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America Unearthed
26 Plays5 years ago
This week Josh and M review the fourth season of the (formerly) very conspiratorial show "America Unearthed."
—
Josh is @monkeyfluids and M is @conspiracism on Twitter
You can also contact us at: podcastconspiracy@gmail.com
Watch M’s series “Conspiracism” here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJEp7xTcFU3hc2W0kfdSvAQ
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Transcript
Scott Walter's Claims of Hidden History
00:00:04
Speaker
According to friendic geologist Scott Walter, the history that we're all taught growing up is wrong. My name is Dr. Emma Extenter, and I'm a conspiracy theory theorist. According to Scott Walter, there's a hidden history in this country.
00:00:20
Speaker
once again in North America, although I guess as we'll see also the UK. Are you finished? There's a hidden history in this country that nobody knows. There are pyramids here. Yes, there's quite a lot in sort of Mesoamerica, not exactly hidden. Chambers,
Reality TV vs. Historical Accuracy
00:00:36
Speaker
tombs, inscriptions, they're all over this country. Apparently, Scott Walter is going to investigate these artifacts and sites and he's going to get to the truth. Sometimes, apparently, history isn't what we've been told.
00:00:49
Speaker
And now we're going to re-investigate these artefacts and sites and we're going to get to the truth. Sometimes history as related on reality TV isn't exactly what it seems.
Podcast Introduction and Episode Focus
00:01:16
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the cons... Ooh, nice little cork noise there. I hope the mic's got that, otherwise I'm going to sound quite silly for mentioning it. I could just edit the noise out, but also edit you in. It's quite a nice cork noise every so often just to make it confusing for listeners.
00:01:33
Speaker
I, appreciator of the cork noise, and clear of the throat, am Josh Edison, sitting next to me, generator of the cork noise, Dr. M. R. Xtenteth. And this is an episode that's been months in the making.
00:01:47
Speaker
It has. Actually, I would even say years, truth be told. Well, I suppose, if you want to go right back. Yes, because this week, and only this week, I actually tell a lie, we're going to be doing a sequel to this, because I'm going to get you to watch other episodes.
Alternative Histories in 'America Unearthed'
00:02:00
Speaker
We're doing a deep dive, and say a deep dive, a shallow dive, because the show itself is quite shallow, into America Unearthed, Scott Walter's vehicle about the real history of the United States of America, although, as we kind of alluded to in the intro,
00:02:17
Speaker
Not really. This does move around a bit, yeah. Yes, no, so I mean, Em has been watching this ever since it began. It's currently now. Back in the heyday of 2012. It's now into a fourth season, having been sort of canned a little bit after season three and then picked up by another net. Yeah, there's almost a five-year period where the show wasn't on the air. Dark times.
00:02:37
Speaker
They were the darkest of timelines. But anyway, so my homework lately has been to watch the episodes of season four of America Unearthed and then report back on my findings, which is what I should be doing now. Was it hard homework?
00:02:53
Speaker
It was time that I could have spent doing something else. Such as? Give me an example of something more productive you would have spent your time on. Playing computer games. Such as? Which I would have enjoyed more of. Give me an example of a computer game.
00:03:09
Speaker
Uh, Dauntless. I've been playing a bit of that. I was hoping you'd do something like Assassin's Creed Odyssey or Assassin's Creed Origin, which would be so appropriate. No, that's a bit of conspiracy stuff. I haven't been playing any conspiracy theory themes at all, I'm afraid. You have failed me on so many different levels. Well, what's new? Shall we get into the main episode? We shall.
00:03:32
Speaker
According
Knights Templar and Secret Histories
00:03:33
Speaker
to Wikipedia, the TV series America Unearthed is hosted by Minnesota-based forensic geologist Scott Walter, who investigates mysteries and artefacts believed to reveal an alternative history of the North American continent before the United States. However, according to resident America Unearthed expert Dr. M.R. Extender, some relation,
00:03:54
Speaker
to show us a deep dive into claims about how the Knights Templar settled North America. Except it was the Vikings who got there first. Possibly the Minoans and the Freemasons are covering it up. Or they were. Scott Walter is now a Freemason and seems to say nice things about them which makes him part of the conspiracy. There's something about diamonds being a map. Is my nose starting to bleed? I think I can actually feel my brain hemorrhaging.
00:04:19
Speaker
It's okay, the show is a mess. Such a mess that it went off the air for almost five years before being brought back in a form which, well, wasn't quite what I expected. Which is where I come in, pre my brand lead. See, I'd never seen an episode of American Earth, and so the... good doctor... bade me watch it, expect it. Well, what did you expect?
00:04:42
Speaker
I expected something slightly more than what we got. I was also expecting you to come in every week going, what on earth was he talking about? Well, so he actually mostly came and going, that was quite interesting. I mean, not actually interesting, but quite interesting. Yes, so possibly a disappointment all around.
