The Basement: Alex Petkas | Julius Caesar's Final 24 Hours

-Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code WHYFILES at https://cowboycolostrum.com/whyfiles -Get 40% off your first Hungryroot delivery and free veggies for life at https://www.hungryroot.com/basement. Explore my Hungryroot Digital Cookbook "Gertie's Hump Day Recipes" at https://hungryroot.com/THEBASEMENT Dr. Alex Petkas spent years learning dead languages so he could tell you what the greatest men who ever lived were actually like. This one goes everywhere — a library buried by Vesuvius, a coup that broke Sparta, philosophers who got way too close to power, and why Julius Caesar wept in front of a statue. There are hundreds of scrolls under that villa that no living person has read. That's about to change. PETKAS LINKS Website: https://costofglory.com Join: https://theclassicalsociety.com/ Podcast: Cost of Glory YouTube: @costofglory X: @costofglory Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-Create your website today at https://hostinger.com/WHY and use code WHY for 10% off. -One scam can cost you everything — protect yourself now. The first 100 users get 20% off with code thewhyfiles at https://coveron.com/thewhyfiles -Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://whyfileslovesgold.com or call (888) 949-9172 now. -Ready to reach your goals? Visit https://hims.com/thewhyfiles to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you. On a December night in 1980, Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum, and six-year-old Colby Landrum took a back road home through the East Texas pines. A blazing, diamond-shaped craft dropped over the road in front of them, pouring fire onto the pavement. When it lifted away, a swarm of twin-rotor military helicopters closed in around it. Within hours, the three witnesses were sick, and within days, their hair was falling out. The doctors had no answers, and the military denied everything. So Betty and Vickie did something no one had done before: they sued the United States government over a UFO. What flew over Farm Road 1485 that night? And why is one key page of the Army's own report still blacked out? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-Don’t sleep on [@ultrapouches]. New customers get 15% Off with code BASEMENT at https://takeultra.com! #UltraPouches #ad -Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://whyfileslovegold.com or call (888) 949-9172 now. -Ready to reach your goals? Visit https://hims.com/thewhyfiles to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you. Dr. Brian Laythe has spent fifteen years pointing cameras and EMF meters at haunted places, and he'll tell you straight when something's explainable. Then there's the rectory in Cincinnati. Two people, two nights, the same thing coming through them — and a team that never fully recovered. We get into the blue flame, the beach balls, and the one room he refuses to go back to. Bring coffee. LAYTHE LINKS: www.israenet.org Book: "Ghosted!: Exploring the Haunting Reality of Paranormal Encounters" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-Try QUO for free and get 20% off your first 6 months at https://www.quo.com/WHY -Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://whyfileslovesgold.com or call (888) 949-9172 now. -Let Rocket Money help you find and cancel unwanted subscriptions, monitor your spending, and lower your bills—join at https://rocketmoney.com/thewhyfiles. A palace door that closes on its own, a tomb that marks anyone who comes near it, and a kitchen floor that keeps producing faces no one can explain. Three true stories, three sets of witnesses, and not one clean answer among them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-One thing to pack, five ways to power! Get 10% Off @Ridge with code BASEMENT at https://www.Ridge.com/BASEMENT #Ridgepod -Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. -For a limited time, get 50% off for life, free shipping, and 3 free gifts at https://mengotomars.com. #ad Donald Hoffman has spent forty years asking one question: are we just machines? He walked away from a defense-industry career to answer it, and the math he found says space and time aren't real — and that what you're looking at right now is one of the cheapest headsets available. We get into the beetles, the beer bottles, the nine proofs he's chasing, and the one story he's never told publicly. Buckle up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://whyfileslovesgold.com or call (888) 949-9172 now. -Upgrade your glasses with Zenni—go to https://zenni.com/podcast and use code PODCAST15 for 15% off your first order plus free shipping on US orders over $65. Styles sell out, so don't wait. For more than twenty years, a hundred people across Italy filled trucks with fruit, water, and industrial chemicals, then walked away and let the cargo disappear. They called the recipients the Friends: an alien civilization living in vast bases beneath the Adriatic Sea. The Friends could teleport supplies, read minds, and reshape the ground itself to build their hidden world. But keeping their bases running depended on something far simpler than advanced technology. It depended on the humans trusting each other. This is the story of a secret alliance between two worlds, the deliveries that sustained it, and the war fought to protect it. We also examine what the evidence for the Friendship Case actually shows, and where it falls apart. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. -Head to https://superpower.com/basement for $50 off your membership. Get 150+ biomarkers tested every year plus a personalized health plan and on-demand care team. Detect early signs of 1,000+ conditions. #superpowerpod Dan Flores has spent his life chasing one animal: the one this country threw everything at and could not kill. Poison, bounties, half a billion dollars of taxpayer money, and today the coyote is in Central Park and closing in on South America. We get into wolves, mammoths, the footprints at White Sands, and the dire wolves Colossal brought back. Then Dan tells me about a chicken named Chickie. Stay for that one. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-https://quince.com/thwwhyfiles -Free trial at https://shopify.com/why -Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. In 1970, a U.S. missile carrying radioactive cobalt lifted off from Utah, aimed at a test range six hundred miles away. It never got there. Instead it flew south, crossed into Mexico, and disappeared into a stretch of desert locals call the Zone of Silence. Radios die there, and compasses spin in place without ever settling on a direction. For decades this patch of land has pulled in meteorites, silenced pilots' instruments, and drawn thousands of visitors chasing lights that seem to answer back. We trace the real missile, the cleanup that followed, and the legend that grew around it, then separate what actually happened from what got added along the way. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-Explore my Hungryroot Digital Cookbook “Gertie's Hump Day Recipes” at https://hungryroot.com/THEBASEMENT -Download Cash App Today: https://click.cash.app/ui6m/re0kp2pw #CashAppPartner Terms apply. Bitcoin services by Block, Inc. See the Bitcoin disclosures at cash.app/legal/podcast. -Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. Some of the sharpest minds in physics have sat down in The Basement, each pushing at the edges of what we understand about reality. We start with the fundamentals, the Higgs boson, the Planck scale, the search for gravitons. Theories tested, published, and confirmed. From there, things get stranger. Entanglement, the double-slit experiment, the idea that reality itself is a simulation, and the possibility that the future is shaping the past right now. Physicists, astrophysicists, and researchers wrestling with the same question. Where does the universe stop making sense, and what happens after that. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-Ready to reach your goals? Visit https://hims.com/thewhyfiles to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you. -Discover how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold and silver — with no taxes or penalties. Get your free portfolio review and free gold & silver guide from GoldenCrest Metals: visit https://GoldenCrestMetals.com/thewhyfiles or call (888) 949-9172 now. Three Deaths Filed as Alien Encounters A man walks out for potatoes and doesn't come home for five days. He turns up on a coal pile in a clean suit, freshly shaved, with chemical burns on his neck and no explanation for where he's been. Two television repairmen climb a hill outside São Paulo carrying handwritten instructions, cut lead into masks, and never come back down. The note in their pocket told them exactly when to lie down. A fisherman crosses a quiet reservoir alone and never crosses back, and what's left of him has no wounds, no struggle, and no organs. Three cases, three continents, and in every one, the file ends the same way: no suspect, no cause, no answer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices