44
Speaker
a and that That's where it goes out on. It's the end of that chapter. yeah Yeah. Right. Well then. then now Now it's my bit, and it's my last bit, or my last two bits, I think, because um where it goes next is what is my chapter 12, I assume your chapter 15, which is conclusion.
00:30:02
Speaker
and as you'd expect from a chapter called conclusion, it basically concludes. It's a restatement of of everything that's come so far in the book and um and sort of a ah ah summation of it all. And by this point, Butler's not playing around. he's It's quite clear...
00:30:18
Speaker
what he thinks went on, what his version of events is. And so he then goes through the various bits of evidence that he thinks prove his case. I was interested, in in this chapter for me, that that secret witness from the 1988 John Earnshaw investigation is mentioned.
00:30:34
Speaker
ah Again, not much comes along. It sounds like that should be a bigger deal than it is, but it's just sort of the the presence of this person has been mentioned a couple of times, and that's really um that's really all we've heard.
00:30:47
Speaker
as As we've seen earlier, it relies fairly heavily on witness statements. He says the conspiracy picture that Doug Patterson painted was clear and consistent with the evidence of the other eyewitnesses, Doug Patterson being the guy who talked to Bob Tizard way back when, and Bob Tizard is the one who, as as Minister of Defence, was apparently telling people, yes, there's tunnels under there.
00:31:08
Speaker
As it goes through, there's a bit of the um ah bit of the style of of of argumentation we've seen. We saw it in that 9-11 truth paper by, what was her name? Oh. <unk> The American lecturer at AUT.
00:31:24
Speaker
Anyway, her name is is not as important as the fact was that that this... Amy Benjamin... Oh, now what was it? Eric Benjamin... Anyway, she her whole argument was but it turned out that 9-11... Amy Baker Benjamin.
00:31:40
Speaker
Amy Baker Benjamin. ah where were we're In the same way that she says it would be a massive deal if 9-11 did turn out to be an inside job, therefore we should investigate it. He he does a bit of...
00:31:50
Speaker
it would be a massive deal if there was large amounts of unexploded ammunition under North Head. So we should look at this. I'm not against that particular style of argumentation. I've argued in numerous places that if it is the fact there are alien shapeshifting reptiles in control of the world, someone should actually be looking into that claim.
00:32:10
Speaker
So I do think if you're going to treat conspiracy theories seriously, you sometimes have to take claims like this seriously. and at least one person needs to go away and investigate to see how plausible that claim is. Because if alien shapeshifting reptiles are drinking our chi children's blood and taking o over the world, most of us probably want to put a stop to that. Unless you're an oligarch, at which point you probably just want to join in.
00:32:37
Speaker
So not it's it's not a bad argument per se. Yes, but nevertheless he he does he really does hype up these risks. He says if if you believe some accounts of what might be under there, there could be enough ammunition and explosives to, in his words, effectively destroy the Auckland CBD and a huge area of residential housing. So he says there could be enough to actually not just blow North Head, but damage the the bits of Auckland that are across the Waite Matar Harbour from it.
00:33:05
Speaker
And also says that if if this were found to be true, the resulting claims from landowners could virtually bankrupt New Zealand. Now, actually, this this this reminds me of something. I thought when we had talked about this long in the past, that you had said that what really got people interested and what got the investigations going was when the insurance companies and what have you started to pay attention to it. But I haven't...
00:33:30
Speaker
Read anything about that in this one. Was there interest from people that maybe their land value could go down to this? I don't remember the insurance companies themselves being particularly perturbed.
00:33:45
Speaker
I just recall having lived in Devonport at the time that there were a large number of homeowners who were going, well, if this turns out to be true, this is disastrous for property prices around Cheltenham.
00:33:58
Speaker
And certainly some of the we ought to investigate this isn't motivated so much by we think your case is convincing, but rather it's motivated by if there's any possibility of what you're saying being true, then $5 million dollars house on Cheltenham Beach is worth nothing.
00:34:19
Speaker
I can't have that. I can't have that at all. Yes. Now... Referring to the um the the court case or the the the investigation presided over by Judge Sean Elias...
00:34:32
Speaker
he he does He does sort of suggest that she could have had no choice to rule as she did, and not not because she was being pressured by by sinister powers from above, but simply because the evidence presented in that inquiry was not significant it was was was not sufficient for her to be able to say, yes there are definitely times on here. In particular, the lack of any sort of physical evidence to support all of the witness statements.
00:34:58
Speaker
um Now, of course, as we've seen, he doesn't think you can discount the witness statements as Judge Elias did. But if you do as she did, then there isn't much else in the way of sort of hard corroborating evidence.
00:35:11
Speaker
But one of the things he he says right towards the end of this, which stuck out to me, was the way he talks about the balance of probability, because this was the whole thing. The investigation found on the balance of probabilities there were no tunnels under North Head.
00:35:23
Speaker
He says... um He says, indeed, when I consider the phrase balance of probability, it does not impart the consequence of getting a decision wrong, especially when the possibility of explosives or other such substances of mass destruction are involved.
00:35:36
Speaker
Surely matters concerning public safety should not be so simply left hanging or weighed against the balance of probability, which, mean, it's an interesting point. I don't, like, it doesn't seem to be the sort of thing a a legal investigation can do, though.
00:35:53
Speaker
Is there any mechanism for, like, weighting consequently? mean, you certainly, when it comes to, say, you know, a case of, and like like, a murder case, You don't see people saying, um well well, the yeah ah consequences of if if we're wrong, ah that but we've got an innocent person here and and the real killer is going free. So therefore, we should place more weight towards one verdict or another.
00:36:18
Speaker
and an inquest like this, is there any place for it? mean It's hard to tell because the the worry about health and safety and the way we put the but the burden of proof on showing that a site is safe. So rather than assume that objects won't be falling from the sky, it is required that if you're on a building site, you must wear a hat.
00:36:41
Speaker
So you can't assume the site is safe, no matter what other safety precautions you've taken. You just always put a hat on when you walk away. walking around there. It's kind of codified in law.
00:36:53
Speaker
And I guess the problem here is that we don't really have a strong legal precedent for explosions that have been left in military sites and covered up by the government.
00:37:06
Speaker
So As far as the government is concerned, if they're not involved in a conspiracy to cover up the fact there's hidden ammunition within North Head, they are going, look, we've discharged the burden of proof here.
00:37:23
Speaker
We have engaged in not one, but two investigations of North Head. We have found no evidence for hidden tunnel structures within it. We've found no evidence to that seriously supports the contention. There's decaying ammunition within the head.
00:37:40
Speaker
So as far as we're concerned, we've discharged the burden of proof here. There is no good reason to think the site is unsafe. And Butler's arguments thus far haven't moved the needle.
00:37:55
Speaker
He, of course, is coming from it from a different perspective. He thinks the evidence of the site being unsafe is overwhelming, and thus the government is being negligent with respect to how they're responding to those claims.
00:38:12
Speaker
And so they're basically starting from different ends of the safety use it safety spectrum. Butler is going, you haven't done enough. And the government is going, yeah, but we have.
00:38:24
Speaker
We have done enough. And there's no way to reconcile those because they're not coming from a shared space of evidence here. Butler thinks that the eyewitness statement should be taken more seriously than they are and the dock investigation should not be taken as seriously as as it has been and the government's responses well the eyewitness statements are an incoherent mess and if we believe them to be true then there are actual tour groups that went through a hidden tunnel complex in the 80s so we're dismissing that but the actual physical evidence we haven't found anything so yeah as far as we're concerned it's the other way around
00:39:06
Speaker
So at the end of all this, he he basically says he has found all of the and official investigations to be deficient in one way or another. um so therefore, he's just plain going to have to conduct an investigation of his own, which, as we just saw, what he went off and did. Yeah, which is why the structuring of these chapters is weird, because we've already talked about the investigation has done, even though in this chapter we've just covered, we're talking about the investigation he's about to do.
00:39:33
Speaker
Time is strange. In the first edition, then, there's this little epilogue, which basically is is a ah very short summary of what you just talked about, about how he spoke to Doc. He did his ground radar survey.
00:39:46
Speaker
He found some stuff, sent it to the Ministry of Defence. They weren't particularly impressed, and that was it. So where edition one ends up entirely is basically him saying, well, look, the the the only thing left have to do is actually start digging.
