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Places That Don't Exist
30 Plays5 years ago
This week Josh and M investigate places that apparently don't exist, like Australia! Finland! Bielefeld! Acre! Molise! And those mysterious "paper towns" on maps!
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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
and learn more about their academic work at:
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Transcript
Introduction and Terminology
00:00:09
Speaker
The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Addison and Dr. M. Denton.
00:00:19
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. It's a slightly rainy, drizzly evening. Not as drizzly or rainy as it was yesterday. Yesterday was storm territory. Yesterday was stormy. Today it's drizzly and cold. It's winter here in Auckland, New Zealand. And we're really feeling it. We are. We being Josh Addison, Dr. Em Denteth. Yeah, it's cold is all I'm saying. Not as cold as the heart of a queue observer though.
00:00:45
Speaker
Cue observer, now cue observer. We know that we've got this right. Not cue follower, not cue adept, not cue stir, not cue tay, no cue observer.
QAnon Confusion and Podcast Changes
00:00:55
Speaker
And cue observers are a little bit mystified this week, aren't they, Joshua? Apparently, because their hero, Lord and Savior, President Donald Trump has been in America, has come from America, been in England, talking to the Queen. Who, of course, as we know, is a child-raping Satanist,
00:01:14
Speaker
who drinks the blood of children. Alien shapeshifter on the side. I see you almost removed the F there, which I keep doing in my academic writing at the moment. And so some of the Q followers who are also observant to the kind of David Ike alien reptile, blood-drinking Satanist coven thing, getting a little bit confused by Trump paddling around with someone who performs sex orgies with children whilst draining them off their blood.
00:01:44
Speaker
Be interested to know the crossover actually between QAnon evil sex cult conspiracy rings and David Icke evil sex slave child trafficking ring Conspiracies I assume you must be good if someone needs to do a survey, but that's not us But this is all we had to talk about the song we felt we had to mention that at the start But um because we don't do news we're not doing using only once a month once a month and use three times a lady
00:02:14
Speaker
that doesn't really work anyway but we'll be doing news week after things but we we couldn't sit on Q observations or being Q observant no so we have an actual topic and that's what we're going to do but first we have a we have a mailbag entry I understand if we so often
00:02:33
Speaker
we get mail from our listeners so infrequently that we don't actually have a sting to play in front of it yeah I actually spent the afternoon going should I make a sting should I make a sting but then I had actual work to do so I didn't but if we get more mail I may have to make a sting for the mail so listener beware
00:02:54
Speaker
Anyway, what's in the mailbag this week, Dr.
Florida Conspiracy Theories
00:02:57
Speaker
Dentist? Well, we have an old friend and someone that I used to get drunk with, who I shall simply refer to as R, which is not her real name, who writes in. And I'm just, I'm summing off the beginning of the email here.
00:03:14
Speaker
A current hot topic is beach driving. It is banned in Florida, but there are two access points on Amelia Island that were grandfathered into permit beach driving. There has been a move to ban these two access points on a safety and environmental level, and there is a lot of local bad feeling around this. It's a fight between those who want to keep the beach driving, because of what has done it, my family's done it for years, etc, and those who don't. Names have been called and mud thrown.
00:03:44
Speaker
It starts off delightfully mysterious and also Florida-esque. Now to the conspiracy. In the past month, two women have been injured a mile apart by a hit-and-run driver while they were sunbathing on the beach. The second driver was apprehended. The first is still unknown. The conspiracy is around the first incident.
00:04:08
Speaker
Basically at this particular beach the local council held a meeting to address beach driving after the first incident and one woman got up to speak saying that she was near the incident and didn't see anything and doesn't believe the woman was hit and also that her leg showed too much bruising to have just happened then etc etc and then our correspondent goes on to say that
00:04:34
Speaker
This person would appear to be of Latino extraction, so there might be a healthy dose of racism going on in this story anyway. Basically, the feeling is the incident was manufactured to deny us the right to drive on the beach.
00:04:50
Speaker
Now, our correspondent missed the meeting, so this story is entirely hearsay, but it was repeated on Melissa Ross's First Coast Connect on the local NPR station by a caller on Thursday, the 23rd of May. Now, the woman's lawyer shut down the story pretty quick, and she hasn't seen much else in the media, probably because it's essentially accusing the woman and her lawyer of fraud, as a lawyer pointed out.
