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Did Lead Lead to the Fall of the Roman Empire? · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Pulled up your number two
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: pencils because we have one for you, with great thanks
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  Speaker 1: to our super producer, Uh, mister Max Unleaded Williams.
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  Speaker 2: I hope you are unleaded Max, get the leadout, Williams.
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  Speaker 2: There we go, and I made a straight corn No,
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  Speaker 2: I don't understand the Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, that is none other than mister Noel Brown. Noel,
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  Speaker 1: how are you doing.
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  Speaker 2: I'm pretty good? Yeah, man, I'm excited to get the
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  Speaker 2: let out. Remember when they used to that was like,
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  Speaker 2: I think it was sort of a universal radio thing
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  Speaker 2: for like a block of led Zeppelin. They just called
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: it get the It might have been a local, regional
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  Speaker 2: thing for me. But for some reason it seems sort
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: of like morning shows with someone called the Goots. As
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  Speaker 2: you like to say, Ben. It just seems like an
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  Speaker 2: old school radio thing, like we're gonna get the let
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  Speaker 2: out this hour nine raw. They do call me Ben Bullen.
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  Speaker 2: The rumors are true, rumors about you forget let me Ad.
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  Speaker 1: I think it's Fleetwood met or Flee or Flee as well.
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  Speaker 1: We're not gonna flee from this when I am a
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  Speaker 1: research associate for this episode. Yeah, Noel, you and I
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  Speaker 1: have been talking about this offline because we used to
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  Speaker 1: hang out a lot off air, folks were We are
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  Speaker 1: phenomenally obsessed with this concept. It is a topic that's
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  Speaker 1: gonna pop up in a darker form on our sister
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  Speaker 1: show Stuff. They don't want you to know, you see,
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  Speaker 1: fellow ridiculous historians. For centuries upon centuries, some of the
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  Speaker 1: smartest historians and all of human experience have debated what
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  Speaker 1: exactly led to the fall of the Roman Empire. It's
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  Speaker 1: one of the greatest civilizations in all known history?
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  Speaker 2: What led to it? Ben?
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  Speaker 1: Okay, you caught Boiler, It's right there, you caught me.
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  Speaker 3: You caught the bad joke. Drama is going to be
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  Speaker 3: working overtime in this episode.
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  Speaker 2: It's a feature, not a bug. Max so uh nol uh.
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  Speaker 1: You and I remember the Roman Empire? Yeah, like it
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  Speaker 1: was only yesterday.
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  Speaker 2: It's almost as those histories repeating itself right now in
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  Speaker 2: the world we find ourselves in. I'm not sure we
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  Speaker 2: can blame lead for that one though. Yeah, that's true,
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  Speaker 2: that's true.
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  Speaker 1: We'll have to see what future Ridiculous historians say, we
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  Speaker 1: know it is impossible to overestimate just how much of
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  Speaker 1: an impact this empire made on the rest of the
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  Speaker 1: world up to the present day. Nol Uh, We've got
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  Speaker 1: to joke in here for you, bro. What factors contributed
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  Speaker 1: to the fall of the Roman Empire as far as
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  Speaker 1: mainstream history is concerned?
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  Speaker 2: Oh, Ben, are you talking about my favorite food? What
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: is your favorite food? Cosmic gumbo of course. Oh yeah,
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  Speaker 2: we used to say that on set. We used to
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: say it's a cosmic gumbo. It's a real cosmic gumbo.
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  Speaker 2: Shout out to Santa Claus and his acting career. Also
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  Speaker 2: shout out and rip to Biff Whiff. I think you
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  Speaker 2: should leave fame that the gentleman who portrayed Santa and
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  Speaker 2: that she passed away last year and really seemed like
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  Speaker 2: a lovely dude as a human person and obviously a
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  Speaker 2: delight in various characters on the Tim Robinson vehicle. I
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  Speaker 2: think Shirt brother Rip Shirt Brothers. Yeah. Oh, with that
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  Speaker 2: amazing song. I'm sorry not to get off the rails
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  Speaker 2: too hard. But one thing I think we both love
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: about that show is that it has emotional gravitas like
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: there are there are sketches quote unquote in it that
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: like pull at your heartstrings and that is one with
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  Speaker 2: our buddy Biffwiff. I used to be a p I
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  Speaker 2: know you were there, slapstakes, you were there. What is it?
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  Speaker 2: Was it a sloppy state? But what's the song like
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  Speaker 2: dangerous Night? Dangerous Nights? Thank you very much? Which is
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  Speaker 2: Vampire Weekend by the way, I think you knew that.
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  Speaker 2: But that band there's a lot of hidden Easter Egg
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  Speaker 2: band performances in there. And the Shirt Brothers song equally
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  Speaker 2: emotionally devastating is the band Turnstile? That's right?
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  Speaker 1: What if there are now rules which people started asking
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  Speaker 1: at the fall of the Roman Empire? Generally, yeah, yeah, yeah, generally,
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  Speaker 1: I'm not proud of it, but I'm not.
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  Speaker 2: Regret And if there was an award for segues, you
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  Speaker 2: would at least be on the shortlist to get it.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. I love it, middle of it easily, Okay,
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  Speaker 1: I'm here in top fifteen, and I appreciate you. Generally.