00:40:00
Speaker
But, of course, nobody wants that to happen. and That was 2012. Now, 13 years later, there's definitely been no more digging. But what else has there been?
00:40:10
Speaker
Well, actually, before we do that, just want to talk a little bit about how much of Butler's story hinges on the Bob Tazard story. So in the last ip episode, we talked about the conversation the Brian Earnshaw and Bob Tizard, who was then Minister of Defence in a Labour government, where it seemed that Bob Tizard believed that there were A, additional tunnels under North Head, and B, they contained decaying ammunition, a position that no subsequent Minister of Defence had. has ever sought to... That's not the right word.
00:40:49
Speaker
No subsequent Minister of Defence has supported. And so Butler writes this. The Tizard recording links the government of 1988 with that of 2014 through its transcription in MP Wayne Map's office in 2002.
00:41:10
Speaker
So essentially, he played the Tizard recording to Wayne Mapp, who was then Minister of Defence. ah Sorry, but who would become Minister of Defence. The next sentence says, MP Mapp became Minister of Defence between 2008 and 2011, yet no further investigation resulted.
00:41:27
Speaker
yet no further investigation resulted The government and military of 2014 continue to be defensive and obstructive and will not support further investigation.
00:41:41
Speaker
The evidence shows they are both fully aware of a cover-up and conspiracy perpetrated by previous military commanders and sanctioned by Minister of Defence, Tizard.
00:41:54
Speaker
So, Butler's story is we have to take Tizard, the Minister of Defence, who seems to be the odd one out compared to all of the other Ministers of Defence seriously, and accept that what he said to Brian Earnshaw is an accurate reporting. John Earnshaw.
00:42:12
Speaker
Yeah, John Earnshaw. I don't know why keep calling him Brian. Was Brian his son? Was he the one that supplied this stuff? Or is your brain short-circuiting entirely? i should see initial yeah I think historically I've always, for some reason, called John Earnshaw Brian Earnshaw. I think it's actually a problem going all the way back to when I was doing my PhD.
00:42:32
Speaker
my my ph d I mean, he definite he he also looks a bit like a John. i have I've seen video footage of him. I've never met him, but I have i had seen video footage of John Earnshaw. I've never seen any vivid video footage of a Brian Earnshaw. If someone wants to supply that to me, they're welcome to.
00:42:52
Speaker
So, yeah. John Earnshaw takes... Minister of Defence Tizad seriously. Takes it that Tizad accurately relaying to him things that were told to him by the New Zealand Defence Force.
00:43:06
Speaker
It seems that no other Minister of Defence has received the same advice from their commanders of the military. And they certainly don't seem to take Tizard's claims particularly seriously.
00:43:22
Speaker
This means that Butler thinks this shows there's a cover-up at the governmental level. But of course, there is another possibility here. As we said in a previous episode, Bob Tizard was not exactly the most well-respected MP. Even though he was Deputy Prime Minister at one point, he was Minister of Defence...
00:43:44
Speaker
Other members of the Labour Party thought he was a bit of a moron. And maybe other ministers of defence, particularly in national governments, have gone... Yeah, he was a bit of a credulous fool, this Bob Tizard.
00:43:58
Speaker
But it is the case that Bob Tizard did say in a conversation with John Earnshaw that he did think there were additional tunnels and decaying ammunition within the hill. Right. So, yeah, that's that's where it wraps up for me.
00:44:12
Speaker
But then there's this extra, this what may or may not be Chapter 16, although it doesn't actually get given a number, Chapter 16. No, it gets given a number, it's just not quarter chapter.
00:44:25
Speaker
Oh, I see, so it's just 16. Yeah, so in the second and third edition, we get 16, not quarter chapter, third edition investigation update summary.
00:44:37
Speaker
third addition investigation they summary And this jumps us ahead in time. So this was written in 2020. So this is five or six years post the agreement to once again investigate North Head.
00:44:55
Speaker
And this, whatever it is, chapter, section, chapterette, novelette. Appendix. Appendix is 16 pages in length. And it's quite a scattershot document.
00:45:10
Speaker
There's no narrative through line. It's simply, here are some things that have happened in the interim. So let me go through some of the things these 16 pages cover.
