On March 11th, 1947, Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd sat in a dark, windowless room in the Pentagon as a Navy pilot who served in both World Wars, Byrd thought he'd seen everything. But what he'd witnessed the month before had shaken him to his core. A door opened into the room and a high ranking intelligence officer stepped through. He asked Byrd to share what he discovered during his mission to explore the North Pole, codenamed Operation High Jump.

The admiral cleared his throat and told his story what time he left the naval base in the Arctic, why his plane lost its radio signal where he'd actually gone.

Finally, Byrd admitted that he'd witnessed unnatural cylindrical aircraft that defied all known laws of aviation.

And these UFOs didn't come from the sky above. They came from inside the earth.

After Byrd finished chairing the strange details of his expedition, his superior nodded and left the room to report Byrd's story to President Harry S. Truman. The Pentagon detained Byrd until he agreed to keep his mission a secret from the public. The general population wasn't ready to learn the truth about what lay inside the earth.

Byrd finally left the Pentagon after nearly seven hours of interrogation. As a military man, he was beholden to his orders. It seemed as though the truth would never get out. But Byrd had kept something from the government, a detailed journal that shared his entire story.

Sooner or later, Byrd's journey into the hollow earth would come to light. Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a podcast cast original every Monday and Wednesday, we dig into the complicated stories behind the world's most controversial events and search for the truth. I'm Carter Roy. And I'm Molly Brandenberg.

And neither of us are conspiracy theorists, but we are open minded, skeptical and curious. Don't get us wrong. Sometimes the official version is the truth, but sometimes it's not.

You can find episodes of conspiracy theories and all other precast originals for free on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts to stream conspiracy theories for free on Spotify, just open the app and type conspiracy theories in the search bar.

This is our second episode on the Hollow Earth hypothesis. The belief that our planet contains another world inside it. Last episode we discussed how humans held this belief for millennia. Only in the last three centuries have we come to understand that the planet is probably solid all the way through, or at least that's what they want you to think.

This episode will explore three controversial theories about the world beneath our feet. Conspiracy theory. Number one, at the North Pole, there is a massive hole that leads to a secret hidden underworld inside our earth. This world is home to an advanced humanoid species known as the Riani Conspiracy Theory. Number two, across the globe, multiple caverns lead from the Earth's surface through its mantle and into an inner realm. Ancient humans escaped from an apocalyptic disaster by fleeing into the underworld, where they still live to this day.

And soon we will have to do the same conspiracy theory. Number three, the earth is actually concave, meaning that we live on the inside with the sun floating in the middle.

We have all that and more coming up. Stay with us. Since the earliest days of humanity, we've pondered the mysteries of our planet, ancient Hindus and Norsemen believed that there was a vast underworld beneath our own, possibly even larger than the heavens. The Hopi tribe in Arizona thought they had originally emerged from deep caverns beneath the surface.

This belief persisted throughout the Enlightenment, even as science and reason overtook religion based thinking. Acclaimed geologists and astronomers such as Athanasius Kircher and Edmund Halley believed that the earth might be hollow. Perhaps it even teamed with life.

Eventually, scientists managed to record the mass and density of our planet. They determined that the Earth was probably too heavy to support this hypothesis. But the deepest hole we've ever created, the Koula super deep borehole in Russia only stretches seven point six miles into the earth. It hardly scratches the surface, so perhaps it's impossible to know what's really down there. According to our first theory, an American explorer named Richard E. Byrd actually entered the earth's interior in the 1940s.

Some conspiracy theorists believe that Byrd's exploration of the North Pole was more than it seemed. They think he may have inadvertently discovered the polar entrance, a vast hole that leads to a gatta, a legendary kingdom within the Earth's core.

The belief that Bird found a gatta stems from two primary sources. First, before setting off on his fateful flight in 1947, Byrd allegedly stated, I'd like to see that land beyond the pole. That area beyond the pole is the center of the great unknown. What he meant by beyond is up for debate. Either he simply flew past the North Pole by some distance, or it was a metaphorical statement referring to the world he'd return to after he completed his extraordinary expedition or beyond really meant that he planned to travel from the North Pole to another mysterious destination.