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  Speaker 1: The boffins in the Ivory Towers of History will tell
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  Speaker 1: you there was again an unpleasant cosmic gumbo of a
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  Speaker 1: lot of different factors that led to the decline of
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  Speaker 1: the Roman Empire military losses against what they called barbarians,
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  Speaker 1: which is also kind of a dumb thing. Do we
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  Speaker 1: want to be etymology nerds about barbarians?
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  Speaker 2: Do we want to be retroactively? I think we are.
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  Speaker 2: I think we are, and we should lean into it
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  Speaker 2: this very moment.
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  Speaker 1: So Barbarian was a term aside from Conan the barbarian,
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  Speaker 1: but Barbarian was a term where in the Roman Empire
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  Speaker 1: was exercising prejudice against people who spoke different languages. Barbar
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  Speaker 1: was like their blah blah bay bar So they were
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  Speaker 1: calling the elephant blablarians.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha? Are the Are these the individuals
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  Speaker 2: that occupied the Barbary coast? Or is that different?
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  Speaker 1: Well, there were blah blah about.
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  Speaker 2: It, Okay, bob blah blahs blah blah, yes, yes yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Uh. People selling people to people?
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  Speaker 2: Uh oh, my grandfather started this company with one rickety
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  Speaker 2: slave ship and a motto, people selling people to people.
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  Speaker 2: We're just hot on the classic comedy at the top
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  Speaker 2: of this show, Thursday is our Friday. We're also exhibiting
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  Speaker 2: some big Thursday energy and to your point, Pan, Thursday
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  Speaker 2: is indeed our Friday. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Other people will tell you that political corruption contributed to
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  Speaker 1: the fall of the Roman Empire, economic woes, internal strife,
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  Speaker 1: all the hits, you know, all the good ones, all
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  Speaker 1: the slow jazz, all the usual suspects. But what if
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  Speaker 1: there was another factor? And Noel, you and I have
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  Speaker 1: been talking about this for more than five years now.
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  Speaker 1: I think we've been obsessed with this.
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  Speaker 2: One hundred percent. Ben, And as you mentioned on our
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  Speaker 2: sister show, Stuff that, I want you to know, it's
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  Speaker 2: it's it's absolutely red meat. But we do love a crossover, Ben,
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  Speaker 2: and this is absolutely one of the ones that fits
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  Speaker 2: right in the sweet spot of then diagram between our
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  Speaker 2: two shows. Sorry, I had to say that so emphatically.
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  Speaker 2: I just felt very strongly about it.
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  Speaker 1: I liked it.
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  Speaker 2: I liked it.
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  Speaker 1: When you do the news voice, what if lead exposure,
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  Speaker 1: the exposure to the chemical lead number eighty two pb
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  Speaker 1: on the periodic table, what if that was part of
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  Speaker 1: the fall of the Roman Empire. As ridiculous as it sounds,
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  Speaker 1: there is a surprising amount of heft to this argument. So,
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  Speaker 1: first off, as we're getting into this, Noel, and then
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  Speaker 1: you Max, what do we think of as Americans when
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  Speaker 1: we hear the were lead. When you hear lead, what's
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  Speaker 1: the first image that pops in your mind?
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  Speaker 2: Get the let out block a led zeppelin? Obviously as
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  Speaker 2: previously mentioned, No, it's true. I mean we think maybe
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  Speaker 2: unleaded gasoline. The fact that they still have to say
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  Speaker 2: that it's always fun. I'm so irritated by that one.
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  Speaker 2: Pretty funny.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, we'll get back to that with Max.
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  Speaker 2: What about you?
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  Speaker 1: What do you think?
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  Speaker 3: I mean, this is dark, but this is honestly where
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  Speaker 3: I go as a Michigan I think of Flint, Michigan.
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  Speaker 1: You think of Flint Michigan pipes. Yea, those pipes, those pipes. Uh,
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  Speaker 1: some of us maybe thinking of old school number two pencils,
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  Speaker 1: et cetera. They contained graphite and clay, they never actually
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  Speaker 1: contained lead. That's something a bunch of people fell for.
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  Speaker 1: But I love what you're pointing out there and old,
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  Speaker 1: the idea of unleaded gas And I forgot to tell you, dude,
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  Speaker 1: I was on an old plane recently, a plane that
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  Speaker 1: was so.
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  Speaker 2: Old that still had ashtrays on the arm.
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  Speaker 1: I had ashtrays in the bathroom. My guy and little
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: flippy boys, Yeah, little flippy boys right under the sign
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  Speaker 1: that says non smoking flight, and I am still mystified
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  Speaker 1: by America's love of unnecessary signage, you know, unleted gas
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  Speaker 1: for real. Now in twenty twenty six, drug free school zone,
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  Speaker 1: Where is the cool school?
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  Speaker 2: Ben? You say that, but you know there's somebody who's
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  Speaker 2: gonna rip a dart on a flight if it weren't
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  Speaker 2: for that flashing sign. I bet you're right.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, we we.
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  Speaker 2: Rely on signage here in the United States because we're
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  Speaker 2: not very smart.
