Rowan & Pine: A Feminist Folklore & Mythology Podcast - September 25, 2026


Pine Cones： Sunken Cities ｜ Rowan & Pine Shorts

Pine Cones： Doomsday Fish [Giant Oarfish] ｜ Rowan & Pine Shorts Spill the Tea Leaves #5 ｜✨Witchy Special w⧸ Katie Ortiz, Author ✨

Episode Stats


Length

16 minutes

Words per minute

126.46

Word count

2,053

Sentence count

117

Harmful content

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey, it's Adam Wild and Jax, host of the Adam Wild and Jax Show.
00:00:03.320 Jax, I got a hot take.
00:00:04.700 The ninja slushy twist is the best thing to ever happen to a party.
00:00:08.240 Okay, big claim.
00:00:09.380 Back it up.
00:00:09.820 Well, see, it's two machines in one.
00:00:11.120 Make two different frozen drinks at once or twist them together.
00:00:14.320 Okay, what's the catch?
00:00:15.460 Do I need a blender, a bag of ice?
00:00:17.300 No, no, that's the whole thing.
00:00:18.420 No ice, no blending, no guesswork.
00:00:20.680 Slush Assist Tech nails it every single time.
00:00:23.620 So even I could do it.
00:00:25.120 Even you.
00:00:25.840 Keep the fun flowing.
00:00:26.740 Sold.
00:00:27.260 Bring the party home.
00:00:28.260 Visit sharkninja.ca.
00:00:58.260 two weeks so grab your glass hit play and join the watch party because horror is better with
00:01:04.100 friends and maybe a little wine new episodes every other thursday listen to spooky sips
00:01:10.120 wherever you get your podcasts
00:01:12.180 me thoughts i saw a thousand fearful wrecks ten thousand men that fishes not upon wedges of gold
00:01:27.080 great anchors, heaps of pearl, inestimable stones, unvalued jewels, all scattered in the bottom of
00:01:34.680 the sea. William Shakespeare, Richard III. On June 7th, 1692, a massive earthquake followed by a
00:01:51.300 devastating tsunami killed 2,000 people and submerged the city of Port Royal in Jamaica.
00:01:58.660 Port Royal was the infamous haven for the real-life pirates of the Caribbean and its sudden sinking
00:02:05.080 was widely deemed a swift act of divine retribution. But that did not stop the ocean
00:02:12.020 raiders who simply packed up and moved further up the coast. Today, Port Royal is recognised as one 0.96
00:02:20.220 of the best preserved underwater cities in the world, with only a handful of artifacts
00:02:25.360 ever removed to be displayed in museums across Jamaica.
00:02:33.360 When we think of sunken cities, we think of Atlantis. The legend is an enduring one. The
00:02:40.780 very name evokes instant visualizations of a grand undersea metropolis, complete with
00:02:46.720 mythical humans who have adapted to live there. But was Atlantis ever actually a real city?
00:02:52.980 Well, no, sadly not. Invented by Plato some 2,300 years ago, he claimed that this utopian
00:03:00.640 civilization, which allegedly existed 9,000 years before his own era, was punished by the gods for
00:03:07.940 becoming selfish, greedy, and amoral, sinking forever into the ocean. Which sea, exactly,
00:03:14.460 he never bothered to clarify. While Atlantis remains an entirely fictional sunken world,
00:03:25.880 the theme of cities which receive divine punishment or have curses is recurring throughout human
00:03:32.760 civilization. There are plenty of real sunken cities out there, cities that through extraordinary
00:03:39.860 misfortune, if not necessarily the wrath of the gods, can now only be found at the bottom
00:03:46.420 of the sea.
00:03:49.300 Long lost Alexandria rivals Atlantis in sheer mythos, yet its sunken treasures are entirely
00:03:56.100 real and fully accounted for. In fact, explorers hit the jackpot here, uncovering two submerged
00:04:04.500 ancient settlements side by side. While Alexandria's royal quarter lies submerged just off the modern
00:04:12.440 shoreline, the sunken port of Thonis Heraklion sits slightly further out in the bay. Both
00:04:19.040 sites remain astonishingly intact despite over two millennia underwater, and their ruins
00:04:25.020 are strewn with ancient shipwrecks, heavy iron anchors and scattered gold coins. Intricate
00:04:31.620 waterways once wound between the Grand Temples of Thonis, echoing the layout of Venice, though
00:04:38.580 the exact nature of the catastrophe that dragged the city into the depths remains heavily debated.
00:04:45.940 According to ancient lore, Thonis was the precise spot where the legendary Greek hero Heracles
00:04:52.820 first made landfall on Egyptian soil. The locals knew the settlement as Thonis whereas Greek
00:04:59.700 traders appended Heraklion in tribute to their legendary champion. Myth also places Helen of
00:05:06.540 Troy and her paramour Paris within its gates, allegedly stopping over shortly before the
00:05:12.020 Trojan War erupted. The city is situated directly at the mouth of the Nile and was apparently a
00:05:19.880 flourishing international trade hub, a fact confirmed by marine archaeologists who have
00:05:25.780 catalogued dozens of sunken merchant vessels and hundreds of discarded anchors along the seabed.