00:05:16
Speaker
But there are stories circulating and it is our own local little conspiracy and she ends with, is it wrong to feel somewhat proud we have one of our own? No, of course it's not. No, it's not. You should be proud. So basically this is a hit and run false flag. Yeah, it's sort of trutherism.
00:05:36
Speaker
on a very small scale there. The thing which I like about this is the argument as to why the event didn't occur, saying I was near the incident and didn't see anything, so I don't believe the woman was hit, but also she was too injured to have been hit by a car.
00:05:51
Speaker
Yeah, I will confess, I didn't quite follow that. I think the notion was she was too bruised by the time I got to her. Right, so bruises shouldn't have developed that quickly. Which does make you wonder whether this person's a medical professional or not. Yeah, that's what I was going to say.
00:06:09
Speaker
Interesting.
Existential Conspiracy Theories
00:06:10
Speaker
Yes, false flags. In Miami, we should call our friend of the show Joe Yusinsky and find out what he thinks. I say Miami, Miami's only one part of Florida. No, it's a big place. It is. America's a big place. And it's filled with gators. And gatorade.
00:06:26
Speaker
And speaking of places... Which may or may not exist. Or may or may not be confused with Miami. That's what we're going to be talking about for the main bit of this episode. Places. Which may or may not exist. Well, specifically those ones, yes. Yes, you've got me there. It's true. Or have I? Yes, you have. Shall we play the chime? Indeed.
00:06:56
Speaker
maps. Maps are wonderful things, and once upon a time, maps didn't just reflect the Noan Lands, but they also represented speculation as to what else is out there to be found. 16th century maps, for example, speculated about a giant continent in the Southern Hemisphere which would balance out the Noan Landmasses in the north,
00:07:19
Speaker
and this was considered a perfectly normal thing to do. After all, not all maps were designed with navigation in mind, and many maps were developed as pieces of political propaganda. What easier way to lay claim to something you think is out there than to pretend to show you already know about it?
00:07:39
Speaker
In the modern era, however, that largely exists as accurate representations of what is there. So if someone pointed to a place on a map, like, say, Finland or Australia, you would or should be very surprised if that person then went on to say, that place doesn't exist.
00:07:55
Speaker
This week we look at some of the conspiracy theories about places people claim don't exist, but appear on maps nonetheless. Some of these conspiracy theories are not seriously believed by anyone, they're just fun games based around the question
00:08:10
Speaker
How do you know? But it also turns out there are some places that appear on maps that really don't exist. And that's kind of interesting in its own right. Of course, given we come from a country which often doesn't appear on maps, maybe you should be taking everything we say with a grain of salt. Are we really broadcasting from Auckland to Aotearoa, New Zealand? Or is this living room really a soundstage in Burbank, California? And does California really exist? Who really knows?
00:08:46
Speaker
Yes, so places that don't exist. This is sort of a subspecies of its own, really, when it comes to conspiracy theories. There are claims about various places around the world that those places don't actually exist. They're not there. They aren't things. And any evidence to the effect that these things might actually exist are all just fakes.
00:09:13
Speaker
Sorry, I don't want to interrupt your first sip of the show. There you go. Sweet alcohol numbs the pain. In what pain I suffer, what pain I suffer. Alright, so for talking about places that don't exist, why are we talking about them with respect to conspiracy theories?
00:09:32
Speaker
Well, that's the thing. It's not simply these things don't exist, and if you think they do, they're wrong. It's these things don't exist, but the man or them or the they or some shadowy forces want you to think they exist and have gone to extraordinary lengths to persuade you all that they exist.
00:09:49
Speaker
So this is basically the reverse of the Atlantis Lemuria theories, isn't it? Where people claim these places do exist, but they don't want you to know about them. In this case, we're talking about conspiracy theories where these places don't exist, but they want you to believe that they do. All right, Josh, hit me with a place that doesn't exist. And why it needs to be big and surprising, otherwise I'm going home. Okay. Is Australia big enough for you?
00:10:20
Speaker
Probably not surprising since we did actually mention it in the intro. It's pretty large from memory. I have apparently flown across it several times going to the Northern Hemisphere. Oh, have you? If you even do fly from Aotearoa, New Zealand to the Northern Hemisphere, a large majority, I would say probably almost over half of the flight, is flying over Australia. Or is it? Because it's so big. Or is it?