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  Speaker 1: Also a largely because of lead boys.
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  Speaker 2: Nice.
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  Speaker 1: Also a lot of our a lot of our road
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  Speaker 1: signage is super neggy, it's super uh, it's super mad
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  Speaker 1: at you and authoritarian. The nicest road sign I've ever
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  Speaker 1: seen is keep going, dude.
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  Speaker 2: I love that. Where you'll live, I mean, if you
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  Speaker 2: go to Germany, for example, the crosswalk signs are these
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  Speaker 2: lovely little fellas called the Amphlmann. You know, they're not
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  Speaker 2: aggressive at all. They're like little cartoon characters just going
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  Speaker 2: for a stroll. There you are, and you can join
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  Speaker 2: them too. Now, lead is still used in some fuel
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  Speaker 2: products today, mainly small engine planes here in the States.
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  Speaker 2: But you're you're not going to run into it at
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  Speaker 2: your local gas station. You'll just see a bunch of
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  Speaker 2: signs that say unleaded gas, and if you ask them
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  Speaker 2: to sell you gas with lead in it because you're
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  Speaker 2: a weird person or you've landed your plane on the
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  Speaker 2: local street, you may be surprised that they do not
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  Speaker 2: indeed sell leaded gasoline. Because the US finally, like so
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  Speaker 2: many other empires, the US fell in love with lead
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  Speaker 2: and then they finally figured out that stuff will kill you.
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  Speaker 2: Do you remember while back we're doing the series on
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  Speaker 2: inventors who die by their own inventions, and we mentioned
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  Speaker 2: this guy named Tommy. How could I forget Thomas Midgeley Junior?
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  Speaker 2: Big reason for the lead craze. Yeah, as we mentioned
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  Speaker 2: in that previous episode, our pale old Tommy figured out
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  Speaker 2: that the compound tetra ethyl lad could be added to
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  Speaker 2: gasoline in order to prevent that knock knock knocking on
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  Speaker 2: Heaven's door coming from your automobiles engine. Though this ended up,
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  Speaker 2: of course, having terrible consequences for the environment. He did, however,
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  Speaker 2: receive numerous medals for her his work as a chemical
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  Speaker 2: company executive and researcher. But it wasn't until much much
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  Speaker 2: later the public finally figured out that maybe uh, these
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  Speaker 2: were these awards were not warranted. Yeah, did you get
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  Speaker 2: some damage? Yeah?
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  Speaker 1: Here ended the side notes, fellow ridiculous historians. Now, aside
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  Speaker 1: from gas, flint, Michigan, and pencils.
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  Speaker 4: Led h what is it good for? Absolutely some things,
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  Speaker 4: several things. Thanks, and let's please not forget lad Zeppelin. Guys,
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: let's please not forget that Zepplin. It is a legitimate element.
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  Speaker 4: It's on the table with all the elements. Number eighty
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  Speaker 4: two on the periodic table. What's the abbreviation PB. That's
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  Speaker 4: so it's one of.
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  Speaker 2: Those weird ones that related to Latin or something, right, Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: number eighty two on the periodic table with a bullet
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  Speaker 2: on weight basis. Lead has nearly the same abundance in
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  Speaker 2: Earth's crust as another popular element, maybe more popular in
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  Speaker 2: the past, much like its weight cousin ten. You don't
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  Speaker 2: see ten nearly as much as we used to. It
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  Speaker 2: used to be super super abundant in terms of manufacturing
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  Speaker 2: and stuff. So, in addition to having a low melting point,
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  Speaker 2: being plentiful and extremely malleable, it is also easy to
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  Speaker 2: extract from the ground.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, which means that human beings have been aware
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  Speaker 1: of lead and have been working lead for a long
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: long time. You might be as surprised as we were, folks,
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  Speaker 1: to learn that lead is even mentioned in the Bible,
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  Speaker 1: not once, but multiple times.
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  Speaker 2: What was the last thing that we dropped that was
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: mentioned in the Bible that was a little unexpected? It
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: came up recently. It's okay if you don't remember. All
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  Speaker 2: I remember is that this is the second time it's
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: come up in a week or two. We'll figure that
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  Speaker 2: out and get right back to you, folks, or hey,
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: let us know to our jobs for us. The Babylonians
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  Speaker 2: used lead as plating material for recording inscriptions, you know literally, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: like a like a medium for for like thanks Ben, Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: the great great sound cue. The Romans used it for
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  Speaker 2: all kinds of stuff.
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  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: They must add a billy maze or some very persuasive character,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: because you know, if you picture the infomercial, it's it's like, Hi,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: I'm Benanitis and Lowell Nikas and Maxima Gadish, Maxima Gadish.
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  Speaker 2: All right, we'll keep it.
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  Speaker 1: We're excited to talk to you ancient Rome about a
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  Speaker 1: miracle substance. We call it lead. You can use it
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: in tablets, you can use it in pipes, you can
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  Speaker 1: make coins.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: It ain't like we don't have somewhat of an equivalent
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: in modern history with asbestos.