00:04:59
Speaker
Yeah, until. Until. Until. Yeah. But we'll get to that. We will indeed. Because, you know, there's a whole bunch of weird mysterious claims going on suggesting a conspiracy of the highest order when it comes to episode 10. Yes, no, we didn't really get the mysterious and the weird 49 out of the 10 episodes. But that last episode, well, shall we get into it? We shall.
Forensic Geology and Scott Walter's Investigations
00:05:26
Speaker
Ooh, nice little cork noise there.
00:05:32
Speaker
Yes, so America Unearthed, a show about the secret history of America presented by a fellow called Scott Walter, who's a forensic geologist. So A, who is Scott Walter, and B, what is a forensic geologist?
00:05:49
Speaker
Let me start with what forensic geology is. Forensic geology is an actual thing. For a while I actually thought it wasn't. I thought this was one of those accolades you put behind your name to go, I'm not really an archeologist. I'm a forensic geologist. But no, it turns out forensic geology is a real thing. It is according to Wikipedia.
00:06:06
Speaker
The study of evidence relating to minerals, oils, petroleum, and other materials found in the earth used to answer questions raised by the legal system. Forensic geology was important when it came to the aftermath of 9-11, looking through the concrete rubble of the fallen Twin Towers, Building 7, etc, etc, which Scott Walter comes into because he was one of the experts brought in to analyse the concrete post the destruction of the Twin Towers.
00:06:36
Speaker
and testified about it in court. So that's why you can be a forensic geologist. You can testify in court about geology and talking about the dating, the history, and how you talk about the composition. What may have gone wrong with the composition leading to a collapse and the like. So it is a real thing.
00:06:54
Speaker
despite the fact that on first glance it does sound ever so slightly suspicious. And then there's Scott Walter. So Scott Walter has a bachelor's degree in geology from the University of Minnesota, Duluth. He also claims to have, depending on who you talk to, a master's degree, or at least an honorary master's degree in geology. It was put down on his CV at one point as being an honorary degree.
00:07:24
Speaker
When the University of Minnesota Duluth was questioned about this, they could find no record of ever granting him said honorary degree, at which point Walser clarified that it was in fact a sympathy degree given to him by some of his former professors after he gave talk
00:07:44
Speaker
where they joked or discussed giving him an honorary degree and presented him with a cup of coffee with whipped cream claiming that was his new diploma.
Scott Walter's Controversial Honorary Degree
00:07:57
Speaker
It's a very suspicious story.
00:08:00
Speaker
Anyway, so that's who he is. I mean, as I have a PhD, I didn't even get hot chocolate. Oh, well, there we go. And I believe in miracles since you came along, you sexy thing. You sexy thing. Okay, so that's who it is. That's the... He's also the author of several books. Oh, books, yes. Let me tell you about it. Tell me about his books. He's written several books on our gate, which is a rock, I do believe.
00:08:25
Speaker
and how they're found in the Lake Superior region. So it appears to be a bit of an expert when it comes to both concrete and Lake Superior. And I have to say, in the episodes, he always seems his most confident when he's talking about rocks and stone structures and so on. So it does definitely seem to be. It's true. He does appear to be in his elements when it comes to rocks. He's also the author of books such as The Kensington Runestone, Compelling New Evidence,
00:08:52
Speaker
Hukdex, key to secret history of America, and from Akhenaten to the founding fathers, the mysteries of the Hukdex. Akhenaten being an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who may or may not have been the first monotheist, depending on A, how you define monotheism, and B, exactly how you define what religious belief looked like in Egypt at that particular point in time.
00:09:17
Speaker
I studied at university. He was the fun one. He was the one who completely changed the whole of ancient Egyptian society. And then after he died, everyone changed it all back and was like, geez, what was with that guy? And then erased him from history by basically removing his name from all the stele and abandoning the capital that he moved, the capital to, which made it quite convenient. He moved it to this place called Tel Al-Mana.
00:09:41
Speaker
turned out that once he died he just abandoned that particular complex and fell into obscurity and disappeared from
Challenges of Egyptology vs. Roman History
00:09:49
Speaker
history. Anyway, enough Akhenaten, although he is an interest, he is a fun toy, he was my favourite bit of ancient Egyptian I think actually. He is one of the only actually interesting pharaohs which
00:10:01
Speaker
not to besmirch Egyptology, but the problem with Egyptology, as opposed to, say, doing Roman history or ancient Greek history, is that we don't really have much in the way of accounts of the personal lives of the movers and shakers of that society. We have the histories and the steles, while the Greek and the Romans left behind actual papyrus or parchment accounts of their individual lives. So it's much more easier, it's easier to be excited about Julius Caesar, because we have his letters.
00:10:30
Speaker
Well, as an art you've kind of got the art, some inscriptions, and why did they remove him from history exactly?
00:10:39
Speaker
At any rate, back to America Unearthed.
Academic Conspiracy in Early Seasons of 'America Unearthed'
00:10:42
Speaker
Did you just stumble upon this show? Were you directed towards it as part of your conspiracy theory? As far as I remember, it all started with the Starks in Game of Thrones. It started in a drunken state in our friend Nick's living room.