00:10:49
Speaker
Well, so have you been to Australia, Joshua? I have quote-unquote been to quote-unquote Australia. Yes, yes. I have been to quote-unquote Australia. You don't have to put quote-unquote around been. You can simply put the quotes around the place that may or may not exist. I would have put quotes around too as well if I'd thought of it.
00:11:15
Speaker
I'm trying to put quotes around I. How do we know I even exist? We'll get into that. I do ask that question a lot. So here is a theory. It's a conspiracy theory. Earlier this year, I think Joe Rogan called it his favourite new conspiracy. The conspiracy to make us believe that Australia exists. So the claim is that, and this one, there is actually a little bit of
00:11:45
Speaker
substance might not be the right word but there's a bit of reasoning behind it at least. There's an argument and an attempt at providing evidence. The argument is that in times past Britain had a bunch of convicts that they wanted to just plain execute but that would have been politically unpalatable perhaps mass murder on that scale so they made up the idea of this Australia place
00:12:10
Speaker
that they were quote-unquote shipping their convicts off to, to hide the fact that they've just been killing a bunch of people and dumping their bodies. So this is the claim. Australia doesn't exist, never existed. It's all hoax by, I guess, started by Britain.
00:12:29
Speaker
but presumably carried on by many more people. And the claim that this, you know, it's one of those conspiracies that goes all the way to the top. If you know someone who claims to be in Australia and live in Australia, they're just an actor. If you get on an airplane that's apparently going to Australia, what really happens is the pilot who's in on it
00:12:48
Speaker
flies you around for several, several hours and then drops you somewhere in South America, somewhere, an island somewhere and tells you, oh, this is Australia that we're in right now. And presumably all the people who you meet while you're there are also actors played to keep up the charade and so on and so on. And it makes sense to make it South America because they also have marsupials. And marsupials is a big thing about Australia.
00:13:11
Speaker
South America has marsupials. Obviously, if you're going to fake a place, do it in a place where you've got the exotic wildlife. But I'm concerned, does this mean that my colleague Pat Stokes isn't Australian? No. So he's from somewhere like Argentina, Brazil. I assume. And the fact that he claims to be Australian merely shows that he's in on it.
00:13:37
Speaker
I wonder who he's getting to write his academic work because they're really good. So you're possibly, at this point, wondering what sort of evidence is there for this? I'm prepared to give up on my belief about Australia, even though I think I've been there, but evidence needs to be pretty astounding.
00:13:59
Speaker
Right, well we can actually look back into the history of when this conspiracy theory first started doing rounds. That actually didn't show up until 2006.
00:14:09
Speaker
That seems quite late in the day for a giant continent that doesn't exist, that people have been talking about for quite some time, and visiting, and exporting things from, and arranging trade agreements, and sharing armed forces in World Wars. Seems a bit odd to only realize it's a con,
00:14:35
Speaker
13 years ago. Maybe that shows how good a conspiracy theory it was that it lasted a good 150 years or so. I'll grant you that. So the theory is that Britain made this up. Now, in the period of time between the supposed convicts going to Australia,
00:14:55
Speaker
there was kind of a war of independence in the United States, which made the United States become independent of Great Britain. And there was a period of antipathy between the UK and the US. So you're saying that for some reason, America maintained the illusion of a convict country
00:15:24
Speaker
to somehow satisfy the UK which they hated right to the top in all the way to the top my mind is blowing but not in 2006 a Swedish Facebook user by the name of Shelley
00:15:40
Speaker
wrote this piece on her Facebook page which starts, Australia is not real. It's a hoax made for us to believe that Britain moved over their criminals to some place. In reality, all these criminals were loaded off ships into the waters, drowning before they could see land ever again. It's a cover-up for one of the greatest mass murders in history made by one of the most prominent empires.
00:16:02
Speaker
And on and on and on. It doesn't exist. All these things you call proof of fate. One of the biggest hoaxes is even known. All these things that Australians, quote-unquote, I suppose the up to, are all just lies designed to cover up one of the greatest genocides in history. Finishes, tell the truth. Stand up for what is right. Make sure to spread the word. Actually, technique says make sure to spread the world, which is even other.
