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Stuff You Should Know

Doggerland: Lost at Sea

18 Dec 2025

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is Doggerland and why is it significant?

0.031 - 3.555 Unknown

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.

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4.496 - 10.583 Josh Clark

Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google doc and send me the link. Thanks.

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11.083 - 15.528 Unknown

Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you. Here's the link.

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16.029 - 25.279 Josh Clark

But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age.

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25.899 - 34.138 Evan Ratliff

Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. Check out the second season of my podcast, Shell Game, on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

35.215 - 56.141 Unknown

Dr. Laurie Santos from the Happiness Lab here. It's the season of giving, and this year my podcast, The Happiness Lab, is partnering with GiveDirectly, a nonprofit that provides people in extreme poverty with the cash they need as part of the Pods Fight Poverty campaign. Our goal this year is to raise $1 million, which will bring over 700 families out of extreme poverty.

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Your donation will put cash directly in the hands of these families in need. And they'll get to decide how to use it, whether that's school transportation, purchasing livestock, or starting a business. Plus, if you're a first-time donor, your gift will be matched by Giving Multiplier, which means more money for those in need.

74.048 - 97.2 Unknown

Visit givedirectly.org slash happiness lab to learn more and to donate. That's givedirectly.org slash happiness lab. Hi, I'm Radhida Vloukia, and I am the host of A Really Good Cry podcast. This week, I am joined by Anna Runkle, also known as the Crappy Childhood Fairy, a creator, teacher, and guide helping people heal from the lasting emotional wounds of unsafe or chaotic childhoods.

97.18 - 117.366 Unknown

that talking about trauma isn't always great for people. It's not always the best thing. About a third of people who were traumatized as kids feel worse when they talk about it, get very dysregulated. Listen to A Really Good Cry on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Chapter 2: How did Doggerland connect Europe and the UK?

209.382 - 225.248 Josh Clark

Yeah, they think that it's possible. So this was really populated during the Mesolithic era. And they think that this area during the Mesolithic era was one of the most densely populated places in all of Europe.

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225.734 - 229.501 Chuck Bryant

That's right. And by the way, did you ever see Taylor Swift on her areas tour?

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230.624 - 237.878 Josh Clark

I didn't, but I can feel a Taylor Swift area coming on eventually in my life.

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238.719 - 242.326 Chuck Bryant

Through the concert, she sort of walked the audience through all of her different areas.

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243.729 - 245.653 Josh Clark

This is my knee, the left one.

246.534 - 247.877 Chuck Bryant

Knees and toes, knees and toes.

248.414 - 265.913 Josh Clark

So, yeah, I mean, it sounds kind of like, wait, that's it? There's like a landmass that once connected the UK and Europe? That's enough. Like you can see somebody making an absurd or obscene hand motion thinking about that, right? But no, listen. I know exactly what you're thinking.

266.154 - 266.254

Yeah.

266.234 - 289.375 Josh Clark

Stick with us because this is it's fantastically interesting, even though we know very, very little about it. The stuff we do know is so tantalizing that it's like the archaeologists who are studying this are just they want to just say like so bad. There's so much stuff down there. We just know it. But they're they're being deliberate and methodical. So they're not letting themselves say that.

Chapter 3: What archaeological discoveries have been made in Doggerland?

340.705 - 359.657 Josh Clark

Yeah, because you were talking about it's a cool name. And the name comes after the Dogger Bank, which is a shallow fishing area, a very productive fishing area in the North Sea. And the Dogger Bank is named after a type of Dutch cod fishing boats that were used for hundreds of years in the area. So there you go, Doggerland.

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359.924 - 380.481 Chuck Bryant

That's right. I hope we got all that right. But it's a pretty shallow sea as far as seas go, about 220,000 square miles. And it sits in between the UK and Europe, of course, because if there was a land bridge that connected those two, that's where the North Sea would be. It has long been a very crucial shipping route and trade route.

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380.461 - 405.253 Chuck Bryant

And as for this story, you know, it's pretty key that in the 1950s and then 60s, gas and oil reservoirs were found there and companies started licking their chops. And they will come into play later, oil companies and gas companies being as being actually in, you know, finally kind of key to helping out science, you know, and scientists in their explorations.