00:11:02
Speaker
where we were talking about pseudo history and other related things. And either I had seen the name of the show online or Nick had seen the name of the show online. And so we looked into, is this going to be something worth watching? And it turned out it was. And what a delight it was, because from the very first episode of season one, Scott Walter is alleging that there is a large scale academic conspiracy to hide the true history of the United States.
00:11:32
Speaker
And seasons one through three basically pushed that line dramatically, that the American government, academics, and the Freemasons are engaging in a cover-up of America's true history, including claims about manifest destiny and claims about the real Europeans who got to North America first.
00:11:56
Speaker
Now, was that your experience of season four? I cannot honestly say that it was, no. There's very little in the way of actual conspiracy theorizing in the show that I saw. There was a lot of this is stuff people don't know about either because it's sort of too obscure, too hidden, or it's just something people have forgotten about. But there was never really much talk of the fact that it's being actively hidden from the world at large.
00:12:26
Speaker
It was very disappointing. The Smithsonian gets virtually no room in the episode at all, because often he would claim, ah, can't say Smith Smithsonian? Having a day of speech disfluency, which doesn't really help.
00:12:42
Speaker
In the previous series, the Smithsonian is often fingered as being there the one to have the real evidence of giants or Phoenician artifacts, and they're keeping them from the public. But she doesn't come up at all. No. In fact, she's quite glowing towards any academic institution that will have him in this particular season. There's the one that wouldn't let him take something off and get it tested.
00:13:07
Speaker
Yes, that was the Frontless Drake episode. Right, yes. But we'll get into that in just a minute. In fact, we'll get into it right now. Let's have a run through. So there are 10 episodes in season four. And as we've alluded to, the first nine, or at least 10 is where it gets to the good stuff. So maybe just a quick whistle stop.
00:13:27
Speaker
tour of the preceding nine episodes. Episode one is called Vikings in the Desert and he looks at these Viking artifacts that are found in the desert in the middle of America and says is this proof that, obviously these days it's well accepted that Vikings did make it to the east coast of America, founded a small settlement but didn't last long there and bug it off back to Viking land.
00:13:49
Speaker
But this is right in the middle. So is this evidence that Vikings made it all the way into the center of America, possibly by sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, around Canada, all the way around, like through the Arctic Circle, right around the top of North America, right back down the other side, and then up a whole bunch of rivers to end up?
00:14:08
Speaker
in the middle of America. The conclusion, basically, they take these artifacts off, they get them looked at by experts and so on, travels off overseas, I think, to get somebody to look at them. And the conclusion is, well, yes, they do seem to be authentic Viking artifacts, but who the hell knows how they got there? Someone could have just brought them over and happened to have lost them there. It doesn't actually prove that.
00:14:32
Speaker
Vikings took a ship. That was the episode that, and I do remember this coming up on Twitter when you were occasionally posting your little updates as you watch things, the
00:14:41
Speaker
There's one section, supposedly they were found in the ruins of an old Viking longboat in the middle of the desert. And they go through property records and so on and figure out where it was originally reported to have been, work out where that land is now, work out who owns that land now, go to the owner of the land and say, hey, we think there could be something buried under here. Do you mind if we do a bit of digging? And the guy says, okay. They go in with a, I can't remember what it was, was it a metal detector or a seismic thingamajigger?
00:15:10
Speaker
They find something down there and go, oh, look, there could be some important historical artefacts buried down there. Bring in the backhoe. A giant, giant backhoe, which poooooom, digs into the ground with absolutely no thinness. And fortunately, it turned out there was not an ancient Viking ship under there. In fact, it turns out that probably what set off the
00:15:33
Speaker
Detector was both a bar of iron in the ground and overhead power lines. Anyway, so that's episode one. Episode two was all about alien artefacts. Yeah, and this is what I call the You're Not a Credulous Get Mr. Pepperdine episode. It's reference to Fry and Laurie there. And this is the episode that shows that Scott Walter isn't a Credulous Fool.
00:15:56
Speaker
Well, yes, he starts off with a guy brings him some tablets that would be inscribed with alienish looking things and they appear to be very old. And so he has a look at around a bunch of related things. He goes to a cave in Peru where there are all these carvings that appear to show extra terrestrials and spacemen and chariots of the gods type stuff. And so he looks at them and straight away says, oh, sorry, guys, these are fake.
00:16:19
Speaker
The inscription, the etchings, the lines are much too recent. These aren't ancient carvings. They've just been made more recently. It is interesting though that he doesn't claim that the people who took him to the cave engaged in the faking.
00:16:36
Speaker
No, no. Which, I don't know about you, but that all kind of smelt like a setup in both directions. Can we find some people who are producing fake artifacts for Scott to go and look at?
00:16:52
Speaker
and say their fake, but also ensure that they appear on camera by not accusing them of doing the faking, even though they're the most likely suspect. Yes. On the other hand, possibly you're in the middle of the jungle in Peru, surrounded by locals and maybe a small camera crew of your own. Maybe you don't want to piss these people off by accusing them of being fraudsters to their face. That's true. That's true. In a location where you could probably disappear per night.