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  Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, that's a great observation.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: It was sold as like a miracle substance that could
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: be used for all kinds of stuff, to keep it
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: from you know, catching on fire.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Kind of similar to plastic. We're still rocking that one,
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  Speaker 1: shout out bodies. Yeah, they we know that. People even
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  Speaker 1: used a derivative of lead, what they called white lead,
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  Speaker 1: as a decorative pigment. They lead was in everything in
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  Speaker 1: ancient Rome. Lead was treated the way people treat plastic today,
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  Speaker 1: or as bestis as you said, through the earlier part
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  Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. And the thing is, it's a
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  Speaker 1: devil's bargain. It's a pyrrhic victory because in addition to
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: being very very useful, lead is also cartoonishly toxic and
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: is so bad for you. It is bad for everyone.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: It's not like gluten where some people are fine with it.
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  Speaker 1: It is bad for every single living thing.
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  Speaker 2: Full stop. Lead exposure can cause serious health issues, particularly
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: in small children when exposed to it at a young age,
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: causing developmental delays, learning difficulties or disabilities, damage to the
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: brain and the nervous system. Those, of course can you
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: happen to anybody, but specifically in those very very important
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: formative years. They can have very specific issues when young
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: people are exposed to it.
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  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, even low levels of lead can harm you.
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  Speaker 1: We do know that the ancient Romans appeared to be
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: aware of lead poisoning, at least by the time of
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Augustus Caesar, not Julius Caesar, the other one. We know
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: that physicians would literally write stuff like lead makes the
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: mind give way, not as a pretty cool slogan, yeah,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: not as a compli of it though that's way clarified.
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  Speaker 2: No, it's true. Still, they didn't really have any particularly
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  Speaker 2: good notion of the long term ramifications. Ben you point
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  Speaker 2: out in the dock here that lead is a bit
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: of an imposter because it's so similar to calcium that
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: human cells take it on instead of calcium, which is
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: of course needed to fortify the bones and other positive
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  Speaker 2: health effects. So a perfect recipe for disaster there, And
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: it didn't take too long before a big old chunk
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  Speaker 2: of the Roman population started to take on massive amounts
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  Speaker 2: of lead into their bodies.
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  Speaker 1: They sure did no. This leads us to the Grand theory,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: the concept that lead exposure and poisoning contributed to the
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  Speaker 1: fall of the Roman Empire. So the idea of this
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  Speaker 1: poisoning is actually pretty old. The theory dates back to
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  Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds. Historians were looking around at all the
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: stuff that Romans used containing lead, and they started looking
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: at cutlery, plates, tableware, you know, and they said, okay,
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  Speaker 1: ancient Romans used lead utensils, right, They sometimes had lead.
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  Speaker 2: Plates, cooking implements, right, and we're talking utensils like things
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  Speaker 2: that you know, you put in your mouth alte exactly.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. But it turns out this this theory was of
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  Speaker 1: good intent. They were asking the right questions. But it
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: turns out that most ancient Romans were not very frequently
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  Speaker 1: using lead utensils because that was more for the fancy
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: pants part of the socioeconomic pyramid.
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  Speaker 2: For sure, it would appear they were much more likely
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  Speaker 2: to have used wooden utensils and tableware.
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  Speaker 1: And if you're super duper wealthy, you're using gilded tableware
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: or silver, or you're using glass plates. But the issue
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  Speaker 1: is if people are using tableware at this time, they're
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  Speaker 1: going to tend to be from the upper crust of society.
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  Speaker 1: So it's possible that the leaders of the Roman Empire
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  Speaker 1: got more of a dose of lead than most people.
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  Speaker 2: No mad king syndrome, right, Maybe we'll get to me. Also,
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  Speaker 2: surely a lot of the proletariat were using like you know, pottery, Yeah, yep.
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  Speaker 1: No, that's a great point. So that enameler those decorative
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  Speaker 1: pigments would also be a vector for lead exposure. If
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: we go back to the nineteen sixties, we see folks
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  Speaker 1: like sc Gilfillan who picked up this idea of lead
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  Speaker 1: poisoning and the Fall of Rome and ran with it.
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  Speaker 1: He was so into this that nineteen sixty five he
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: published an article called in a Burst of Creativity, Lead
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: Poisoning and the Fall of Rome.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Also an excellent emo band.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: Also an excellent emo band. They've got just one album
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: from nineteen ninety three. But we think they're going to
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: come back.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: I think so too. They'll be opening for My Chemical
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Romance on tour before you know it. So this piece
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: or paper, I guess. It was argued that the aristocracy's
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: use of lead cookwear and lead infused wine led to
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: infertility and cognitive decline among the hoi. No, not the hoypeloi.
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  Speaker 2: The hoypeloi is the lower class. This is the upper crust.