00:16:26
Speaker
Wow, there we go. Australia is not real. It's a code word for the cold-blooded murder of more than 100,000 people and it is not okay. We will not accept this. Stand up for the ones who died. It'd be known that Australia does not exist. Hashtag Australia is not real. No, I'm assuming this Shelley is some kind of historian and thus has done the research to be able to show that this is in fact a massive hoax. Oh no, she's just someone on Facebook.
00:16:50
Speaker
I'd refer you to the Facebook page, the original post, apparently it's been taken down because it had gathered a whole lot of attention, much more attention than I think Shelley was expecting and the suggestion was that it was all just a bit of a joke, a bit of satire that she'd put up that people kind of took the wrong way. So this is a hoax. It actually does look like it's a hoax, yes.
00:17:17
Speaker
OK, well let's move on. There must be other countries where we're at. OK, you want other countries? I'll give you other countries.
Finland Conspiracy Theory
00:17:23
Speaker
Finland. How do you feel about Finland? You know how I feel about Finland. Finland, Finland, Finland. There's nowhere that I'd rather be smoking, haddock and camping. Well, too bad. Or watching TV. Too bad if you want to be in Finland. Finland, Finland, Finland. It's the country for me. But it's not. Because Finland also doesn't exist. Oh.
00:17:46
Speaker
I've been to Helsinki, and I've been to Turku, and I was told they were in this place called Finland. Oh, you were told that? You were told lots of things. And I met a Finnish colleague, Juhar Riker,
00:18:03
Speaker
you met a person who claimed they were Finnish. But the fact is, according to this conspiracy theory, that Finland does not exist. Where we see the country of Finland on world maps, it is in fact empty ocean. And that the places that are claimed to be Finland are actually sort of Eastern Sweden, Northern Russia, just sort of other bits around Europe that have been copied to the extent that.
00:18:28
Speaker
that some of the people who believe they are Finnish and are living in Finland have themselves been lied to, and the country which they call their own doesn't even exist. I know that Sweden used to control the country people think of as Finland, if indeed it does exist.
00:18:47
Speaker
And so there is a kind of political theory there that the Swedes would aid like it back, or the Finns really are kind of crypto Swedes. But this is taking things to a whole new level. I need evidence, Joshua. I'm not willing to give up on my belief in Finland without a decent bit of evidence.
00:19:04
Speaker
Well, maybe we should get to the motivation here, because before we can look at the claims of how this could be, maybe we should look at why this should be. Tell me, why are they keeping the non-existence of Finland secret? Wailing. Japanese wailing.
00:19:25
Speaker
Interesting. Please continue. Japan obviously does a bit of whaling and cops a bit of flak for it. Lots of countries don't like the fact that Japanese waving ships go around killing endangered whales. So what they did was they cooked up this idea that if we can say that this area of ocean isn't ocean at all, it's actually landmass, then Japan can go into that area, wail to their heart's content, and no one will be any the wiser.
00:19:53
Speaker
So when did they start doing this? After World War II. So Finland was invented after World War II? Yes. Despite the fact that Finland was involved in World War II. I think you'll find that's quote unquote Finland. Were you around in World War II? Did you personally write in the histories of World War II? You have got me there. I was not around during World War II or prior to World War II.
00:20:22
Speaker
No, there's lots more. There's lots more pieces of the puzzle. The Trans-Siberian Railway, apparently, has something to do with how they transport this illegally obtained fish. And even the name, though, is a clue, right? Because Finland is called Finland and fish. What do fish have? Girls? Yes.
00:20:45
Speaker
they also have Finn. Let that roll around in your brain for a little while. My brain is blowing once again. This is two blows in a row. Now you might think obviously that Finland is the name that we give to the place and the people who actually live in Finland call it Swomy or something similar in much the same way as the Germans don't call Germany Germany they call it Deutschland and so on and so forth and so why would
00:21:15
Speaker
If it were given the name Finland by Japanese whaling sympathisers, why would they work an English word into a country that doesn't speak English? But that's beside the point! Somehow. I'm quite fascinated by...
00:21:30
Speaker
Japan's duplicity here, they've had to go back and modify a lot of records because there are recorded incidences of Finland well before World War II. In historical sagas and the like. I should say that part of the conspiracy theory is that the CIA is largely behind it.