00:17:20
Speaker
And so the conclusion now, the artifacts that kicked it off, it's all just a little bit eerie theory and... He reckons he got the artifacts tested and they appear to be impossibly old. They appear to be thousands... The glue apparently is impossibly old. There's no way you could fake...
00:17:37
Speaker
having organic matter that old in glue ipso facto. The glue that's binding things to the artifact indicates they are incredibly ancient and as several archaeologists online said after that episode, it's quite easy to get old organic matter to then put into glue so that glue appears to be old when you test it.
00:17:57
Speaker
You just dig a really, really deep hole in an area where you know human habitation has been for a long time. You dig up organic matter from beneath the ground. You make your glue paste from that organic matter. And when it's dated, the glue will look old. It's not impossible. No. But he stops short of saying, well, here's proof of alien life right here. But he sort of leaves it on a bit of a question mark. Really, these things look to be impossibly old. And it's very much chariots of the gods, as you said.
00:18:27
Speaker
Now, episode three, the Cave of Secrets. Now, I found this episode genuinely interesting, but it's not for its earth-shattering history. In fact, it doesn't mean anything new about history, does it? No, it doesn't at all. Basically, this fella in Pennsylvania says, hey, I've got this cave on my property, which I stumbled upon when I was a lad, and it has mysterious carvings and markings and stuff inside it. Do you want to come check it out? So he has a look at this cave.
00:18:56
Speaker
Unfortunately, he's now flooded, but he sends in a little drone submersible thing and then sends in some actual cave divers and has a bunch of fun poking around there and finds a bunch of carvings and some things down there. In one bit that did appear quite staged, they hit an idiot and they can't investigate anymore into the cave because of the flooding. Then the guy who invited him says, oh, by the way,
00:19:21
Speaker
forgot to mention the other day I also found this badge around the same time in that area when I first discovered the thing and it's the badge of some sort of quasi Masonic order and they had looked through the records and find out that the leader of that order was the former owner of the house so it appears that that cave had been used in the in the rituals of this this sort of Mason ish secret society that was in the area at the time and
00:19:44
Speaker
Which then somehow goes into the Underground Railway. Well, yes. Again, they've taken that story as far as they can, and then they're like, but he keeps coming up to these initials that appear to have been carved in the walls, and they can't find anyone involved in that secret society that had those initials. So maybe who else? What could have been and where they are in Pennsylvania is where the Underground Railroad went.
00:20:09
Speaker
Through it makes it sound like it's an actual railroad but and and so basically they they do a bunch of investigating so it's entirely possible that this cave could have been used to shelter runaway slaves who were being taken to free states as part of the Underground Railroad and he goes and finds the descendant of a freed slave who who wrote a
00:20:30
Speaker
a sort of chronicle of people who went through the Underground Railroad who now his descendant is now a historian and they sort of get to see his original diaries. It's quite an emotional moment for her and at all odds it was an interesting bit of American history but not a particularly secret or controversial or conspiratorial history. No, which then becomes quite interesting when we go to episode four which is unmasking Jack the Ripper, the notorious serial killer who operated in
00:20:57
Speaker
London, which is I believe located in a country called the United Kingdom of not the United States of America. Yes, so not so much America unearthed as in we have to do a Jack the Ripper episode now. I mean, to be fair, he's investigating the theory of a bunch of American guys. So it kind of starts in America. But yes, it's entirely about. It's not about the hidden history. It's not about the history of America at all.
00:21:25
Speaker
So I mean, the theory they're going in, obviously, is there anyone in that time period who hasn't been accused of being Jack the Ripper by now? One of my ancestors hasn't been accused, but only one. All the others have been. So in this particular case, their theory is that Jack the Ripper was actually famous author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes. And what else did he write?
00:21:48
Speaker
Was Sherlock Holmes his only thing? He also wrote the Professor Challenger stories, which are the Lost World as a Professor Challenger story. He was also fairly famous at the time for writing historical romances.
00:22:03
Speaker
which in that sense is about knights doing daring deeds. But they basically haven't survived because they weren't very well written. They were kind of over-written whilst it turned out his more pulpy fiction he wrote for The Strand, like the Sherlock Holmes stories and the Professor Challenger stories, were written in a kind of pulpy, fast-paced manner. And those stories turned out to have stood the test of history. Well, it's the stuff he actually thought was important
00:22:31
Speaker
turns out not to have done. At least when it comes to fiction. There's also the whole Cottingling theories thing, which he was involved in. But that's another story. Yes, I mean, Arthur Conan Doyle was a Freemason. And so they get to talk about Masons a lot and Masonic rituals and all that sort of stuff. And he was a trained doctor as well. He was, yes. And so then Scott Walters chopping up a...
00:22:54
Speaker
A fake cadaver as opposed to an actual cadaver. Here I am, emulating the ripper murders by actually chopping up a human being to see how hard it would be. That's the budget. He does get to disembowel a practice cadaver. Unfortunately, it's a male one, because some of the victims had their ovaries removed and what have you. And he's like, well, this is more or less where ovaries about are. So if this were a woman, this would be anyway.