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405.47 - 428.571 Josh Clark

So yeah, that will come in later. Also, there's a lot of shipping that goes on. Apparently, that's a very ancient thing. People have been shipping things over the North Sea for a very long time. And then now it's become a really attractive site for renewable energy, as we'll see. So the North Sea is very important. And it's been used for a very long time. But its depths were just unknown.

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429.292 - 432.895 Josh Clark

People hadn't explored it. They didn't have the means to, really.

432.875 - 435.678 Chuck Bryant

Yeah, even though it's fairly shallow, it's still deep for back then.

435.718 - 444.849 Josh Clark

Yeah. 100 feet, what are you going to do? Hold your breath? Exactly. I mean, the moment you get down on the bottom, you have to come right back up. It's terrible for exploration, holding your breath is.

445.45 - 445.891 Unknown

Yeah.

445.911 - 459.808 Josh Clark

But there were some tantalizing clues that came up over the years that did strongly suggest that there was something down there that had once been above the sea's surface.

Chapter 4: How did the climate impact life in Doggerland?

553.197 - 553.838 Josh Clark

I love it.

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554.358 - 557.126 Chuck Bryant

Yeah. He's a pretty great writer, too.

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557.768 - 559.011 Josh Clark

Yeah. Interesting dude.

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560.475 - 562.922 Chuck Bryant

Man, we should do one on H.G. Wells. He deserves his own show, I think.

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563.584 - 563.845 Josh Clark

Okay.

564.854 - 592.262 Chuck Bryant

All right, moving on. As we crawl through Noah's Woods now, before the 19th century and those bones and that Morlog Pete started coming up, there were whispers then. I said the first whispers came in the late 19th century. That's not exactly true because during low tide, way back when, the water levels would drop and some of these folks living in the UK at the time would see these tree stumps

592.242 - 604.748 Chuck Bryant

And this is like medieval times, and they called it Noah's Woods with the idea that this was, you know, possibly the area where Noah from the Bible lived before God decided to flood the earth because he was grumpy.

604.808 - 627.476 Josh Clark

Yeah, and here was plain, right in your face evidence of it. So that had stuck around since the medieval age. And apparently, according to UK or early British lore, this is where Robinson Crusoe, who is the model for Robin Hood, emerged from the water and gave Arthur the sword in the stone.

627.496 - 628.999 Chuck Bryant

That's right.

Chapter 5: What evidence supports human habitation in Doggerland?

753.511 - 768.507 Josh Clark

But then there was a discovery in 1931 that really grabbed the archaeologists in the area by the throat and shook them until their tongues turned blue and hung out of their mouths. And it said, look at this. This is important.

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768.907 - 788.292 Chuck Bryant

That's right. Did you say 1931? Because that's when it was. That's when a trawler called the Kalinda was fishing off the coast of Norfolk, came along, and again, a big old chunk of moorlog was hauled in in the net, and they were digging through that. And this guy's got a great name. The skipper of the Kalinda's name was Pilgrim Lockwood.

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788.813 - 793.719 Josh Clark

So good. I would say that's a hotel check-in name, but it's just a little too eye-catching.

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794.24 - 795.341 Chuck Bryant

Too suspicious?

796.062 - 798.846 Josh Clark

Yeah. Yeah, it is pretty suspicious, actually.

799.18 - 805.71 Chuck Bryant

Yeah. Hi, Pilgrim Lockwood checking in. Yeah. Okay, buddy. What's your real name? And who do you think you are?

806.353 - 806.473

Right.

806.943 - 830.605 Chuck Bryant

So Pilgrim Lockwood is busting up this peat with a shovel, just like out of a movie, hits something hard, reaches in and finds. And this is the kind of discovery that all of a sudden, like you said, everyone's going to be like, OK, there's really something happening here. Because it was an eight and a half inch long harpoon head, a harpoon point carved with hands out of an antler.

Chapter 6: What role did tsunamis and sea level rise play in Doggerland's disappearance?

930.319 - 945.473 Chuck Bryant

Yeah. So they used a pollen analysis to figure this out. And later on, they were able to date this thing. And this harpoon head they found was about 14,000 years old, which would place it kind of squarely in the Mesolithic era.

