transcript

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Speaker 1:
[01:40] Welcome back, Max.

Speaker 3:
[01:41] Well, thank you, Danny. Thank you for having me again.

Speaker 1:
[01:44] Of my pleasure. I just finished reading your paper published in Nature, all about the vases.

Speaker 3:
[01:51] Correct.

Speaker 1:
[01:53] Amazing.

Speaker 3:
[01:54] I'm amazed you read it, because I didn't really expect anybody to read it. Because when you write a scientific paper, you think just two or three nerds would read it, and that's it. But that paper, I think, has like 4,000 downloads by now.

Speaker 1:
[02:11] Wow.

Speaker 3:
[02:12] Yeah. And it's trending like really high, and I was surprised to see how many people were interested in the topic. Because by definition, scientific papers are supposed to be boring. Right. But I guess when the topic is so fascinating as ancient Egyptian vases, it's anything but boring. And that's honestly what kept me through it, because it's a lot of... And doing research is one thing. You're writing it up as a paper. It's quite different because the amount of requirements that go in is a lot. And one thing you got to do, you got to put it in the context of the broader research on the topic. Because when you publish a paper, it needs to fit within the existing knowledge on the subject. And if it doesn't, you cannot get it published, which means you have to research all of the references and literature, see what other researchers and scientists explored about this topic and tie it all in and see how your research fits, how it adds additional knowledge or returns established notions and whatnot. And of course, as you recall, the biggest outcome of the paper was that there is no such thing as precise ancient Egyptian vases.

Speaker 1:
[03:30] There's no such thing as precise ancient Egyptian vases.

Speaker 3:
[03:33] Yes. They're all handmade. So the outcome of my research, which was like 180 degrees flip in my thinking, in my understanding that all of this fascinating ancient Egyptian vases are handmade. And this is a very high quality manual work, but it's not like machined work. And that's, I guess, where the rift developed between myself and let's say Ben and Matt to some extent, because they are... I cannot speak of now, because it hasn't been a while since we talked, but the last time we talked, they still believe that some of those vases were precise in general, whereas all of my research pointed to the opposite. And I can tell you more about it in just a second. But that's, I guess, what happens sometimes in scientific exploration. So you start with one idea and as data comes in, you're forced to change your opinion on it. And that's the very definition of open-mindedness. You got to be able to change your opinion when facts demand it. And when I started this vase project, I was entirely sold on the idea that they were genuine, you know, precise, quote unquote, precise ancient Egyptian vases that were machined with space-like precision. And I was really excited to characterize them and prove the point scientifically. But once I started researching the point, I wasn't finding any evidence of that. And in fact, all of the data points kind of were stacking up higher and higher to tell me that the genuine museum pieces are handmade, whereas some pieces from the private collections aren't genuine. And that's unfortunately is a sticking point. If you own one of these, of course, you don't want the authenticity of your object challenged or questioned.

Speaker 1:
[05:37] Right.

Speaker 3:
[05:37] But that's kind of what I've ended up doing in the end, because this is where the data points to.

Speaker 1:
[05:44] So the basis of this paper, this research that you did, was you took a bunch of vases from the museum, the Petrie Museum.

Speaker 3:
[05:49] Correct.

Speaker 1:
[05:50] You took a bunch of vases from private collections, of people who have bought them off the antiquities markets. And then what was the other subset of vases?

Speaker 3:
[05:57] Vases I bought on the internet.

Speaker 1:
[05:59] Vases that are just purchased on the internet.

Speaker 3:
[06:01] Basically, I went crazy on eBay, and I bought a bunch of stone vases.

Speaker 1:
[06:06] And the issue is, there's no way to actually prove, I put a timestamp on when these were made, because they're stone. There's no way to do carbon dating.

Speaker 3:
[06:15] Exactly. So that's, I guess the principle issue with stone is it's not easily datable. And there are some experimental techniques, like thermal luminescence. So if you have a granite surface, that's been, let's say, aged, just naturally. And then you take a sample of it, put it in an oven, and let it relax under heat, it will emit some light. And you can measure the amount of that light, and you can say, well, based on the amount of light, this surface is so many years old, because what happens is granite has quartz in it, and quartz tends to accumulate radiation damage. So natural background radiation strikes quartz, and you've got these electrons that are captured in it, and then when you heat it, it gives off those accumulated electrons as light. I'm oversimplifying it, but that's in a nutshell what it is. And then if you machine the surface, you take all of that surface layer, and then you have this virgin material that hasn't accumulated this environmental radiation, and then you take a sample of it, it will give off a lot less light. So that's how in principle you can date granite or other in a similar-

Speaker 1:
[07:31] Oh, interesting.

Speaker 3:
[07:32] Quartz, rich stones. But I haven't found a lab that was willing to do it. And in fact, back then when I was still working with Matt Bell, we reached out to a lab that looked like they could do it, but they said they do it only on ceramics. So for ceramics, it's actually an established technique because you find a piece of pottery and it's the same thermoluminescence applied to pottery can tell you when that pottery was baked. And that's like a routine procedure that's done a lot for archaeologists, whoever to where you sent your sample to the lab and they'll be able to tell you the age of that ceramic.

Speaker 1:
[08:08] So when it comes to granite, the more glow you get out of the quartz, the older it typically is.

Speaker 3:
[08:13] Yes, yes. But I asked if they would look at the piece of granite and characterize it in the same way. And they kind of refused.

Speaker 1:
[08:20] Who refused?

Speaker 3:
[08:21] The lab.

Speaker 1:
[08:22] The lab.

Speaker 3:
[08:22] Yeah, because it's not a common technique. And what happens is in science, when something is not common, there is a big learning curve and set up and everything goes into the process. So if there was a lot of demand for it, I guess it would be worthwhile for somebody to set up an operation like this, wherever you calibrate everything, go through the grinds of getting reliable data and then you can start dating those things. But nobody, to my knowledge, provides that service. And my knowledge is not extensive. So maybe somebody out there, there is, but the way science goes, nothing is easy. Carbon dating is hugely complex. And the only reason it's done, because there is a lot of demand for it. And then it's been perfected sufficiently to where you can get reliable information. But if you're just starting it, like my wife sometimes says, Max, why wouldn't you do your own carbon dating? And tell, look, it's the amount of learning and equipment and everything I need to put in is like years of effort. But once you do it, it becomes like 10 minute job. But after two years of prep. Right.

Speaker 1:
[09:36] So how many total vases did you measure for this paper?

Speaker 3:
[09:40] Boy, good question. I think it was over 60 or 80, you know, something of that nature. I think about 20 from Petri, about 20, oh, okay, 20 vessels that were handmade in Egypt from-

Speaker 1:
[09:58] That you knew for a fact were handmade in Egypt.

Speaker 3:
[10:01] Yes, they were made from, incorrect term is in Egyptian alibaster, but correct term is travertine or calcite. So travertine or calcite vessels that are handmade in Egypt, you know, to this day, but, you know, for tourists basically. And there are two cool things about it. The tradition, the stone working, you know, stone in a vase making tradition survived for millennia. And this fact actually is described in the scientific literature. I wasn't the first one by no account who discovered it. You know, some other, like almost a hundred years ago, either archaeologists or an ethnographer probably, you know, discovered that they're still making these vessels. And now that evolved into like a tourist business where they make them for tourists. And you can go into shops and you can see, you know, how they're made and they're using like ogres to pull out vessels and they use, you know, rubbing stones to shape them. So it's basically same, you know, tools and techniques and as depicted, let's say, somewhere in a tomb, right? On the wall, you see someone barefoot sitting and grinding this vessel. It's exactly the same. The only difference is instead of like copper or bronze tools, you know, they use steel tools now, but that's the only difference. And I don't think they use flint chisels anymore. It's like, you know, metal chisels.

Speaker 1:
[11:19] And so all of the ones that you measure that you knew were handmade in ancient Egypt, in these museums, none of those were perfectly symmetrical.

Speaker 3:
[11:27] No, no, and in fact, that was one of the things I introduced in my paper. I introduced a technique on how to characterize a vessel. Because, you know, when you, let's say, look at a vessel like this, you know, what does perfection mean, you know?

Speaker 1:
[11:42] Right.

Speaker 3:
[11:42] In order to define the perfection, I had to define the metric of quality. And metric of quality is basically a sum of concentricity and circularity metric. So you take this object and then, forgive me for repeating, you know, this from our previous discussion, but you basically take a 3D scan and you slice it into perpendicular to the axis of symmetry. And you get, you know, more or less circular slices. And each slice, you can characterize it, how round it is. And those slices, you know, when you superimpose one on top of them, how concentric they are, you know? Do they all center on the same axis or are they slightly off? And you get a number. And you add these numbers together and you get a value, you know, which tells you how perfect your vessel is. So if the value is like real low, because I'm looking for deviations. So real low values tell you it's a high quality, you know, manufacturing process, because it's very round and it's very like concentric. But if it's a handmade, you know, the value is not going to be very low because it's not perfectly round and it's not perfectly concentric. So you get higher values. And all handmade vessels that were made in Egypt, you know, they form like a cloud. And I want to plot the points on a chart. And one axis is concentricity, the other is circularity, you know, there is a cloud. Right. And then I take vases from the Petri Museum. And I crunch the numbers in a similar way and I get another cloud. And the biggest surprise to me was that both clouds are like virtually indistinguishable. You know, they like map on top of another. So, which means that the quality of the Petri vessels, I cannot distinguish from the quality of the handmade vessels that were made by hand in Egypt. Whereas the so-called the precise vases, let's say from Matt Bell's collection.

Speaker 1:
[13:30] Yeah. So, where did you get the most precise measured vases?

Speaker 3:
[13:33] Right. So, the most precise were, you know, the so-called precise vases from Matt Bell's collection.

Speaker 1:
[13:38] So, from Matt Bell's personal collection.

Speaker 3:
[13:40] Yeah, from his personal collection. He has about 80 and maybe 10 or so were qualified as precise.

Speaker 1:
[13:47] Okay. 10 of the 80 were perfectly precise. Really, really, really. Like within, what was the deviation?

Speaker 3:
[13:53] Like, boy, good question. See if I can remember any of the numbers.

Speaker 1:
[13:59] I thought it was like one one thousandth of an inch or something crazy.

Speaker 3:
[14:01] Yeah, it's like few thousands of an inch.

Speaker 1:
[14:03] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[14:03] And anybody interested can look up the actual numbers in the paper because it's free, like open access. Anybody can download and see.

Speaker 1:
[14:12] We'll link it below for folks that are listening.

Speaker 3:
[14:15] And forgive me if I don't remember the numbers. But the point is the precise vases form a separate cluster, a separate cluster of very low values. So when you plot, and I call this quality map. So when you plot this handmade Egyptian vases, you got like a big blob. And then you plot the Petrie Museum vases, you get another big blob and the two blobs overlap to where you cannot distinguish them. But when you plot precise vases from Mel Bell's collection or from some other people I've met and befriended, it's a different, tightly packed cluster of low concentricity error and low roundness error values. That's very distinct. So you can easily tell them apart. But where the biggest surprise was, was in all of these eBay vases that I bought.

Speaker 1:
[15:04] eBay vases?

Speaker 3:
[15:04] eBay vases. And by now, I probably have 50 or 60, maybe even more. I mean, my house is just any nook and cranny, you know, there is a vase in it.

Speaker 1:
[15:13] How much can you buy one of these for on eBay?

Speaker 3:
[15:16] Like 10 bucks.

Speaker 1:
[15:18] No way. And they're granite?

Speaker 3:
[15:20] Some are, yeah. I think for granite vases, I paid maybe like 50 bucks, and I'll explain why. But the point is when I analyzed the modern eBay vases, you know, they formed the same cluster as, you know, the vases, precise vases from Matt Bell's collection.

Speaker 1:
[15:38] No way.

Speaker 3:
[15:38] Yeah, it was exactly the same, you know, no difference, you know, whatsoever. And of course, you know, to me, you know, the only conclusion I can draw is, you know, those were made in modern times as opposed to in the ancient times because-

Speaker 1:
[15:53] And the ones that you purchased on eBay, the description was, how do they describe they were made?

Speaker 3:
[15:59] Oh, most didn't have any description. And really, sometimes I would buy a vase and it says one thing, but you know, when I look at it, I know it's another thing. The most common material, of course, is marble, you know, because it's beautiful. So most-

Speaker 1:
[16:16] Also very soft, right?

Speaker 3:
[16:17] Yeah, also very soft. So most vases are marble because it's a beautiful material, it's easy to machine. And the way they're made, you know, you just put it in a lathe and you run like a steel cutter, typically, and that's good enough to give it outer shape and give it inner shape. And it's all perfect and nice and looks beautiful. Some vases are made out of what is called like Pakistani onyx. And once again, it's a misnomer because it's not onyx, it just looks like onyx and the reality is calcite. But it's very beautiful, it looks like onyx, but it's the same, you know, softness as marble, but you know, beautiful texture. So those are made in India and Pakistan. And of course, I wanted to have some harder stones too, like granite and granite isn't like typical for your gift shop vases because it's hard stone and it can be machined, no problem machining it, but it requires a diamond tipped tools. And in fact, there are multiple companies that make, you know, this kind of product out of granite and the typical application is outdoors stuff because you know what happens to marble outdoors, like very quickly it degrades because acid, you know, in water and just soft stone and water erodes it with acid even faster, you know. So it's very unstable. So that's why a lot of marble structures, you know, Greek Roman ruins are in terrible shape. So if you want something to last, you make things out of granite. And where people want something to last, like funerary stuff, you know, monuments and a lot of granite vases are actually urns or vases for flowers that you put at a tomb. And there are shrubs in China and India that like mass produces in a funerary.

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 3:
[19:44] Who knows? Actually, I have some idea of what they were used for.

Speaker 1:
[19:47] I wonder if they did any cremation in ancient Egypt.

Speaker 3:
[19:50] Not to my knowledge. I guess mummification was the go-to thing.

Speaker 1:
[19:53] Yeah, that's what I thought.

Speaker 3:
[19:55] And we know from studies that a lot of the ancient Egyptian vases were used for cosmetics. So cosmetics and specifically coal was.

Speaker 1:
[20:03] But they pulled, sorry to interrupt, I thought they pulled organs out though before they did the mummification.

Speaker 3:
[20:09] So those are like canopic jars. So when you have a mummy or burial was a mummy, organs were typically put in canopic jars. But if we talk about like hardstone vases, pre-dynastic, those were primarily used for like ointments and cosmetics. Because some of them that I even, that I analyzed using x-ray fluorescent spectroscopy, I was able to find traces of coal. And coal is this lead-rich black substance they used for eyeshadow and whatnot. But kind of finishing to answer your question, so I bought a lot of this granite vases from the shops that make funerary implements. And shout out to Knight Scarab. He bought some, I think, one onyx vase and one, should I forget the word, the glass, volcanic glass was the word. Obsidian.

Speaker 1:
[21:07] Obsidian.

Speaker 3:
[21:08] Obsidian short glass, that he shared his hands with me. So there was a good sample of really hardstone vases there. And once again, what I realized is, the manufacturing quality is indistinguishable between those eBay vases that were made on a lathe, or in case of this granite funerary vases, they were made on a mill. Because to turn them on the outside, you use a lathe, but then if you need to hollow out, you use a mill. And the quality was indistinguishable. And how come I didn't find any of that at the Petrie Museum? And ever since, I've been actually posting some of my findings on X and on my blog, and people were going back and forth. So I went again to Petrie Museum. So I've been there three times now. So I've been twice in May of last year, and that information is published in my paper. And then I went again in December of last year. And I also went to Manchester Museum. And by luck, a colleague of mine was able to go to the Pushkin Museum in Moscow in Russia that has a substantial Egyptian collection. And they scanned like 20 more vases from it. So all in all, we have like 50 or 60 museum vase scans. And none of them are precise. So none of them are in like nearly in the same ballpark of what you get when you buy a vase from eBay that's been turned on a lathe. And that to me is conclusive proof that this so-called precise vases from private collections aren't of ancient Egyptian origin, just based on their manufacturing quality. Because there is nothing in museum that is like that. And when people say, well, you haven't seen all of them. And it's true, you know, I haven't scanned like every single vase in the world. But you know, the research thing is statistics. Sure. And if we, you know, the reason the world functions is because we believe in statistics, right? So when you develop a drug, you know, it helps one out of, you know, a hundred people, but that's good enough, right? Because it's a proxy, right? You have a million people sick and, you know, 1% is 10,000 people. It's a lot. So we know that statistic works. And if you like sample, sample and sample, and you don't get any of this, like unusual objects in your sample, you know, they likely don't exist. And then the question becomes, you know, what are they? And I don't know if they were made like in modern times or they were made in 19th century. So the lathe and machining tools and our ability to work hard stone at very high quality and existed for at least near 200 years. So I cannot tell, you know, whether those ways were made in modern time or in like a hundred years ago, but I sure as heck know they weren't made in ancient Egypt just because they're so different in their manufacturing quality. But that's not maybe even, you know, the biggest argument. To me, it's the biggest argument scientifically based on the quality, you know, on the manufacturing quality. But there is another very important observation that we made recently, and that has to do with the stone itself. For example, you know, pre-dynastic stone vases, they're made of predominantly of four stone types. You know, basalt is one. Then you have your diorite and andesite, and you have your, you know, brachia. And sometimes, you know, calcite. So it may be like five predominant stone types. And every like museum, you go to British Museum, you know, Oxford, you know, Cambridge, you know, Met in Boston Museum, it's, you know, same stone type, you know, four or five stone types. And that's how it was. And if you want to, you know, read more about it, there is an excellent book by Barbara Aston. It's actually her PhD thesis. And her book is like 200 pages. And she studied every, you know, hardstone vase in existence pretty much.