Perhaps he already had some idea of what he'd find up there. No one would know the answer. For over 20 years, until Byrd's secret journal surfaced in 1964, the mysterious Dr. Raymond Bernard published Admiral Byrd's journal in his book The Hollow Earth, subtitled The True Origin of the Flying Saucers. Byrd's writings are reprinted in full, beginning with a detailed flight log. That's six a.m. on February 19th, 1947, Byrd took off from his Arctic base at nine 10 a.m. He remarked that his flight instruments began malfunctioning as he neared the North Pole.

And at nine a.m., he was alarmed to find an unexpected mountain range on the flat Arctic horizon.

At 10 a.m., Byrd was able to see beyond this ridge into a flourishing Green Valley, complete with trees, animals rolling green hills and a small river bird remarked. The light here seems different. I cannot see the sun anymore.

As he continued to fly, Bird saw a woolly mammoth, an animal that supposedly went extinct 4000 years before.

As he descended to 1000 feet, his navigational instruments began to function again, according to his temperature gauge. It was a pleasant 74 degrees Fahrenheit at the North Pole.

Bird's immense shock at his discovery was evident in his notes with increasing alarm. Bird noticed that his plane stopped responding to his commands. It appeared to be flying itself as if gripped by an invisible vise. That's when he realized that he wasn't alone in the sky.

Two glowing disc shaped aircraft hovered on either side of the plane as they closed in on Bird. He noticed strange markings on the ships, these unidentified flying object, S'pore, huge swastikas.

Justin Byrd's radio buzz to life, a German accent and voice said, Welcome, Admiral, to our domain. We shall land you in exactly seven minutes. Relax, Admiral. You are in good hands.

The plane's engines suddenly turned off. Whatever external force was gently moving. The plane landed it outside a shimmering, multicolored, futuristic city. Several tall, blond men were there to greet him.

The flight log ends there and Bird reported the rest from his memory.

Birds hosts led him to an elevator. After a long journey downward, the elevator opened onto a long hallway. On the other side was a great door, bearing an inscription in a language that the admiral didn't recognize. One of Byrd's hosts told him that he was now going to meet the master.

Bird stepped into a vast chamber across the room. A man with delicate features sat at a long table. He welcomed Bird to the kingdom. He called a garter. The master said, We have let you enter here because you are of noble character and well known on the surface world. You are in the domain of the Orient, the inner world of the Earth.

The master explained that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki two years earlier greatly disturbed the Arani. After becoming aware of humanity's development of nuclear weapons.

They sent their fuel rods to investigate the surface world, what they call fuel rods, surface dwellers called unidentified flying objects. That's right. UFOs came from within the earth, not from space.

The Arani had already tried to warn humanity's leaders that future conflicts would make World War Two look like a minor scuffle. A global nuclear war would lead to a dark age descending upon the earth. The master was unsure whether humanity could survive this event, but the leaders of the surface world refused to listen.

The master was saddened to report that humans even fired upon their peaceful Pflueger rods. So the orien retreated into their world and decided instead to choose a human to spread their message. They chose bird.

The two Arani hosts then Brad Bird back to his aircraft and encouraged him to spread the information the master gave him, the arani lifted his plane back into the air and at 2700 feet, they put the admiral back in control of his aircraft. The swastika laden hovercraft flanking him wisht Bird Outfitters plane and flew back to their strange world.

In addition to Admiral Bird's journal, Dr. Raymond Bernhard's book included over 100 pages of analysis and other evidence of the existence of a hollow earth.

Even with all those extra pages, Bernard never explained how he found Byrd's writings, but he knew quite a bit about the Riani. According to Bernard various. He left a gatta thousands of years ago aboard flying saucers to lead primitive humans to greatness. They founded every successful ancient civilization, including the Mayan empire, ancient Egypt and China. Although the original ARIADNI disappeared back into the earth, at some point they became known as gods, inspiring the ancient Pantheon's. This tied the hollow earth hypothesis with a well-established ancient aliens theory the belief that advanced beings influenced early humans.

Dr. Bernard is correct on some of his points. Many ancient cultures did believe in a massive underworld, and Admiral Byrd did fly over the North Pole. But not in 1947. Byrd's first flight over the North Pole took place on May 9th, 1926, 21 years before Operation High jump. At the time, he never noted any mysterious semih tropical land that lay inside the North Pole.