00:05:35.380 Across the Mediterranean, the sunken Roman resort of Baia tells the story of pure opulence.
00:05:42.740 Known as the ultimate playground for Rome's ultra-wealthy,
00:05:46.380 Baia drew elite visitors with its thermal baths, mild climate and sprawling seaside mansions.
00:05:52.820 Julius Caesar and Nero built huge villas along its cliffs, and Hadrian breathed his last within its opulent walls in 138 AD.
00:06:04.080 However, the volatile geology that powered these famous hot springs ultimately sealed its fate.
00:06:11.380 Laiye was constructed directly over the active magma chambers of the Campy-Flaegri supervolcano near Naples.
00:06:19.040 Over the centuries, the cyclical rising and falling of the earth, driven by subsurface
00:06:25.600 volcanic pressure, gradually dragged the resort beneath the Mediterranean.
00:06:36.360 Not all cities that fell victim to the tides belong to the ancient world.
00:06:41.660 Take Villa Epequen, a bustling resort town roughly 370 miles from Buenos Aires, along
00:06:48.640 the salty shores of Lake Epequin. Famous for its therapeutic waters, it flourished as a premier
00:06:55.080 holiday destination for decades. That all changed in 1985, when a period of severe, abnormal weather
00:07:03.780 triggered massive floods that burst the lake's protective dam. Over the next eight years, the
00:07:09.720 waters rose relentlessly, swallowing the resort block by block. By 1993, it lay buried under 33
00:07:18.140 feet of salt water. In recent years, the floodwaters have finally begun to recede,
00:07:25.260 exposing a ghostly landscape. What remains today is a stark, airy town grid filled with bleached
00:07:32.700 ruins, skeletal dead trees lining former avenues and a long abandoned marina. Remarkably, the city
00:07:40.940 isn't entirely uninhabited. Reportedly, up until relatively recently, a single solitary
00:07:48.400 resident still lived among the ruins, watching over the memory of a town time forgot.
00:07:56.820 Beyond the sheer tragedy, sunken cities carry a dark fascination for both haunted history
00:08:03.640 lovers and dark history lovers alike. Before the earth opened up, Port Royal was infamous
00:08:10.380 as the most sinful city on the planet.
00:08:12.900 Powered by blackout strength, kill-devil rum,
00:08:15.900 lawless privateers, and a thriving sex trade,
00:08:18.680 the English had seized Jamaica from the Spanish in 1655
00:08:22.720 and quickly turned Port Royal's natural harbour
00:08:25.860 into a massive Caribbean stronghold 0.80
00:08:28.220 built on the slave trade and plunder. 0.96
00:08:31.440 It was a place so thoroughly defined by vice
00:08:34.080 that the legendary pirate Captain Henry Morgan
00:08:36.940 was eventually named its lieutenant governor.
00:08:40.380 Morgan died four years before a disaster struck on June 7th, 1692.
00:08:46.740 A devastating 7.5 magnitude earthquake shattered the island, which was built largely on loose sand.
00:08:54.940 The ground liquefied instantly.
00:08:57.720 Entire streets, buildings and citizens were swallowed whole.
00:09:02.900 Gazers erupted from the soil, followed by massive tsunami waves that dragged the ruins out to sea.
00:09:09.840 In minutes, 33 acres vanished beneath the waves, killing 2,000.
00:09:16.220 Even Morgan's cemetery slipped into the ocean,
00:09:19.640 sending long-buried corpses floating to the surface to mingle with the freshly dead.
00:09:26.200 While the earth was still settling, surviving locals turned on one another,
00:09:31.480 looting corpses and raiding flooded homes.
00:09:34.140 When the news reached the wider world, religious leaders seized upon the tragedy as a direct divine retribution for the city's rampant immorality.
00:09:45.100 But the surviving pirates were entirely unfazed.
00:09:49.100 Port Royal remained a notorious den of thieves for another 50 years, culminating in 1720 when the infamous Calico Jack Rackham was hanged at the city's gallows point.
00:10:01.140 Over the years, a relentless series of fires, secondary quakes and hurricanes, including
00:10:09.460 Hurricane Charlie in 1951, finally reduced what was left of the city to a quiet ghost of its former
00:10:16.720 self. Port Royal is not the only drowned city that seems to carry a supernatural curse. Across the
00:10:25.360 sea in England lies Dunwich, once one of the nation's busiest medieval ports. Over the
00:10:31.220 centuries, relentless coastal erosion and violent sea storms systematically drag the
00:10:37.100 thriving settlement into the ocean. Today, almost the entire medieval town rests under
00:10:43.220 the waves. Stonework from several of Dunwich's dozen submerged churches was salvaged during
00:10:49.840 deep dives in the 1970s and 80s, but local folklore insists that the town is far from quiet.
00:10:57.440 Fishermen have long claimed to hear phantom church bells tolling from beneath the seabed.