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945.453 - 964.676 Josh Clark

Well, about toward the beginning of it, I think. Well, it's in the area. It's a squishy one. And the other thing that's so exciting about Doggerland and finding stuff out about it is we have very little information about Mesolithic people of this area of the time. Okay? Yeah. Okay, everybody.

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965.377 - 987.762 Josh Clark

In addition to all that, Chuck, there were some more things that came up during the 20th century that were like, there's something really interesting down there. They were finding bits of textile. Yeah. They found a Neanderthal skull fragment that they managed to, it was between 70,000 and 40,000 years old. Okay. We'll talk about it a little later, but there's a facial reconstruction.

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988.042 - 996.84 Josh Clark

You know, they love to do like the 3D. Oh, yeah. They have the guy smiling, just a huge, big, sweet, goofy smile. And I thought that was a nice touch.

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997.141 - 1005.133 Chuck Bryant

Yeah, that's always nice. That's like when they recreated what they thought Jesus would really look like, and he looked like he was on The Simpsons or something.

1005.173 - 1009.9 Josh Clark

Right, or he's doing the eye wink and the double guns. I've seen that before, too.

1009.92 - 1023.32 Chuck Bryant

Oh, yeah, that's classic. But despite all these finds, kind of throughout the 20th century, they still, the scientific community still were like, okay, so there were people there, but like this was just, they were just traveling along the road.

1023.48 - 1023.7 Josh Clark

Right.

1024.021 - 1025.262 Chuck Bryant

Like nobody lived there.

Chapter 7: How are modern archaeological methods uncovering Doggerland's secrets?

1091.301 - 1114.681 Chuck Bryant

Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents in small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. You know the shade is always shadiest right here. Season six of the podcast Reasonably Shady with Giselle Bryan and Robin Dixon is here, dropping every Monday.

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1115.002 - 1123.538 Unknown

As two of the founding members of the Real Housewives of Potomac, we're giving you all the laughs, drama, and reality news you can handle.

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1123.518 - 1131.968 Chuck Bryant

And you know we don't hold back. So come be reasonable or shady with us each and every Monday. I was going through a walk in my neighborhood.

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1132.809 - 1138.355 Evan Ratliff

Out of the blue, I see this huge sign next to somebody's house.

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1138.375 - 1144.742 Unknown

Okay. The sign says, my neighbor is a Karen.

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What? What?

1146.164 - 1147.767 Josh Clark

No way.

1147.807 - 1171.994 Unknown

I died laughing. I'm like, I have to know. You are lying. Humongous, y'all. They had some time on their hands. Listen to Reasonably Shady from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith. This is Jacob Goldstein. And we used to host a show called Planet Money.

1172.214 - 1186.773 Josh Clark

And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history and some of the worst people, horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business.

Chapter 8: What future threats do wind farms pose to Doggerland's archaeological sites?

1307.237 - 1312.344 Chuck Bryant

Yeah, maybe she busted into the room and said, that was no land bridge. Yeah.

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1312.364 - 1330.978 Josh Clark

So, yeah, and there's just this collection of archaeologists and scholars, and it's getting increasingly elbow-to-elbow in there, and hot, because there's no AC for some reason in this room, okay? Yeah. And it's July. Yeah. And there's a lot of rotting fish in the room, too, for some reason.

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1331.678 - 1334.521 Chuck Bryant

Yeah, that's a weird addition. Everyone wondered about those fish.

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1334.541 - 1341.469 Josh Clark

Yeah, and then somebody is eating leftovers of Vietnamese food, and it's loaded with shrimp paste.

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1342.109 - 1343.611 Chuck Bryant

Oh, man, that's shrimp paste.

1344.412 - 1351.84 Josh Clark

And then there's one guy who's got leather patches on his elbows, and it's chafing the people on either side of his arm.

1351.86 - 1352.881 Chuck Bryant

Oh, God, yeah, Neil.

1352.901 - 1354.843 Josh Clark

Because they happen to be wearing short sleeves.

1355.009 - 1356.39 Chuck Bryant

Yeah, Neil always wears that thing.

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