And it wasn't only the dates that were wrong in Bernard's book, the locations were wrong to. Bird did lead Operation High Jump in 1947, but his directive was to explore the South Pole, not the North, other than confusing birds.

Second expedition with his first, Dr Bernard made another huge mistake. He didn't disguise his identity well enough. In reality, there was no Dr. Bernhard. His real name was Walter Sagmeister, a dietitian who believed that eugenics, mass colonization and vegetarianism could lead humanity to a new golden age. By the 1960s, he allegedly promoted Breatharianism the belief that humans can gain all the nutrients they need simply from breathing.

So maybe Raymond Bernard, Mrazek Meister, was an untrustworthy character. But Birds flight log is vividly detailed, certainly seems official. As a military man, Bird would have felt beholden to his superiors if they ordered him to keep quiet and maybe they disguised Operation High jump true objective in order to hide the truth. Now, I'm going to give this theory a one out of 10.

I made up my mind when I learned that the author of this book didn't even exist. I'm also giving this theory a one out of ten. Sure, Admiral Byrd was a real person, but he never said anything about the hollow earth while he was alive. And Zig Meister published his journal after Byrd's death. Zig Maistre or another UFO conspiracist almost certainly wrote it, not Byrd.

So there probably isn't a city underneath the North Pole. But can you know for sure if you haven't seen it for yourself? My eyes were about to find out. Visiting the North Pole isn't as simple as it seems.

Coming up, we'll discuss our second conspiracy theory, which might turn your world upside down. Hi, it's Molly, in case you haven't heard, Parkhurst has an intense new original series I think you'll really enjoy. It's called Medical Murders, and it exposes the dark, disturbing and deadly side of medicine.

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Now back to the story. A few years after Rear Admiral Richard Byrd's death in 1957, a secret journal emerged that he entered a world below the Earth. Apparently, Bird flew into the North Pole through a huge hole surrounded by a warm, lush forest.

This diary was published by Dr. Raymond Bernard, who was really a disgraced pseudoscientific dietitian named Walter xG Meister. Zied Meister's book, titled The Hollow Earth, became the primary source for Hollo, or a theorist's, although many had previously theorized that the Earth might be empty. Inside Zik Meister's book added a race of advanced humanoid creatures named Arwani to the theory.

Ultimately, this book lacked credibility. However, Herzig Maistre wasn't the only person to propose there was life inside the Earth.

This leads us to our second conspiracy theory that across the globe, natural caverns connect the surface world to an interior domain populated by interdimensional beings. Ancient civilizations were fully aware of this internal world, but this knowledge was lost for thousands of years until one man remembered.

When Dallas Thompson was a boy in the mid 1980s, he moved to Maui with his father one day as he walked along the north shore of the island.

He felt a strong presence. The boy looked up and met the gaze of an old, wise looking man in the distance in the blink of an eye. The man teleported to Thompson. The man introduced himself as a Cohuna or shaman. Kahunas are well-respected leaders in traditional Hawaiian culture, and this one was no different. In fact, according to Thomson, he owned half of Maui. Thompson and the Cohuna struck up a friendship. According to Thompson, he had eternity in his eyes.

In the mid 1990s, when Thompson was in his late 20s, he found a glowing blue orb in the jungle that he couldn't identify before it disappeared. Thompson was lucky enough to take a picture of it.

Thompson showed the picture to the Cohuna, who identified it as a spirit in pure form. The Cohuna had seen several of these orbs recently, and he understood what they signified. A great change was coming to the Earth. The Cohuna brought Thompson into the jungle, where he was allowed to hold sacred meteorites that vibrated in his hands.

These stones showed Thompson incredible visions of a devastating car accident. Thompson understood that this image was from his future. To gain further understanding of the universe's secrets, Thompson needed to have a near-death experience.

The Cohuna then shared something else with his protege. The wise old man was soon going to pass away, which he called transferring shortly after Thompson left Hawaii.

Now in his late 20s, he returned to his hometown of Bakersfield, California.

In 1997, Thompson was driving 70 miles per hour through pouring rain on a cliffside highway near Bakersfield.

His car hydroplaned and before he knew it, he was falling down the cliff. The accident ripped the top off of Thompson's car. The EMTs brought a body bag to the scene of the wreck, expecting the worst. Thompson had miraculously survived. His vision had come true. Five years later, on October 4th, 2002, 31 year old Thompson appeared on the classic radio show Coast to Coast with Art Bell to promote his new book, Cosmic Manuscript. Bell specialized in long form conversations with conspiracy theorists, taking unscreened calls from guests who claimed they shot Bigfoot or visited the Andromeda Galaxy.

