It is picking up somewhat. People seem to get it. They get the hidden wonder thing. We get so many submissions from to the ilt the castle. I wonder if it is still there. There is a sense of hometown pride,s people showing off what they have discovered and that is what we are cultivating. As a way of showing you some examples of what is inside the book, because we have collected about 700. We have done a sort of a greatest hits album, sampler platter of places that we have collected on the website. I wanted to take you on a quick world to her that showcases a few of the places in the book. So lets get started. This is one of the first places that was submitted to the website, within the first few months of it launching. Was submitted by someone who lives in chair punchy, in the north of india. This is one of the wettest, most humid regions of the world. One of the problems with dendritic that it disintegrates quickly. Would rots, metals rust. So some of the people have come up with an ingenious and visibly stunning solution. These are the root bridges, there are a few of them but this one in particular is especially spectacular because it is a doubledecker. The way they are made is the villagers build a trestle over the river and they guide the roots of the trees across the trestles. It takes about 15 years for the bridge to grow and it can continue growing for centuries. When we received this we thought, okay. Yes. This could work. This. This is incredible. And it is real. To continue with the theme of bridges, this is also a bridge, it is a land bridge that unites the islands in south korea. This bridge only appears for about an hour or so twice per year, there is some mythology associated with a bridge, in involves what is basically the south korean equivalent of moses. The story goes that a tiger had descended a pound the island and everybody managed to escape apart from this elderly woman and the tiger was menacing and encroaching upon her and she looked at it and thought, [inaudible] my watch, so she prayed for a bridge to open up for the waters to receive so she might safely escape to the islands. And according to mythology, this did happen. So every year, once in in may and once in june, this bridge opens up. The people from the area and visitors walk from their separate islands along the bridge, meet in in the middle and then turn around and go back home. This is a fascinating place. It is about 100 miles north of los angeles. In 1958 an eccentric urban planner by the name of Matt Mendelson purchased 80000 acres in the Mojave Desert. He had a grand plant, the plant was to establish a giant, sprawling automobile based metropolis that would rival l. A. It would be a utopia, so he bought the land and laid out the streets. He gave every street a name. And thats as far as the project to god. [laughter] because he clearly overestimated peoples willingness to move out to the Mojave Desert and establish a utopian metropolis. That is a shame for him, but this still exists, all of these roads that have been named are still there. We have events, realworld events where we go out and explore in various chapters. A few years ago we organized a convoy of people to go to the streets and was going to be called California City and they went exploring. They walked along along the streets that are being reclaimed by the sand, i have not been there yet but i very much want to. From the air it looks like a giant circuit board. This is like the greatest hit of the greatest hits. This is the classic. This is the result of an industrial accident, essentially. This is in a desert, its referred to locally as the gates of hell, or the door to hell, in 1971 a soviet team of soviet geologists were drilling for natural gas. They found some, unfortunately this gas was located in a giant subterranean cavern. As they began drilling this hole opened up and there drilling rig fell in. So they reacted perhaps slightly panic driven by setting the whole thing on fire. [laughter] i suppose the mentality was, give it a few days or weeks and this thing will burn off and be fine. Fortyfive years later it is still burning. These gates of hell are 200 feet wide, you can go visit them as this brave chap on the left is. This man in another subterranean cavern, slightly slightly less hazardous, his name is robert. He is one of many creative driven visionaries, many of whom are rather eccentric that we celebrate. There is a former monk in madrid who woke up one morning and decided he needed to hand to build a cathedral for the next 50 years of his life. He is still doing it. Rob is somewhat similar but he uses the medium of sand. Since the 1990s, he has been walking in the new mexico desert and digging incredible caves. He takes commissions but its not really about that. Its about him expressing himself through the way that he digs. He puts a wheel barrel on his back and carries a shovel and just listens and he has made about a dozen of these caves since 1992. This fellow who looks rather the worse for wear, but not when you consider that that when he died in 1783 and two, he was 96. Three, he mummified himself. His name he was one of many monks in northern japan who are part of the variance of buddhism. For a few centuries these monks of northern japan were engaged in the arts of self mummification. Called the fox of japan. You might be thinking, well, i studied ancient egypt in school and i know how to modify someone else in theory. Once they are dead you do the old hook up the nostril, cranial cavity type procedure. But how how do you mama for yourself, surely that is impossible. But as you can see, it happened. It was a ten year process. It began with a very strict diet that was undertaken for 1000 days. Days. It was basically nuts and seeds. And a lot of exercise. The idea was to strip your body of fat in this initial stage. Once i was stunned you did not really get a respite. Wise it just became more strict. The next stage was to feast upon park and the sap from the tree which is ordinarily used on wed. So the idea behind that is you your internal organs, its just that easy. Once this stage was complete the monks were generally very close to death. So what they did was they went into a tomb, they sat in a lotus position and they chanted mantras, every day they would ring a bell to signal they were yet living. And when the bell stopped ringing the tomb was sealed. After they had been left there for a while the monk would be retrieved and put on display and venerated. Several hundred monks attempted this procedure, about two dozen succeeded. There are about 16, that are still on display northern japan. The practices practices outlawed at the end of the 19th century by the emperor who i imagine was pretty much like, guys. Come on. We need some limits here. This is a charming local mystery that is a lot closer to home than minnesota on the north share of minnesota and this is called devils cattle. As you can see it is a waterfall that splits into two. On the right side the waterfall keeps going, on the left, the water goes into this known as a devils cattle and emerges, no one knows where. In is not for lack of trying. People people have tried to solve this mystery. They have thrown thousands of pingpong balls in there. They have tried to die the water, and thrown gps devices in there. Nothing has yielded an exclamation. So it is a local mystery. Try to solve it if you want to journey to minnesota. This looks like an idyllic place to go, perhaps on a Pleasure Cruise and take vintage postcard here. I would i would not recommend going there however. The reason why is in the name of this place. It is called snake island. I hear a murmur in the crowd. Indeed, warranted. This places off the coast of brazil. It it is named snake island because it is home to a vast quantity of golden lance head vipers. They they are endemic to the island. Given half the chance they will kill you. Their venom is not a good kind. If they dont kill you they will cause a lot of damage. It is remarkable that the silent is the density of the snakes. Estimates have varied over the years, but rough guide says one snake per square meter. I am from the commonwealth in a work in the metric, but if you dont, what what you have to remember is on snake island you are never more than 3 feet from potential death. Also also one tidbit, the snakes are not just terrestrial, they are also arboreal so you may be walking along and feel one drop beside your feet. Terrifying. You are not allowed to go to snake island. You have to convince the Brazilian Navy that you have a legitimate scientific reason to visit. So if it sounds enticing, start thinking of some reasons. So in florence, the museum every wants to go to is the is the home of venus, michelangelo, michael the banshee, but the lines get really long. In summer you can be waiting for hours to get inside. There is a museum around the corner that is less visited. It is a science museum. And among all among all of the scientific instruments, the globes, you will find galileos middle finger. [laughter] classic. His finger was swiped from his corpse about 100 years after his death while it was being moved. It has been in various places since then, but since 1927 it since 1927 it has been at this museum which was recently renamed, the galileo museum. There are various ways to interpret this object. Meet galileo had complicated relationship with the church. You can see it as he is merely a indicating the heavens above or you can view it as a more pointed message, the interpretation is up to you. [laughter] so there is a period of a few decades in between when aircraft started to be used as part of the military weapons and prior to the development of radar for detecting an incoming bombing raid. During this during this time there is some creative approaches into how to know when you are about to be attacked. These three concrete objects are on the south coast of england, they are known as listening ears because what the british did was to build these curves, these semi circles as a means of trying to amplify incoming aircraft noise. They built them, they pointed they pointed them toward germany, and they hoped for the rest. You can see on the right there is a stand where microphone would have been mounted. The idea was to amplify the sound that the microphone picked up, a guy with a device that was like a stethoscope, it has these big tubes here would also sit there and listen really hard, they sort of worked, nowhere near as well as radar, these are established, devices like these were built in the 1920s and 1930s, but as aircraft move faster, the benefits became negligible they gave you an ever so slight edge if it was about to attack, but, but not a lot of time to prepare, this is the , also known as the last rope bridge, bridges like these which are woven from the grass they see in the bottom right used to be all over the andes but as far as we have been able to tell this is the last one. It stands in peru. The guy on the bridge is actually one of my coworkers. What happens in makes it so special is that every year, because the bridge is you so much it starts just that sag and look a little dicey for walking upon, so the villages come together and cut down the existing bridge and let it fall into the valley, sometimes burn it if there feeling dramatic and they weave another one, they bring all of these grasses together and they weave them, and they reestablished this rope bridge, so this is the last surviving one of what used to be an entire network. This just look like a kind of oldschool church organ in a cave. Which sure has its merits in terms of strange and wondrous, but youre not seeing the whole picture, these are the cave in the caverns of virginia and this instrument is there because of a man with an incredible name, leyland sprinkle. Who in the 1950s went spelunking in the cab friends and decided they would make the perfect backdrop for what you become the Worlds Largest musical instrument. What you see here is the council but what you dont see are the pipes of this church organ, the pipes what he did was spend years searching these caves for stalactites that would make the exact right sound when he struck them. So once he had found them he wired 5 miles worth of cables from the Central Council to each individual stalactite. It is called this delay take pipe organ. He he used to play the organ, it is now played an automated way, but cds with music from the organ are still on sale at the gift shop in the caverns. As they have have been marketed as musical gems from solid rock. This wonderful device which resembles a tiny carousel is actually an attempt to add a weather prediction device. Lets first exhibited at the 1851 london exhibition. It was created by a man with another great name, a