Speaker 1:
[25:47] Really?

Speaker 3:
[25:48] Yes, it's unbelievable.

Speaker 1:
[25:49] What was her name again?

Speaker 3:
[25:49] Barbara Aston. Barbara Aston, yes.

Speaker 1:
[25:53] Aston.

Speaker 3:
[25:54] Yes, and her book slash dissertation thesis is called Ancient Egyptian Stone Vessels. And the amount of work she's done is just unbelievable because she cataloged over 1,000 vessels. So most of that book is a catalog. She says, vessel, saw and saw, material, such and such, museum, specific place. So she cataloged all of them and out of like 200 or 300, she got permission to take stone samples that she studied under like electron microscope to figure out the stone type and where that stone came from. So that's like the go-to resource for your stone vases, very exhaustive exploration. And she was able to establish where the stone came from in Egypt, so specific like quarry sites. And which vases are made of which stone and gives a complete catalog. And guess what? How many granite vases are in that catalog? Of 1,000 vessels.

Speaker 1:
[26:57] Out of 1,000?

Speaker 3:
[26:58] Out of 1,000. How many granite vases are there?

Speaker 1:
[27:03] 200.

Speaker 3:
[27:05] One.

Speaker 1:
[27:06] One?

Speaker 3:
[27:07] One. One. Yes. And that was a big shocker because, you know, Ben was, and the term OG vase, like original granite vase. And then, like all over the internet, it's OG vase, original granite vase. And then Matt Bell has this precise vessels, and most of them are granite. And, you know, none of ancient Egyptian vessels are granite safe for one. And by granite, we mean Osman granite. Which is, you know, this characteristic, you know, pink granite that Egyptians used. And they use this Osman granite a lot for sarcophagi, for various sculptures, for columns. But not so much for vases, because only one vase is known to exist that's made out of Osman granite, you know, that's documented by Barbara Aston in that book. And she says, yep, you know, only one, you know, Osman, you know, pink or red, you know, however you want to call it, pink Osman granite, red Osman granite vase. And she was able to find in museum collections. And if you go like to online resources and you look for granite vases, you'll find some, but it's all mislabeled. It's not granite, it's some other type. It's either diorite or andesite or something else, because those materials, you know, look similar, but when you look closer, you know, it's not granite. And this S1 granite has a very specific, very certain texture. It's like big splotches of black with pink in a felt spot around it. So it's very characteristic. You cannot really mess it up with anything else. And that's, you know, one thing, you know, Veronica, my lovely wife, has done, she took a lot of pictures of S1 granite objects from various museums and put them on her blog, like side by side, so you could see what the pattern is. And then, you know, you compare against OG vase or against Bell's vases that are, you know, granite. It's like entirely different pattern.

Speaker 1:
[29:14] So just to clarify, out of 1000 vases that Barbara analyzed, one out of 1000 were Aswan granite.

Speaker 3:
[29:21] Yes, yes.

Speaker 1:
[29:22] But others were granite in general?

Speaker 3:
[29:25] No, they were not.

Speaker 1:
[29:26] No granite at all.

Speaker 3:
[29:26] No granite at all, no.

Speaker 1:
[29:28] How many of Matt Bell's vases are Aswan granite?

Speaker 3:
[29:35] I don't think he has any Aswan granite at all.

Speaker 1:
[29:38] None.

Speaker 3:
[29:38] He has a few red granite, but it's not Aswan granite. You know, when I look at it or when anybody look at it, and in fact, you know, you can take a picture of his vase versus Aswan granite, you see that the pattern is different. So that's another red flag. It's red granite, all right, but it's actually Indian red granite.

Speaker 1:
[29:57] Indian red granite.

Speaker 3:
[29:57] Yeah, that's what it looks to me.

Speaker 1:
[29:59] Is it possible that any of the granite in his collection came from Egypt?

Speaker 3:
[30:04] You know, I'm not a geologist and I cannot speak in absolutes of that nature, but you know, when I look at his granite, red granite vessels, they look a lot like Indian granite to me, and I'll show you in just a second. Although, you know, I cannot establish the variety for sure. What I can say for sure, for sure, it's not Aswan granite, because it looks like very different. So, and to me, that's a dead giveaway, because, you know, ancient Egyptians, they just didn't use, you know, red granite or Aswan granite for stone vessels. They used it for sculptures, they used it for columns, they used it for sarcophagi, they used it for building blocks, they just didn't use it for vessels. And that also...

Speaker 1:
[30:48] Let me ask you a question. This may be a very dumb question. What kind of granite is inside the Great Pyramid?

Speaker 3:
[30:56] Probably Aswan, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[30:58] Can you confirm that, Steve?

Speaker 3:
[30:59] Yeah, I'm not entirely sure, but. So, and I think this stone choice makes sense, because, once again, if you read like Barber, Aston's book, or other publications, they trace how different types of stones were used throughout Egyptian history. So the oldest vessels are basalt. And then you got diorite, andesite, and andesite porphyry. It's this beautiful, black and white, splotchy vases that's in like andesite porphyry.

Speaker 1:
[31:33] Aswan red-pink granite. Sourced from quarries in Aswan.

Speaker 3:
[31:39] And then you get some calcite vessels too. And as time goes by, you know, different tastes set in. And like early dynastic Egypt, you know, Gnase was all of the importance. And all of this, you know, bowls were made out of Gnase. And tens of thousands of them, you know, those like massive manufacturing of really beautiful Gnase bowls that you can see everywhere. You know, they're not pre-dynastic, but they're early dynastic. And that towards, you know, later dynastic periods, the shift was to travertine, you know, which was incorrectly labeled as alabaster, but it's travertine and some serpentine and some other stone types. So it's like fashion, you know, they started with one stone types and, you know, switched to the next and ended up actually with metal and glass and faience because as technology progressed, you know, demand for stone vessels kind of dropped because, you know, metal implements looked more beautiful or the glass was exotic or faience was exotic. And it makes sense. Like we don't drive steam cars, right? So even gas engines are, you know, getting out of fashion. Getting in towards electric and who knows, maybe 10 years from now will be fusion cars. That all makes sense, but kind of returning to the ascenticity subject. So the granite, you know, wasn't used. And besides that's not an Aswan granite, you know, upon my examination.

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 3:
[34:51] And something that even Matt agreed with me, that the surface of this so-called most precise vases is pristine. There is not a nick, not a scratch. And it's just strange credulity that after five or 6,000 years, they're just so pristine. And all of the vases and collections are just, I mean, in museums. I want to say terrible looking, but they show the age. There is weathering and there is damage and a bunch of imperfections. You have no doubt in looking at an old thing just because it's so worn. And no wonder, they've been traded so much, they spend so much in the sand. Sure, they show their age. But, yeah, you want to ask a question?

Speaker 1:
[35:40] No, I have so many questions running through my head right now.

Speaker 3:
[35:43] Well, one other thing I'm going to say, and then you can ask questions. I think a popular theory was, and the one that Dan from Dedunking kind of dwelled upon considerably is, and for that matter, Ben also said that all of the best objects were given by Petrie to private collectors. That's-

Speaker 1:
[36:12] Ben, Ben Kirkwick and Dan from Dedunking said all of the most precise bases were given away by the Petrie Museum to private collectors.

Speaker 3:
[36:21] By Petrie himself to private collectors.

Speaker 1:
[36:22] By Flinders Petrie.

Speaker 3:
[36:23] Right, yes. And that's kind of a popular theory that's discussed by-

Speaker 1:
[36:28] Is there any evidence of this?

Speaker 3:
[36:29] Exactly. My point, because of my work that received good reviews, the director of Petrie Museum helped me a little bit with this question. So she directed me towards some of the most valuable resources that are contained in the notes and publications on how the artifacts trickle down from, let's say, the excavation site to museums and elsewhere. And there is an invaluable book called Scattered Fines. I think this book was written by, I believe, one of the curators of the Petrie Museum, which documents the process of how excavation took place and then how these objects were inventoryed and moved around and ended up being scattered, but not irregularly or unaccountably, but rather how Petrie collection formed the core that was split and shared among other museums and institutions. So Petrie had incredible integrity, along with all of the people he worked with. And all of the objects were accounted for. You know, there is a record for everything. And you can go to the archive and you will find.

Speaker 1:
[37:59] There's a paper trail.

Speaker 3:
[38:00] Right, there is a paper trail. Yeah, and the deal was the expeditions were sponsored, obviously. You know, I mean, you cannot go to an expedition without having sponsors, you know, backers. And those sponsors and backers were primarily other institutions, like, you know, Boston Museum of Fine Art or some other archaeological society. They were private patrons also, but at the end.

Speaker 1:
[38:24] And what year are we talking? This was done.

Speaker 3:
[38:26] Beginning of the 20th century, maybe late 19th century, early 20th century. Okay. You know, somewhere in that ballpark. And the agreement was that backers, you know, get portion of the collection. And the backers were other institutions, other museums, other universities. So that's how you have, you know, collection of the British Museum. That's why you have Ashmolean. That's why you have Manchester. That's why you have a collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. So all of those places received, you know, portions of the Petrie collection. We weren't able to find any records of objects, you know, going to private collectors, like of the books. There were a lot of objects given away, but those were like Shaktis. And if you know, Shaktis are a little like blue figurines that were so numerous, they weren't even considered valuables, valuable. And there were like thousands of them, you know, given as gifts for subscribers. And subscriber were someone, you know, who contributed money to this, you know, foundation or fund that, you know, supported, you know, Petri's or their archeologists explorations. And as a token of appreciation, they would, you know, get this Shaktis. So there is no record of, you know, I wasn't able to find any record of, you know, Petri giving away, you know, just objects indiscriminately. And if he did, as I said, it went to a museum. Right.

Speaker 1:
[39:53] Well, it's possible some of the, I mean, it couldn't be possible that some of the big institutions that funded the excavations could have some big shots behind it that were like, hey, we're going to fund this, but you know, you got to pay us a tax or something like that.

Speaker 3:
[40:06] Well, I cannot comment on that, but what I can say is this.

Speaker 1:
[40:15] I mean, we don't have any evidence for it, but you can't rule it out.

Speaker 3:
[40:18] The stone vessels weren't even considered like a valuable artifacts. Oh, really? Back in the time.

Speaker 1:
[40:23] And also in the 1800s, they had the technology to measure this stuff, see how precise it was.

Speaker 3:
[40:27] That's exactly another point. I'm glad you're making it, let me finish kind of the first point. So the stone vessels weren't even considered like valuable. And frankly, until I guess Ben started popularizing them, I don't think anybody cared much about them because pottery and stone vessels look very similar. You know, pot as a pot, what is so unique about it? So the popular objects of the time were mummies. So everybody wanted to have a mummy. So when Petrie or the archaeologists were giving up the finds, the squabbles were about mummies. And this book that I mentioned has a story where Australian Museum received their share of finds and there were no mummies in it and there were no like sarcophagi or bigger objects. And they were like very upset. They said, you know, what kind of trash you send us? You know, you send us the shards and pots and whatnot. You know, where is the real stuff? So everybody wanted to have mummies and, you know, big objects. So pots, nobody cared about. And the other point is, I, myself personally, when I went to Petrie Museum for the first time to study, I bought the vessels, stone vessels, by looking at the pictures on the museum, because I had to say which ones I wanted to study. So I bought them and I divided them in two categories. One I called precise and the other called imprecise. Because when I went, I had a theory in my mind that, Ben was right all alone and there were like two industries. One was making precise objects and the one was-

Speaker 1:
[42:03] That was your mindset when you went into this.

Speaker 3:
[42:05] Yes, yes. I bought in Ben's narrative 100% that tale of two industries and the bad ones are really handmade by Egyptians and the precise ones are-

Speaker 1:
[42:18] Basically for folks that are listening to this, Ben did a series of videos on ancient Egypt and some of the stones and the artifacts that come out of ancient Egypt. And basically, the story is that the older you get, the more precise stuff is. And the more recent you get, the closer you get to year zero, the more rudimentary and crude the stuff becomes, right? And less precise the stuff becomes. So the idea is that maybe there was some sort of a technology prehistory that we're not aware of, that we have no evidence for, that was responsible for some of this precision stonework, like the pyramids and the bases and all that stuff. I mean, you have those giant circular saw blade cuts and those big rocks. It's like, what the fuck is this? Maybe there was some lost industrial civilization that could explain this.

Speaker 3:
[43:11] Yeah, and I really believe that because it's a fascinating idea and it goes against the grain. And I got to give Ben Kredit, he's an excellent storyteller. He's an inspirational figure, I'd say, and a great storyteller. And when he presents in his story, it's very compelling. So I bought it like hook and sinker, you know. So I went to the museum with the idea that I'm going to prove his theory. And that's why I looked, when I looked at the pictures, I sorted them like into bins.

Speaker 1:
[43:44] And by the way, I still buy it. I'm not, I still think that he's dead on with that. Even if the vases are moderns, the precision ones are moderns, there's still a lot of stuff. There's still a lot of evidence that there was some lost industrial technology that we're not aware of.

Speaker 3:
[43:59] I would say, you know, we shouldn't conflate the subject of vases, you know, with the rest of it.

Speaker 1:
[44:06] Right, exactly.

Speaker 3:
[44:06] Because a lot of people who, you know, get upset, you know, with my work, they say, oh, you know, you say that the pyramids were, you know, killed by hand.

Speaker 1:
[44:16] We're not throwing the baby out with the bath water here.

Speaker 3:
[44:17] Yeah, I'm saying no. You cannot generalize to that extent. I'm just saying vases aren't it. You know, vases are handmade. There's nothing special about them.

Speaker 1:
[44:27] Right.

Speaker 3:
[44:28] But I would love to study sarcophagy, you know, to venture my opinion. And I'd like to study, you know, the pyramids and some Assyrian, you know, some other artifacts.

Speaker 1:
[44:38] I want somebody to study that damn labyrinth.

Speaker 3:
[44:40] Yeah. Yeah. So my point is, in order to answer a question, you gotta really study it, because what appears on the surface utterly, you know, may utterly deceive you. And that's how, when I looked at the pictures of the vases and categorized them into categories, and I couldn't believe it, that, you know, when I scanned these objects and I analyzed them, that both were of the same quality. And I say, but how come, you know, when I look, this vase looks fine and this vase looks crooked, but, you know, when I analyze it, it's the same quality. And that's, you know, how human eye, you know, perceives. If the surface is like smooth and not so much eroded, you think, oh, you know, this is a nice looking object. But at the same time, you can have a much more like perfectly made object that's the surface is a bit, you know, weathered, or even, you know, the color or texture of the surface is different and it doesn't look nearly as fine. Or it might have some features about it that kind of throw you off, but computer is, you know, blind to the nuisances of, nuances of esthetics. And your computer just gives you numbers. And I was blown away to see that, you know, going by eye, I couldn't really tell, you know, which object was precise and which wasn't. They were all, you know, imprecise to the same extent. You know, granted, you know, some, you know, Petrie Museum objects were better made than others. And that happens all the time when you do, you know, things by hand. So some pieces turn out great, some not so. But in the end, you get the statistical distribution, you know, the bell curve. And as long as everything fits on the bell curve, there is no problem, but you'll have a few objects, outliers. Well, not exactly outliers, but you know, as the bell curve goes, you have some objects on the front and some objects in the back. And these are like exceptional pieces of craftsmanship and these are like poor pieces of craftsmanship. But it feeds the curve, you know, because it's a statistical distribution and most of them like 90% are somewhere in the middle, but occasionally get an exceptional piece when everything was lucky, you know, the artisan was lucky, the conditions were right and it turned out to be more perfect than the rest. But overall, basically, you cannot tell just by eyeballing an object how well it's made. You have to analyze it with a 3D scanner and do the number crunch in order to tell, let's say, a contemporary laystone object from a similarly looking hand made object. You just cannot tell. And that's why even if collectors were trying to steal the most precise objects from Petri back then, when he was excavating them, he wouldn't be able to do it. Just because they all look about the same. Right.