00:21:53
Speaker
And so they're doing a lot of this tinkering. So the CIA is sponsoring Japanese whaling by making up a country called Finland, which is actually largely sea. Yes. Okay. Yep. I think you'll find it all holds together. This is a hoax, isn't it? Well, let's have a look into the history of this one. We need to go all the way back in time to the heady days of 2000
00:22:23
Speaker
15. Right, so the last one was 2006. You're saying that Finland is a conspiracy that's only just been uncovered three years ago. Well, in 2004, four years ago, you're living in the past. Sorry, actually, I from over there, I thought you said 16. Yeah, you did say 15. I sit corrected. So in 2015, there was a thread on Reddit
00:22:48
Speaker
called, what did your parents show you to do that you assumed was completely normal only to later discover that it was not normal at all? He's seen other people. Apart from that, the top post on this thread is by a user called Rarergan who describes how one thing his wacky parents did was tell them that Finland didn't exist and there was a CIA conspiracy to make us all think it does and laid it all out and how it all went and only later in his life did he discover that this is not actually what all people believe.
00:23:19
Speaker
His parents were playing a joke on him one day. His parents do appear to have been playing a joke on him, yes. This was again one joke that one person made on a Reddit thread, although it took on a life of its own to the extent that there is now a subreddit about the conspiracy that Finland doesn't exist. R slash Finland conspiracy.
00:23:36
Speaker
You know, I think these people are really devaluing the term conspiracy theory here, when it's just a joke. It's possible. Okay, hang on, hang on. So, too recent for you, was it? Would you like something with a bit more history to it? Goes back a little bit further? Yes, yes
The Bielefeld Conspiracy
00:23:52
Speaker
I would. Allow me to interest you in the German town of Bielefeld. Oh, I know someone who went to university there. Or do you?
00:24:00
Speaker
Oh, for the love of God. Because, apparently, it's been widely known that the town of Bielefeldt in Germany, in northern Germany, doesn't exist. I like the way you've pronounced that name two different ways so far. Did I not say Bielefeldt last time? Or did I say the first time? Not at Belefeldt.
00:24:19
Speaker
I'm not German and I can't be expected to pronounce German words correctly. I'm just enjoying the fact that I'm not the person mangling words. Fine. So, this town of Bielefeldt is a hoax. It's not there. It doesn't exist. The hoax itself was propagated by, and you'll like this, them. Them. Them or, in German, zee. Or, I should say, all in capital letters.
00:24:47
Speaker
Well of course it would be. So who are them?
00:24:53
Speaker
I'm glad I asked. They could be, well, take your pick really, being the hypothesis, they all in caps may be the CIA, they may be the Mossad, they may be aliens using Beelerfeld's university to park their spaceships. You said the Beelerfeld doesn't exist, so how can they park their spaceships? Well, sorry, the place where we say it is.
00:25:21
Speaker
So it's kind of like an Area 51 thing where they say Area 51 is in one location, it can be a different location and they can part the alien flying saucers in a location where you're not looking.
00:25:34
Speaker
Interesting. Interesting. This theory basically bases itself around three questions. Do you know anybody from Beelerfeld? Yes. Have you ever been to Beelerfeld? No, although I haven't played for postdoc. Do you know anybody who has ever been to Beelerfeld? Yes. Right, well then you're in on it. Simple as that. Any normal person would answer no to all three questions, such as myself.
00:25:57
Speaker
Never been there, don't know anyone who's been there. I will grant you, I'm not a normal person. And Beelerfeld is... This is where things get slightly embarrassingly parochial here. Beelerfeld's kind of a small town in Germany. Germany, a country of more than 80 million people. So a city with a mere sort of 300,000 people in it is just a little backwater really. The fact that in New Zealand
00:26:24
Speaker
Having 300,000 people will put you in the running for being the country's second largest city. Which is our capital. But yes, by German standards, it's a nowhere. It's Prokio, it's small, it's tiny, it's insignificant. It basically looks like any other small German town or doesn't. It essentially doesn't exist.
00:26:46
Speaker
So yeah, how does that tickle your fancy? See, I happen to know that this one is a hoax because there's a YouTube video in which someone talks about the Bealford conspiracy theory. And the joke about it is that he claims to be in Bealford talking about the conspiracy theory about how the place doesn't exist. And then the video ends with saying, actually, I'm in the town next door because part of the hoax of Bealford
00:27:12
Speaker
or at least the hoax about the conspiracy theory about Bielford, is the sheer fact that all these small German towns look identical. And that's part of the reason why people can joke about it not existing. Because every small German town looks exactly the same. And so it's easy to then go, well, this town looks exactly like that one. Maybe it's the same place. Maybe I haven't moved at all.