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  Speaker 2: So the rulers, not the rules, We're the ones potentially
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  Speaker 2: getting dumber as a result of this exposure, which is
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: of course a perfect recipe for revolution.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, very much so, because now you can now
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: you can look at your rulers and say, hey, guys,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: I do think these people might be dumber than us. Like,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: I'm not trying to be a hot headed revolutionary. I'm
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: just saying, whatever these folks are doing that we are
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: not doing, is making them kind of dunderheaded.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You mix that with like, you know, a dose
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: of corrupting power and incest and incest it's a rest.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: It's a real recipe for disaster.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And then we see this theory about lead in
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: the fall of room continue to find interest through the
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: next few decades. People like the geochemist Jerome Ragu They
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: added gout to the mix. Gout. Yeah, well, sprinkling of
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: gout for a little bit of gout as a treat.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And it is historically in some of these accounts
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: associated with lead poisoning. This geochemist mentioned the following said, Hey,
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: maybe all the rich folks in ancient Rome having gout
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: was due to all that lead and the stuff that
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: they drank, and perhaps all the potted meat that they
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: were consuming. That's that's me, that's my take.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And to explain what we're talking about with lead
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: as a sweetener, ancient Romans used something they called sappa
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: sugar of lead as a preservative and a sweetening agent
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: in wine. So they would boil this syrup in these
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: lead pots and it would make a sweet flavor, and
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: then they would you know, step on the wine with
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: it a little bit. I think step on is a
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: drug term, but you know, I'm saying they would dilute it.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: The why with this stuff. It would lead to chronic
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: lead poisoning. It would cause infertility, dementia, and of course
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: gout because your wine tastes sweet, but you're paying for.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: It, oh for sure. However, a lot of us is
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: more or less various well intentioned forms of speculation. There
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: was not the technological means to gather concrete quantitative data
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: regarding these theories, so they were essentially just smart dudes
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: making pretty smart guesses. However, this all changed very recently.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: In fact, just last year and this is this is
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: where this came up on, so they don't want you
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: to know. In our weekly Strange News segment, the Roman
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: lead fall theory is in fact back in a big way,
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: though not the way you might think. Yes, we were.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: We are very well adjusted entities, so we definitely don't
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: stay up late at night texting each.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: Other weird theories like this.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: I am lying we do. So. In twenty twenty five
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: there was a report you you remember that I got
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: you and our pal Matt myself very excited. Proceedings of
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: the National Academy of Sciences led by da DA a
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: guy named Professor Joseph McConnell found that people of Rome,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: they were able to prove it for the first time
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: that people of Rome were ingesting lad on a beat
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: me here Max, on a fucking bonkers level.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like on purpose. It was a feature, not a bug,
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: as I like to say, as I wanted to say,
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: They were in fact using a substance that was combined
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: with lead. In fact, lead ascetates not just to sweeten
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: their wine through the vessels that it was being held in,
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: but just putting it straight up in there to just
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: make it a little sweeter. Give it that lead that
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: led umami. We all crave like a mixer and a cocktail.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: Huh yeah, a little bit of bitters in.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: There's a little dash of lead, right, yeah, I'll have
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: my pinots straight up with some lead.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah dirty, please, very very dirt dirty.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: And this practice of using lead acetate in wine continued
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: well after the fall of the empire. By the way,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: we do have to give some aberration to the Romans.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: They had an impressively sophisticated aqueduct system, which I think
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: a lot of modern people forget the catches. The coffeat
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: is here that their aqueduct system used lead pipes because
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: plumbers of the time loved lead. It's malleable, right, it
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: doesn't take that much to heat it and form it.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: It also leaches into everything, so we made pipes well,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: but we made pipes out of bad MATERI. The big
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: reveal from this study is that Romans were also breathing
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: in huge amounts of lead through the air from silver
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: mining and smelting. It was like lead at this time,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: you guys, was like teenage mutant ninja turtles in the
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: nineteen nineties. You couldn't get away from this stuff. Sorry,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: I still got the turtles on the brain.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: Where did that? That came up recently too? We're talked
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: about we talked about pizza of course, favorite turtles, and
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: I think we opened the discussion yesterday to the entire
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: Turtles universe, which I wasn't given the option to do
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: when posed with this question initially, So I would be
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: Krang or the big robot body that houses KRNG. Okay, great, yeah,
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: well you know that.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: We have sort of voluntold Max to get on board
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: with the TMNT lore Max. Thanks for playing along. We
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: also op Max is popping back on. Oh what'd you do?
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: What was the hand signal?
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: This?
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Okay?
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: Okay, horns, Okay, I'm on board.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: I thought you were doing that cool hand signal from
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Big Trouble in Little China? Do you remember that one
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: like that? No, I see what you're doing. We're an
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: audio show. So it is true to your point all
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: about the danger of lead exposure to children. It's true
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: that this toxic substance polluting the air probably got into
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: children's blood. It leads to what these researchers call a
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: widespread cognitive decline.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: Right with researchers including that lead poisoning or exposure rather
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: from the air alone may well have caused an estimated
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: two point five to three point drop and IQ's throughout
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: the entirety of the empire. And let's just really quickly
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: reframe the question here that we posed at the top,
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: which is a complex one. Did lead exposure cause the
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: fall of the Roman Empire? Just putting that one back
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: out there. So again, we're in a similar boat here,
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: not necessarily with lead poisoning, but with things like social
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: media and AI. We know that that stuff is absolutely
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: on a long enough timeline going to cause significant declines
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: in IQs.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and stay tuned for our upcoming episode on whether
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: IQ tests are malarkey. But I love that point there, Noel,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: because modern civilizations are not that different from ancient ones.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: The researchers in this study, in particular, they say their
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: findings represent the first documented example of human caused industrial
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: pollution in all of history. And the way they figured
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: this out, it kind of ties into that episode we
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: did a few years back about the worst year in history.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Do you remember that one?