Speaker 1:
[47:25] How did it make you feel when you saw the data come through and analyzed it?

Speaker 3:
[47:30] I couldn't believe it because as I said, I went to Petri Museum and it was a certain mindset. So when I got the scans and the results were not what I expected, I was like, what the hell? I was looking for a mistake because the first thing, what was wrong? How did I end up with this data? But when I scanned my object, I also scanned a reference standard. And that's another thing that, let's say, non-scientists often overlook is whenever you do any kind of measurement, how do you know that your measurement is correct? So you have to measure a standard. And in case of 3D scanning, you have to 3D scan a reference sphere. And it's a sphere of known diameter and known quality. And I scanned that sphere like four times throughout my scanning process. And every time it came out perfect. So I know my scanner was working right, because every time I scanned the goddamn sphere, it gave me the perfect one-inch circle. And I included the data. It was my data set. So anybody can download and see what the sphere looks like. So I know my scanner was working right. So I thought, okay, well, maybe there is an error in my code. So I spent like two months rewriting my code, my analysis code. So every morning I would get up like at six in the morning, because I couldn't slip. I really couldn't slip. So I would get up in the morning, not drinking coffee, not taking a shower, not dressing in my boxer shirt, sitting on my couch rewriting the goddamn code. And it took me two months to do it. And in the end, I couldn't find an error. And in the end, my results are kind of cleared in the sense that the signal became obvious, that the scans are correct. And what they're showing me that these objects are handmade. And there is nothing unique about them from the standpoint of lost ancient CNC machining technology. They are all handmade, consistent with the same hand process Egyptians pursue now when they make this travertine and calcite vases for tourists. And utterly inconsistent with the turning on a lathe or milling that we find in this eBay vases. Or precise vases from Matt Bell's collection. So gradually I started to accept this because I already started writing a paper because I wanted the contents of my nature paper to be different. I wanted it to say, hey, I found lost ancient technology. So I already wrote a paper like that. So I had to discard it and start writing a new paper, the one that ended up publishing. So it took me like a while to adjust to the facts and make peace with them. Because they were entirely at odds with what Ben was leading us to believe.

Speaker 1:
[50:20] It's amazing how hard that is for us, huh?

Speaker 3:
[50:22] Yeah, it is. And that's why famous Conan Doyle quote, attributed to Sherlock Holmes. When you start an investigation, you should never have a theory. Because then you invariably make facts, bend facts to fit the theory.

Speaker 1:
[50:40] Right.

Speaker 3:
[50:42] I was lucky in the sense that I was able not to fall into the same fallacy. And when I saw the facts that contradict my theory, I didn't throw out the facts. I threw out the theory. And I arrived at what I believe are correct theories. But psychologically, it's difficult. And of course, Matt wasn't too happy to see me change 180 on his precise vases. So I think it was hard on him too, especially since I've been like three times on his show. And every time we thought this was lost ancient technology. And then I come out and say, well, I don't think it was. So I think it was hard on him too. I don't know where he stands now, but to me, it's pretty clear. But there was an additional point I wanted to address, and that's why I brought all of this props here with me. Because a lot of people, and once again, because Ben was saying it so many times, that you can't make these today out of granite. You know, with the same quality.

Speaker 1:
[51:54] Right, right.

Speaker 3:
[51:55] And I heard this so many times.

Speaker 1:
[51:57] Does he still say that? Is that still his position?

Speaker 3:
[52:00] As of a few months ago, probably, but it's been a while since we talked, so I don't know what his views are now. And frankly, I was hoping that he would change his views in view of the facts that I uncover and present, but I don't know where he stands. Maybe you can ask him.

Speaker 1:
[52:19] By the way, Ben, the one who connected us in the first place. Right, yes.

Speaker 3:
[52:22] Thank you, Ben, obviously, for connecting, and he's a friend, I love him to death, but I'll cite the famous Latin saying, Plato is my friend, but the truth is better friend. So Ben is my friend, but truth is more dear to me. So I'm gonna speak my mind honestly and truthfully. So there was a lot said by him and others that these precise vases are like airspace precision. We cannot make them today.

Speaker 1:
[52:52] Right. Chris Don was part of that.

Speaker 3:
[52:55] Don, anybody. So I was saying, what a, pardon my French bullshit, so let me make them. So I went to like a few shops in China. Of course, when you wanna make something, you go to China, right?

Speaker 1:
[53:10] Right.

Speaker 3:
[53:11] Probably would have been smarter and better going to places in America, but you have to go to an artist because nobody typically works on hard stone because as I said, it requires like diamond tip tools. And it's difficult and because shit you buy on eBay is like $10, $20. And how you're gonna compete if you spend like 20 or 30 hours making something out of granite and you have to compete with this beautiful Pakistani onyx vase that's like $5 retail? You can't. So nobody wants to do it unless you say, well, here's $10,000, do it. I didn't have $10,000. So I started like a post on X and said, hey, I'm gonna make this vase out of granite. So who's gonna pitch in a thousand bucks? If you give me a thousand bucks, I'll give you a vase. So four people, fortunately, pitched in and that gave me a budget to work with. So I went to a shop in China and I said, can you make this? And they said, sure. So I sent them drawings. So I actually took one of the vases from the Petri collection that I scanned and I asked a CAD designer, can you just make an idealized version of it that I can send to a shop to get a CAD drawing? And that's what I did. And I sent them to the shop and they made me a few vases and I brought them here. So here's one.

Speaker 1:
[54:46] This is one that you had made in China.

Speaker 3:
[54:47] Yes, and here's another, right? So I had two more, but I already...

Speaker 1:
[54:51] And what is this material?

Speaker 3:
[54:52] Granite. So this is black granite.

Speaker 1:
[54:54] This is black granite.

Speaker 3:
[54:55] And this is red granite. Yes. And you can see this vase has all of the attributes of the precise vase. It has log handles that people said cannot be made. It has a narrow neck that people say cannot be made. And it's hollowed out on the inside. So inside is a lot larger than the outside.

Speaker 1:
[55:17] The inside also feels similar to the other vases I've found.

Speaker 3:
[55:20] Right. Because it's machining marks. And in fact, I also have videos of how they were made. And I've sent some to Steve. And maybe when this episode airs, he will include a few of those. Yeah. And I have a lot to say about it, but basically...

Speaker 1:
[55:39] What kind of granite is this? Red?

Speaker 3:
[55:40] This is red granite. Right. And this is Indian. Yeah. I'm actually asking which granite this is. And this looks pretty similar to what Matt's vases look. And they basically turn the outside on a lathe, and then there is this rim left where the lug handles are. And then they manually shave them off with an angle grinder. And the inside, they use... They shave.

Speaker 1:
[56:05] So this is all round.

Speaker 3:
[56:07] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[56:07] And then they shave off here.

Speaker 3:
[56:09] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[56:10] To make these pop out.

Speaker 3:
[56:11] Exactly. And you can tell it...

Speaker 1:
[56:13] You can't feel it, really.

Speaker 3:
[56:14] No, because it's good work.

Speaker 1:
[56:16] You can see it on the heat map, but...

Speaker 3:
[56:17] Yes. And obviously, that's how it was hollowed out. That's the rough hollowing out. And then they did a fine hollowing out on the lathe. So the rough, they used this cutter, and the more fine one, they did on the lathe. And that's the polishing. Yeah. And frankly...

Speaker 1:
[56:35] And how precise?

Speaker 3:
[56:37] Excellent question. But before I proceed, I wanna talk about logistics a little bit. So, it's not really expensive to make this. What is really difficult is going back and forth. So I'm here in America, and I'm talking to a girl who is an intermediary. And English is not a native language for her, and Chinese is not a language for me. And then there is a time difference, and then she relays this information to the guys who make them. So we have me, her, maybe somebody else, and them guys, and a lot of information gets lost.

Speaker 1:
[57:13] Telephone game.

Speaker 3:
[57:14] Yeah, basically. So management was difficult. So making this for them wasn't. But making them the way I want them was difficult because either I couldn't explain it, or they couldn't communicate it by jumping through the steps. And when they do something, I wasn't there standing. No, that's not what I want. It's kind of like remote work. I work with engineers remotely, even when we speak the same language. It's not the same when you're all in the same room. So that was the only challenge. And that's why some of the vases don't quite look the way I want them to look. It's just because it was an impossible game of tag to try to explain and then adjust or adjust. But anyway, so I scanned these vases, and I'm going to publish the scans shortly. And they're practically indistinguishable from the precise vases in Matt Bell's collection. Yes, yes. And that was the objective. I wanted them to be of the same quality. And some are better and some are a little worse.

Speaker 1:
[58:19] Can I see that one in the back?

Speaker 3:
[58:21] Yes, and that's another story. That's the spinner.

Speaker 1:
[58:24] This is the spinner.

Speaker 3:
[58:25] Right, and you can.

Speaker 1:
[58:26] Oh yeah, because all of Matt's ones were rounded bottoms.

Speaker 3:
[58:29] Well, some were, and you can actually spin it.

Speaker 1:
[58:31] Yeah, a lot of them were, right.

Speaker 3:
[58:32] And you see it spins just fine. Yeah. Spins no problem. And because that's another people were saying, I think like, what's this bright inside guy, Chris Corsetti?

Speaker 1:
[58:46] Sorry?

Speaker 3:
[58:47] Corsetti.

Speaker 1:
[58:48] Oh yeah, Jimmy Corsetti.

Speaker 3:
[58:48] Jimmy Corsetti, sorry. Yeah, he kind of pointed out, so you can't make this. Well, you know, I made this and it spins.

Speaker 1:
[58:55] Holy shit.

Speaker 3:
[58:56] But that's not it. Check this out. So can you see the light shining through?

Speaker 1:
[59:03] Oh, Steve, you want to hit the lights? Or if you don't, we don't have to, but it might be fun.

Speaker 3:
[59:08] Oh, you can see it. I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[59:12] I think Steve's gonna kill the lights so we can get a really good shot of this.

Speaker 3:
[59:17] I'll let you play with it. Just shine on the side and you can see it. You can actually.

Speaker 1:
[59:23] Oh yeah, yeah, it's showing up great. Can you see it?

Speaker 3:
[59:25] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[59:27] So we did this when Matt came on the show, we did this with his vases and he's doing this too.

Speaker 3:
[59:33] So you can actually shine the light through because there is quartz.

Speaker 1:
[59:36] Wow.

Speaker 3:
[59:37] And these are like thin enough to where it shines through. And this is not like a particularly bright light. Yeah, and there is an interesting thing about the spinner vases. So when I asked them, actually like this better than this, but you know, when you eyeball them, you know, which one do you think is more precise?

Speaker 1:
[59:58] All of these?

Speaker 3:
[59:59] Yeah. Well, let's see, how are your eyesight? Which do you think is like more precise?

Speaker 1:
[60:09] I mean, my brain wants to tell me the shiny one is the most precise.

Speaker 3:
[60:16] And what would be your second one?

Speaker 1:
[60:19] The red one probably.

Speaker 3:
[60:20] Good, yes, your eyesight is really good. You got it, yeah, so this is-

Speaker 1:
[60:25] I got it?

Speaker 3:
[60:25] Yeah, you got it. This is more precise than this one. And these are less precise. And the reason being, you know, when you look at the videos, they actually cheated a little bit. I asked them like to turn the whole thing, but instead they, there was like a big foot in here. That they grounded manually. So all of this is the angle grinder as opposed to turning on the lathe. And this section, you know, they also ground, you know, with the angle grinder. And you can see that, oh, sorry. So, yeah, you see, the foot is pretty large. So those are areas that they messed up because it's not like machine work, it's like semi-hand work. And at the end of the day, you know, this vase looks in quality, you know, pretty similar what you end up with the vases from Petrie Museum. Really? Yes, yes. So this quality fell short of the machine work like this tool, like this tool made, you know, machine work quality, like 100%. Because these were like mostly turned in, the lock handles are fairly small, and they did a better job at polishing them. So with this, it was so hard to explain them what I wanted to where they said, just screw it, and they used angle grinder for most of the work. And that's kind of the result that you see. And I'm like, oh, God, do I go through another round of management trying them to say, no, just turn everything on the lathe and polish it better? You know, I might.

Speaker 1:
[61:55] Is there another way they could do this even more precisely, like with a CNC machine or something?

Speaker 3:
[62:01] Yes, yes, they can. And I asked, can you do that? And they say, sure. Would you order 100? If I order 100. How much would that cost? Probably will cost like 20 grand, maybe. Yeah, because I think if I do 100, then each one would cost about 200 bucks.

Speaker 1:
[62:20] All right, let's think about it. $20,000, we get 100 vases. We sell each vase for $50,000.

Speaker 3:
[62:26] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[62:27] What's the profit?

Speaker 3:
[62:28] Yeah, I mean, obviously you can make this work. And in fact, what I'm going to say, if you want a vase like this made, you can still donate a thousand bucks. And I will still make one for you. Because, I mean, if nothing else, I fell in love with stone vessels. So that's why I have like 100 of them now. They're all modern. I did end up collecting some, you know, genuine too, but I mostly found that I am like a vase junkie. I just like the shape. And it was kind of fun to have this made. But I was astounded that you can actually, you know, shine the light through how thin, you know, the walls were. On the black, you can't do it because, you know, the crystals aren't as big. But on this one.

Speaker 1:
[63:15] What about those really tiny ones, like this?

Speaker 3:
[63:19] Yeah, I mean, you can do it. In fact, you know, the machine shop that makes parts for me for my Fusion project, you know, they have a CNC mill that we can use to make this. And it's currently in disrepair. And the guy said, well, you know, you fixed the mill for me. You know, I'll make some of this for you. So I said, all right, you know, you captured my interest. I'll help you, you know, fix the mill so we can make them here as opposed to in China. And we don't have to, you know, jump through the hoops and play this broken phone, trying to explain what we need. Besides, you know, I'll just give you a CNC drawing and we can just program it into the machine and it will grind everything perfectly. And there is no problem for the modern industry because think about machine tools, you know, cutters, you know, end mills and whatnot. You know, they don't grow from the ground. They don't fall from the sky. They are machined. And this guy, he can machine, you know, tool, steel. No problem. And how you do it? You have, you know, diamond tip cutters. And as you know, the flutes on the cutters are elaborate. You know, there is like complex shape to it and whatnot. So none of that is problematic, you know, for CNC and you use diamond tip tools to do it. So it's just, you know, the approach I took, it's ended up being like semi-machined, like half of it was turned and the rest, you know, was machined with an angle grinder. And then this, you know, as I said, they turned out to be the same quality as Matt's, you know, most precise pieces. And you know, this in the interest of full disclosure and honesty aren't as precise, but you know, when you look at the manufacturing process, you know, I saw where they didn't follow my instructions, but heck, you know, they are balanced, they spin, and you can shine the light through it.

Speaker 1:
[65:07] That's fascinating, man.

Speaker 3:
[65:09] We can absolutely make them today, and this looks pretty much, you know, like Matt Spinner, and that's where I got the inspiration from.

