The Flat Earth Interviews
Diary of a Koala Spotter part 2
The following is a transcription of a conversation between men at a logging plantation in rural Australia.
I have attempted to present them as accurately as possible, including some of the grammar used (Expletives are plentiful).
The discussion occurred over a public UHF channel in the early hours of the morning before sunrise.
It begins mid conversation between two loggers as I arrived on site to the chirping of cockatoo voices in contemplation on the UHF channel.
As the talking progresses additional characters (including myself) begin to weigh in on the deep philosophical and scientific topics being discussed.
(At times UHF crackle and interference impeded my ability to document the discussion and fragments were lost).
J: So B if the sun’s local what happens at night, how’s that work then?
B: Yeah well at least at night time it’s black which means you can’t see.. which.. makes fucking sense but day time you can’t, you shouldn’t be seeing the fucking blue.
15 seconds silence..
J: Maybe it’s just the reflection of the ocean.
more silence..
B: Yeah cos when you go down the coast you see the reflection of the fucking sun on the other side of the planet, you know, you go down the fucking coast.. yeah.. no it’s not.. you know that J, you know that.
J: It’s too early for this shit.
B: You started it!
Truck Driver: Don’t do it J! Don’t do it!
B: He’s jumping mate, onto the right side of the fence here.
Truck Driver: He’s a wet skipper..
J: Think about it though mate.. it’s gotta be flat.
Truck Driver: I’m getting out of this, copy.
B: Yeah you keep looking at shit about it or whatever and it’ll all make sense eventually. I only started looking at it to get into some good arguments with cunts down the pub. Fuck I’m convinced now.
Truck Driver: Got you fucking sorted you reckon.
J: Got me convinced anyway.
Truck Driver: He’s good at it isn’t he.
J: What do you reckon A?
—
A: I reckon I’m in the round camp.. although it’s pretty flat from where I’m sitting.
J: Fucking hell B! You gotta educate A.
B: Yeah.. here we go.
B: A, if a fucking ship sails from here to Hawaii are you telling me that fucking half the distance its going uphill and then the other half it’s going downhill?
A: Hmm, I guess it’s more about the perspective of the ship and that from wherever it is positioned it feels flat because the ball is so large.
B: Fucking hell man.. so where you’re at is flat but the rest is round.. fucking come on man.
A: Yeah well it seems flat in where we are here but we both know that it’s gradually sloping south towards the ocean.
B: What happens when it gets to the ocean?
J: See you’ve got him there, that’s broken his theory!
A: Well I guess I’m more interested in what you think about the ocean and why it doesn’t just fall off the edge of the planet if it’s flat like a plate..
J: It’s the ice wall around the edges man!
A: Ah yeah so in your theory the ice walls form is a big ring around the edge of world, keeping us on the plate?
J: Yeah yeh.
A: But then that makes me ask you whether the ice caps are melting or not?
30 seconds silence..
Truck Driver: You’ve fucked his head in there..
J: Well yeah they probably are man. I don’t reckon this is our first generation on earth like there’s fucking heaps of shit underneath us and in the sea (crackle) you know?
A: Yeah I can dig it. But do you believe in comets and stuff? Do you believe that space is out there?
J: Yeah I do, yep aww fucking hell. I’m all over the shop here. I reckon we are on like a see-saw of nature and as small as an atom floating around out there. There is more than one of you know?
A: Yeah i can dig it. Bloody oath. Fucking Men in Black style.
J: Yeah not wrong.
A: Anyway, I asked about the comets because, like, say, if a comet or something hit the ice ring what’s to stop the whole ocean draining out?
30 seconds silence..
Truck Driver: Fuck me you cunts.. it’s too early for this shit!
A: And if we’re in space on something flat how de know we’re on the topside and not the bottom..
J: That is a very good point there A.. Fucking oath.
B: Alright then have you seen them shooting that laser across a lake to test the curvature? They measured the height of the laser on one side of lake in Canada or somewhere and it’s a fucking massive lake. It was the same height at the other side. Where’s the fucking curvature?
A: Well i’ve gotta know exactly what happened and the conditions involved. Assuming they did the experiment properly the light could be being refracted by various factors including air density and moisture content and shit. Like a the way a torch bends through water..
15 seconds silence..
B: Yeah righto.. have you seen the fighter jets flying for hundreds of kilometres only a few meters above sea level. In dead straight lines?
A: I can’t say I’ve seen it but you’d think following gravity that it takes a consistent amount of thrust to keep them airborne and gravity will keep them in that position unless that force changes. So no matter the curve they follow, gravity keeps their relative position.
B: Nah that doesn’t even make sense man. The curvature is 8 inches every square mile. So work that one out. We don’t see the curvature.
Truck Driver: I always wondered if we are spinning at 1600ks an hour how come we don’t fall off?
B: You mean 3000khs
Truck Driver: There ya go, we’re hanging on.
B: If you spin a wet tennis ball up in the air everything flies off it eh?
Silence..
Truck driver: Yeah someone asked me the other day that if the sun lights up the earth how comes there’s no light in space?
B: Cos the suns local.
A: Well I suppose we can’t actually see light. We can just see the things it’s bouncing off. So if space is space and there’s nothing in it there’s nothing for us to see the reflection from.
Truck Driver: It lights up the earth though and there’s no light on mars or pluto or any of them ones..
30 seconds silence..
A: My understanding was that there was light there. They have their own day and night cycles. I don’t know if they spin the same speeds and stuff.
Barky: So is there light up on the moon or is only the glow from the sun that makes it look like?
Silence..
—
A: Coming back to the spinning thing and why we don’t all fly off.. a good question to ask is how a spinning top stays upright?
Truck Driver: Yeah but if you hit it with a big rock it’s gonna fucking fly off..
A: Yeah so if we are on a plate and get hit by a comet what’s stopping half us being flicked off the side of it?
B: Fuck.. um.. gravity has never been proven That’s a fact. It’s only a theory. If we’re on a flat earth the things that’s keeping us down is that we’re being pelted through space. Getting pushed down you know what I mean?
A: So like a bug on the windshield pushed down with wind pressure you mean?
B: Yeah.. Yeah yeah yeah.. yeah..
A: But what if we are on the bottom?
B: Doesn’t make sense, that trips me out that does.
A: Well like I was saying before we don’t know if we are on the top or bottom of the plates, what’s to stop all of us walking to one side and trying to flip it if it’s just space wind keeping us down?
B: But mate that wouldn’t be enough weight to shift it. You can fit the population of the earth, I mean everybody can fit in the grand canyon so it’s not that much. I get what you’re saying but nah..
A: But it’s got nothing there to support it. It’s flying through space. Like trying to throw a paper plane with a wonky wing it doesn’t take much to shift the trajectory.
Silence… long
J: He’s thinking A he’s thinking.
B: I’m not.. Well, like, I don’t see how you think we are on the other side.. like fucking.. think about it.. this dome is going fucking pointing outwards for sure.. otherwise we’d make do with the underside.. like this could be the underside.. yeah but..
A: I don’t necessarily think we are on the underside it’s just hard to tell eh?
B: Yeah if its the underside it’s ok .. but.. I don’t.. yeah..
A: Coming back to the dome.. so thinking about aerodynamics the wind has to be coming down on the dome to keep us on top but the dome is also what stops us escaping so there’s a gap that we occupy in-between. What’s stopping us bouncing around like snow in a snow globe? Also something with a round shape and a flat side wouldn’t align with the airflow heading dome first.. it would go kind of sideways..
B: That uh.. no.. uh.. it’s a dome.. it’s.. (UHF Garble).. from the bottom.
A: What is from the bottom sorry?
B: I dunno.. well anyway.. think about all the world organisation fucking places like the health organisation places and all them. Look at their logos, it’s a flat earth with an ice wall around the edge in every one of em.
A: Now we are getting into proper conspiracy, this is up my alley. I would say its pretty hard to have a spherical sign to hang on your wall or use as a logo though.
B: Yeah but they’re all government, like world organisations and they’d all got the same thing.. bit suspicious if you ask me.
A: See I think they leave those cues there to try and confuse us and get us worried about the shape of the planet instead of the fact that we are all being exploited for our work and money.
B: Yeah definitely Im with you there. We’re basically in a fucking prison. They just made it look pretty..ish.
J: It’s super pretty..
B: Shut up J you’re in isolation.
J: Fucking too right Haha! We’re all in isolation if you think about it..
B: yeah..
A: For sure.
—
Broken signal and crackling fills the radio before the discussion can be deciphered again.
—
B: Fucking it only has to be localised government or council. the community runs itself.. like yeah..
with this AI shit they aren’t gonna build anything after that are they? Now they are talking about universal basic income. Does my fucking head in.
A: If they wanna pay me to do nothing I’m not gonna stop them.
B: You already do nothing mate
A: HAHA yeah that’s what I was thinking but if I stayed home I’d miss these scintillating conversations.
B: Walked right into that one..
A: Won’t be long til they take a scan of Barky and have a Barkbot working 24 hours a day.
Barky: That’d be alright.
——
A: Are the sun and the moon flat? Are we the only half snow globe thing out there?
B: Who knows.. yeah.. another fucking story eh? Could be the only ones..
——
B: Here’s another one for ya Al. When it’s daytime and you’ve a half moon or something how come that half of the moon is blue if it’s outside our atmosphere?
A: My answer to that is that the blue comes from the light being reflected by molecules in our atmosphere and we are looking through that.
B: We’re gonna get to the bottom of this shit man.
B: Thinking about this round earth shit, I mean anyone that’s been up in an aeroplane can see it’s not fucking spinning and how could they land the thing on that spinning cunt of a thing?
A: Well if we’re in the dome we don’t feel the spinning. Like you don’t feel the wind outside you car windows when you’re driving.
B: It’s only the round earth people that think it’s spinning.
A: Have you ever considered the idea, if we entertain a round earth for a minute, that the human brain evolved here and made it feel flat because it was easier to deal with?
Extended silence
—
J: So if the sun is a giant ball of burning gas does it have oxygen on it? It needs oxygen to ignite the gas.. Where is it getting it from?
B: Thats uh.. well its a fucking star potentially.. so it’s like consuming itself if you know what I mean..
J: So that means theres oxygen on the sun then?
B: Yeah fuck.. I hear what you are saying.. I dunno.. you’re right. It’s own fuel is it’s own fuel I guess but you’re right about the oxygen.
B: There’s none on the moon, that why they wore the spacesuits.
J: Well that’s the thing. No oxygen out there in space. So how’s it fucking doing it then?
A: So do you reckon they got outside the dome to stand on the moon in their space suits or is the moon inside the dome..
30 seconds silence..
J: I was looking at the moon landing the other night.. looks dodgy as fuck..
A: Doesn’t it?
B: What about the car?
A: So they didn’t really need the space suits when they pretended to go to the moon then?
J: Um yeah fuck that’s it isn’t is A? Yeah.
A: Is the moon flat then? we could be looking at another plate..
B: Exactly.
A: Makes sense why they wouldn’t be able to land on it. They’d slip off the fucking side..
This piece is NOT competing for a cut of the $400 prize pool in NOPE Interviews: The Bounty as I have run significantly over the word limit and disqualified myself.
I had this project planned anyway so this open call just got me moving. I tried to edit it down but as it was close to nonsense already it was hard to manage.
Hopefully this inspires someone to do their own interview and enter the competition. Nope Journal seem really fun and I always support projects designed to build connection and collaboration in the community.
It would be great to see this project get some legs to have even more interviews to read. Get in there!
I can’t even make up something as dumb as the laser argument 😭it’s a wave. Please just look up the Coriolis effect man!
Good job letting them attempt the critical thinking. It really hammers everything home
This is amazing. I need this to become a podcast I can listen to while doing the dishes.