Thompson spoke with manic energy, barely stopping for breath for over an hour and a half.

Bell frequently had to interrupt him to ask a follow up question or poke holes in his beliefs, and Thompson had an answer for everything.

Thompson claimed he survived his car wreck because interdimensional beings transported him to a place deep within the earth, where all time flowed simultaneously. Thompson referred to this metaphysical place as the now, just as the meteorites in the Cohuna had predicted Thompson unlock the secrets of the universe, the beings who saved him didn't come from outer space. They came from beneath our feet. The. Earth was hollow, and soon it would become the last refuge of humanity since that accident, Thompson made it his life's mission to spread the word of the upcoming apocalypse.

The beings warned him that the Earth's magnetic poles were going to switch. The North Pole would become the South Pole and vice versa. This would cause an immediate change to the global climate, the Thompson compared to Noah's biblical flood. Although Thompson didn't mention it by name, the idea he proposed is also known as the cataclysmic pole shift hypothesis. Broadly, it's the idea that the Earth's magnetic poles will one day flip, causing devastation to the planet.

The phenomenon is known as geomagnetic reversal, and it's happened before. Essentially, every half a million years, the Earth's magnetic poles weaken and eventually reverse. South becomes north and north become south.

Scientists are unsure exactly why this polarity reversal occurs. It's thought to be caused by periodic changes within the fluid layer of the earth's core.

Geomagnetic reversal is associated with extinction events because our planet's magnetic field actually protects us from harmful solar radiation during a power shift. This field weakens.

Some theorists even believe a cataclysmic pole shift wiped out all life on Mars. However, it's unclear if a geomagnetic reversal ever caused a mass extinction on our planet.

Dallas Thompson proposed that this shift happened every few thousand years, but in reality it usually happens every few million years. The last one having occurred 770 3000 years ago. And that reversal didn't take place instantaneously, like Thompson claimed the next one would. It slowly changed over 22000 years. Even so, Thompson said that this change in the polar balance was Mother Earth's attempt to shake us off and reset, killing almost all of humanity. But people with an intimate connection to the earth would be spared.

At the time of the shift, the interdimensional beings would draw them into their internal world.

He advised the show's listeners to follow his example. Ever since his accident. Thompson had completely stopped wearing shoes. This, he believed, made him more connected with the planet and closer to the interior world.

This internal realm was the home of ancient tribes who had fled the surface world during Noah's flood. They had advanced technology and were able to survive the deluge by retreating into caverns deep within the earth. Without the constant bombardment of solar radiation that we face, they could live for as long as seventeen hundred years. Eventually, they evolved into the interdimensional beings who saved Thompson's life. The Earth's mantle surrounded this internal world. Modern science estimates that the mantle is upwards of 1800 miles thick and makes up 84 percent of the Earth's total volume.

But Thompson claimed that it was only a mere 4500 feet at its thickest. That's just over a quarter of a mile. Structurally, that's much too thin to support our surface world. Modern science also posits that the mantels temperature ranges from 1000 to 3700 degrees Celsius. But Thompson claimed that the mantle wasn't universally hot. Volcanic eruptions were just its way of venting excess heat.

In fact, some parts were so cold they were hot.

When Bill asked him what this phrase meant, Thompson simply replied, That's a cave you don't want to be in.

He went on to explain that the Earth's crust surrounded this mantle. Caverns riddled the Earth's surface, connecting our world to hollow spaces inside the mantle. These caverns were lit by huge, reflective 20 foot tall crystals that bounce sunlight from the surface to the interior.

Bioluminescent moss also helped illuminate these caves.

According to Tomson, dinosaurs thrived within the Earth. It was also the home of the Anunnaki super intelligent, reptilian creatures from Sumerian, Egyptian and Hindu mythology. Some believe that these lizard people secretly run the world.

Thompson told Bell he planned to visit the North Pole on his 30 second birthday, May 24th, 2003, according to the interdimensional beings. This was also going to be the date of the pole shift.

Thompson planned to fly directly into the hole using a backpack sized personal helicopter called a solo trek.