00:23:21
Speaker
And in the end, as is becoming something of a theme, it ends up fairly inconclusive. They don't prove that Arthur Conan Doyle was the Jack the Ripper, but I guess they don't prove that he wasn't. No, but it does have the best line in the entire series, and we're going to play you a clip of that right now. If he was the Ripper, in his mind he was done, so he checked out a masonry and checked into murder.
00:23:51
Speaker
No, it doesn't actually get better than that, does it? No, it really doesn't. I mean, that's basically the pinnacle the show is ever going to have. Anyway, so we move on. Episode 5, Phoenicians in America, which is kind of like the Vikings in America one. Again, they found some artifacts that appear to be Phoenician artifacts in the middle of America. Does this mean that the Phoenicians managed to get all the way across to America? So he looks into this theory and a large part of it seems to be based
00:24:18
Speaker
on an ancient map from the time period that has these little islands off the coast of Africa. And some people, for some reason, think that those aren't actually islands off the coast of Africa. So the Canary Islands, I believe? Yeah, I think people think they're canaries. But then they're like, some people suggest, maybe they're actually these islands on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. In the Caribbean. Just because the map, the cartographer has no sense of scale that looks like they're right next to Africa.
00:24:44
Speaker
Ignoring the fact there are some islands off the coast of Africa that these islands would actually match quite closely. So, yeah, there's a look into that. I understand he meant the Minoans come up. I understand. So back in season one, he does an episode about how he thinks that the bronze that the Minoans based their civilization upon comes from North America, because there's this
00:25:08
Speaker
rather errant claim that the amount of bronze attributed to the Minoans can't be sourced from the Mediterranean. It turns out that that's probably not correct. It's probably also more likely that they sourced their bronze from the Mediterranean than found North America and then engaged in a very elaborate sea trade of bringing bronze all the way back to Crete.
00:25:34
Speaker
Now I have to admit, I can't even remember how this episode finished. That's how little an impact had on me. Was this the one where it turned out the artifacts weren't genuine? Yes, that's the one where the grandmother may have been mistaken about the Phoenician nature of the lettering on the artifacts in question because linguists went, yeah, that's not Phoenician. But Scott still finds evidence that maybe the Phoenicians were in America, just not with that evidence.
00:26:01
Speaker
Now episode 6, The Spy Who Saved America. Once again, not actually hidden history, just more historical question of, it's not, there are no lies, there's no misinformation, it's a case of we don't know who a certain member of the cult aspiring was.
00:26:20
Speaker
And this episode is an investigation to three candidates who may have been the mysterious Culper Spryring. Spryring, if he was fairly spryring. A spyring member operating outside of New York. But he does it with Valerie Plame, which is a name you probably remember.
00:26:41
Speaker
She was, she got booted out, didn't she? She had to resign. What was the deal with her again? Because they didn't go into her, they sort of say, hey, you know, you've heard her name, but they didn't quite go into the... So she from memory is involved in the whole and how it's interrogation thing and the exposure of what was happening under George W. Bush's regime in the US and kind of got
00:27:09
Speaker
ostracized by the intelligence community from memory. I'm actually going from from memory on this. So basically was the full person for that particular story. And yes, they don't mention that at all. They just mentioned that she's an expert when it comes to spies, because she's a former spy. Yep.
00:27:28
Speaker
And so basically, there is this one spy who goes by the identity of 355, who was a woman, and one of George Washington's sort of trusted spies during the Revolutionary War. And yeah, I mean, there are three women who they think sort of fit the bill, and they narrow it down to one, largely based around the fact that the other two weren't anywhere near New York when the spy was supposed to be in New York, so I'm not sure.
00:27:54
Speaker
And yeah, again, it's an interesting bit of history. It's not controversial or conspiratorial.
Debunking the Louisiana Bigfoot Myth
00:28:00
Speaker
I mean, the story itself is conspiratorial. It's all about spies and the revolutionary war and passing information and so on. But at the end of the day, here's a person we don't quite know who their identity was, and they come up with a good candidate for her identity.
00:28:15
Speaker
No, I'm completely wrong about the warehouse interrogation thing. It's the Scooter Libby, what's called Plaingate. So yes, it was a case of
00:28:30
Speaker
information being leaked and things like that and basically she was the source there you go anyway i want to episode seven bigfoot of the bayou so we go to some actual bigfoot hunting um there's a sesquatch type is it do you pronounce it cryptid i've heard people say it in different like
00:28:49
Speaker
I say cryptid because I call it cryptozoology, so crypto cryptid. That's right. I'm sure people pronounce it weirdly. But anyway, I'm going to say cryptid as well. Sasquatch type cryptid in the bayous of Louisiana. And he basically goes on a Bigfoot hunt. He gets out his night vision cameras and stakes things out. And they sort of this is done for network television. So it has has commercial breaks.
00:29:16
Speaker
which always, you know, they always managed to have something dramatic happen beforehand. So he's like in the bush and then it's like, what was that? Cut to commercial, come back. Suggesting heavily he's about to be attacked by Sasquatch. And cuts back to, oh, I guess it was nothing. It wasn't nothing, it was gas.