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I was the one where all the real
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: bad stuff, right, Yeah, a lot of plagues. It was plagues.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: It was weather stuff. It was bad times.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, very plague forward with notes of natural disaster. Right,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: had a little bit of lead for fun. So these
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: folks did something fascinating. They went to Greenland and Russia
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: and they started hunting ice core samples. And this was
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: really cool because before this study even kicked off, the
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: scientists in those areas had spent decades and decades using
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: these specially designed large drills to go through ice sheets
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: in the Arctic, and they would come up with these long,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: basically ice noodles, solid ice noodles, like eleven thousand feet
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: in length.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: It's pretty cool the way they store those too, Like
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: they have to store those, right. I don't know if
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: you guys saw that kind of not that great season
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: A true detective. I guess none of them have been
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: that great. After the Night Country, Night Country, which it
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: was cool for a minute, but it ended really weird
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: and not good.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: I don't think it was I don't think it was original, correct.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: I think the third season was pretty good. It has
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: similar flavor to the first one and similar character study. Yeah,
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: some people are real apologists for the second season. I
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: just remember some of the dialogue being like utterly cringed,
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: but I need to go back and revisit it. But
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: that season that I'm talking about in Alaska involved ice
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: core studies and research stations and all of that. So
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: the thing that's cool about ice cores is it's like
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: a you know, a time capsule. You can then you
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: can look down through these massively long ice noodles as
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: you put it in and see what happened in the
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: past based on layers of material that have been deposited
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: and then covered over and then et cetera. You can
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: see what was going on in the environment at the
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: time and guess. And these were full of a lot
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: of lead, right, Yeah.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like dendo chrinology the science of reading
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: tree rings or the art of reading tree rings.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: Or phrenology. Wait no, aha, no, no, no.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Similar intention, but maybe not inaccuracy. Oh phrenology, Noel can
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: just for anybody who somehow doesn't know, can you give
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: us like a quick three sentence summation on what phrenology is? Not?
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: Good? There we go. Now, it's just a notion that
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: you could like figure out someone's lineage, I guess through
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: the bumps on their head. And it was typically harnessed
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: in order to other folks from different parts of the world,
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: not them, you know European experience, right, yeah, like saying
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: by studying the bumps on an African Americans head, for example,
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: you could see that they were inferior.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: And they got super weird with phrenology to the point
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: where they were saying things.
• 30:51
  Speaker 5: Like, oh, the bump on this back part of the
• 30:55
  Speaker 5: ear right ear right behind the ear indicates this person
• 31:00
  Speaker 5: as Welsh heritage, which means they are thief in a gambler.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: That was very good. That's kind of how they do, no, no,
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: no question about it. And it was also one of
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: those pseudoscience's flim flam quackery kind of things that could
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: be molded to the.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Very nefarious purposes of whoever was wielding it. So dendo
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: chronology is different from this, even from phrenology, which is
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: a BS science and I love that. Aside, we know
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: how the study went because if we go to articles
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: like the Smithsonian in twenty twenty five, we see the
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: journalist Sarah Kuta puts it this way. She explains why
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: looking at these ice noodles is so important.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: Sarah Kuda correct. She says, as snowflakes fall they capture
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: chemicals and particles from the air. When the snow touches
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: down in the Arctic, it compresses and solidifies in the
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: thin layers of ice, with those chemicals and particles still
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: trapped inside. I said, in these layerscientists can effectively peer
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: back in time. She said it way smarter than I did,
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: but the gist is there and it remains true. So
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: the team looked at layers of Arctic ice that corresponded
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: to between five hundred BCE and six hundred CE. In
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: examining those, they saw increased levels of lead pollution kind
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: of focused around a particular year fifteen BCE, which of
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: course lines up with the early years of the Roman Empire.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: And then they also saw those lead levels remained high
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: until one hundred and eighty CE. Some of us might
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: remember that date from history class, the end of what
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: we call the Pax Romana, the two hundred ish year
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: height of the Roman Empire. Oh yeah, piece of Rome. Yeah,
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: the glory there was Rome.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: This is a crazy period in history. It's an era
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: of for the time, unprecedented prosperity. So as a result,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: the Roman powers that were naturally making a lot of
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: currency because they didn't have you know, electronic debit cards
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: or chip and pen, So that meant they had to
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: do a lot of mining. That meant they had to
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: smelt a lot of silver, and both of those endeavors
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: send huge amounts of lead into the atmosphere. Speaking to
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: the New York Times, Catherine Corney in twenty twenty five,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: doctor McConnell from this study said, you know, to produce
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: one ounce of silver at this time, the Romans probably
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: also produced something like ten thousand ounces of lead. And
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: they didn't have you know, an EPA, right, they didn't
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: have some kind of regulatory body saying hey, stop putting
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: that crap in the water.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, knock it off. Yeah, hey, you guys, knock it off.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: So they look at like you're saying, these ice samples
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: and they find these levels of lead. This is concrete
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: evidence that lead was in the air. They started working
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: backward and they said, okay, if we know how much
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: we can find in the ice from that time, we
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: can estimate how much lead the Romans must have just
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: been into the atmosphere.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: Well, we can tell you atmospheric models suggest that's between
