About the piece

On April 10, 1918, in a small town called Hamilton, Ohio, a man named John Symmes sent a pamphlet to every college and scholar whose address he could find. This pamphlet outlined his theory of the earth, known officially as the Symmes Theory of Concentric Spheres and Polar Voids, which stated:

"I declare the earth is hollow, and habitable within; containing a number of solid concentrick [sic] spheres, one within the other, and that it is open at the poles..."

He proclaimed in this short manifesto, and later throughout America while giving lectures, that near the north and south poles the ground gradually curved inwards towards the center of the earth and revealed within a series of smaller and smaller earths on which grew lush vegetation and was possibly even home to other races of humankind. He used this theory to explain earthly phenomenon like weather patterns and tides (water pours in one hole and leaves the other, creating currents). Though he lived by this theory for the rest of his life, and even gained enough momentum towards an expedition to the poles to submit a proposal to Congress in 1823 (voted down 56 to 46), relatively soon after his death in 1829 it vanished into obscurity. This piece attempts to take the listener on a journey through one of the polar openings into the worlds within ours and back out through the crust of the earth.