00:45:24
Speaker
Martin reports when he went to Ireland to visit a similar fort, is, say, ah fortification built around about the same time as North Head. He says it had underground features not seen at North Head.
00:45:39
Speaker
And he takes that to be evidence that there must be additional underground features at North Head because this fort in Ireland looks different from one in Devonport in New Zealand.
00:45:52
Speaker
I mean, yes. an alternative explanation does present itself fairly fairly easily and also of course as you've talked about the idea that well maybe the North Head one was kind of done on the cheap because we were down in the arse end of the Commonwealth and people were not perhaps as scrupulous as they otherwise might have been Yeah, to I mean, to one one of the interesting factors or facts, which is a probably better word than factor here, about the building of North Head is that when they did the cut and cover to build North Head, they used railway lines to be the iron girders on the top of the tunnels.
00:46:31
Speaker
And the reason why the New Zealand government had... these railway-lined spear to be able to use for covering tunnels, as opposed to building a railway network in Aotorau, is for the sheer fact that the British knowingly sold the then government of New Zealand defective railway tracks.
00:46:54
Speaker
So basically the railway, so the carriages and engines that we had down under were of a particular weight and needed a particular gauge of railway track.
00:47:05
Speaker
The British government said they were selling us that railway track. Actually, they sold us the wrong size, and they knew what they were doing at the time because they knew that once it arrived in the country, there was no way for us to send it back. So the New Zealand government had this excess of unusable railway track footage no railway track trackage they had an excess of railway a bunch of but bunch of metal dna so they they had to find a use for for it so they just threw it north head it was something which was being built but it really wasn't being built according to plan
00:47:46
Speaker
By this time, so in 2020, he still feels the military are continuing to obfuscate. So he wanted to talk to Commodore Dean McDougall about his statement about the tunnel complex.
00:48:01
Speaker
So Commodore Dean McDougall had talked about the tunnel complex as being relatively extensive and the fact there were sealed up tunnels that were sealed up relatively recently.
00:48:14
Speaker
And Butler wants to ago what did you mean by those claims? And he only gets vetted statements. So the military is going, here you can't talk to the Commodore. You can just go through the official channels and we'll give you vetted statements from the com Commodore as to what he meant by those particular things.
00:48:35
Speaker
And on one level, I understand why he thinks this is a member of the military obfuscating an investigation. But of course the official position by the New Zealand Defence Force is that there is nothing to say, and thus people in the New Zealand Defence Force are treating this as a very low-priority matter.
00:48:57
Speaker
So you're just not going to make time. to talk to someone who believes something which you think to be, in scare quotes, a crackpot theory. And especially since when Commodore Dean McDougall makes these claims, he's talking about the handover of North Head to the Parks Board, which then becomes the Department of Conservation.
00:49:19
Speaker
And so when he's talking about a relatively extensive tunnel complex, he could just be talking about the existing complex on North Head, which is relatively extensive, and the fact that some of the sections had been sealed up to make them safe relatively recently.
00:49:37
Speaker
So Butler takes it this as an indication the military know that tunnels have been made to disappear. But another reading is, no, he's just talking about the work they did as they handed the tunnel complex over.
00:49:53
Speaker
Okay, what's what's what's next on his grab bag tour of evidential stuff? Well, he spends quite a lot of time trying to get files about the fort. So historical files, building files, documents, and the like.
00:50:08
Speaker
And he finally receives what does exist in 2017. But as he says, there's very little to see there. There's really nothing more than people had discovered in previous investigations.
00:50:22
Speaker
He talks about how in 2016, the Department of Conservation accepts that they should be doing more gas testing on North Head at the sites of interest as they end up admitting it is a health and safety issue.
00:50:38
Speaker
Not necessarily because they think there's discarded ammunition releasing gas there, but because gases like tolling ah Not particularly safe for people to breathe in, so they should be testing to make sure that there aren't excess levels of it on the head.
00:50:55
Speaker
But Doc ends up dragging their heels due to the costing of doing that guest testing. So it takes them three years, and so by April 2019, they have taken those tests, but Doc is simply testing for safety level of gases as opposed to testing to determine the source of those gases.