As soon as Thompson mentioned that he was traveling to the North Pole. Bell asked him if he knew about the dangerous conditions there. The average temperature of the North Pole is minus 40 degrees. Fahrenheit without protective gear, Thompson might die by Thompson, said he felt no fear. He believed that the beings would beam him into the hole.

It would place an electromagnetic bubble around him and the solar track would no longer require power. These creatures had saved his life so that he'd accomplish his destiny. They wouldn't allow him to die.

It seemed as though nothing could sway Thompson from his theory. He was determined to visit the North Pole. But before he could make his fateful journey, he vanished without a trace.

Nobody knows why Thompson disappeared months before his expedition, but of course, the hollow Earth community has its theories.

During his interview, Thompson seemed unsure of who was funding his expedition. One hollow earth for user proposed to government entities were actually bankrolling Thompson's trip without his knowledge.

One post said maybe they got what they wanted and no longer needed him.

Or he really did step away from the spotlight and attempted to carry out his mission in secret.

But because the solo track only had a range of about 100 miles, he may have passed away during his attempt.

Others believe that Dallas Thompson was successful. He flew into the hole at the North Pole and now lives within the earth among the super beings that saved his life years ago.

If you ask me, the obvious answer is that he just took the money and ran. If his book really was a bestseller, as he claimed, he may have looked at his bank account and had second thoughts about risking his life.

Additionally, another member of his group named Michael Mott, claimed that Thompson's cosmic manuscript plagiarized his own book, Cavern's Caldrons and Concealed Creatures, and many other sources.

Perhaps Thompson, disappear to avoid litigation.

Sure, Thompson's disappearance is certainly mysterious. But after what I've heard about the cataclysmic shift hypothesis, I might just start heading underground of geomagnetic reversal occurs over such a long period. Who's to say it hasn't already begun? But I don't think that leads to interdimensional being. So I have to give this theory a one out of 10.

I have to agree a pole shift might significantly harm the world, but it's unclear if they've ever caused a mass extinction. I still don't believe that the mantle is a quarter of a mile thick. And Thompson offers no concrete evidence that interdimensional beings live within the planet. Dallas Thompson and Walter Zig Meister both believed in a world beneath our own, but some took it even further than that. Coming up, we'll look at our final conspiracy theory. Thompson's pole shift hypothesis turn the earth upside down, but one 19th century cult managed to turn it inside out.

Now back to the story.

So far, both theories we've discussed followed the same basic rubric there is a large hole in the North Pole that leads to an internal world full of advanced life. Dr. Raymond Bernard, a.k.a. Walter Zik Meister, believed that this world was home to technologically advanced Germanic people.

Dallas' Thompson took it further and said that powerful interdimensional beings lived in this underworld. But what if these theories have it backwards? What if the truth isn't under our feet, but above them?

This brings us to conspiracy theory. Number three. Not only is the world hollow, it's concave. We are the ones living on the inside, not the other way around. A cult leader named Cyrus Tee'd or as his followers called him, Karash first proposed this belief in the 19th century. In the 19th century, upstate New York became known as the burned over district due to its abundance of religious movements. The nickname came from the severity of this awakening, which spread through the population like wildfire.

Amid these movements, Cyrus Tee'd was born in 1839 in the small town of Trout Creek.

Ted's grandfather was a prominent Baptist minister, and his parents hope their son would do the same. Instead, Cyrus saw a medical career following in the footsteps of his uncle, Dr. Samuel Freed.

By 1869, 30 year old Cyrus and his uncle ran a doctor's office in Utica, New York.

They hung a humorous sign outside their window that read He who deals out poison deals out death. This referred to both their business and the tavern directly beneath them. Their medical practice thrived and life was good.

But that fall, Cyrus's life changed forever. According to his pamphlet, The Illumination of Koresh, Cyrus managed to transform lead into gold while experimenting in his medical laboratory. As soon as he accomplished the seemingly impossible task, he was knocked backwards by some invisible force.

Cyrus lay on the floor, unable to move and became convinced that he had died when he heard a distant, calming, feminine voice, he was certain that it was an angel coming to claim him, but instead it was God herself.

When Cyrus tried to speak, his voice wasn't his own. It was God speaking through him. This was how she communicated. She revealed that Cyrus was yet another incarnation of God's prophets on earth.