00:29:33
Speaker
Well, yes. In the end, one of the things that marks the Sasquatch type creature everybody talks about is that supposedly it has a terrible smell and this bad smell is sort of a sign that the creature is nearby. And so again, in the him not being entirely credulous thing, he does actually debunk part of this thing by saying, actually, that thing you can smell, that's swamp gas being released by the decomposing vegetation.
00:29:59
Speaker
as becomes standard throughout the season. He goes back to talk to the person who sent him on his quest in the first place and says, well, I mean, it might be swamp gas, but I do think that maybe your ancestors saw something or experienced something after all that can't be explained. So he does try to have it both ways. He does a little bit of gentle debunking and then goes, but it still might be true. Anyway, moving along. Let's rattle through the studio episode eight. Drake's lost treasure.
00:30:27
Speaker
They go looking for Sir Francis Drake's lost treasure. So basically, when Drake's fleet returned to the UK, there was kind of a sum of money missing. It's suspected that maybe it was buried somewhere along the coast of North America. They go looking for it, looking at what appears to be new map evidence. They don't become rich.
00:30:51
Speaker
Yes, and so that's the one where he wants, he wants, he says to the University, hey, can I please take this old thing and get it properly tested? And the University's like, no. Yeah. And so that's the end. Which he then goes, they don't want me to test to see whether this is real because suspicion is the artifact in question is a fake.
00:31:09
Speaker
Well, it's probably more likely that they're going, we don't know who you are. We all do it professionally or not at all, not just give it to a reality TV host who will probably shine lasers at it. Ooh, nice little cork noise there.
00:31:25
Speaker
So, episode nine, Chicago's Mystery Bomber is yet another interesting historical footnote episode, basically. They try to identify the person behind the Chicago Haymarket attack of 1886, which is sort of the first
00:31:40
Speaker
The first sort of bombing attack in American history, some dude chucked a bomb into a gather, it was like a labor, not riot, but it was a labor movement thing, threw an explosion into the middle of the crowd, killed a bunch of people, and it's never been proven exactly who the bomber was. Yeah, so there's a suspicion that it might have been a unionist,
00:32:05
Speaker
or it might have been a member of the police or the security forces attached to the state at the time who was trying to antagonise the issue. Interestingly enough, he goes and talks to the Pinkertons who were operating on the side of the local government at the time and they say, no, it definitely wasn't us. And Scott Walter goes, well, if they say no, it can't have been them. Despite the fact the Pinkertons have a
00:32:34
Speaker
fairly salubrious history of being agitators and then denying it after the fact and the history books going, no actually you are kind of on the side of the bad guys there. So he gets to have a bit of fun, he goes old school and makes one of these old-fashioned hanger, he goes to a
00:32:53
Speaker
I don't know what he is, a metallurgist or an ironmonger of some sort who forges one of these. It's like sort of a little sphere of lead with the yupak explosive inside. It's kind of like a petard. It is a little bit, yes. With a fuse and then you throw it and then many people are hoist upon it, or hoist by it.
00:33:14
Speaker
Scott Walter was almost hoist by his own petard, you're saying. He was. Well, he pretty well. He could have been, if he'd been standing a bit closer. Or if the Fuse had been wrong. And so again, much as with the Valerie Plame episode, they find a guy who fits the bill, could well be the dude. Interesting historical footnote, not particularly conspiratorial or mysterious. No.
00:33:36
Speaker
But then we get to episode 10, Exodus of the Templars.
Knights Templar's Alleged Treasures in the New World
00:33:41
Speaker
Now this is what I was waiting for. Yeah, this is the one you wanted me to see. Josh, tell me what happened in episode 10. Right, well it starts with some dudes found an inscription on a rock in Newfoundland and gets Scott Walter to investigate and he looks at this and says this could be more evidence for his pet theory that the Knights Templar, after getting booted out of England,
00:34:01
Speaker
sailed to the new land. Not England, Europe. Out of Europe, out of everywhere, out of the old world. Well, they ended up in Scotland, didn't they? Or is that what he claimed? At any rate, got booted out of the old world, came to the new world with all their riches and treasures and mysterious artifacts. He claims they possibly had the holy grail. They possibly had the Ark of the Covenant. They possibly had documentary proof of secrets that the church doesn't want you to know, including the existence of Jesus's children.
00:34:31
Speaker
The old bloodline, eh? So I understand this has been the common thread throughout the previous three seasons. Now before we go into exactly what this is meant to mean, did this episode make any sense to you at all?
00:34:51
Speaker
I could understand the claims he was making, couldn't really get a handle on how the things he was looking at provided evidence for those claims. In particular, so he has this inscription. Was it an actual hooked X? There was another symbol on it that he thought was a temporary sort of a symbol. He does his whole geologist thing. At first he looks at it and says, oh, actually, I think this might not be legit because the
00:35:18
Speaker
that doesn't look nearly weathered enough to be old enough, but then he goes and inspects it with his microscope, which appeared to be a special lens stuck on the end of a cellphone camera, and says, oh, I'm nearly surprised to see the rock is actually a lot, the kind of rock is a lot harder than he thought it was, which means you wouldn't expect to see nearly as much weathering, so it could be legit and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, then he goes to Scotland.