00:27:39
Speaker
Well, I'm going to have to take issue with your claims of hoax here. If we look back into the more detailed notes here, now we see this one's been around since 1993, last century, no less. The earliest of early days of the internet and really did anything exist before the internet.
00:27:58
Speaker
Yes, it did. But yes, this conspiracy theory first showed up on the German Usenet group d.talk.bazaar, where it started as a joke. See, told you.
00:28:14
Speaker
Yes, apparently it was all just an in-joke from one person. Someone met a person from Bielefeldt and upon meeting them said the German equivalent of, I don't believe it, is an expression of surprise. But in German, the phrase literally translates as that doesn't exist. And people apparently jumped on that and said, oh, Bielefeldt doesn't exist. And turned it into their own little in-joke, which became a bigger in-joke, which got spread around the internet.
00:28:41
Speaker
to the extent that the town of Beelerfeld actually refers to their non-existence in press statements and marketing material. Angela Merkel herself apparently has mentioned the fact that Beelerfeld doesn't exist, or possibly does.
00:28:56
Speaker
So that's three for three which have not been real. Okay there must be more. I'm getting a bit worried that we're doing an entire episode on places that do exist and it's just jokes about people claiming they don't exist. These don't sound like conspiracy theories. This sounds like a series of hoaxes and pranks. Well what about the Brazilian state of Acre then? I've never heard of it and thus I've never been to it.
00:29:20
Speaker
Right, well, then you're in good company because numerous other people in Brazil have been known to say that archa does not exist.
00:29:31
Speaker
That's the thing they say in Brazil. Accra doesn't exist. Does it exist, Josh? I mean, it does exist. But it was the last, apparently the last state of Brazil to become part of Brazil. And it's a border state. So it's sort of bordering on Bolivia and Peru. And so people are sort of like, you know, kind of doesn't exist in that, you know, it's like not really part of Brazil, but it is, but it's not.
00:29:55
Speaker
Basically, that's going to be Hamilton in 20 years' time when our cities start to merge, and we're going to start joking. Hamilton doesn't exist anymore. But they say it. It's a saying in Brazil. Acre doesn't exist.
00:30:13
Speaker
I mean, that's something. That's not really a conspiracy theory. Well, if you're going to say that's not a conspiracy theory, then you're going to have to say that the expression in Italy, that the region of Melissa doesn't exist. You're going to say that's not a conspiracy theory as well? I'm sensing a trend. So I'm going to say, no, it's not a conspiracy theory. It's not a joke. Then how do you explain the existence of the Facebook group Molesizant? I don't believe in the existence of Melissa.
00:30:38
Speaker
by going onto Facebook right now and saying I don't believe in the existence of Josh Anderson and I bet I can get all of our friends in common to join that group and join me in a discussion about how you don't exist. Right.
00:30:53
Speaker
Yes, no, okay, I have to confess this does look more like Italians making fun of Melissa the same way Aucklanders make fun of Hamilton, although whereas we say that Hamilton is the chlamydia capital of New Zealand, no longer true, apparently. Rotorua supposedly has that crown.
00:31:09
Speaker
I want to say congratulations to Hamilton and Rotorua. You need to get on top of that. We really make jokes about airborne sexually transmitted diseases. These plays will deny its existence. It's all just good-natured. Ripping. Yup.
00:31:27
Speaker
So look, I'm going to be honest, every conspiracy theory around places not actually existing, but there being a conspiracy to make you think they do, everyone turns out to have been a joke originally, or satire, or not meant to be believed.
00:31:43
Speaker
But they are examples of how do you know?
Skepticism of Known Places
00:31:47
Speaker
So cases where you go, well, I met X, X comes from blood. And you go, but how do you know that blood exists? Because it turns out it's actually quite difficult to answer that question in a way which is decisive. So for example, I have been to Finland. I have been to Australia. I've met someone from Beelford.
00:32:10
Speaker
And in each of those situations, Josh could turn to me and say, but can you prove it to me? And I said, well, I got on a plane to Helsinki. How do you know you were in Helsinki? Well, I saw a sign that said Helsinki. How do you know that the sign wasn't just an elaborate set? I literally don't know. How do you know the person you met went to university in Beelwald? Well, they told me they did. Do you trust this person? Well, I kind of know them vaguely.
00:32:37
Speaker
can't make any big claim. It didn't seem like they were lying. Ah, but the best liars never do. It's a great example of the sceptics question, but how do you know? Taken to an extent where you can then go, well, from that we can say there's probably good reason to think maybe the place doesn't exist.
00:32:58
Speaker
But as an epistemological position, it doesn't really get you anywhere because it can be applied to anything. Well, I mean, it's often taken to be the issue with the extreme skeptic in that, yes, they can basically show that we know nothing. But of course, it seems that we actually do know an awful lot. And so answering the skeptic's dilemma of how do you know, satisfactorily, is, of course, a big research area in epistemology.
00:33:27
Speaker
I mean, if a person were to really seriously try and take that position, I would have thought the question would be less, you know, how can you not believe this thing than how can you possibly believe anything you could cast out on anything whatsoever. And yet I note, you don't close your eyes and walk across a busy motorway, even though you have presumably no way of knowing that that would be likely fatal. I mean, motorways to
00:33:52
Speaker
exist, but there were famous Greek skeptics who literally would just walk into a forest when it was on fire on the notion that their acolytes would be the ones that would steer them away from danger. So there were extreme skeptics in the ancient world. Ancient Greeks, they were all, they were a little bit, whoo, a little bit away, a little bit fucking stupid.
00:34:17
Speaker
It's the source of philosophy, Joshua. Exactly. Of your being a Westerner who ignores the fact that other civilizations... Well, yes, there's a lot of it came from the Middle East. But also everyone does philosophy. They do. Now, actually, one thing, though. One thing.
00:34:34
Speaker
Now, we said that they do all seem to have started as jokes, but possibly among the Flat Earth crowd. And again, the Flat Eartherism, it's a little bit hard to know exactly how much of that is, or at least started as a genuinely held belief in how much of it was a bit of a satire that got out of hand. But apparently, at least the idea that Australia might be real has been jumped upon in certain Flat Earth circles, I understand, because it kind of fits a little bit with some of the stuff they might like to be saying.
00:35:03
Speaker
Especially since flat earthers do have to spend a lot of time trying to explain how plants work. So the amount of time plants spend in the air, the amount of fuel they use, the fact that they don't appear to be doing loops. So it would be convenient to get rid of some land masses to make the earth slightly more flat and less
00:35:24
Speaker
Spherical. So there's something there at least, but if all of this sort of stuffy ends up eventually in a joke, is there anything in real life that's kind of like this? Let me introduce you, Josh, to the notion of the Phantom or Paper Towns?
The Use of Fictional Maps
00:35:41
Speaker
Paper Towns. I've seen that film. It has Cara Del Vin in it.
00:35:45
Speaker
I have not seen that film. Based on a book which does not have Cara Delvin in it because it's a book. Does the book feature paper towns? It does. What is a paper town? Paper town is a town that only exists on maps. So they really are places that don't exist and yet there is information to suggest that they do.
00:36:03
Speaker
Now, sometimes paper towns exist on maps because of accidents performed by cartographers, or these days by algorithms used by, say, Google, Apple, or whatever organization is producing your map, where a cartographer
00:36:21
Speaker
erroneously places a town centre on a map and sometimes even gives it a name. Sometimes it's because they've mistakenly thought that a small suburb of a larger town is in fact its own town.
00:36:38
Speaker
sometimes because the algorithm simply seems to make something up. One of the great mysteries about AI at the moment is exactly what those algorithms are doing at any particular point in time, pointing people towards child pornography on YouTube at the moment. So sometimes they are simply mistakes, but other times they're what are called copyright traps. Yes.
00:37:03
Speaker
So sometimes, and this has been going on for a very, very long time as well, as long as there have been maps, people have been in the habit of putting deliberate mistakes in their maps. And I suppose this applies to other documents as well, but we're talking about places at the moment. They'll put a deliberate mistake in their map and that way they can know if they ever see another map that includes that mistake, they know that that person has ripped off their map.
00:37:29
Speaker
So in older times when things were all a little bit less well known, perhaps this was easier to get away with. But these days even official maps in some cases have had these so-called paper towns on them, towns that exist on the map but only exist on the map so that they can tell if anyone else has violated their copyright and ripped off their map.