Then a light of dazzling brilliance appeared in front of him. The light transformed into a beautiful woman, and Cyrus knew that this was the image of God.

Cyrus fell to his knees before her. God informed him that he had been chosen to redeem humanity by spreading her message.

Some skeptics believe that this vision was actually a hallucination brought on by a near-death experience. Cyrus was attempting to use electric energy to transform lead into gold.

Details about his revelation line up with the possibility that he badly electrocuted himself. This would have paralyzed Cyrus, which would explain why he was at first unable to move.

Either way, Cyrus was never the same. After this experience, he changed his name to Koresh, the Hebrew version of Cyrus. He wrote down everything that God had told him.

In 1922. Fourteen years after Cyrus died, his various writings were published as the cellular calls Marghani, or the Earth, is a concave sphere.

Cellular calls Marghani laid out all of his beliefs. Koresh reason that sells eggs and seeds which share the same basic structure or the central building blocks of all life. Therefore, the universe itself must take that shape as well. The sun, the moon and the cosmos form the cells nucleus and an outer membrane marked the universe's boundary like a nucleus.

The sun that floated in the middle of this cosmic egg was the world's power source. But the sun wasn't ball shaped.

Instead, it was a helix powered by electromagnetism. One side emitted bright energy, while the other gave out dark energy.

The sun revolved, giving us night when the dark side pointed outward in the day when the light side faced us.

These heavenly bodies were an extension of God's divine power. According to Koresh, the sun was a massive battery that redirected this energy from God to the rest of the world. Almost none on Earth, down to the atomic level was derived from that astrobiological source.

As for the moon and the solar systems, other planets, they were giant discs made of mercury that rotated around the sun. When a correction saw the moon at night, they believe there were actually looking at the Earth's reflection in one of these discs.

Our planet didn't rotate, it didn't orbit. The sun didn't move at all. Outside the Earth, there was only void. The entire universe, which Koresh called the alchemical organic cosmos, existed within the Earth's hollow shell. According to Koresh, the Earth's outer crust was 100 miles thick and composed of 17 different layers. The innermost five were rock. Further outward were five mineral layers, and the last seven or the Lomani were all made of metal.

A vast sheet of solid gold completely surrounded the cosmic egg.

The theories of Christianity went beyond the hollow earth theory. Koresh strongly believed in reincarnation.

Specifically, Koresh himself was the reincarnation of a prophet who in every age interpreted the Bible differently. One of these prophets was Jesus Christ himself, thereby making Koresh the Messiah.

All of his writings, teachings and beliefs stemmed from his own unique take on Christianity by reducing the entire universe to the contents of our planet, Koresh refuted the idea that creation was infinite.

According to Christianity, God wouldn't make the universe unknowable. She wants us to understand her. And since we are her creation, we are the entirety of her focus.

Koresh hadn't forgotten the religious awakenings he witnessed during his childhood. In the years following his enlightenment, hundreds of communes were still thriving in the United States. Koresh knew that to redeem the human race and spread God's messages, he had to gather followers to do so.

Koresh set out on a lecture tour in September 1886. He spoke at the National Association of Mental Science Convention in Chicago. Although the text of this speech was lost, it was successful enough for the convention to invite him back the next day. During his second speech, Koresh successfully demonstrated his skill at Faith Healing during a woman who had lost the ability to walk.

These speeches gave Koresh a small spark of credibility, which he managed to fan into a flame. He began publishing a monthly magazine devoted to the science of being called The Flaming Sword. He founded a church, the Assembly of the Covenant.

By 1894, 55 year old Koresh had acquired about 200 followers. They pulled their resources and bought 300 acres of land near the small town of Estero, Florida. They quickly established a printing press, a bakery and even a power plant in their new community. Christianity thrived there for about a decade.

In 1994, Koresh decided to incorporate his community into its own town. Now they were able to collect tax money from the state. Next, they became a political force, backing progressive candidates in a conservative state. They even founded their own party, the Progressive Liberty Party.

While they never won an election, they certainly disturb the status quo. Nearby, Floridians were afraid that Christianity would continue to grow, eventually overtaking the state.

This tension came to a head in October 19. Six years of misunderstandings and long held frustrations between the community and the corrections led to a small riot in front of a grocery store in Fort Myers, Florida. Koresh himself approached the conflict and tried to clear it up, but he was struck three times in the face for his trouble. The marshal of the town witnessed the attack, but refused to do anything more correction's.