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 3:
[66:36] Yes, and here is the interesting, like really interesting story behind it. I would say it goes like this. On my third visit to Petrie Museum, I actually looked at some of the unfinished vases. And they had a couple, and I actually asked one that I photographed. I think it was diorite, maybe, like an unfinished vase. And you could see, and if you go like for their catalog, you will see all of the manufacturing steps because it's a large collection, like thousands of objects. And in that thousand of objects, there are some vases that were started, but not finished. And by started, you mean an artisan, like with a chisel gives the vase its initial rough shape. So basically sculpts it. With all of the handles, with all of the like essential parts, but it's not smooth, it's rough. And there are plenty of examples like this in Petri collection. The one that I photographed was the vessel that already was in some stages of smoothing, polishing. And I'm actually writing a new paper on reconstructing the technology. And I think how it went is after the object was chiseled and chipped and sculpted, it was mounted like on a shaft, and it was submerged into a sand slurry, like abrasive sand. And then it was rotated. And the reason I believe this is the case is when analyze the skins, I clearly see that the outer surface of the vase, of the pre-dynastic vase, was shaped by rotation of the vessel itself. It's like glaring from the data.

Speaker 1:
[68:28] Interesting.

Speaker 3:
[68:28] Because the, yes, that's the unfinished object. And the reason I know that the entire vase was rotated is because concentricity is excellent, but circularity is poor. And the thing is once you submerge this entire object in abrasive slurry, so it's wet sand basically, and rotate it, you know, the longer you rotate it, the more round it will become. It's like stones on the beach, like pebbles on the beach. You know, just naturally, sand and water gives everything a round shape. So you start with a random shape, but this natural grinding gives you round shape. So the more you rotate it, so the rotation here was abandoned, you know, midway. And you see how the handles were like smoothed out, because that's what happens, you know, when you turn the thing. And I think, you know, that's what they did. They turned it, and I think the objects got really hot in the process, because once again...

Speaker 1:
[69:24] So that's what asphalum granate looks like.

Speaker 3:
[69:26] No, that's diorite.

Speaker 1:
[69:27] Oh, diorite, okay.

Speaker 3:
[69:28] Yeah, asphalum granate looks similar to this, but it's got like big splotches of black in it. So when you rotate it, like in a slurry, it gets hot. And what Barbara observed in her dissertation, she says, all the samples, she ran through electron microscope. She says that the chemical composition of stone was altered. Altered by presence of heat and water. That's what she observed. It wasn't like a virgin stone. So the stone was altered by heat and water. And when I read this, I said, but of course, this is what's gonna happen if you dip this into sand, wet sand and rotate it, it's gonna get wet, it's gonna get hot. And the surface is gonna receive this glaze. So most pre-dynastic Egyptian vessels, at least in the basalt ones and the right ones, they have this glaze on top, which you don't know what it is, but it's the same freaking stone, it's just been chemically altered by heat and water. And I submit in the process of, this is abrasion basically, right? In the process of abrasion. And this is a lapidary technology where this thing is rotated. And of course, once it's done, they would handwork the handles to define them better. And you just use, you know, grinding, you know, grinding stones for that. And I was able to identify a bunch of grinding stones too, in what I think, you know, were grinding stones in the Peter collection. And I posted some on my blog. More interesting is how did they do the inside, right? So that's more interesting because what does my analysis tell me? My analysis tells me that the outer surface and the whole object was rotated, but the inner surface, they used a grinder tool that was rotated. And it's also very clear from the data that I published is because roundness is very good, but concentricity is poor. And this happens when you have a tool, like a milling bit, boring bit, that rotates and gives you, you know, nice round cuts. But, you know, you move it and this cut is here, this cut is there, you know, they're not like coaxial. And that's the thing I see on all pre-dynastic vessels. So none of them, like a perfectly straight inner part, it's this way, that way, even a vase that looked like you could do just a cord drill wasn't done through a cord drill. It was done with this grinding bit, which I think was a mace head. So there is this, a lot of this, you know, mace heads that, you know, were fit. And that was like Matt Bell's observation, actually, when we were discussing. He says, oh, I think that that foot, because this was clamped and there was a foot here that was, you know, cut off. And it looks exactly like the mace head. And when he said that, I thought, you got it. You know, I think that's the mace head they used, but I think they also used it for grinding the inside because it has the perfect shape of the boring bit. And I found a few of this boring bits in Petrie collection in Manchester Museum. And I published them on my blog. I see, you know, they have this elongated, some have this elongated shapes and that what you need to introduce it vertically. You know, then you rotate it horizontally because then the neck is narrow. So you put it vertically and then you rotate it. And then it's on a shaft and you rotate the shaft. And that's how they hollowed it out. And the other interesting part is I actually, I speculate. I don't believe it was manual labor. I believe they used some sort of automation for it. And it's actually very well established that they used bow drilling. And in bow drilling, you have a shaft and you have like a leather strapping that goes around the shaft and you have a bow. And just this year, a paper was published where they discovered an intact bow drill complete with a leather shaft.

Speaker 1:
[73:32] They discovered this?

Speaker 3:
[73:33] It discovered in a museum. They didn't know what it was until, because you know, museums have so many objects that had been excavated and just tucked away. And researchers stumbled upon like a perfect set of a bow drill, you know, complete with the leather wrap and even a bronze bit. So clearly, it was not meant-

Speaker 1:
[73:52] You find this, Steve?

Speaker 3:
[73:54] Yeah, it was not meant for stone drilling. But you know, if you replace the bronze bit with let's say a diorite or a flint, that will be suitable for stone. But the point is, you know, a bow drill was known in pre-Denastic times. And I think they could have used a bow drill, you know, when they made the pots, let's say when they hollowed out the inside. Or I actually believe they used water. And this is not like a wild idea or unprecedented idea, because we know Egypt was a lot wetter, you know, back then, and, you know, Giza Plateau had water works and channels and whatnot, and the water level was a lot higher. Yeah, you got it. This is it.

Speaker 1:
[74:36] This is the bow drill.

Speaker 3:
[74:38] You might need to scroll up a little bit. That's the leather. Is this the leather implement?

Speaker 1:
[74:44] Scroll up. How a 5,300 year old bow drill is rewriting the story of ancient Egypt. This was published like one month ago, exactly. In examining the 5,300 year old Egyptian artifact, remarkable new research has confirmed the existence of far more mechanically sophisticated technology than we ever thought possible from before the age of the pharaohs.

Speaker 3:
[75:13] Yes. And it's not high technology. I mean, it's low tech, but ingenious use.

Speaker 1:
[75:19] Researchers at New Castle University and the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna reexamined the ancient artifact excavated a century ago from a grave at Badari in Upper Egypt. The artifact was only 63 millimeters long and weighed 1.5 grams, cataloged as 1924.948 in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge. The object was described by the original excavators as a little all of copper with some leather thong wound around it. 63 millimeters long.

Speaker 3:
[76:00] Mm-hmm, tiny. Well, not that tiny, but you got it. So yeah, copper bit with leather around it. So brown things, leather. Oh, what's left of it.

Speaker 1:
[76:12] What is it, a bow drill for ants?

Speaker 3:
[76:14] Well, I mean, if you make furniture, you need holes, you know, things of that nature, or kind of any implement, you know, as a whole. Even like pallets are very common, pre-dynastic Egyptian objects that you see in every museum. And they usually have holes for ice, where they inlaid other inner materials, like a fish shape. So you, that could have been used to drill a hole. And then, you know, you inlay another piece in it. But the point is, I think they used, you know, some kind of automation. I think it's incorrect to think of, let's say, pre-dynastic or ancient people as primitive. They were not as technologically advanced as us, but they were in general. And it means they found ways to automate tasks that, you know, that were difficult and laborious in line with the technology available to them. And it's very well known that in Turkey, Heracopolis, there was an ancient sawmill for cutting stones that was automated by water. So there were water mills that were spun by, you know, flowing streams of water with reciprocating saws for cutting stone. And that is like 2000 years old. So I would argue that, you know, something similar existed in pre-Denastic Egyptian times where they used flowing water to actuate, you know, this stone grinding, you know, implements for the vases. So you can have a mill, wheel that turns, and then, you know, some maybe a leather belt or something or cog wheel that would, you know, make this thing turn and turn. And you don't care. You just put it in stone. I mean, put it in sand at, yes, exactly.

Speaker 1:
[78:03] Right.

Speaker 3:
[78:03] Here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and you take it out.

Speaker 1:
[78:15] How do you think they did the Petri Core or those cores?

Speaker 3:
[78:19] Good question. I don't know for sure, but one thing I can say, if you're talking about this quote unquote famous core, there is one famous Petri Core. I don't remember its number, but I think it's a red granite.

Speaker 1:
[78:35] Number seven, I think.

Speaker 3:
[78:35] Number seven, that's one granite that arguably has the thread.

Speaker 1:
[78:40] The spiral.

Speaker 3:
[78:41] The spiral.

Speaker 1:
[78:42] Spiral groove.

Speaker 3:
[78:42] Well, I will disappoint you. I don't believe it's a high-tech core for two reasons. One reason is when you use core drilling with, let's say, copper tubes or bronze tubes. Even copper tube will work. Or even bamboo tube will work. Everybody knows it's not like the bamboo or the copper that does the drilling. It's the grit. It's the abrasive that you introduce. And this copper, it just drags it. And then when you do this, because this is a fairly primitive process, your core ends up being tapered. It's thinner at the top than at the bottom, because the top portion was in contact with the abrasive slurry for longer. So it ground more. And this has actually been recreated by scientists, again, myths, and by many other researchers who started core drilling with copper tubes. You get this tapered core, always. And that's how Petri Core number seven is, it's tapered. So that's like one, let's say, trait that matches the idea that that was core drilled using a copper tube. The other one is where the groove is observed. Well, lo and behold, when you core drill using copper tubes, you get this grooves. But these grooves aren't continuous. And in fact, all researchers that have done it observe these grooves. And even there was a study at UPenn by two engineers who did some core drilling and put the resulting cores under SEM to look at the grooves. And they observe the pattern of them to match exactly what's found in the core drills excavated in Egypt. So there is like 100 visual consistency. And that's another point. And the third point is the groove on the famous Petri Core is not continuous. A lot of people looked at it. And yes, and scientists against myths looked at it. And somebody else looked at it. Oh, I think Knight Scarab looked at it, too.

Speaker 1:
[81:00] I know Chris Dunn looked at it. And he said that they ran a string all the way around it.

Speaker 3:
[81:04] Well, I dispute that finding, because the other people who've done it show that there are multiple non-continuous grooves there that are entirely consistent.

Speaker 1:
[81:15] It doesn't, but just looking at the photos, it certainly does not look like it's a continuous spiral.

Speaker 3:
[81:20] No, it's a bunch of different grooves, because tiny little stones, bits of grit were dragged, and you get this discontinuous mess of big and smaller grooves. So to me, it's not a particularly fascinating artifact, but there are other cores that I've seen at the Petrie Museum, basalt cores, that appear to be more interesting, because I didn't see tapering on them. I haven't scanned them, I haven't studied them, but when I looked at the pictures, they looked like just tubes. And I was like, how the heck do you do that? So that was more interesting. So maybe one of those days, I should scan and study those, but because there's so much work was going on, I couldn't do it this time around. But the Petrie core number seven, there is nothing fascinating about it, and I think it's time to quit claiming it as evidence of high tech, because if it is evidence of anything, it's evidence of core drilling, and we've been able to reproduce all of the characteristics of that core exactly on more than one occasion. As I said, Scientists Against Mist, and then there is another book everybody should read. It's a book by, let me try to remember the name. My memory, it's a British researcher. He wrote a book on recreating ancient stone working techniques. I can't remember his name. Well.

Speaker 1:
[82:54] When was it published?

Speaker 3:
[82:55] Or how old was it? Fairly recently, maybe like 20 years ago. Shoot, I have it referenced everywhere, and I can't remember his name.

Speaker 1:
[83:02] Hold that thought, I gotta get pee real quick.

Speaker 3:
[83:04] Yeah, maybe it's here, hold on.

Speaker 1:
[83:05] We'll be right back. We're back, so here's the book.

Speaker 3:
[83:09] Yeah, so the book is by Dennis Stocks, Experiments in Ancient Egyptian Archaeology, where he recreates ancient stone working techniques, including drilling, taking cores, shaping vessels, cutting stones using copper saws. So I guess the point is whenever you study any subject, you really gotta study literature on it, because a lot of people have done research. A lot of people, you know, done analysis and you gotta absorb all of that. You can never ignore, you know, the body of work that existed up to the point where you decided to enter the field, right? And that's kind of what I ended up doing over the past year. You know, had to study all of the sources, you know, read these books and dissertation to see, and even, you know, talk to people who actually, you know, bothered to recreate techniques. So can you cut a granite with a copper saw? Absolutely. It's not the copper that does the cutting, it's the abrasive, the grid that does the cutting. Yeah, for that matter, you can cut copper with a string. I mean, you can cut granite with a string. It's not the string that does the cutting, it's the, you know, slurry, the abrasive slurry that does it. So, things like that. And the bigger point, so, ancient people were ingenious. You know, when you don't have the technology, you use your brain a lot more, and see, you know, how you can do less work. So, that's why I never buy the mainstream archeologists' explanations when they concoct this elaborate techniques of how, you know, the blocks were hold and how much labor went. Yeah, because when I look at it, it's ridiculous. It's like too labor intensive. It's totally insane. You know, I don't necessarily believe aliens, you know, have done it, or Atlanteans, but I don't believe that, you know, people were holding, you know, these blocks because, you know, humans are lazy, right? So we don't want to do the work. And then somebody would say, well, you know, pharaohs would command you to do this. And pharaohs weren't stupid, because every slave who is doing stupid work is not doing something useful to enrich the pharaoh, right? Or not fighting the enemies, not conquering lands, not mining something useful. It's business. So let's say you're Jeff Bezos, right? So you have 100 million slaves. You're not going to make them do stupid stuff, right? Right. Yeah. And so I don't believe pharaohs were stupid, or kings were stupid. And all of these monuments that we see, I don't believe that like stupendous amount of work went into them. It's just because it doesn't make economic sense. So these people, another argument I would give is, even if you had like 100,000 slaves working, well, you got to feed them. Imagine, I know how much food you need to keep this army going. And could your country produce that much food at the time? And if it could, would it live enough for the population or for the actual army?

Speaker 1:
[86:12] What is the official narrative, the official consensus on how many people built those things, built those pyramids and how long it took?

Speaker 3:
[86:23] I cannot answer this truthfully.

Speaker 1:
[86:24] You find it Steve?

Speaker 3:
[86:25] I apologize.

Speaker 1:
[86:26] What does a old handy dandy Gemini or Chachi Biti tell us?

Speaker 3:
[86:31] I just don't believe anybody would undertake for whatever reason, such a stupendously expensive enterprise. So therefore, you know, I wouldn't rule out aliens or Atlanteans at this point, you know. I haven't studied the object, like the subject too closely, but I don't think the explanation is just enormous amount of labor over enormous time because of the expense.

Speaker 1:
[86:59] Modern consensus estimates that approximately 20 to 30,000 workers were directly involved in building the Great Pyramid of Giza over a period of about 20 years. I call it bullshit. Get the fuck out of here.

Speaker 3:
[87:11] It's just my feeling because I think, I deeply believe that people could be mean, but they're rational. Overall, we're rational. If something happens that's irrational, we just don't know the reason for it. So somebody is doing something. But there is always a reason and pharaohs and somebody else were rational. So if you're spending that much resources, I think your country will be ripe for conquest by somebody else. While you're busy feeding this army of slaves that are building some edifice, you have no food or no money to pay the real army. So anyway, I don't really know how the pyramid was built yet.

Speaker 1:
[87:54] Or how those stones were moved, or how they were elevated up there, or how they were like.

Speaker 3:
[87:58] I think it's a fascinating topic to explore and that's what I would like.

Speaker 1:
[88:02] It is fascinating.

Speaker 3:
[88:03] To do it eventually. I just don't believe it's a stupendous amount of stupid labor. It's just because we see evidence to the contrary. We see that the ancient people were ingenious. And that's another thing that the point I'm making in my paper that I'm working on currently is that, you know, pre-dynastic Egyptians were actually familiar with all types of subtractive machining we use now. Because that's what you see in the pre-dynastic stone vases. You have turning and you have milling. And that's exactly the same subtractive machining techniques we use now. We use turning and we use milling. And they used, you know, far more primitive tools for that. So it was like a wooden shaft instead of a nice, you know, metal chuck that we use in our lathe. And it was like a stone drill bit or stone mill bit, right? But it was, you know, actuated for rotation, you know, the same thing we do. You know, now we use, you know, belts and gears. And back then they used this bow, string or a piece of leather, but it's the same freaking principle. That's what blows my mind that, you know, 6,000 years ago, however long ago, they were familiar with the basic principles of subtractive machining we know and use today. And that's like mind blowing to me.