00:37:48
Speaker
Yeah, so for example, there was Argleton in Lancashire in the UK, and Batusu and Global in the US. In fact, there was a place called Aglo New York, which was invented in 1930s map as a copyright trap. And then someone built a general store in that vicinity, called it the Aglo General Store, and the paper town effectively became a real location.
00:38:15
Speaker
Now this is also not just town. So when cartographers in mountain ranges, depths in valleys and the like, little things, which if you're copying the map, you'll copy the basin, which you can then use to show that that map is actually plagiarized rather than based on original work. Because if it was based on original work, those features wouldn't appear. And actually book writers do this as well.
00:38:41
Speaker
So you will sometimes put a false reference or an index item in your book that refers to nothing on the notion that if those items appear in a competing volume or a volume on the same topic, you can go, yeah, I made that bit up. So you've just copied my bibliography wholesale. You've written a couple of books. You've done that?
00:39:08
Speaker
There is a false reference in my first book, the philosophy of conspiracy theories. I shall have to hunt it down. You will indeed. And then there's another phenomena, which is even more deliberate, I guess, fake maps in sort of wartime. Yeah, World War II is famous. Sorry, not significant. Critical information. Yeah.
00:39:30
Speaker
So you might decide you want to lure the enemy to the wrong location or make them think some important feature is located elsewhere, at which point you will dump a fake Mac. A bootleg Mac computer on the battlefield.
00:39:50
Speaker
And then you will hope that the enemy will take that map and go, oh, this is prize information we've got from the enemy that attacked that ammunition's factory there, and then send them on a bombing rum, bombing rum. Oh, I'm just, I'm just spoonerising like madness now. Bombing rum on a pig farm. Or of course, what you might do is you might take a legitimate map, but you'll just modify it in a way where
00:40:18
Speaker
People on your side will know how to translate the modifications, but will make the map completely useless if it ever gets into enemy hands. So there you go. There are places that people want you to think are real when in fact they are not. But they're generally less about covering genocide or fostering Japanese fishing rights as they are about simple copyright violations or possibly wartime secrecy.
New Zealand's Map Mystery
00:40:48
Speaker
And I suppose we also, as we alluded to the other start, have to mention the fact that we live in Aotearoa, New Zealand, a country which is notorious for being left off of maps. Yes. There's a tumbler for it. And there are so many films where we do not appear on world maps. In fact, especially if the map's sort of a bit stylised or something. Look at the image of the world on the UN website. There's a
00:41:14
Speaker
suspicious lack in the UN imagery about the world? Yes, now we're notorious for it. We had a tourism video with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and it was Rhys Darby, was it? Yes, unfunny man Rhys Darby. Not a fan, not a fan. Not really. Talking about it, it was even on an episode of John Oliver.
00:41:32
Speaker
And as I commented at the time, I think the Prime Minister made a mistake there. We don't want people to know where we are because when the climate catastrophe occurs, people are going to want to come here and pointing out where we should be on a map is actually bad PR Jacinta. It is bad PR. People do not need to know where this country is.
00:41:55
Speaker
So what you're saying is we need to have some sort of concerted, organized effort. We need to possibly work in secrecy towards the common goal of falsifying maps and making people think that New Zealand is not where it is, or indeed that it doesn't exist. There's a word for that, I think. I'm already on it. I'm in the conspiracy. That's the one.
00:42:16
Speaker
So I think we've come to the end of an episode. We have indeed, but for patrons there is more to come because after the break and by break after you load the bonus episode you'll get to hear about a Viking horde which threatens to rewrite English history, how the media loves a UFO expert who may not be who he claims to be,
00:42:40
Speaker
how Italy is evicting Steve Bannon from a monastery, and finally, Twitter is going to be looking at dealing with white supremacists. Possibly just a little. Too late. So, to our patrons to whom we are as ever eternally grateful, stick around for that if you feel like it, to our listeners to whom we are also eternally grateful, just slightly less grateful. No, don't feel bad about it, but it is true. Well, feel slightly bad. Just slightly, yeah.
00:43:08
Speaker
Don't let it ruin your night or day, but think about slimming SU dollars our way and joining in on the fun. To you at any rate, we say thank you for listening and we shall also talk to you next week.
Conclusion
00:43:23
Speaker
Indeed, indeed. Until then, toodly pip. Goodbye.
00:43:36
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.
00:44:37
Speaker
And remember, they're coming to get you, Barbara.