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: three three hundred and four thousand, six hundred tons of
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: lead being released each year during the Pax Romana. That's
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: a lot of lead. Ben that's more than four thousand
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: tons a year for around two hundred years.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a lot of lead. And the pollution was
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: naturally worst in areas where there was a mining operation
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: or smelting industries. It was reaching concentrations of one hundred
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: and fifty nanograms per cubic meter of air. So it's
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: very rank in they are lead wise. Also, air knows
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: no terrestrial borders. Air is not a citizen of any government,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: so it just flows. Man, it just goes with the flow.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: It's kind of a cosmic gumbo.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: It is a little bit of a cosmic gumbo. It's true.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: We're not saying that these folks were purposefully tainting everything.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: In the same way we're not saying that like microplastics
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: were purposely done. It's just another example of people either
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: not knowing what the long term consequences of things would be.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: There might be a tad of not caring and the
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: microplastics of it all, but it's not necessarily, you know,
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: utterly malicious for the purposes of poisoning the population like
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: on purpose. Yeah, it's not a thing here I am
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: apologized being an apologist for the for the plastics industry.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: No, but it's not a thing where the average person
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: or even the average man actual would have noticed damaging
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: potential on the way, right, You're not You're walking by
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: a mine and you might think, Ah, the air's bad,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: it smells bad, but you're not thinking, oh, this is
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: making me dumber. Uh. The researchers use more modern data
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: to get a bullpark picture of how much lead would
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: have built up in the blood of ancient Roman children,
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: and from there they attempted to extrapolate how those accumulations
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: might have affected the IQ of those kids. Do it
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: for the kids, right? But why focus on children? Why
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: focus on the kids? Is it like we.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: Believe the children? You know, they literally are, They literally are.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: It's a big part of the motivation of this research
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: to study and tackle current problems related to chemical exposure
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: of children. Children are specially vulnerable, as we said, to
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: lead exposure as their brains are yet to develop fully,
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: have yet to develop fully, as well as their body
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: and various organs of course, various organs the body. And
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: today we know that no amount of lead exposure at
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: all is safe for kids. In addition to some of
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: those developmental delays that we were speaking of potential to
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: lower IQ. Lead accumulation in the bodies of children can
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: lead to slowed down physical growth conditions like anemia, hyperactivity,
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: hearing problems, and behavioral and learning problems.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is serious stuff. And so our researchers find
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: that children during the Pax Romana likely the right. Yeah,
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: they likely had an extra two point four micrograms of
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: lead per desolater of blood just from the air pollution.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: So if they combine that with research on the more
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: recent lead exposed populations, you see a drop in IQ
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: that we alluded to earlier, somewhere between two point five
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: and three points. So everybody, according to IQ test gets
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: a little bit dumber. But wait, as ancient Roman Billy
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Mays was wont to say, there's more. This is just
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: the exposure from the air.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: That's what they study.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: They're not studying all the other sources.
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: One hundred percent pence. So for the average Roman kid
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: living and ostensibly doing okay during the pox, your life
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: would have been absolutely chock full choco block riddles, as
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: you like to say, ben with lead. And weirdly enough,
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: the higher you were in the echelons of society, the
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: more likely you were to have multiple sources of lead poisoning.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: You've got the indoor plumbing, right, You've got the fancy plates.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: Okay, sweetening of the boots, sweet wine, yeah, and so
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: sweet berry wine right right. And so it's tricky to
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: guess just how high these levels get when we factor in,
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: as you said, the why, the pipes, the decorations, and
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: so on. For a comparison to Max's earlier note about Flint, Michigan,
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: American children had about fifteen micrograms of lead per desolate
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: blood during the nineteen seventies. That's before lead paint and
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: leaded gasoline got banned. That likely different research. This is interesting.
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: This shows us a scary thing about Rome. Different research
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: from kids around the nineteen seventies. In the US estimate,
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: those US kids getting exposed to lead at this point
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: in history experienced a hard nine point drop in their IQ. Again,
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: please check out stuff they don't want you to know.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: It's upcoming episode where we dive deep into the dark
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: side of that one one hundred percent man, and I
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: think this brings us up to the present, at least
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: in terms of this type of research, and we have
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: a bit of an update. We can all certainly agree
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: that all of this stuff was bad news for ancient
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: Rome in terms of the higher ups abilities to govern
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: all of that. Kind of the question then, though becomes
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: is this enough to be a top five candidate for
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: what caused the fall? The actual fall of the Roman Empire?
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: And I think the answer there is nay, probably not.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: It's a bit of a stretch, right, I mean, is
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: it good enough to get shortlisted? We know it happened,
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: but there's something we wish people would mention more often
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: in these conversations. IQ tests are far from perfect. We're
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: talking about this off air, have we Gon'll be talking
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: about on an episode? Yeah, yes, here.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: We are shout out to our buddy Alfred Benney. He
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: had a good idea, he had noble intent. But the
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: testing itself, the structure of it, the methodology of how
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: it was derived, it is controversial because of things like
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: cultural bias, reductionism, limited predictive validity, which is, you know,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: going to be familiar to all our fellow honors students. Right,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: you're the smartest kid in second grade? Why are you
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: not the president?