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 3:
[90:48] Yes, yes. Have you?

Speaker 1:
[90:51] There's no reasonable explanation to how anyone could even achieve something like that today.

Speaker 3:
[90:58] There is actually, I'm glad you mentioned it.

Speaker 1:
[91:00] Look at this, it's a negative relief, enormous temple cut out of the side of a freaking granite mountain.

Speaker 3:
[91:08] I might disappoint you here slightly too.

Speaker 1:
[91:11] Please do.

Speaker 3:
[91:13] There is a, they've built a temple in India. So the stone working tradition is alive and well in India to this day. So they have traditional craftsmen that use nothing but chisels, built a similar ornate temple in Hawaii. What is its name? Let me see. It was just finished recently.

Speaker 1:
[91:41] Really?

Speaker 3:
[91:41] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[91:42] And the same way this was with the negative?

Speaker 3:
[91:44] Very, very close, I would say. Maybe not exactly the same way, but it gives you the idea, you know, how.

Speaker 1:
[91:49] Where instead of building and adding on, you're taking away the negative space.

Speaker 3:
[91:56] Let's see, Hindu temple in Hawaii, maybe. Yeah, that's it, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[92:02] That's one piece of rock?

Speaker 3:
[92:03] Well, I don't know about one piece, but it shows you the, yeah, that's the temple. It shows you the technique they use. So the very intricate sculpting technique was just, you know, hammers and chisels. There are some videos on YouTube, and I can send you some videos.

Speaker 1:
[92:22] It doesn't look like it's one piece.

Speaker 3:
[92:24] It may not be, but it shows you that the tradition of stonework is alive. So that's all done by him.

Speaker 1:
[92:30] Oh, it's certainly impressive stonework.

Speaker 3:
[92:32] Yes. It's not one piece, no.

Speaker 1:
[92:34] Right. But that Kailasa Temple is one solid piece. Like there's no moving parts at all in that whole thing.

Speaker 3:
[92:42] I entirely believe that.

Speaker 1:
[92:43] And when was that built? Find out when the Kailasa Temple was actually, when that was carved out of the side of that mountain. I want to say it was like 600?

Speaker 3:
[92:55] 750.

Speaker 1:
[92:56] 750. Right.

Speaker 3:
[92:58] I'd be more interested in knowing how they made the, you know, Bear Bear Caves.

Speaker 1:
[93:02] What's that?

Speaker 3:
[93:04] Is it Bear Bear or Bar Bar?

Speaker 1:
[93:06] Bar Bar Caves?

Speaker 3:
[93:07] Maybe Bear Bear Caves.

Speaker 1:
[93:08] Where's it at?

Speaker 3:
[93:09] It's in India.

Speaker 1:
[93:10] In India?

Speaker 3:
[93:11] I cannot believe you haven't heard of that.

Speaker 1:
[93:12] I don't think, I mean, maybe I've seen it, but the name's not ringing a bell.

Speaker 3:
[93:15] Okay, maybe I mispronounced it. Yes.

Speaker 1:
[93:18] I've never seen this.

Speaker 3:
[93:19] Bar Bar. Bar Bar Caves. It's a giant rock turd that they carved a, So they carved a cave inside this rock turd that's like a polished finish.

Speaker 1:
[93:31] Can you find a video of this, Steve? Or like a bit better photo?

Speaker 3:
[93:33] Somebody actually scanned them. There's like a metrology company from Europe did a 3D scan of the inner surface. And it's like mirror finish. You can see yourself.

Speaker 1:
[93:43] Really?

Speaker 3:
[93:44] Yes. Bar Bar Caves, yes. It's a mirror finish and you can see yourself. You can see your reflection. So that, I have no idea how that was achieved. You know, that I would never buy. They can done, you know, with-

Speaker 1:
[93:58] Or just find a photo or something.

Speaker 3:
[93:59] With chisels and stones. So the temple-

Speaker 1:
[94:01] Well, look at that. Look at that. It shows you the actual dimensions of it.

Speaker 3:
[94:05] Yes. So the-

Speaker 1:
[94:07] Oh, that's megalithomania.

Speaker 3:
[94:09] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[94:12] Whoa. Full screen this?

Speaker 3:
[94:19] Yeah. Look, look how shiny the walls are.

Speaker 4:
[94:22] Absolutely incredible. It's just like the caves we find on Barabar Hill.

Speaker 3:
[94:29] Oh, that's why I'm here.

Speaker 4:
[94:33] So we're now at the Nagarjuni Caves. There's three caves on this hill, separate to Barabar Hill. This is the Gopika Cave or Gopika. And this has remarkable carvings in Brahmin script, which you can see in the moment. Whoa.

Speaker 3:
[94:50] It's just mind blowing. I think this is by far the most interesting.

Speaker 4:
[94:53] More than tourists. But I wanted to show you these pictures. These are equally interesting. Some of the finest polished granite stonework. Just like we find at Barabar Caves as well. All of this is polished, as you can see. The floor, here, all the way along here. You can see the remarkable carvings here.

Speaker 1:
[95:13] It's gotta be aliens.

Speaker 4:
[95:14] Which I find fascinating.

Speaker 3:
[95:15] It definitely doesn't look like I was cheesing.

Speaker 1:
[95:18] That is insane.

Speaker 4:
[95:20] And then we go inside it.

Speaker 1:
[95:21] Look how perfect that text is.

Speaker 3:
[95:24] Well, never mind text, you know how perfect the walls are.

Speaker 1:
[95:26] I know.

Speaker 4:
[95:27] You can hear the sound here.

Speaker 3:
[95:29] Consistent angles, consistent curvature.

Speaker 4:
[95:31] You see how wide this is, and it curves around this end as well.

Speaker 1:
[95:35] 230 BC, this was carved out?

Speaker 3:
[95:37] That's the inscription.

Speaker 1:
[95:39] The inscription was 230 BC, which means the cave is much older.

Speaker 4:
[95:42] There's actually the core level, the center of it is under the floor. The acoustics are incredible. And you can really imagine, I mean, these are with some gentlemen here, and they were in here meditating. You can see why. It just booms. It's just, what an amazing spot. Holy shit. You see the beautiful kind of precision, like the polished granite. Absolutely incredible. It's just like the caves we find on Barabar Hill.

Speaker 1:
[96:15] How perfect is that symmetry on that?

Speaker 3:
[96:16] I don't know. I mean, I really would like to study the scans.

Speaker 1:
[96:20] That is fascinating. I cannot believe I've never seen that before.

Speaker 3:
[96:23] So, I think French company went in with the lasers and scanned it. I don't know if they published their scans or they could be obtained, because then you can actually see how precise it's made. Because the point I keep making, ice often deceive us, right? When you look at something and it looks really nice.

Speaker 1:
[96:40] Even if it's not precise, it is fucking astonishing that it's that old? Older than 200 BC? Laser scans of the 2300 year old Barbar Caves in India reveal astonishing precision with granite walls polished to a mere finish and curved symmetrical designs created within 0.1 degrees of accuracy.

Speaker 3:
[97:03] I would say, don't believe the AI summaries because...

Speaker 1:
[97:06] It's summarizing it off of a YouTube video.

Speaker 3:
[97:08] We really need to...

Speaker 1:
[97:09] I mean, even if it's not precise, it's still incredibly, it's super impressive.

Speaker 3:
[97:13] And it might be precise. I'm saying, I'd like to see the data, the actual scans to really quantify it. I don't know if they published a paper or if they published scans, but it's freaking unbelievable. Barbar Caves, yes.

Speaker 1:
[97:30] Wild.

Speaker 3:
[97:31] Yeah, I think that's maybe even more fascinating than pyramids. If it's really that precise as they claim, because how the heck do you do it? Why?

Speaker 1:
[97:42] And what was it for?

Speaker 3:
[97:43] What was it for exactly? What was it for? Clearly it wasn't a whim because somebody wanted a hole in the wall, right?

Speaker 1:
[97:48] Right.

Speaker 3:
[97:49] Clearly serves some purpose.

Speaker 1:
[97:51] Right. I would love to see a peer review on the function of the pyramids, like a real thorough study done. Like somebody could take Chris Dunn's work, combine it with like Jeffrey Drum's work, and do some sort of like collaborative, interdisciplinary review of the function of the great. But couldn't that be, would that be accepted by like mainstream journals?

Speaker 3:
[98:15] I think so. And in fact, this is what is badly needed. So it's not enough, you know, just to publish a YouTube video. We're not enough to publish a blog post, right? So at the end of the day, we need to produce scientific papers. And I think it's necessary for two reasons. One is when you write a scientific paper, you are obligated to include or address all prior knowledge about the problem. So this problem doesn't exist in the vacuum, right? It exists, you know, with everything around it. So your explanation needs to mesh with everything that we know. Otherwise, you know, if you find a guy who has a knife, you know, did he stab it or did he pick it up, right? So you need to consider all of it. And the other thing is, so when you write a paper, you need to be like really diligent on the analysis and presentation of your data. It's never enough to say, you know, I think or this is it. Like, you know, the thing that kind of bothers me about, you know, how Ben reports in his videos, he makes a lot of claims without substantiating them, meaning, you know, Peter giving away objects. Well, you can say that like in scientific literature only if you produce a piece of evidence that supports that claim. Here's like a paper that says, you know, this object, you know, was given to this person or something else. Or you can never like show a picture and say, you know, these are stone vessels and this is pottery. How can you tell, you know, by looking at the picture? So it has to be like deeper analysis that goes with it.

Speaker 1:
[99:49] Well, I don't think Ben is making like bold claims on anything. He's simply just asking questions and observing things, right?

Speaker 3:
[99:56] Well, I wouldn't disagree with you, you know. When I rewatch his videos, he's making a lot of claims like that. And I'd like to use this as an opportunity to show how you cannot make claims in scientific literature. Right, right. Because like when you write a paper, like every sentence that you write, it's either like your own, you know, genuine observation or conclusion, or if not, you got a reference, you got to cite a reference. Saying, you know, if this is a clay pot, if you make in that statement, then you need to say why. Yes. And like what analysis did you do to determine that this is a clay pot? Because when you look at a picture, you cannot tell, you know, a clay apart from stone, you know, they look the same, right? Or if you say it's a clay pot, then you say, because Petrie said so, right? And that's like good enough. Well, you know, that's how science works. You know, we-

Speaker 1:
[100:46] Well, let me ask you this though. If you were to publish your paper with all the same evidence, came to the opposite conclusion, you think it would have been published?

Speaker 3:
[100:52] Yeah, I think so, yeah. And here is an interesting story too. I think we both underestimate and overestimate, you know, how scientific community functions. It is, you know, difficult to publish papers that go against the grain or against mainstream. I know this firsthand, because a lot of my papers, you know, were rejected. I couldn't publish them because I argued, you know, against the point that was genuinely accepted. And they are, papers are rejected for two reasons. You know, sometimes the prejudice in a certain journal is just so high to where mere mention of a certain word, you know, gets you rejected. And I give you an example of cold fusion. As you recall, I'm also a nuclear scientist. I work on nuclear fusion and I research cold fusion, among other things. You know, I don't believe that cold fusion is genuine, it ever worked, but it doesn't mean-

Speaker 1:
[102:00] You don't believe it ever worked?

Speaker 3:
[102:01] No, I don't believe it ever worked. No, I mean, I used to believe like 20 years ago, but I had a 180 on it.

Speaker 1:
[102:09] Did you see Jeffrey Epstein's email about it?

Speaker 3:
[102:11] I think he was taking credit for something he didn't do.

Speaker 1:
[102:14] I think so, too.

Speaker 3:
[102:15] But my point is, even though I don't believe in cold fusion, I tried to publish a paper recently where I mentioned cold fusion, and I actually said I don't believe in it, but because I mentioned it, that was enough for that particular repository to reject the paper. And I know this is stupid, like beyond belief, and that particular repository I'm referring to is Archive. Archive is the main repository of unpublished papers. So let's say when I submitted the paper to Nature, it took them a few months to examine it and publish it. And what most researchers do, they want to share their papers quickly. So while the journal is mulling your paper over peer review and whatnot, you upload a preprint to Archive. And it used to be that Archive was any paper you can upload, it was like a preprint server. Your unpublished works gives a home, gives a link, anybody can read. And I do have several papers uploaded from before. But lately, they've kind of evolved a stance on topics. And they don't believe in cold fusion, they don't believe in UFOs. And maybe there are a bunch of other things they don't believe in, I don't really know. But they started applying this editorial criteria. When you submit a paper and they find a keyword they don't like, they don't accept the preprint. And the funny thing was when I submitted a paper on Fusion to the journal, they said, well, no, we're not going to publish it, unless it's published in another journal. And when it got published and they come back and say, well, will you upload a preprint now? They still refuse to do it. It's just prejudice, you can do nothing about it. It's just because they're so hard set on not considering certain things. And there's nothing you can do about it, but wait for people to die. And I think someone made this claim that physics make progress one funeral at a time. I don't remember who said it, but it's very true of many scientists. So that exists for sure. So I'm sure there will be journals and people who would never accept that, let's say, high tech existed in the past, even if you find evidence for it. So I fully agree with that. But there are other journals that, good journals that would actually publish it because there is competition among journals. Yes, and I actually...

Speaker 1:
[104:40] What is this? Oh, this is the quote, okay.

Speaker 3:
[104:43] So Planck's principle, okay. Science makes progress one funeral at a time.

Speaker 1:
[104:49] Yeah, it's a good one.

Speaker 3:
[104:51] So, but there are other journals too, and good journals for that matter, that actually would publish that stuff. And what I've found out is nature portfolio of journals is more receptive to fresh ideas. So let's say science, you know, like science magazine, right? Science journal, you know, it could be more hard nosed in their choices of what they publish and whatnot. But I think nature is more open-minded nature portfolio of journals. And it's the quality of paper ultimately that determines whether or not it's gonna be published. So if you present enough evidence and that evidence is incontrovertible, and you're not trying to do the sensational claims and extrapolate into areas that are not worth it, I'm sure you'll be able to publish your paper. And now when I look back, the papers that I couldn't publish and got rejected, and now I think was for good measure, for good reason, because, you know, they weren't good enough to be published in that, you know, in that caliber, you know, over journal. So I do believe that you can overcome all of it if you do diligent work, and it might be that you need to publish piecemeal until you really have this incontrovertible evidence, and nobody can say it. But let's take the Barbar Caves as an example. So what I, and granted, I have not researched that topic in depth, so I don't know whether the team that scanned them published their scans, or published a paper. So I think, you know, the first step would be, you scan it, you publish a paper with the scans, and you just say, well, this is what we've done, this is the data set, and you can study it. And that's pretty good and pretty important publication because it gives data for people to look at. And that's what scientists and researchers must do, they must provide the data. Because without the data, there is nothing to discuss. You know, we can look at the pictures and we can speculate. It means precisely nothing, because at the end of the day, we cannot compare this against that. And that's what you need in order to drive a conclusion. So if you chisel the wall, this is what you get. You know, if you grind the wall with an angle grinder, this is what you get, right? If you use some, you know, high-tech boring machine or laser or plasma jet, this is what you get. And that would be like this second paper. You compare different granites working techniques, like chiseling, angle grinding, plasma torches, lasers, who knows? And you say what kind of quality of the surface you get. And then you take the published skin and you contrast them against these various machining techniques or chiseling, chipping techniques. And you say, does it look similar to any of this? And if it doesn't, you can say, well, we have a cave that we don't know how it was made. But you cannot say it was made by aliens or by Atlanteans or by gods or reptilian beings from Tao city, because none of that is present. And that's speculation. And that, obviously, you cannot publish, because it makes scientific journal look like a yellow press, right? But you can say, well, it's not consistent with any known tools or techniques. And then you can say, well, look at all of the angles and all of the surfaces, and you can come up with the same quality metrics, how perfect the angles, how flat the surfaces are. And you can contrast that against like manual, non-manual labor or known like machine labor. And does it look more like manual, or does it look more like machine? And then once again, you have a claim, say it's consistent with machine, right? You cannot say that, you know, ancient chiseled it because it's consistent with machine. So you imply that something else was there, but you don't know what it was. And maybe you can say, well, maybe there was a lost civilization, because how else we can explain? Maybe there were visitors from outer space who done it, because how else we explain? You cannot prove it, but you can show that it's inconsistent with chiseling, or maybe at the end of the day, you review the data and it is consistent with chiseling. That's why I'm saying it's really hard to pass judgment unless the data is available. And that's what I strive to do in my line of work. I publish all of the scans, all of the data, all of the spectrum data I collect for others to independently analyze and verify. And maybe they'll discover something that I missed because that's kind of the point of science. You publish what you've learned so that somebody else can learn even more. And that's how we build. And that's why it took 300 years to develop the theory of electrodynamics. Ampera worked on it, Volta worked on it, or Airstead worked on it. And 300 years later, you know, Maxwell writes his equations that are simplified by Heaviside, and we finally have a theory. But it freaking took 300 years. Because everybody did their bit and they published their findings. And we kind of have to do the same approach in archaeology and elsewhere.