name perfect for meteorology, doctor george meriwether. Doctor meriwether who is a surgeon had come to decide or perhaps imagine that when there was an approaching storm, freshwater leeches seem to get a little agitated. So he thought, how can i harness this meteorology wise and what what he did was built a device called the tempest prognosticator which is the very device you see before you and how it works was there is a circle of little jars in which a freshwater leech would be placed. The jars would be connected by little wires to bells, similar to the mummified monks now that i think about it. At the idea was that if a store were approaching, these leeches would shimmy and the ropes with jangle and the bells would ring and you would think i better bring the washing them. It did did not so much work. Which is why we have thermometers and barometers other than, these prognosticators which is sad because look at this, but, theres still a model in a museum that is exactly the kind of museum that we love to celebrate, it is called barometer world. Its in the north of england and its all about barometers. Go if you can. This is a place i first went to as a child and as such has made a mark on my brain and soul. It looks like it resembles a nebula or a galaxy if you dont know what today is. Each of these glowing lights is in fact a fungus met in its stage. The story is, these are the caves in new zealand on the mills island which is where i was born, what you do is there its a big network, you go in there and the final moments of wonder is that you get in this boat that rose along a Subterranean River and you can close your eyes, is very dark. All of a sudden this feeling of what looks like a universe opens up before you. All of these amazing little glowing things. They are fungus gnats. They dont last very long but the thousands and millions of them. And we adore a luminescence. One of the places in the book is also if you been to the Smoky Mountains at the right time of year you get synchronized fireflies. The same thing happens in a part of malaysia. And in japan there are the firefly squid that light up the bay. So this is a particularly magical example. Another place for my part of the world. I was born in new zealand but i up in australia. This is near minor of the woods. It is off the south coast of australia. It is a volcanic shard people get confused, sometimes i dont know what im saying. And it is about 1800 feet tall known as med. It is is significance comes from in 2001, two scientists were scaling these treacherous sites because they were looking for a creature that their world had given up on. The creature is known by many names, some call it the walking sausage, its name is more scientifically the lord island insects. It looks like a big insect but its the size of your poem. If you want to see it, thats it. Just imagine it this big. So the scientist in 2001 had gotten a tip from climbers that they had found the remains of these insects that had been thought extinct. They used to exist on the island which is about 13 miles from this spire, when black rats were introduced to the island in 1918 they began to disappear. By 1930 by 1930 there are thought to be extinct but, because the walking sausage bodies had been discovered by climbers on the spire there is reason to go in search, and in 2001 the scientists, theres about 225 feet and they found this little nest of about two dozen walking sausages. Having made the discovery, the next thing to ask themselves was what we do with them, is such a small, fragile population of a creature that was thought extinct. So they spend about two years trying to puzzle out what to do with these creatures in 2003 they decided to take two pairs to the melvin zoo to try to get the population going again. Unfortunately one of the pairs died but the second pair became the basis for what is now a thousand strong walking sausage population and they name were adam ne. [laughter] this one is okay. We have some fans in the audience, and so glad. This object is located at the Icelandic Museum of witchcraft and sorcery which is a few hours outside of go, its a good time. Good time. This is a replica garment but according to the curators who these existed in the 17th century. They are called, the knicker pants. The story goes as follows so the procedure of vinegar pants which are intended to bring you luck and wealth begins with a simple request, you your approach a friend who is male and an acquaintance would be an awkward conversation. And you say, say, when you die, may i have your skin. Only from the waist down, lets not be unreasonable. Ideally the person would say yes and you would wait for them to die, or become involved somehow dont ask questions and exude their corpse, fillet the skin from the waist down ensuring to keep it all in one piece and then don the skin pants yourself as a pair of trousers. Next comes part of the procedure that had unreasonable. Youre supposed to steal a coin from a poor widow which seems excessive. Im not sure why she already has to be povertystricken to snatch the coin and place it in the scrotal pockets of the nick from the ideas that the coin in the groin will attract more coins and it will bring you luck and wealth and once, yes ive heard rumors, once the scrotal pockets is replete with coins or begins to chafe, whichever comes first you pass the nick her pants onto the next lucky where every good luck youre supposed to do it one leg at a time. Like a threelegged race situation. We have not been able to confirm the veracity of these knicker pants reports but we thought the story was so good that we had to include it. So, welcome. [laughter] these are the they are located just outside the village improve until 2005 nobody beyond to the people this village of their existence. In 2005 a german explorer, tours, traveler, was venturing in the area and saw these falls. He thought, they were were are really tall. Like top ten in the world tall. He spoke to the villagers and the villagers said well we know they are tall but there so many things out there the world, so many waterfalls we just kind of got use to them. When the waterfalls were measured it became apparent there different waves of measuring waterfalls. Its a bit of a controversy. But by some measure these are the third tallest in the world. There are 2500 feet tall. My coauthors, dylan and josh visited the falls abo