Object M: The buried Estonian mystery the KGB spent years trying to reach | Reality Check episode artwork

EPISODE · Aug 11, 2026 · 1H 8M

Object M: The buried Estonian mystery the KGB spent years trying to reach | Reality Check

from Reality Check with Ross Coulthart · host Ross Coulthart

If you’re ever injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can start your claim in just a click without having to leave your couch: https://www.forthepeople.com/RossIn this episode of "Reality Check," Ross Coulthart sits down with Estonian filmmaker and author Mart Sander, whose new book, "Object M: Estonia's Buried Mystery," traces one of the strangest and least understood cases in Europe. In 1969, a man drilling a well in the Tallinn suburb of Merivälja struck something solid roughly seven meters down, and the fragments he broke loose eventually reached Soviet laboratories that concluded the alloy could not have been produced on this planet.Sander walks Coulthart through the two decades of excavation that followed, the shafts sunk under the garden, the KGB files stamped top secret and the researchers who reported burns, blackouts and stranger effects the closer they got to whatever sits beneath the upper layer. He also lays out the counterarguments, from the meteorite explanation to the claim this is a forgotten first World War superalloy buried in a hurry, and explains why the physical evidence points in two directions more than a 100,000 years apart.What neither man can account for is why, years after the Soviets left Estonia, two strangers turned up at the homeowner's door with a suitcase of cash for a small suburban house that nobody had ever proven held anything at all.#unexplained #mystery #objectm CREDITSHost: Ross CoulthartExecutive Producer: Andy GipsonEditorial Producer: Meagan MedickSegment Producer: Christine JenkinsonAssociate Producer: Will TomasiResearch Producer: Rob JonesEditor: Anthony DiasioOn "Reality Check," NewsNation Special Correspondent Ross Coulthart takes a fact-based approach to tackle everything from unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) to mysteries often missing from the headlines. More Reality Check: https://www.newsnationnow.com/podcasts-newsnation/reality-check-with-ross-coulthart/ Email your questions to [email protected] NewsNation is your source for fact-based, unbiased news for all Americans. More from NewsNation: https://www.newsnationnow.com/ Get our app: https://trib.al/TBXgYpp Find us on your screen: https://www.joinnn.com/CHAPTERS0:00 Intro6:00 A Story That Found Him, and a Hundred Thousand Year Contradiction7:26 An Ancient Wildlife Camera, and We Are the Wildlife8:22 Shards of an Outer Layer, and No Way to Reach What Lies Below11:04 A Word From Our Sponsors13:10 His Favorite Teacher Lived in the House14:43 What Two Years of Digging Did to the Family Inside17:12 Viivika, the Caretaker Paid to Keep the Legend Alive19:30 Seven Meters Down, Into Soviet Laboratories, and Out of Estonia24:03 A Claim About Two Occupants25:37 Aleksander Dejev, the Villain of the Book29:27 Is It Still There, or Is It Moving Through the Soil30:13 Nuremberg, April 1561, and the Calculation That Led to Tallinn34:33 What the Vatican Archives Say36:03 D Generators in the Basement39:11 A Swedish Psychic and a Russian File42:03 Photographs of the Dig, and Nothing of the Object44:06 Igor Volke's Two Objects45:58 Bottomless Pockets47:40 A Meteorite, or a 1917 Superalloy Buried in a Hurry51:05 Books Flying, and a Dog That Would Not Settle52:41 Vormsi Enn Says Bury It, and by 1988 They Do54:54 Even the Hardened Skeptics Agree Something Is Down There55:41 Japanese Television Arrives58:48 The Public Discrediting of Aleksander Dejev1:01:42 A Suitcase of Money1:04:17 Ross Asks Mart1:06:10 The Book, the Movie, and an Invitation to the Dig1:07:22 Coming Up on Reality Check

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