Speaker 1:
[110:14] So going back to what you said about cold fusion, why don't you think cold fusion never happened?

Speaker 3:
[110:19] Excellent question. And once again, when I entered the field 20 years ago, I entirely believed the narrative. And the narrative was like this. In a Fleischmann and Ponce in 1989 made a breakthrough at the University of Utah. Where they demonstrated.

Speaker 1:
[110:34] It was 89?

Speaker 3:
[110:35] 89.

Speaker 1:
[110:36] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[110:36] Can you imagine like 40 years ago almost? Is it 40? Yeah, nearly like 30.

Speaker 1:
[110:42] About 40, 30, 39 years.

Speaker 3:
[110:44] Yeah, all around it to 40, like nearly 40 years ago. So they claimed that the nuclear fusion took place in solid palladium electrodes in a glass. It's submerged in water, electrolyte technically, with some current passing through. They claimed to have observed nuclear fusion in such a simple setup.

Speaker 1:
[111:04] Deuterium?

Speaker 3:
[111:06] I think it was deuterium and palladium, yes.

Speaker 1:
[111:08] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[111:09] And clearly it was a sensational claim because fusion is believed to be a very complex process. You know, you build this four-story tall facility with plasma containment, you know, superconducting magnets, lasers, what not. And all of a sudden somebody says, oh, I can do it in a cup of water. Implications are staggering. So that's why it attracted so much attention. And then what happened, MIT, Texas Tech and some Texas A&M and some other universities tried to replicate the results. And nobody could. Some people thought they did, but the more they tried, they realized, oh, it's actually not what it is. At the end of the day, nobody could replicate the result. And the topic was said to be disproven. And there was a split in academic community. Some people were believers and said, well, the fact that you couldn't replicate it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, because maybe your replication was wrong, because it's difficult to replicate things that are novel. And that's kind of what I thought. I thought maybe that's really what happened. People tried hastily to replicate it, didn't work, but more specifically, there is intense competition for funding within academia. And that was the reason I didn't go into academia, because when I was young and naive, I thought when you become a scientist, they give you money to do the research. That kind of makes sense, right? So mom, I want to be a scientist. Why? Because I'm curious. So you get a job at the university and they give you money to do the research. And that's what a young, naive person thinks about science. That's what I thought. The truth is far more sinister than that. So when you grew up and become a scientist, and God forbid you're hired by the university, they expect you to find money for the university. And two thirds or one half of that money will go to feed this bureaucratic monster that exists. And one half or one third of that money goes to fund your research. So when you are a professor at the university, you're forced to compete with all of the other scientists for limited funds, grant money. And that's a vicious, cutthroat environment. No sane person can stand. And I think Sabin Hassenfelder is a good example of a narrator who described what happens in academia and how people fight, watch her channel. And I entirely understand where she's coming from, because I've been in academia myself. And that's one of the reasons I left, because I don't want to feed the bureaucratic machine. And then I'm forced to find funding. And you never can find funding to do the research you want. You find the funding for specific research, because the system is screwed up. There is a bureaucracy that exists on the government that decides what to fund and what not to fund. So when you wonder why nobody's working on cold fusion, or why nobody's researching in a vases or pyramids, it's because there is no funding for it. So you go to funding agencies and you see what grants they give. And the grant would be, oh, you do the CO2 conversion into something, or you do a solar panel, or you do a conventional fusion reactor, or you study Native American artifacts. And you can never find the topics you want to explore. And it's not like you can say, hi, I have this idea, give me money for it. It almost never exists.

Speaker 1:
[114:53] Or could it be possible that, for example, the oil industry could be purposely thwarting that kind of research, so it doesn't interrupt or just disrupt their...

Speaker 3:
[115:04] Also quite possible. I mean, also quite possible that, but I don't think it's the oil industry, it's the mainstream fusion industry. And it's actually not my speculation. And if you read the reporting on this subject, it's a very well-known fact that the people that were most adamant against coal fusion were the mainstream fusion researchers, because they didn't want their funding to be pulled from them or reduced and given to this other group. So everybody protects their turf. So if somebody comes up with a competing idea, this means next time you go for funding, DOE or DARPA or somebody else, they might give you less money because they'll give some money to this other group. So in this case, scientists are hugely disintensified to support any innovation, because it always threatens status quo, threatens funding. And we tend to think of scientists in idealized terms. We think, oh, these are truth-thickers, very honorable individuals. They're not. In fact, I would say a lot of scientists I've known are either narcissists or really nasty characters that are concerned about prestige and promotion and being on top of things.

Speaker 1:
[116:20] Tenure.

Speaker 3:
[116:21] Tenure, yeah. Nobody gives a shit about truth, because money corrupts everything. And once money started flowing into science, money corrupted science, and now you cannot study anything, because it's what you cannot get money for. But long story short, the reason I don't believe that the cold fusion was real is because it took me many years to learn radiation detection. And that's what I specialize in. And I specialize in gamma and neutron radiation detection, but mostly in neutron radiation detection. Because whenever you have fusion, you always have neutrons. That's like a telltale sign of fusion. You got neutrons, you got fusion. No neutrons, no fusion. And I've reviewed all of the neutron signals published in various cold fusion papers. And because I know so much about neutron detection, I could see the flaws in their measurements. They weren't following the procedure, right? They weren't looking for sources of systematic errors. They didn't use the statistics or they abused the statistics. So in every paper, I could find the Floyd radiation measurement. And that was the motivation for me to develop my own hardware and my own software for radiation detection because I basically developed a standard on how to detect like low levels of neutron and gamma radiation. And that's what you need to prove that you have nuclear reactions. And when people claim, well, there could be some processes that don't result in radiation, I am very skeptical of that because nothing is ever perfect. Let's say you can, you came up with a way to do fire with no ash. Let's imagine that you burn logs, but there is no ash. That process will never be perfect to where there is no ash at all. There will be, maybe you burned this gigantic log, but you have this just a minuscule amount of ash nonetheless. So, I think the same idea applies to nuclear fusion. If there is some exotic process that allows you to do fusion without radiation, it will never be perfect. There will be some, maybe just not the stupendous amount of radiation, like from a conventional reactor that's gonna kill you if you look into it, but it will be some that you should be able to detect. And if you got none, to me it's telling clearly that you have nothing going on regardless of what you claim. And the other thing, it's been 40 years, like nearly 40 years, and people kept researching it, researched it on and off on various private corporations, issued grants and sponsorships, you know, big companies, we're talking big companies, and there is no result, so why is that? And I think it's because there was nothing to begin with, I think it's, I still believe it's a good idea.

Speaker 1:
[119:16] It's possible it could have been kept out of the public eye or a public study and kept dark.

Speaker 3:
[119:21] Don't think so, I really think, well-

Speaker 1:
[119:25] Because there's an argument for the study of antigravity for that, because there was a lot of development with that in the 50s, and then all of a sudden it went dark, and there's a lot of interesting-

Speaker 3:
[119:34] I mean, obviously it could be that, but from what I know, it doesn't have to be that.

Speaker 1:
[119:41] No.

Speaker 4:
[119:41] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[119:42] From what I know, it would suffice to say that the data that's been captured either in error or insufficient, but it doesn't mean the idea is bad.

Speaker 1:
[119:53] So that's why I'm sticking with it, because I believe the idea is bad, and that's why my research revolves around it, and I do believe I have some interesting results in some of them. I published some of them I'm still working on. So I think we can still research it and figure it out. I just don't think we're there.

Speaker 2:
[120:10] What do you make of all these nuclear scientists that are gone missing? There's another one that just went missing today.

Speaker 1:
[120:15] Oh, man.

Speaker 3:
[120:17] Pepsi prebiotic cola in original and cherry vanilla. That Pepsi taste you love with no artificial sweeteners and three grams of prebiotic fiber. Pepsi prebiotic cola. Unbelievably Pepsi.

Speaker 4:
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Speaker 1:
[121:13] Israel killing scientists, I don't know. That's in there. You know, they're known for doing that.

Speaker 2:
[121:21] Israel is known for killing scientists in America?

Speaker 1:
[121:24] In Canada, for sure.

Speaker 2:
[121:26] Well, they kill nuclear scientists, I'm sure.

Speaker 1:
[121:27] And in Iran, for sure.

Speaker 2:
[121:29] In Iran, yeah, definitely.

Speaker 1:
[121:30] And in Iraq. All in America, too. There is a big story.

Speaker 2:
[121:33] The 10th person linked to top secret US nuclear research has disappeared without a trace per the Daily Mail. Can you find an actual new story to this?

Speaker 1:
[121:42] I can tell you another story, where the scientist was believed to have been killed by Mossad. He was building a super gun for Saddam. So Saddam Hussein, he used to have this super gun that potentially could shoot ballistic trajectories for thousands of people. And the scientist who were building it was a genius. And I think when he was murdered, he was living either in Canada or he was murdered like in front of his apartment. And everybody believes Mossad did this. But I couldn't put it past him. Yeah. So once again, from experience, I think that's probably is happening. I don't think people are being killed because they've made a discovery that people want to suppress. Which actually brings-

Speaker 2:
[122:34] It's very strange.

Speaker 1:
[122:36] It is strange. But-

Speaker 2:
[122:38] Not many people are talking about it.

Speaker 1:
[122:39] Yeah. I kind of learned a lesson there. So I decided to put all of my research into public domain. You know, I made this decision like a few months ago, where I'm not going to keep any secrets and I'm going to publish everything I've learned in nuclear science and public domain to where there is no point in killing me.

Speaker 2:
[122:58] Right.

Speaker 1:
[122:59] It's all been disclosed.

Speaker 2:
[123:01] Published April 11th, 2026. Updated, okay, updated the same day. Another person with links to America's nuclear secrets has gone missing as the disturbing list of deaths and disappearances in recent years continues to grow. Steven Garcia, 48, vanished without a trace on August 28th, 2025, and was last seen living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Wow. Wow. Carrying only a handgun? What? So all these people are allegedly like connected to the Department of Energy. And doing like nuclear weapons stuff, like secret. One person actually worked at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Oh yeah, there it is. Punching on that. So they're all dead or missing. Steven Garcia is the latest. Top scientist detecting signs of alien life at NASA JPL, Frank Maiwald, two people from Los Alamos Labs. Scroll down. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, two people linked to there. That is freaking bizarre. Why?

Speaker 1:
[124:23] I don't know. Yeah, but my belief remains that we probably don't have the technology that is being suppressed.

Speaker 2:
[124:36] You don't think there's any secret technology the government's hiding?

Speaker 1:
[124:41] I don't think to the level that we might fantasize. Clearly, they have technology we don't know of, but I don't think they have anti-gravity or teleporters or stargates or fusion devices.

Speaker 2:
[124:55] What do you think the stuff that The New York Times reported about in 2014 was?

Speaker 1:
[124:59] What was that?

Speaker 2:
[125:00] The tic-tacs that the Navy pilots saw on the radar?

Speaker 1:
[125:03] I don't know. That's another thing. I mean, I find UAPs extremely fascinating and worthwhile of research, and I really hope that peer review journals overturn their policy of not publishing papers on the subject, because how do you expect to make progress?

Speaker 2:
[125:22] We're past the point now in the timeline where you can't dismiss UFOs anymore.

Speaker 1:
[125:28] Yeah, and that's exactly my point. We've got to study them in order to make sense of them, because the way they're described and the way they behave, hard to explain in terms of conventional physics, right? Clearly, if you use the Occam's razor, it's much more likely to be like a government technology, like you're implying that we're not aware of. That they are blaming on aliens, because...

Speaker 2:
[125:54] Look, we have a government that likes to keep secrets and likes to lie to the American public.

Speaker 1:
[125:58] Yeah, I mean, that entirely feeds...

Speaker 2:
[126:00] Those aren't two facts.

Speaker 1:
[126:01] It entirely feeds the pattern. And I think it's a lot more likely than aliens per se, because we've never seen aliens, but we've seen government lie all the time, right? So out of the two, government lying and having secret technology is far more plausible than visitors from outer space being here, but could be the other thing, too. You know, we don't know. And I think we need to research, and I think we need to publish the findings, because otherwise it's just speculation, and we're non-deviser, and government is not going one day just to say, oh, I'm sorry we lied. It's up to us to find it. So I'm all for researching it, and I'm all for peer-reviewed publications on the topic, and that's what pisses me off when these whistleblowers go and they present to Senate or Congress these hearings on UAPs. How come the Congress or any agencies haven't been pressed to release data on these objects? Because telemetry is available, video footage is available, lots of other sensors. So these airplanes that detect UAPs, have a bunch of sensors on them that collect information on these UAPs. So I think we should push for release of that information because that would enable a scientific study because what we're given is pictures. And pictures are like the Plato's Cave allegory, you know, you see shadows on the wall. You have no idea what that shadow is and government has the rest of this information which are not releasing. And that's, I think, what must happen in order for us to gain understanding. And they say, well, we cannot release it because we are afraid that it's going to jeopardize national security because the secret sensors or secret contraptions, I think this is bullshit. It's just an excuse not to give us information so we could never research these objects and figure out what they are and maybe trace them back to the government or maybe identify them as either to unknown natural phenomena or maybe establish.

Speaker 2:
[128:18] Instead, we get documentaries with all the top officials in intelligence and military and government, all testifying that all this stuff is real, right? Like this Age of Disclosure documentary, it's insane. How many government officials and intelligence agency officials are all saying, giving testimony, sworn testimony that this stuff's real, it's hidden, secret, whatever, which any reasonable person can sit down and watch and be like, oh my God, this shit's real. Like, holy crap. Yet, they will not show any evidence. So it's like the ultimate gaslighting on society.

Speaker 1:
[128:50] Which exactly highlights and emphasizes the point I was trying to drive through our talk, that it's never sufficient to make claims without evidence. So if you have a narration or you're telling a story and you say this or that, this is all unsubstantiated. For what I care, you invented it. You came up with it. And then the other point is people lie. People lie all the time. And how can you believe anybody without evidence? Just believe me, I'm telling you, believe me. No, I don't believe you because I know people are lying for multiple reasons, lying on purpose to mislead us, lying to get not the right, lying to get popularity, lying for material, monetary advantage, lying to get laid, you name it.

Speaker 2:
[129:42] And also, to the point of the secret technology stuff, if we were really testing all that crazy stuff, we're involved in how many wars right now and there's been no reporting on any of this stuff being used. We're still using helicopters and aircraft carriers.

Speaker 1:
[129:58] So you think if you had some secret tech, they would have taken out like Iran, like that, and there will be like a radioactive desert.

Speaker 2:
[130:08] Right, we're effectively losing a war against a stone age civilization.

Speaker 1:
[130:14] Right.

Speaker 2:
[130:14] Yeah, we have all the top secret, like anti-gravity.

Speaker 1:
[130:17] So where is this? Yes, that's why it doesn't make sense. Yeah, I mean, always like, I don't know for sure, right? I'm just telling you, my personal feeling, right? My personal preference. Based on my experience with engineers and with scientists, you know, I have very few reasons to believe that some super tech exists. It's just because everything I've looked at, I was able either to find a problem or find a mistake or people who claim they had something 20 years ago, still at the same base they were 20 years ago.

Speaker 2:
[130:52] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[130:53] So how is that if you told me 20 years ago, you had an over unity machine or you had something levitating or something producing power? And how come you're not like a multi trillion dollar company now if you had that 20 years ago?

Speaker 2:
[131:07] Right.

Speaker 1:
[131:08] And that's kind of the pattern with all of this crazy scientists, crazy inventors that you hear on and off, somebody invents this, somebody invents that. But 20, 30, 40 years later, we still don't have flying cars and we still burn gasoline. I just think it's people lie a lot more than they should have.