00:35:40
Speaker
And there's a castle in Scotland, where apparently the Templars were, and there's a carving wall, a chapel, an old stone building, that's a castle in my books. And there's inscriptions on the wall, including this one that has sort of four diamond shapes on top of each other with another little symbol and then a sort of a five pointy sort of pentagrammy star.
00:36:02
Speaker
which he claims is a treasure map, and that's where I was like, hang on, what? He claims that these diamond shapes are coordinates. Each one is a coordinate. I think it was... Which is their latitudes. Yeah, I think it was coordinates.
00:36:17
Speaker
he did talk about earlier the nice templar supposedly had a thing where they'd stake out a square and sort of run twine around it and then at a certain time of day they'd see that the square would cast a diamond-shaped shadow. Was that where the diamonds came into it? That was the only other time I remember him talking.
00:36:36
Speaker
The whole diamond thing, I had watched it several times, and I still quite grasped exactly what his argument was meant to be. But they're meant to be latitudes, indicating stops that the Templar fleet made on their way to Newfoundland in North America.
00:36:54
Speaker
They just look like a bunch of diamonds and they're sort of carved into a wall So if it was like you'd need to get really precise with your angles surely if you were doing some anyway That's his thing. Then he goes and talks of this tower and Newport and I understand back in America I understand this has come up a bunch of times Yep, he's obsessed with what appears to be the remains of a grain mill which you take comes to be Templar architecture of some kind
00:37:18
Speaker
Yes, I mean, he doesn't in any way resemble Templar architecture in the old world. He makes a great sort of mention of the fact that there's like an archway and the cornerstone is not in the center where a cornerstone would normally be. It's off to the side. And so therefore that's supposedly highly significant. And there's a window in it that the sun shines through at a right tile, possibly Venus. I can't remember. Venus comes up a few times as well. So he certainly appears to believe that the treasure of the Templars is buried underneath this tower.
00:37:48
Speaker
But they won't let him dink. Well, and as he himself says, you'd have to, it would be quite an undertaking to not destroy the tower at the same time as you're digging underneath it. So again, there's a bit of a, there's a bit of a sigh. One day, maybe we'll get into this. He gets his pet archaeologist too, doesn't he? This dude who used to be a baseball player and is now an archaeologist. So he was a little bit famous beforehand or something.
00:38:16
Speaker
Yes, we have this way in the previous season as well. Yeah, there was a lot of stuff where I was just like, hang on, what? His thesis seemed clear enough. The Templars came here. They brought their stuff. There are symbols that you can trace their route. But any time he tried to show actual proof of this, my brains did start dribbling out my ears a little bit.
00:38:42
Speaker
I particularly like the bit, though, he looks at one inscription, I can't remember if it's a Newfoundland one or a different one, and he's like, now you've got this picture, uh, talking to the guy he's with, and they've sort of got a scan of it on the computer, now can you measure the width of the top line, and the guy measures it to be exactly 46.6 centimeters, and he writes this down in his notepad, and now can you, can you measure the length of the bottom line of text, and you measure it out, and it's exactly 23.3 centimeters, he writes down 23.3, and he's like,
00:39:12
Speaker
46.6 23.3 why that's a ratio of exactly two to one and I did notice though that when he draws the line identifying it it's like from the top left of one to just a little bit below the top right of the other side just to make sure the line extends to exactly 46.6 and exactly 23.3 then apparently that was ridiculously
00:39:33
Speaker
significant because the templars and the masons and everyone else was all about their two to one ratio in their architecture, although that was like, that have rooms where the width to height ratio was two to one, not inscriptions where one line happened to be twice as long as the other. You have to mention the poor person who manages to get the ratios on the inscriptions completely wrong. We have to throw this entire stone out now. Start again. We have to pull the entire stone out of the wall. Bloody hell.
00:39:59
Speaker
So yeah, I admit I did kind of get lost. So you've watched it yourself as well. Does it make more sense having seen the previous ones? Yes, because it is very much a sequel to previous template episodes you've seen on America Unearthed. So traditionally,
00:40:17
Speaker
Scott Walter spends two episodes per season looking at his pet theory about the Templars coming to North America after their expulsion from Europe. And it's quite clear that this was meant to be a two-part episode that was cut into one commercial hour. It does jump around a lot.
00:40:39
Speaker
Yeah, it does feel like there's a lot of stuff missing there, so they had to compress things into one hour, because obviously the channel went, we're not giving you two hours on Templars, we know you want to do an episode, but you're doing an episode. Not a two-parter, not a movie link special, just a normal episode. And so he is revisiting a lot of material he's looked at in the past.
