Unreal Hollow Earth Drawings, Part 1

Season 5, Episode 6, Dec 15, 2023, 01:24 AM

Welcome to the Whispering Gallery podcast! I’m Suzanne Nikolaisen and if this isn’t your first rodeo - er, time listening, you know that together we seek out the spooky, unusual and fascinating stories from the art world—to understand the art and the related “unknown” a little better, and boy—howdy, did I find another “strange” doozy of a pseudoscience story for you today! Im all researched out and can give you the downlow on unreal hollow earth drawings!

Have you heard about the Hollow Earth theory? It may have been a conspiracy theory you easily dismissed, but there are some drawings of what the space was imagined to look like, not to mention hollow-earthers (is that a demographic?) both credible and -incredible- people who are part of the story including Leonhard Eeuler, Swiss Mathematician, Cyrus Reed Teed, American physician who ended up thinking he was the messiah. Edmud Haley (as in Haley’s comet) and hero Admiral Byrd and his not so secret diary and–shang-ri-la like story. It’s out there. And in America there was John Cleves Symmes.

The illustrations themselves are in pen and ink diagramming the hollow earth as early infographics that are a bit scary, as only a fantastical, conspiracy theory-ish, geography-meets-sci-fi stories (about a crazy big hole at the North Pole, and the South Pole leading to the center of the earth) can be. You just can’t make this stuff up. Oh wait—they did. Imaginations galore! And Science doesn’t care what you believe or draw, it doesn’t make it real...

From GEEK'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY CULTURE 12.11.20 11:44 AM on Wired.com’s article The Hollow Earth Theory Isn’t So Funny Anymore - which shares more about Owen Egerton and his book “Hollow” one of npr’s books of the year in 2017.

"While he was writing the book, Egerton viewed the Hollow Earth Theory as a bit of harmless fun, but recent events have made him reconsider that view. “When I was writing about the Hollow Earth, I was celebrating people’s ability to believe what was obviously not true,” he says. “But as the book came to be, and as Donald Trump was elected, I found more and more that those conspiracy theories weren’t so cute, that that power could move in a bunch of different ways—and a dangerous way."

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Image Source: "Sectional View of the earth Showing the Opening at the Poles, a diagram from Symzonia by Capt. Adam Seaborn (probably a pseudonym used by Capt. John Cleves Symmes)" as seen in The Public Domain Review, Essays, Stories of a Hollow Earth By Peter Fitting, October 10, 2011 https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/stories-of-a-hollow-earth/

Whispering Gallery Podcast Music:

Toy Piano Boogie (restored), by The Piccadilly Pipers; Clem Moorman, Edward McKlaine sourced from us.archive.org

Audio: Music and Sound FX Resource: Freesound.org Please note, not all files downloaded were used (they were my best guess at what I might need at the time of production). Thank you to the talented audio artists who share their files! They help me tell the Whispering Gallery podcast stories with a lot of atmosphere!

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