Speaker 2:
[131:29] I think so too. How much do you know about this, like uranium enrichment for nuclear weapons stuff, like that we're talking about?

Speaker 1:
[131:37] I know a little bit. I mean, I guess three things I know, and I'm not an expert. I know that Iran's supreme leader, until he was killed, he issued like a fatwa.

Speaker 2:
[131:50] Yeah, yeah, in the early 2000s.

Speaker 1:
[131:52] Nuclear weapons, and that makes sense from the standpoint of their religion. So it's not approved, it's not okay. It's like we have Christian principles, and Christian principles, you say you don't kill the innocent, right? So they have the same idea. So I entirely believe that it's possible that the enrichment program was civilian in the sense that the Iran is working with Russia on civilian and nuclear power. And it would think you'd be in a better off just buying nuclear secrets from Russia, because Russia did help China get nuclear weapons, and probably did help North Korea get nuclear weapons. So it could have helped Iran in a hard bit. So why haven't this happened for decades and decades? Because Iran has been working on it for how long? And that's another thing.

Speaker 2:
[132:59] Apparently, from my understanding, is they've been enriching uranium strictly for manufacturing and energy purposes.

Speaker 1:
[133:08] For civilian nuclear power, you need somewhat enriched uranium fuel in order for it to participate in the fuel cycle.

Speaker 2:
[133:15] The question is just like, what's the percentages?

Speaker 1:
[133:18] Right, exactly.

Speaker 2:
[133:19] All that stuff is very confusing.

Speaker 1:
[133:20] And if you recall, South Africa used to have nuclear weapons. Right. And then they just dismantled the program. And Israel has nuclear weapons. So the point is, and North Korea has nuclear weapons. And just think how poor the country North Korea is, yet they have nuclear weapons. And Iran is much larger. So clearly, if Iran wanted to have nuclear weapons, they would have had them 20 or 30 years ago. Because otherwise, how you can explain that, such a great country with such great technological potentials still don't have them. And the only explanation is they never really intended to. Otherwise, they would have had it, right? And many people would argue it was a mistake on their part, because had they had nuclear weapons, I'm sure they wish they would have done it. immune from the attack. But as I said, I'm not an expert. And I do believe you need to enrich. I know you need to enrich for this.

Speaker 2:
[134:15] There's this conspiracy theory that I just recently learned about that says nukes are fake, nukes aren't real. And I think one of the main basis of it is the videos, which is wild. The videos of that the US released during the first nuclear tests. Have you seen them?

Speaker 1:
[134:34] Some.

Speaker 2:
[134:34] Of like the houses being blown apart. You know what I'm talking about, Steve? So how did the cameras survive if these houses are being literally incinerated by these bombs?

Speaker 1:
[134:46] I will...

Speaker 2:
[134:47] And how did the film survive?

Speaker 1:
[134:49] I will tell you something else. I do believe that nuclear weapons are outdated. Like, when military technology makes progress, it's like every once in a while, old technology is discarded and new technology is brought in. Think about the first world war, for example, right? Tank was the main thing that changed the static warfare into dynamic warfare, and Germans really perfected it, and that's why they had the upper hand, throughout the early years of the world war too. Then before that, why Napoleon became great? Because he figured out how to use artillery. So before him, artillery existed, just nobody knew how to employ it efficiently, and he really took advantage of it, and he was able to crash and smack his enemies like no tomorrow because he was an artillery genius. And then nuclear weapons were developed, and now we think, oh, it's an ultimate weapon. And the truth is, it no longer is, because now we have high precision weapons. And that's what you really need to accomplish military objectives, which is war in Iran is clearly showing. And Israel and United States can bomb and destroy any target anywhere, like within seconds using conventional weapons because you don't need a large megaton explosive to destroy, let's say a bunker or a launch vehicle or something else. You need a small but precisely positioned weapon. And that's what the modern warfare is about. It's about precisely positioning small explosives where they need to be. So you will not gain much by deploying nuclear weapons. In fact, all you're going to gain is death and destruction of the world. Because the air is going to be contaminated. Yes, and water, we drink air, we breathe is going to be contaminated worldwide. These weapons are untouchable because the second you start using them, you end life on this planet as we know it. I mean, not like totally, but our standard of living and comfort will just disappear because of all of the outcomes. So I think for all intents and purposes, nuclear weapons are dead because you cannot use them because it destroys the environment at such an uncontrollable rate to where nobody is going to tolerate it. But more importantly, there is no military reason to use them because you can do things a lot better and a lot more efficiently. You can precisely deliver conventional weapons, hell, with drones.

Speaker 2:
[137:34] So this is the video I wanted to show you of what the United States released when they first did the nuclear weapons tests right here. Steve, can you play it for us real quick? In the 1950s. So how did they film this is the question. If that house literally got incinerated like that, vaporized, how is this camera, not only how is the camera surviving, but how is the film inside of this, because this is shot on film, obviously. How does the film survive? If a film gets damaged going through airport x-ray scanners or airport security, how the hell does it survive this?

Speaker 1:
[138:18] Well, I can have a plausible explanation. So clearly, the camera must have been positioned in explosion proof enclosure. So it could have been a concrete bunker that is also screened with lead and whatnot to protect the film. Because radiation is directional. So when you explode a nuclear ordnance, the radiation is directional. So you know where it's coming from. And the shockwave is directional too. It's coming from the epicenter of the explosion.

Speaker 2:
[138:45] But it also does like a sucking too, right? Not only does it explode out, but it sucks back in.

Speaker 1:
[138:51] Right. So in principle, you can have a concrete bunker that is with an opening for the camera, and the opening for the camera is on the side opposite to the side from where the shock wave is approaching. So I think you can, in principle, protect the camera from radiation from the shock wave.

Speaker 2:
[139:14] Interesting. I wonder if you can ask...

Speaker 1:
[139:17] Once again, I'm not an expert. I just ventured an opinion.

Speaker 2:
[139:21] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[139:22] I could come up with, you know, on the spot.

Speaker 5:
[139:24] This is a metal structure.

Speaker 2:
[139:28] Huh. Right.

Speaker 1:
[139:32] But I know from geology, you know, Trinitite, Israel, you know, Trinitite, the rock that was formed when they blew up, you know, the first nuclear weapon.

Speaker 2:
[139:43] What is it called?

Speaker 1:
[139:44] Trinitite.

Speaker 2:
[139:45] Trinitite?

Speaker 1:
[139:45] Yes. It's when they set off, you know, the Trinity, the glass was formed on the surface of the desert.

Speaker 2:
[139:54] Oh yeah.

Speaker 1:
[139:55] And that became like a collectible rock because it's radioactive. It has this glassification and it's vitrification from the heat of the nuclear explosion. And it circulates like all over the place. A lot of it, you know, was collected and then given away. I don't think you can find it anymore, but you know, it exists. It's real. It's radioactive from that explosion. Yes. Trinitite. So.

Speaker 2:
[140:20] And that's the only way it can be created.

Speaker 1:
[140:23] I cannot say it's the only way, but you know, to me, it's a tangible evidence of the explosion of the first nuclear weapon.

Speaker 2:
[140:34] What was the other, there was another element that was found on earth that was also found on Mars. Xenon.

Speaker 1:
[140:39] That's very interesting. Yeah. That's very interesting. So I don't know how to explain it. And that's uninteresting because it's a reactive isotope that is not, we don't know of a process that forms it naturally.

Speaker 2:
[140:49] Right.

Speaker 1:
[140:50] So we know a process that forms it as a part of nuclear explosion, but we don't know if it can, of any other ways it can be formed. Therefore, it's a viable hypothesis. So you cannot dismiss it offhand. And in order to dismiss it offhand, you need to find another way that isotope could be synthesized. And then you can, you know, challenge the nuclear war explanation. So I'm saying you have to be consistent in your logic, in application of your logic, right? So when you dismiss hypothesis, you don't dismiss them because they're crazy sounding, right? You need to dismiss them only when they lack evidence. And we don't have evidence for this xenon isotope forming in any other ways, then this is the only explanation. But in the future, it could be different, as we'll learn more, you know, who knows? Well, we don't know, but for the time being, I'd say it's the only explanation.

Speaker 2:
[141:48] Right. Yeah, the nuclear question is certainly interesting because that's true.

Speaker 1:
[141:55] Or that Oklo natural reactor in, I think, in Gabon. You familiar with that?

Speaker 2:
[142:00] No.

Speaker 1:
[142:00] There is a natural fission reactor that was discovered in Gabon, I believe. It's called Oklo Natural Nuclear Reactor.

Speaker 2:
[142:14] Oh, I do remember that. I think you mentioned this last time.

Speaker 1:
[142:18] So, to me, it's... And once again, I'm not an expert on the subject. Whatever little I know, it's very difficult to explain that naturally, because the premise there is this uranium is depleted. So whenever you mine uranium, uranium has certain proportion of fissile isotopes versus non-fissile. So you have uranium-235 and uranium-238. And 235 is what goes into nuclear weapons and what goes into nuclear power plants, and 238, nobody cares about. Yeah. So...

Speaker 2:
[142:59] Earth's two billion year old natural nuclear reactor.

Speaker 1:
[143:03] And I find this very hard to believe because the idea goes like this. In order for uranium ore there to be depleted to the extent it is, that reactor must have operated for many millions of years. And for reactor to operate for many millions of years, you need to have the conditions just right for many millions of years. And nuclear reactor is a very complex thing in the sense that...

Speaker 2:
[143:34] You built one in your garage.

Speaker 1:
[143:35] Right. In the sense that, let's say, if the fuel is not sufficiently pure, you can have some poisons to develop in it. And those poisons basically would absorb your nutrients and extinguish your nuclear reaction. Or if your proportion of isotopes is not just right, your reaction will either fizzle out or it will result in an explosion. And there are many considerations like that that students and engineers study in the field of nuclear engineering. So in order to build a functional nuclear reactor that operates for a meaningful amount of time, let's say 10, 20 years, a lot of conditions need to be just right. And if any of the conditions are not met, the reactor will either stop working or explode.

Speaker 2:
[144:33] Right.

Speaker 1:
[144:35] And now you're telling me that by chance, in nature, you know, the conditions were just right for millions of years. I just find it impossible to believe.

Speaker 2:
[144:47] I find a lot of things impossible to believe.

Speaker 1:
[144:49] It's far easier to believe it was a remnant of an ancient, you know, nuclear reactor.

Speaker 2:
[144:53] I mean, what about the sun? What about the moon? What about the universe? All of this shit's impossible.

Speaker 1:
[144:57] Yeah, but you know, with the sun, we have advantage of scale. And that's what makes it work. You know, sun, we believe that the sun is the large, natural thermonuclear fusion reactor.

Speaker 2:
[145:11] Thermonuclear.

Speaker 1:
[145:12] Thermonuclear, right. And the reason it works is because, you know, sun is so large and the gravity contains the plasma. So it doesn't fly apart, you know, it does not become a cloud just because gravity holds us all back. And when we're doing, when we're trying to scale the sun down to, let's say, to this and put it in a car, the problem is, you know, how do you contain sun in this small form? And that's the containment problem. And the best solution, well, it's magnetic field. And then it's difficult, it's expensive, it requires large complex engineering because you don't have, you know, this massive force of gravity to keep it all together. But in the case of the sun, you have the scale and the gravity holds it together naturally. But in the case of the Okla fission reactor, it's not thermonuclear fusion, it's fission. So where uranium fissions, as I'm saying, is so many conditions need to be just right. So I could believe it happened like for a few seconds. And then it blew up or fizzled out. But for it to be right for millions of years, I think other explanations are more likely.

Speaker 2:
[146:21] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[146:22] But, you know, I'm not an expert on that topic, so I can't really argue it, you know, I'm not a scientist unless I study it. But just from what I know, I'd say easier to believe aliens built it or Atlanteans built it, because it makes a lot more sense. So we know this is possible. So we know that, you know, aliens could have visited and built it or.

Speaker 2:
[146:42] Well, we also know what we don't know. And what is also true is that we keep finding evidence that human beings, at least, were on this earth way before we knew previously. Their evidence keeps coming out that makes us older and older and older. There was this article that came out about a year ago about this skull found in China, human skull, that's over a million years old. So, you know, it's certainly possible that we existed or some version of us, some multiple versions of us have existed on this earth millions, possibly billions of years ago that we would have no evidence for.

Speaker 1:
[147:28] Yeah. Besides, it doesn't have to be people, right? Could have been reptilian beings for what I get, right?

Speaker 2:
[147:34] So, less than a year ago, this was published. A million-year-old skull rewrites human evolution, the scientists claim, and then a million-year-old human skull found in China suggests that homo sapiens began to emerge at least half a million years earlier than we thought.

Speaker 1:
[147:50] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[147:51] Insane.

Speaker 1:
[147:52] It's absolutely right. So much we don't know. And if you think earth history is billions of years old, so maybe intelligent beings evolved in the times of dinosaurs, or maybe, you know, many times since. But this is actually a legitimate topic for a scientific discussion publication where people discuss what traces of technological advanced civilization you can find in human geological record.

Speaker 2:
[148:18] Or maybe it's just us, and we like lost the plot along the way. You know, like right now, if there was a global thermonuclear war went down, though probably one of the only groups of people to survive would be, you know, indigenous tribes in the Amazon or like people who are current day hunter-gatherers, that would be become like cargo cults that would civilization would have to restart, but it would still be us. It just wouldn't be how we think of us.

Speaker 1:
[148:49] Yeah, besides this, this happened in the past for sure, because if you read about human genome, it's not diverse. Right. In fact, when you compare human genome to, let's say chimps genome. So chimps a lot more genetically diverse than humans. And the way it is explained is at some point in the past and not so distant past, like entire human population came through a bottleneck of only like a few hundred individuals.

Speaker 2:
[149:16] Right. Yeah. I think we had a genome expert on the show, Kevin McKiernan, and he was saying that every human on earth came from like 20,000 humans.

Speaker 1:
[149:24] Right. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[149:25] That's the variation.

Speaker 1:
[149:26] Yes. So clearly this speaks of some kind of catastrophe that happened or-

Speaker 2:
[149:32] When did that bottleneck happen? Find that. See, find out when the bottleneck in the human genome was dated to.

Speaker 1:
[149:40] So that's why I want to chisel my poetry on the slab of granite.

Speaker 2:
[149:45] Yeah. Let them all know that you made it all.

Speaker 1:
[149:47] What happens, all the paper and disks will burn out, but they'll find this rock with my words chiseled on it. And it will be the only tangible-

Speaker 2:
[149:57] We need to go put it on the moon. We need to go put a bunch of hard drives on the moon. Major severe human ancestral bottleneck is dated between 930,000 to 813,000 years ago. The bottleneck lasted approximately 117,000 years, reducing the breeding population to roughly, I don't know, 1,200 individuals, and bringing human ancestors close to extinction. Hmm, I thought it was way more, I didn't know it was that low, 1,200 individuals.

Speaker 1:
[150:23] And I thought it was more recent than that.

Speaker 2:
[150:25] Yeah, I also thought so.

Speaker 1:
[150:25] Maybe there is more than one bottleneck.

Speaker 2:
[150:27] There might have been another bottleneck, yeah. Find out the most recent bottleneck, Stephen. When is the most recent bottleneck in the human genome?

Speaker 5:
[150:36] I'll just put that in there for the most recent.

Speaker 2:
[150:44] Oh, it just says the same thing. Find out what Kevin McKiernan said on our podcast, if you can. But yeah, certainly, written history only goes back, what? Like 800 BC, something like that, or no? When is this? It would be Sumerian stuff, right?

Speaker 1:
[151:03] That's what I was going to mention. If you're reading Sumerian tablets or Sumerian legends, they say we were created. This story of human race being created by gods. I think we should take it seriously. Why not make it a topic of scientific exploration? Because there are a lot of abnormalities, let's say, in human physiology. Like everyone's back hurts. Why is that? Then reproductive cycle, why all animals reproduce only in spring and human beings reproduce all the time? And that doesn't make sense.

Speaker 2:
[151:42] And also we're one of the few species on earth, maybe one of the only species on earth, that our offspring is completely helpless for years from starting at birth.

Speaker 1:
[151:56] Yes, but there is an even more fascinating subject. You know, the human growth hormone and what's the organ in our brain that's producing it?

Speaker 2:
[152:08] Pituitary?