Join the fray and more townsfolk as well. Eventually, the marshal jumped in and punched me in the face, allegedly knocking his glasses off. The marshal and his forces then arrested all of the corrections present. On December 22nd, 08, Cyrus Tee'd passed away as a result of his injuries. Like Jesus Christ, his followers believe that he, too, would return three days later. But Christmas Day came and went, and Koresh stayed dead.

Christianity didn't last long after its leaders death. Eventually, there were only 36 corrections left in 1940. A woman named Hedderwick Michele fled Nazi Germany to Estero for a few years. She attempted to revitalize the community, but she was unsuccessful.

In 1961, only four corrections remained. Michelle donated their 300 acres back to the Floridian government. Christianity was finally over.

Like so many cults and commune's, Christianity was successful only because it revolved around one central personality. According to the Tampa Bay Times article Keeping a Dream of Utopia Alive, Koresh was exceedingly warm and complimentary to his followers and inspired extreme loyalty in them.

Koresh was able to gain a large amount of female followers due to his strict belief in gender equality. After all, God had first appeared to him as a woman.

But as appealing as the community was, the religion of Christianity stretches the imagination. So much of his theory is unexplained, and his rambling texts are almost unreadable. And any telescope can clearly observe that the moon is not a metallic disc reflecting the earth. True, but scientific knowledge was not as widespread then as it is today.

Koresh was formerly a devout Christian and a doctor. The supposed scientific analysis of the Bible must have seemed alluring to his followers. I see how people might have believed Koresh at the time, but more than 100 years later, it just seems completely irrational. I can barely give his theory a one out of 10. We definitely live on the outside of the Earth.

I'm also going to have to give this a one out of 10. NASA has sent objects thousands of miles into space and they haven't crashed into the other side of the world. And whether or not you trust NASA, the theory feels to nesh to be true. If we really live in a cosmic egg, someone other than 250 cultists would have probably proved that by now.

Out of all the hollow Earth conspiracy theories, I find Dallas Thompson's poll shift hypothesis the most convincing. But looking back on it, that's really just a small part of his broader theory. Interdimensional beings rescuing people from car accidents and granting them divine knowledge stretches the imagination quite a bit.

Yes, but you have to admit that something was up with his disappearance. Even if he was just in it for the money, he could have stayed around to earn a few more bucks. Something happened to him, even if it wasn't supernatural. As for Admiral Byrd, he passed away years before his supposed secret journal was published, so he didn't even get the opportunity to deny it. If you ask me, Walter, Zied Meister capitalized on a war heroes popularity to sell books.

Agreed.

Even so, we really don't know much about the Earth's interior. In 2014, reports emerged that scientists had discovered a massive ocean within the solid rock of the mantle. Some experts believe that our surface oceans are constantly draining into this underground sea, while geological activity pushes it back up onto the surface.

This may even be the source of our planet's water in the first place.

That's certainly an intriguing discovery, but it still doesn't point towards the possibility of life underground, which is the central belief of two of these theories. As for Christianity, I think the fact that the religion existed for less than 50 years says everything.

But as we said at the top of this episode, we've only drilled a short distance into the Earth. What lies beneath our feet remains to be seen. One day, maybe very soon, we might dig deep enough to discover a brand new world. Thanks for tuning into conspiracy theories. We'll be back Monday with a new episode, you can find all episodes of conspiracy theories and all other cast originals for free on Spotify.

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Until then, remember, the truth isn't always the best story and the official story isn't always the truth.

Conspiracy Theories was created by Max Cutler and is a podcast studio's original. Executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler, Sound Design by Russell Nash with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Carly Madden and Travis Clark. This episode of Conspiracy Theories was written by Eric Stanky with writing assistance by Ali Whicker and stars Molly Brandenberg and Carter Roy. Hi, listeners, trust me, you don't want to miss the intense new park EST original series, medical murders from trauma surgeons to hospice staff, medical professionals are trained to give exceptional care.

But what about those who use their skills not to heal but hurt? Every Wednesday meet the worst the medical community has to offer men and women who took an oath to save lives, but instead use their expertise to develop more sinister specialties, follow medical murders free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.