00:51:20
Speaker
So Butler then decides that the Department of Conservation, because they're not looking for the thing he wants them to look for, They're only dealing with the health and safety issue, an issue that Butler pressed them on.
00:51:33
Speaker
He thinks the Department of Conservation or DOC really stands for Department of Cover-Ups. I mean, to be honest, that that that that is where his rhetoric was going.
00:51:45
Speaker
but was, yeah. So it continues. He has an archaeologist who back in 20... It's a very scattershot chapter because he talks about one thing happening and he was oh, a few years earlier, this other thing happened as well.
00:52:01
Speaker
So he points out that he meets with the Department of Conservation in 2018 to clarify that what he wants to do is not to investigate areas that Doc has already investigated,
00:52:12
Speaker
but rather to investigate sites that were not investigated by Doc back in the original investigations. And then he points out that an archaeologist in 2016 had verified the scans from Scantec and thinks that they could be Unrecorded tunnels Doc is basically Unimpressed by all all of this And so Butler then says that they have an agenda Or if they don't have an agenda They lack critical Thinking skills So as you say, keeps on coming up With these rather exciting Bon mots Anything else?
00:52:50
Speaker
Well, he has what he takes to be a bit of a bombshell. So let me read read this out. However, it's a truly significant development.
Concealed Histories and Liabilities
00:52:59
Speaker
On the 30th of April, 2018, Lieutenant General Sir John Mace, formerly Chief of Defense Force, confirmed to the author that...
00:53:08
Speaker
read the letter out. We wrote the letter in, I think it was kind of a mid-ish the 80s. I retired in 1991. Obviously this came to something of a head in 1992 and 1993.
00:53:19
Speaker
You know the records of what we based our letter on. I don't have them, but they'll be in defense. Now, you guys are approaching the Minister of Defence and the Mayor, the Minister of Defence can certainly dig that up. That is what we based our letter on, the one we wrote to Bob Tizard.
00:53:35
Speaker
I gather it's a fairly dangerous business if thoses in if there is actually ammunition there, and if there's not, why did they seal off the tunnels? I should point out there are there's an ellipsis here which indicates that part of the letter has been cut off.
00:53:53
Speaker
So he gets in contact with the person who advised Bob Tizard, who goes, well, yes, I was reading some notes, and they should be in the Ministry of Defence. So surely the stuff that I based my report to Tizard on should be in the files.
00:54:13
Speaker
So, on May 14th, 2018, the author wrote to the Honourable Minister of Defence, Marks, that's Ron Marks, in 2018, regarding the records referred to by Lieutenant General Sir John Mace.
00:54:26
Speaker
ah A reply was then provided by Commodore G.R. Smith, Chief of Defence Staff, New Zealand Defence Force, dated 8th of June, 2018, that stated, The Minister's officers do not hold any records from their predecessors.
00:54:39
Speaker
Your request was transferred to the NZDF. The letter then referred the author to NZ archives for a nonspecific search of the records. It therefore seems that these records have been efficiently disposed of.
00:54:55
Speaker
Efficiently? that another little jab? Yes. yeah So not that they have been lost or they haven't been kept. They were efficiently disposed of.
00:55:06
Speaker
Right, more more cover-up-y documents being destroyed type insinuations. Yeah, and basically that kind of brings things to a close. So in 2019, now that North Head is under the authority of Iwi in the form of the Mona Authority,
00:55:29
Speaker
The Department of Conservation has basically taken on any liability for any military relics which lie beneath North Head. So effectively, when the Monor Authority took over North Head, Doc went, well, look,
00:55:46
Speaker
we've we've done We've done the business. We've made we've made the place safe. If it said isn't safe, then we have liability for it. You don't have to take care of that.
00:55:57
Speaker
If we haven't done our job properly, then we'll take care of it. But the Department of Conservation remains unconvinced of there being any real danger because of the investigation they've done.
00:56:11
Speaker
Butler's lawyers take this to be an irresponsible position by the Department of Conservation because they have a different view on the burden of proof when it comes to what the Department of Conservation should be doing with respect to the discarded or missing ammunition theory But the Monarch Authority doesn't want a dig on North Head.
00:56:35
Speaker
Their position basically is if the Department of Conservation thinks it's a good idea, then maybe we'll license it. The Department of Conservation doesn't think that's a good idea.