Speaker 1:
[152:08] Pituitary, thank you. Yeah, and you're a professor at Penn State who was studying pituitary gland all his life, doing experiments in space on NASA's space stations, International Space Station. Turns out pituitary doesn't work in space. So if human beings go in zero gravity-

Speaker 2:
[152:28] I've heard this. They go into, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[152:31] Body falls apart extremely quickly and one of the reasons is pituitary doesn't work. And he studied it in all his life.

Speaker 2:
[152:38] It's called pregnenolone steel syndrome, I believe. Google that.

Speaker 1:
[152:42] And they didn't find the answer and they were joking, oh, there must be a switch in your heel.

Speaker 2:
[152:48] A switch where?

Speaker 1:
[152:49] In your heel, like a pressure switch in your heel. I mean, it's a joke, but that was, you know, after 40 years of research on the topic, the best answer they could give was a joke. There is a switch in your heel.

Speaker 2:
[153:01] Pregnenolone steel syndrome is a theory suggesting that chronic stress causes the body to divert pregnenolone, a precursor hormone, away from producing sex hormones like progesterone and testosterone. Type in pregnenolone steel syndrome astronauts, because I think they study this actually. Astronauts and chronic stress, so they're saying it's related to high cortisol and creating low sex hormones from DHEA to progesterone and testosterone. Yeah, also another crazy thing is that when you're in space and you're around all that stuff, you're not getting any light, you're not getting any sunlight on you. And I know it's really unhealthy to not get UV light and full spectrum sunlight on you. It's why people get so sick when they are constantly inside under fluorescent lights.

Speaker 1:
[154:04] So you can make a good point and argue that humans were somehow engineered from more primitive beings that existed on Earth because these anomalies don't make sense. But if you consider them as a whole, it becomes a byproduct of genetic engineering or maybe unintended outcome of it.

Speaker 2:
[154:25] Also, pretty much every species, plant, every plant and animal on Earth is locked into this coherent symbiosis with nature. Except for us, we're like the one that doesn't really fit. Even down to phytoplankton and everything, it works in this synergistic stream within nature.

Speaker 1:
[154:50] I would take it even further. Why is the idea of gods so infectious? Why we believe in God and we are servants to the God? It's as if it's ingrained in us by design. We want to serve God, so we've been built, born, created. We have been created by God to be its servants. That's like the highest aspiration in human spirituality, to be with God, to serve God. Why is this? I'm a scientist and I cannot escape the same thoughts. They permeate through my poetry, through my feelings, and I'm thinking, why is this? I am so driven to be with God, to serve God. God makes no sense, unless of course, you've been built as a biological slave to another species.

Speaker 2:
[155:39] Well, just by the fact that human beings are the only species on earth that are able to reason, right? We have to, we know that we came from someone. I came from my dad, he came from his dad, but if you extrapolate that all the way to the beginning of time, where did the first one come from?

Speaker 1:
[155:56] Yeah, I mean, you can argue that elephants and dolphins and apes can reason to some extent.

Speaker 2:
[156:03] Right. But we're the only ones that can communicate it to our, you know, coherently and write it down and study it and try to figure it out. But then there's no reason, there's no like, it's like a gap in our understanding of where did the first one come from? You know, there must be some sort of creator. And I think it kind of, it fills a spot in the human psyche that kind of gives us a sense of purpose.

Speaker 1:
[156:27] Yes, yes, why do we need the sense of purpose? And I was thinking about this philosophically for the longest time. And I would say, what is the difference between man and God? So God does not need a sense of purpose, because he is the purpose. And we need a sense of purpose, because we're not gods. Without the sense of purpose, our life is useless. So why do we feel that way? And it's such a universal human thing, is to have a purpose, to be helpful. You're not a person if you're selfish. And then it brings a blasphemous point. Then is God selfish? Is God evil? Because it doesn't need a purpose. It serves only itself or himself, however you want to refer to it. Because everything that's good, that's human, is you serve somebody. But God does not need to serve. It's a thing in itself. So, is it selfish?

Speaker 2:
[157:25] Also, if there is this all seeing, all omnipotent God, that means he knows everything that's going to happen in the future already, which means the future's already written, which means there's no free will.

Speaker 1:
[157:38] Right, yeah. And then, which brings another interesting point, how in quantum mechanics, everything is indeterminate, that everything is probabilistic. And there is a Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics where there is no deeper truth to what probabilities tell you. So you can never predict what an electron would do. And many scientists find this idea uncomfortable because we're used to determinism, right? So, and the idea was, well, maybe if you include additional parameters, you'll figure out what the electron will do. You just don't have the enough data to make that decision. And Niels Bohr was vehemently opposed to this point of view because he believed on philosophical grounds in free will. And he believed that the electron was in a sort of, as a quantum of free will. It was a fool's errand, try to figure out why electron goes this way or that way. Because he fundamentally believed it was free to do however it pleased. And it was stupid trying to question, why did it turn left or why did it turn right? It's like trying to understand in a human psyche. It was that fundamental to him. And that's why he fought nail and tooth, like, what's the word, deterministic explanations of quantum mechanics.

Speaker 2:
[159:09] Oh, Steve found more bottleneck info. Neolithic Y chromosome bottleneck, 5,000 BCE. Estimated ratio, diversity dropped to approximately one reproducing male for every 17 reproducing females. What does it say? Does it say like how many individuals? Breeding survivors, estimated between one to 10,000 individuals.

Speaker 5:
[159:28] Yeah, so this is the total.

Speaker 2:
[159:30] Oh, these are different catastrophes. Okay, I see.

Speaker 5:
[159:32] This is the most recent one, 5,000 years. There's no number because it's so random. The next one was the out of Africa, which is what Kevin was talking about. That's one of the 3,000 breeding individuals that made it through around 50,000 years ago.

Speaker 2:
[159:47] Wow. It's pretty wild. And those are the ones that we know about. And Earth is so many billions of years old, there's gotta be so much we just don't know.

Speaker 1:
[159:59] Yeah, that's why exploration is fascinating. We are curious. Like Einstein said, I don't have any special talents. I'm only passionately curious. That's what we gotta do. I've gotta dig, analyze.

Speaker 2:
[160:13] I think if aliens are real, they're probably time-traveling humans.

Speaker 1:
[160:18] I'd like to think that aliens are real because you watch Star Wars, you see all of this species and the life finds a way. I just refuse to believe we're alone. In fact, I think probably George Lucas got it right. Maybe that's how...

Speaker 2:
[160:33] Who got it right? George Lucas?

Speaker 1:
[160:34] Yeah. That's how the universe is. Countless aliens everywhere because life takes it easily, so I don't believe we're exceptional.

Speaker 2:
[160:44] Yeah. I just think all the accounts that people have given that have experienced these things or allegedly seen these things, these gray aliens that have two arms, two legs, upright walking hominids, I think that it's most likely they evolved here and not anywhere else because of other Goldilocks planets that we know of don't have the same atmosphere, they don't have the same gravity, they're mostly water worlds. So.

Speaker 1:
[161:07] Actually, Veronica, my lovely wife Veronica makes a good point. You know, we have all cell phones and cameras everywhere. How come there isn't a good picture of any alien that they claim to have seen here or there or craft, you know, it's always blurry, always grainy. Yet, you know, in every pocket, there's a cell phone with a camera. What's up with that? Right.

Speaker 2:
[161:31] That's a good question.

Speaker 1:
[161:32] And it just makes no sense. And, you know, when you look at this perspective, yeah, sure. I mean, I think it's far more likely that government is doing some sinister stuff that they do and blaming it on aliens because then there is no accountability. And we know that American government has done, you know, terrible things to Americans, you know, like LSD testing in California and forced sterilization of African Americans and, you know, wiping out of Native American population.

Speaker 2:
[162:01] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[162:01] When all that, they've done it. So it's so easy to dress somebody funny and do some sinister stuff and blame it on aliens, then look, it's not us, it's aliens.

Speaker 2:
[162:13] Yeah, we've done some of the most sinister stuff and we're guarding nuclear weapons in general, like not even just dropping nukes on civilian populations, but some of the experiments that we did with nuclear weapons here in the United States on our own people, our own citizens and our own soldiers. Have you seen the nuclear soldiers?

Speaker 6:
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Speaker 7:
[163:04] K-pop demon hunters, Saja Boys breakfast meal and Huntrix meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you say to that, Rumi?

Speaker 3:
[163:13] It's not a battle.

Speaker 7:
[163:14] So glad the Saja Boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.

Speaker 2:
[163:18] It is an honor to share.

Speaker 7:
[163:20] No, it's our honor. It is our larger honor.

Speaker 3:
[163:24] No, really, stop.

Speaker 7:
[163:26] You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side.

Speaker 3:
[163:31] Ba-da-ba-ba-ba. Participating McDonald's while supplies last.

Speaker 2:
[163:35] The US. Soldiers, there's a great Vice documentary on this. It's called, I think it's just called Nuclear Soldiers, where they took US servicemen and women, put them on aircraft carriers or ships in the ocean and detonated nuclear weapons way off in the horizon and purposely had them stare at the nuclear weapons to see what the reaction would be, what the long-term effects, what the short-term effects would be. Some of these folks are still alive and had to have to deal with all kinds of cancers, sterilization. They said, we were guinea pigs. What do you explain what the nuclear bomb blasts feel like? Yeah, there's a video on this on YouTube where they interviewed a bunch of them. They have yearly meetups that they go to. And it's crazy. And not only did we do that kind of testing on our own people, but we also did where these experiments on the East Coast of the United States, we've looked this up before, where we took disabled children and experimented with injecting them with uranium and different nuclear materials to see what would happen to them. And I think Bill Clinton like exposed all this when he was president. He came out and did some sort of a public thing where it was either like reparations for these families or something like that. But this all came out under Bill Clinton. Remember when we talked about this?

Speaker 5:
[165:05] Yeah, I'm looking for it.

Speaker 2:
[165:06] Crazy. It's just, it's crazy the stuff that the government has done.

Speaker 1:
[165:09] Yeah, I guess the evil has no limit. So here's the point I want to make. I think the purpose of life of every good person is to fight evil. That's the only true purpose that we have in our life. There is so much evil all around. We all have to fight it collectively or else it will proliferate. And evil starts unfortunately with lying. You know, you lie, that's the smallest evil you commit, and then it goes from there. You know, violence grows from it. So I think that's the fundamental purpose of life, fight and combat evil. And you start just by being honest.

Speaker 2:
[165:51] Yeah. I think you got a great point there. I think you're right about that. All right, well, so to wrap this up, what are your plans for the future when it comes to setting these ancient vases and some of this stone stuff? And you obviously got your paper published about the vases. What are your next goals?

Speaker 1:
[166:12] Yes, I do have some plans. Two things I'm doing. If anyone wants a vase like this, just contact me and you can donate money to research and I'll make you a vase. And this is important because we're starting a new project. I have a partner now, Rico Horta, and we're going to go to Peru to take some 3D scans of Peruvian megaliths, the polygonal blocks that I want to subject to the same rigor of study, where we can determine hopefully no better how they were made and what they look like by producing the data sets, the analyzable data sets of how the stones look in 3D. So 3D scanning and he might call the project scan civilization or whatnot. I think it's important that we acquire and share data. So one person cannot discover all of the truth, but one person can help others by documenting carefully and by publishing what one finds. And that's what we would like to do. We would like to scan as many stones and artifacts as we possibly can over a period of time and put all of that in a public domain, publish all of that for other researchers to do their own investigation. Because we need brilliant minds looking at the data and making sense of the data. So the least I can do is capture the data, provide you with high quality of data. But young minds and capable minds will see so much more in it. And that's how I believe we can move closer to learning the truth about our past.

Speaker 2:
[168:02] Some of the stuff in Peru is astonishing, the way it looks like it was melted together. They look like melted marshmallows, right? And it's like, it looks like even with some of the stuff in Egypt as well, like in the Osirion, it looks like the stuff was just heated up and molded together. Would there be a way of testing that to see if it was ever heated up?

Speaker 1:
[168:22] That's a second motivation. I'd like to be able to collect some of the samples from those rocks, stones, and put them into my electron microscope. And I'll be able to tell if the surface was modified, what elements it contains, and whether it looks different from the first rock. So I think it's very important to be able to sample some of this in a polygonal, in a masonry blocks, and subject them to microscopy to see how it was made. Because you will see if the surface was melted, or if it was chemically altered, or if some chemicals were used, you will see all of that under electron microscope. And that's what I also intend to do. And of course, I'm very interested in scanning, you know, sarcophagi in Egypt, but I realize that that requires, you know, permits and applications for permits. And that's one of the motivators for me to keep publishing papers. Because, you know, the more papers you publish, the higher your, you know, credibility in scientific community is. And that's what you need in order for, you know, to obtain a permit.

Speaker 2:
[169:24] Yeah, but then you join the dark side.

Speaker 1:
[169:26] Not necessarily. I don't believe that. And I could be naive and who knows, but the best thing, you know, we can do is try, right?

Speaker 2:
[169:36] Yeah, you should. You should try to have one foot on both sides of the fence and try to look at things objectively with nuance and not try to look at it tribally.

Speaker 1:
[169:45] And if the journals refuse to publish my findings, I'll publish them on my blog, on my website. But it's important to capture high quality data. And I don't know how to do it in Egypt without getting permits. In Peru might be easier. We hope it's easier because there are lots of sites that are not restricted. And in the sense we should be able to scan it.

Speaker 2:
[170:09] Have you looked at this Egypt scan thing with the big things that go underneath the pyramids?

Speaker 1:
[170:13] Yeah, that's like freaking fascinating.

Speaker 2:
[170:18] There's a lot of issues with it.

Speaker 1:
[170:19] If you're talking about the, what they like determine from space.

Speaker 2:
[170:24] Yeah, well, what are they calling it? Aperture radar?

Speaker 1:
[170:27] Yeah, I don't believe that. So that as a scientist and after reading the paper, I think it's utter and complete bullshit.

Speaker 2:
[170:33] Jeffrey Drum did a beautiful breakdown for us on this podcast of all of that stuff and all of the stuff, all of the evidence they gave and all the scanned.

Speaker 1:
[170:42] So he debunked it?

Speaker 2:
[170:43] All the technology. And essentially, oh yeah, he found gaping holes.

Speaker 1:
[170:48] Yeah, it's absolutely bullshit.

Speaker 2:
[170:50] Yeah, like one of the craziest things was their scans showed giant King's chamber sized chambers in the central copyright pyramid. And we know that they're not in there. And there's just lots of inconsistencies in that stuff. And Jeffrey Drum does a really good job.

Speaker 1:
[171:07] That's why I said, all evil begins with lying. So don't lie, be honest. And in your own research, the easiest person to fool is yourself. So if you don't have integrity, you'll fool yourself very quickly. So I may not deliver a sensation, but I'll deliver a good data set that you can analyze. So if there are any listeners listening in to this podcast, and if you want to help with this project, you can help us in getting permits to scan or just get an introduction to various museums or sites, we could use that, because we don't want to be breaking laws or violating regulations and whatnot. So it will take, I think, a collective effort of people who are really genuinely interested in learning truth about the past, to pull our resources together in one capacity or the other, so we get the necessary permits, collect and publish the data, and let everyone analyze and make sense of it. Because it may be different from what we believe now. Maybe even more interesting and more fascinating than we could ever imagine, but we need to be truthful and honest about it. Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 2:
[172:23] Well, super impressive stuff, man. I'm really impressed by how far you're going to produce some of this evidence and replicate some of these results, and call balls and strikes with this stuff, because it's refreshing in today's day and age.

Speaker 1:
[172:37] Thank you. It's very kind for you to say.

Speaker 2:
[172:40] We'll obviously link everything below, but are there any specific links people should be aware of to find your work and find you online or anything like that?

Speaker 1:
[172:46] Yeah, Maximus.energy is my website, and that's your best starting point, because on my website, there is a blog dedicated to Egyptology, and to my fusion research, and to general physics, and this is where you can read more about my ideas and my findings, and all the links and references to the papers, so Maximus.energy, and I'm not much of a YouTuber, I do have a YouTube channel, and the link is on my website, so it's either you do a research or you produce content, so I kind of focus on research, and I'll let you produce the content.

Speaker 2:
[173:22] Cool man, well thanks again. Steve, we have Patreon questions? We do. We have a couple of Patreon questions, we'll do. All right, that's the end of the podcast. Good night folks.