Tartaria: The Conspiracy That Built Better Buildings

Dive into the mysterious, muddy, maybe-mythical world of Tartaria — the “lost empire” the internet can’t stop talking about. Mud floods, strange architecture, suspicious star forts, and way too many basements that look like first floors. Allegedly. Maybe. We don’t know. Welcome to Everything’s an Illusion.

All used as context; any facts mentioned in the episode are still treated as alleged within the show:

1. Wikipedia – “Tartary” – Historical overview of Tartary as a geographic term for Central and Northern Asia, not a unified empire.

2. Wikipedia – “Tartarian Empire” – Discusses the modern Tartaria conspiracy theory, mud flood ideas, and its roots in Russian pseudohistory and online meme culture.

3. Discover Magazine – “Tartaria: The Mystery Behind the Lost Empire and the Mud Flood Conspiracy” (2023) – Popular-science overview of Tartaria and mud flood claims, with expert commentary.

4. All That’s Interesting – “Tartarian Empire: The Civilization Allegedly Scrubbed From History” (2025) – Summary of the conspiracy claims and why historians reject them.

5. Bloomberg – “Inside the ‘Tartarian Empire,’ the QAnon of Architecture” (2021) – Explores the architectural angle and why Tartaria has been nicknamed the “QAnon of architecture.”

6. Medium – “The Tartary Empire: Historical Reality or Modern Myth?” – Examines the gap between historical Tartary and the modern Tartarian Empire conspiracy narrative.

7. Library of Congress Blog – “Tracking ‘Tartary’ on Western Maps” (2025) – Looks at how “Tartary” appeared on historical maps and how the term evolved.

8. Various mud flood / Tartaria commentary & audio books – e.g., The Mud Flood Hypothesis: The History of the Conspiracy Theory about the Global Empire of Tartaria and related summaries, used for understanding believer narratives.