00:41:03
Speaker
Now, Walter's thesis about the Templars coming to America is an incredibly convoluted story. It involves this thing called the Kensington Runestone, which is supposedly a Viking inscription, which appears to be
00:41:24
Speaker
narrating a travelogue which waltzer claims is actually a land claim which has a unique feature called the hook x which is something only the templars apparently use which indicates the vikings the templars are somehow related and then apparently when the viking order the night's templar was shut down
00:41:46
Speaker
by the church and the French aristocracy. Apparently they all just had to disappear elsewhere as opposed to what actually happened which was that most of the members of the Knights Templar outside of the leadership who were tried ended up just going to different
00:42:06
Speaker
orders all around Europe. In fact, actually, some branches of the Knights Templar weren't suppressed. They actually continued to exist for years afterwards. So, this actual understanding of what happened to the Knights Templar is so ahistorical, it's kind of unbelievable.
00:42:25
Speaker
below. He's got this really big thing that the Templars made it to North America and established colonies, land claims and bloodlines there to hide the real treasure of the Knights Templar, the children of Jesus Christ.
00:42:43
Speaker
Which they only get mentioned in person in that episode. Yes, and that's in part because I think they've snuck an episode in which has the most palatable version of his Night's Templar story, knowing that long-term fans who have watched seasons one, two and three will have seen the previous storylines and know exactly what he's heading towards.
00:43:10
Speaker
Well, there you go. So general impressions, I was surprised at the production values. It's very slick, very, you know, sort of nicely shot, good CGI, reconstructions, reenactments, yes, with the costumes and everything. But yes, the whole thing just seemed a little bit tepid. Things are either inconclusive or
00:43:33
Speaker
interesting, but not in any way going to up-end all of history as we know it. And then yes, then the last one was just a little bit, a little bit weird.
00:43:46
Speaker
Yes. And the thing was, I was kind of hoping for old-style America Unearthed, which is chockablock with conspiracies, pseudo-history, alternative takes on the prehistory of North America.
Unresolved Historical Questions in 'America Unearthed'
00:44:01
Speaker
And what we got this time was basically half and half of
00:44:05
Speaker
maybe Vikings and Phoenicians got here or maybe they didn't, and here are some unanswered questions about American history. Wouldn't it be fascinating to go on a field trip and throw some bombs around to see whether we can work out the answers? And that stuff was particularly tepid because the show starts off telling us history we've taught has been wrong. There are pyramids, artifacts, inscriptions. And half the storylines isn't about the history that we've been told is wrong. It's
00:44:33
Speaker
There are questions about history which we're not sure about. Let's investigate it. The promise of the show is not fulfilled by the show itself. So we're now going to have to have a sequel to this episode where you furnish me with episodes from previous seasons. We are, yes. That'll be coming up later, once I've recovered. I mean, given that there is, given there are at least 13 more episodes for you to watch, I imagine we'll be doing that in about 30 weeks.
00:45:03
Speaker
Indeed. So I think we've come to the end of the episode, which means we are now going to stop recording and then start recording again some bonus patron content for our patron bonus bonus patrons. The bonus bonus patrons patrons bonus.
00:45:19
Speaker
if you would like to become one of our patrons that would be just super impeachy keen and you can do so at patreon.com or at conspiracism.podbean.com or you could just not and just continue listening to these main episodes and that's fine as well
00:45:35
Speaker
It is fine. I mean, it does make you inferior compared to our patrons, but our patrons are truly superior human beings, and also alien shape-shifting reptiles, and two sentient dogs from Alpha Centauri, but we shouldn't get to that.
00:45:53
Speaker
So, to our non-patronisters, we'll see you next week. To our patronisters, we'll see you in a minute, assuming that you then, you stop listening to this episode and immediately do the bonus episode, which you might, I don't know, I'm not your mum, you listen to things whenever you want. I mean, you may already listen to the bonus episode. Yeah, you could be some sort of weird, weird, sick in the head lunatic who likes to listen to the bonus content and then the main episode.
00:46:19
Speaker
But you do you. Yep. It's a free world. It is. Unfortunately. What one day? One day we'll do something. One day. But until that day, we will say to you goodbye and oh, nice little cork noise there. Tune in next time.
00:46:48
Speaker
You've been listening to the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy, starring Josh Addison and Dr. M.R. Extended, which is written, researched, recorded and produced by Josh and Em. You can support the podcast by becoming a patron, via its Podbean or Patreon campaigns. And if you need to get in contact with either Josh or Em, you can email them at podcastconspiracyatgmail.com or check their Twitter accounts, Mikey Fluids and Conspiracism.
00:47:49
Speaker
And remember, silent green is meeples. What the hell am I caught on? Here we go. Cabling. Oh, the cabling.
00:47:58
Speaker
It's like, boom, cats, the reckoning. Okay, I saw her kick some ass and then I tripped over the cables and everything went everywhere and it was embarrassing. And then we became the theme tune to Bird of Prey, or Birds of Prey, one of the early DC attempts to do the TV series. I actually never watched it. No, it was, it was kind of- There was Gail Simone was writing that? I don't know. I think she was, yeah. Anyway, oh, nice little cork noise there.