00:56:45
Speaker
So no matter how much money Martin Butler wants to throw at the problem, there is not going to be another physical investigation of North Head.
00:56:57
Speaker
And that's basically where things come to a close in the third edition. Indeed. Well, we we that's it then. as As I look at the timing of this recording, we're just on an hour, although once things have been edited, it'll be a little bit different, I'm sure.
00:57:13
Speaker
So we're done. I mean, especially when we get rid of that racist rant you engaged in about the nuns of Malta. Well, they know what they did. So, I mean, you asked me at the start, I think in the first episode, did find it convincing? So many years ago, Josh. So many years ago. hard to remember. Did I find it convincing? And I said, yeah, kind of.
00:57:34
Speaker
I mean, when he lays it all out, there's a lot, especially the Bob Tizard stuff. When you've got an actual Minister of Defence saying, oh, yeah, yeah, no, they've told me there are tunnels under there, that definitely um definitely raises your eyebrows. I mean, the the I guess the main thing that isn't stated that that does occur to me is is motive.
00:57:56
Speaker
I mean, why, if if you have all this stuff under there, why would you leave it there alone? Would it just be laziness and why would you still cover it up? I mean, whose reputations are protected now all these years later by um by keeping secret the fact that there's this potentially dangerous ammunition under there. I struggle to find a motivation for the cover-up side of things.
00:58:26
Speaker
But in terms of the evidence as he lays it out, it does sound convincing, and that um that might be a segue into the bonus episode talk, perhaps. Maybe. i mean, i i'm still I'm still not particularly convinced. And the reason why I'm not particularly convinced is that for the book to make a strong argument for the existence of a hidden tunnel complex open over North Head? Yeah, an aerial tunnel complex. That be a particularly... just of lightan yeah and yeah oh No one will think to look for tunnels in the air.
00:59:02
Speaker
A hidden tunnel within North Head, hidden tunnel complex even within North Head. Although I guess if they found at least one hidden tunnel, that would be evidence of something. To tell that story, certain parts of the story have to be omitted. So the story about the building of North Head, the cheapness of the build of North Head, all that stuff is missing.
00:59:26
Speaker
And I just find that ever so slightly suspicious. And I find that ever so slightly suspicious because I've talked to Martin Butler about these things. So he is at least aware there are alternative explanations to explain some of what is going on.
00:59:47
Speaker
And I do think the eyewitness statements mostly work against him rather than for him. It's one of those cases where if I were writing this book and I was trying to convince people of a hidden tunnel complex, I would have gone through the eyewitness statements. Well, look, some of these are obviously...
01:00:09
Speaker
examples of people's memories being contaminated. Two old dears going on a tour group walkthrough of a hidden tunnel complex where they're actively sealing up the tunnel complex as tour groups are going through it.
01:00:26
Speaker
That is something you need you need to explain. You need to go, well, look, obviously this can't be true, at which point we have to then kind of excise some of these eyewitness statements here.
01:00:39
Speaker
So i I still don't find it convincing in the sense I think he's made a case positive for there being a hidden tunnel complex within North Head.
01:00:51
Speaker
I do think that based upon the ground radar surveys, there are structures that should be investigated in case they turn out to be additional structures on North Head, which would be useful to know about.
01:01:08
Speaker
but I don't think they are good evidence of a hidden tunnel complex. I think it's just good evidence that using superior technology to when Doc did their investigation in the 90s, you can discover more about the archaeology of North Head now than you could in the past.
01:01:30
Speaker
Yes, I think... And by archaeology, you mean the archaeological history. Yeah, I think... but There's a lot of stuff he puts there and a lot of stuff you can say in response. And I think um just just yeah the the volume of it and some of the bits that stick out, like the Bob Tizard stuff, do make for a good case.
01:01:52
Speaker
but you but but But you can make an opposing case, I guess is the thing. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, i i mean the Bob Tizard thing is interesting. So we do have the Minister of Defence on tape, as we'll discuss in the bonus episode, making those claims.
01:02:11
Speaker
And we then have in the explosive update for the third edition, the person who advised Bob Tizard talking about what went on there.
01:02:23
Speaker
So you have the Minister of Defence making a claim, you have the person who is advising the Minister of Defence saying, well, my claim should be backed up by the notes and is convenient for the official story that the notes are now missing.
01:02:43
Speaker
But at the same time, it is interesting that no other minister of defense and no other chief of staff of the New Zealand Defense Force has reacted the same way based upon the information they had access to.
01:02:59
Speaker
And that might be the indication of a large scale cover up. Or it might be an indication that maybe when people go and look at the notes, they go, yeah, Bob really kind of didn't read these particularly well, or he did kind of exaggerate what they said there.
01:03:18
Speaker
Yeah, I think at the end of the day, it's like a lot of things we've seen where just no hard and fast definitive evidence either way. We don't have evidence of... ah extra structures being built or of of anything to do with these tunnels. Yeah, we just have a time span in which they could have been built.
01:03:38
Speaker
Yeah. and So it also hinges well, they could have done this at that time. They could have built North Head according to the official me manual.
01:03:51
Speaker
it It's a lot of ifs. A lot of couldn't. It's not impossible for it to have happened. yeah but And I mean, i can understand Butler's frustration that he seems to be the only person carrying the torch for this particular hypothesis now.
01:04:11
Speaker
But at the same time, i think there's a reason why, and that's because the evidence really is with the official theory here. so but But we have an update.
01:04:24
Speaker
We do have an update, yes. So... Our patrons will get to hear us talk about a recent presentation that Mr Butler gave to the... The wife?
01:04:36
Speaker
Yep. The Devonport Takapuna Local Board Business Meeting in September of 2024. And there's even an update on that, but Josh doesn't know about that yet.
01:04:47
Speaker
No, I don't. But as I say, when you when you see him actually in person spell out his case... He makes a good case. But then, of course, it's it's all it's what what is he not saying?
01:05:00
Speaker
what is What is there to contradict him? Which, of course, he does not raise. So that's the end. That's the end of this episode. That's the end of our talk on ah Martin Butler's book Tunnel Vision, at least so in terms of main episodes.
01:05:17
Speaker
Although, Josh, I should actually just go to tunnelvision.com now and see if there's a fourth edition which is coming out. It does feel like we've been talking about this for so long, the fourth and fifth edition.
01:05:33
Speaker
ah Must have been produced within that particular time. So we'll just verify that because you never know. all right, let's have a look at books. No, unfortunately, Josh, the third edition is the only current edition available on the website.
01:05:49
Speaker
Right. Well, that's that then. Unless you're a patron, in which case you'll get to hear a bonus episode where we talk about this just a little bit more. Oh, actually, one thing i didn't note, the website also has a free Teacher's Notes for Mystery under Monoika.
01:06:07
Speaker
So if you want to use this book in your classroom, there is a set of notes around it. And i am really, really quite curious to see what's in those notes.
01:06:20
Speaker
But then that's a thing for me. It really is. so I think we're done. think it's time to actually wrap this up. Go record a bonus episode and then put this whole sorry saga behind us.
01:06:33
Speaker
For the time being. So it just remains for me to come up with what I'm fairly certain is the winning catchphrase. I don't think there's going to be any beating this one. Until next week, conspiracy you later.
01:06:46
Speaker
going massage a meal. Conspiracy you later. Like, see you later. I put conspiracy on the front there. This is gold, Ian. This is pure, solid gold. We'll make millions from a catchphrase alone. I'm sorry. yeah You make it sound like the mupples Muppets Tonight thing. What do you get when you you cross with an elephant with a rhino?
01:07:08
Speaker
And that was the best sketch I've ever done. Therefore, this is best sketch. And that was the first episode, first scene. And Muppets Tonight went downhill from there.
01:07:19
Speaker
I fear we've got off topic. Goodbye. Elephino! I saw Jimmy
01:07:30
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy features Josh Addison and Associate Professor M.R. Extenteth. Our producers are a mysterious cabal of conspirators known as Tom, Philip, and another who is so mysterious that they remain anonymous.
01:07:44
Speaker
You can contact us electronically via podcastconspiracy at gmail.com or join our Patreon and get access to our Discord server. Or don't, I'm not your mum.
01:08:11
Speaker
And remember... these!