I hadn’t heard of this show, but I randomly found it on the Internet and ended up watching it. For anyone who hasn’t seen it, it’s about brothers Marty and Rick Lagina spending excessive amounts of money trying to solve the mystery of the Oak Island Money Pit (Cecil’s article, Wikipedia, CSICOP article).
It’s certainly not from a skeptical standpoint, as the producers seem to believe everything that’s ever been said about the Money Pit, including such ludicrous details as the flood tunnels and connections to the Knights Templar and William Shakespeare, and a few that I had never even heard of like the idea that the pit was originally dug solely as a red herring to distract from the real hiding place of the treasure. The Norwegian “Tree of Life” guy was an especially dumb connection to bring in.
However, it was enjoyable to watch if only because the people in it are fun, and many of their attempts to find evidence of the treasure actually make sense. There are also skeptical viewpoints on the show, even if they are muted. I especially liked one bit where Rick and Dave are sorting through some of the muck dredged up from 10X, and Rick keeps pulling out little pieces of junk to Dave’s derision. “'It ain’t, it ain’t, it ain’t. Why do you keep saying that?” “…'Cause it ain’t.” The show would be a lot more fun if it focussed on the people more and told the narrator (and Norwegian conspiracy theorists) to go home.
In five episodes, they made a total of two interesting discoveries, although they were very interesting. They found coconut fiber in Smith’s Cove, which was apparently verified both to really be coconut fiber, and dated to be from between AD 1260 and 1400. They completely ignore the fact that that puts it at least 100 years before the European discovery of America, which to me is even more interesting, especially since that date range doesn’t fit with any reasonable theory I’ve heard as to what (if anything) was put in the Pit. Of course, they also found only a couple of small tufts of the fiber, despite the claim that the entire cove was once covered in the stuff to act as a filter for the “flood tunnels.”
Their more substantial find was a copper Spanish coin from around the 1600’s. Of course, this wasn’t found in or near the Money Pit; it was found buried in a few feet of muck in a swamp. All that proves is that a Spaniard was on the island at some point and lost his pocket change, and that’s assuming it wasn’t planted, which is also possible (though if I were going to plant evidence, I would have done it in the muck they were dredging out of 10X, not the swamp). Regardless, it is certainly interesting.
I still tend to believe that the Money Pit is nothing more than a sinkhole with good advertising, but the show was a fun watch and I’ll check it out when it comes back next month. Anybody else watch it?