00:11:03.040 A legend first recorded in 1859 when a captain insisted he navigated his ship
00:11:09.200 through heavy fog purely by the muffled sound of a submerged church bell.
00:11:14.320 Today, walking along the crumbling cliffside offers a chilling view of history sliding away,
00:11:20.900 with ancient graveyard tombstones and ruined stone walls still tumbling slowly into the sea below.
00:11:29.100 A remarkably similar tragedy unfolded thousands of miles away in California,
00:11:34.740 where San Pedro meets the sea at Point Furman Park.
00:11:37.980 Known today as the Sunken City, its coastal wasteland is defined by shattered asphalt, broken foundations and fractured streetscapes from an entire suburban neighbourhood that began sliding into the Pacific in 1929.
00:11:54.520 Over two decades, the unstable earth slowly gave way, dragging modern homes towards the waves.
00:12:00.680 In the decades since, the treacherous seaside ruins have become a magnet for urban explorers
00:12:06.840 and street artists, turning the concrete rubble into a sprawling outdoor gallery.
00:12:12.600 But beneath the viral graffiti lies a very real, very deadly danger.
00:12:17.880 The sheer cliffs remain notoriously unstable and, over the years, dozens of trespassers
00:12:23.720 have fallen to their deaths, whilst others have chosen the crumbling precipice to end their lives.
00:12:29.160 local legend now claims that if you stand near the edge when the ocean fog rolls in
00:12:35.160 you can hear the mournful cries of those lost to the abyss
00:12:39.120 warning the living to stay far far away from the edge
00:12:43.440 these cities whether brought down by shifting fault lines volcanic superstructures or simple
00:13:00.220 human hubris cities that once echoed with the shouts of sailors the clinking of coins and the
00:13:06.840 music of sprawling imperial resorts, now sit in total silent darkness, ruled only by tides
00:13:14.500 and bottom feeders. Much like Plato's Atlantis, not every sunken realm was a brick and mortar
00:13:21.780 place. Off the west coast of Ireland lies the Ghost of Eif Rassil, an enchanted phantom
00:13:28.960 island that cartographers dutifully plotted on Atlantic charts from 1325 all the way until
00:13:36.280 1873. Rooted in Celtic mythology and known as the Isle of the Blessed, folklore claimed
00:13:43.740 it was shrouded in perpetual fog, appearing to human eyes for just a single day every
00:13:49.760 seven years. Like Atlantis, expeditions sailed in search of it for centuries, only to find
00:13:56.960 empty water and our obsession with lost worlds is just as much about the secrets we project
00:14:02.240 onto the mist as the ones buried beneath the waves.
00:14:06.820 These places remind us that nature always reclaims her space eventually,
00:14:11.520 no matter how grand our walls are or how fierce our privateers.
00:14:16.940 So, until we meet next,
00:14:19.400 if you find yourself wandering a foggy coastline
00:14:22.160 and hear church bells chiming beneath the waves,
00:14:25.640 don't linger to take a photo,
00:14:28.060 step back from the crumbling edge,
00:14:30.060 leave the lost cities to the ocean,
00:14:31.680 and try to keep your feet firmly on solid ground.
00:14:36.300 This has been another Sea Timber edition of Pinecones,
00:14:40.620 short bursts of folklore from Rhône and Pine. 0.98
00:14:44.260 Thanks for listening, and fuck yeah, folklore. 0.97
00:14:55.680 Hey, it's Michelle Mylett. 0.96
00:14:57.300 And Evan Stern, hosts of the podcast Spare Parts.
00:15:00.520 And hosts of a lot of parties.
00:15:02.740 I love making drinks.
00:15:03.840 But there are always too many to make.
00:15:05.800 Enter the Ninja Slushy Twist.
00:15:08.140 Make two drinks or twist them into one.
00:15:10.360 And I have to crush ice and blend and...
00:15:13.200 No, that's the thing.
00:15:14.020 No ice, no blending, no guesswork.
00:15:16.900 Dual Slush Assist tech does it for you every time.
00:15:20.020 Sounds like good times on tap.
00:15:21.620 Time to bring the party home.
00:15:22.920 Visit sharkninja.ca.
00:15:24.220 Spare Parts is now available on Roku Video in Canada, brought to you by Shark Ninja.
00:15:30.520 looking for your next obsession the creators collective podcasts is your gateway to the dark
00:15:37.160 the chilling and the downright fascinating we're a community of independent podcasts with one goal
00:15:42.940 to share the best in true crime paranormal tales folklore and unexplained mysteries whether you
00:15:49.020 crave cold cases that won't stay closed haunted histories that refuse to be forgotten or stories
00:15:54.380 that make you sleep with the lights on there's a show waiting for you in the collective and when
00:15:59.280 you join us, you're not just listening to one podcast. You're stepping into a world of creators
00:16:04.020 who love this stuff as much as you do. Check out the Creators Collective today. Follow the link in
00:16:09.920 our show notes to discover your next favorite podcast. We'll be waiting for you.