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: Well, not to mention something that we'll talk about much
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: more in depth and give some personal insights into when
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: we do the IQ episode. But like, some people don't
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: do well with timed tests, and it can be a
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: pretty shoddy metric for actual you know, life skills.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the fact that some of Earth's smartest human beings
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: just get freak the heck out when they have to
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: take a test. We have all been there. Humans also
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: will at this still don't really understand how to define intelligence,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: much less how to measure it. So that's our first
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: badger in the big bag of problems. And there's another
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: problem with the proposition of LED leading to the fall
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: of the Roman Empire.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: Correct, even if we accept the you know validity, the
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: relative validity of IQ testing and measurement based on the
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: numbers drive from some of these studies, experts aren't in agreement,
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: or at least aren't universally persuaded that a provable two
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: point five to three point drop in IQ was enough
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: to do the thing, you know, to affect the entire population.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: And would that be enough to be a sole factor
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: in the kind of decline that we're measuring here for
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: of an entire society?
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I got lost a little bit, guys,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: because I was trying to remember the band that made
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: a really anomalous song for them, The Decline by New FX.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: Do you remember that, It's like a twenty minute song.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: Oh no, no, I do. I just remember we're the
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: Bruce sporting anti swastika tattoo.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: Yes, Fat byc show.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: Jump in here.
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: I saw one of my first concerts I ever saw
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: was No Effects at the Old Masquerade, and they opened
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: the concert by playing the Decline.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: They opened the concert with that way.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: It was pretty cool.
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: It was like, really cool way to start concerts.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: It's like a short film. They played a short version
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: of fifteen.
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: Then it was like, oh man, it's gonna be awesome,
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: and then they just spent the rest of the time
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: talking about I thenk They played like six songs after that.
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: I talked about strip clubs for like half an hour.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: Two different me to decline.
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: So we know that there is we know that there's
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: pushback on this theory. You'll speak to folks like the
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: pathologist Amy L. Pile Ilola speaking with New Scientists. This
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: pathologist said the magnitude of exposure and the correlated blood
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: lead levels were enough to negatively affect the cognitive function
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: of that population. Yet this is still a far pry
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: from causing the downfall of the Roman Empire. So this
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: pathologist is saying, Okay, yeah, we can acknowledge that everybody
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: probably got a little bit dumber.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: Mm hmm, a little bit not good, certainly not, but not.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: Enough to lead to the fall of one of history's
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: biggest empire single leadedly.
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: Yes, and other experts do agree. We've got Caleb Finch
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: and neurobiologists at the University of Southern California who told
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: science is you know science, Taylor Mitchell Brown of Science.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: He said, the conclusion of widespread cognitive client from an
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: estimated three IQ point decrease does not match the huge
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: productivity of the Roman Empire when lead production was maximal.
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: We've mentioned that, of course, and given props where props
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: are due. These aqueducts, the architectural features that they, you know,
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: revolutionized various things that were done when the lead was flowing.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Another point on that topic is, consider, folks, how
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: complicated it is for you to order a thing now
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: with an ubiquitous Internet. Consider how tricky it can be
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: to order your own stuff now. These folks were still
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: despite let exposure, they were more than clever enough to
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: figure out global trade networks as far away as parts
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: of East Asia with no online access, no.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: GPS, no Aii Asians. I think one could argue that
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: the things that we mentioned at the top of the
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: show that we're contending with as a population would likely
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: lead to more of a malaise and social decline than
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: lead did for the Romans. Do you think people were
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: smarter back then, though? I think the Again, we know
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: it's tough to measure this concept. They were certainly craftier
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: and they had to get it done. You know, I
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: don't know.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: I think people are playing life on harder difficulty mode,
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: So you would be more likely to be weeded out
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: if you were not competent.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: And you're stretching those life muscles a lot harder than
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: we have to.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Yeah, you're walking a lot more, you're working
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: out a lot more, you're exposed to many more old
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: school pathogens.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: Problem solving a lot more.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you have to worry about where you can
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: sleep safely, where you can eat, figuring out if the
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: water is going to kill you. Yeah, it was harder
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: back then. In a lot of ways, but we still
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: have our speed bumps and obstacles to civilization.
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: Today.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: We've had a lot of fun in today's episode. We
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: hope you have as well.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: Here's a question, though, real quick, can you build lead
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: structures in SIEV six.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: That's where we get to one of our last questions,
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: which is about the wonder of the world for the
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: Roman Empire? And here we go to UMX in Civilization,
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: the game the franchise by sid Meyer.
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: The best one to build to the Roman Empire really.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: Just kind of throwing me, give me three to the wolves.
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: But the Colosseum. Okay, Colosseum is overpowered, absolutely lousy with.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: Lead, absolutely lousy with led. Hopefully you are not lousy
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: with lead. But this gives us us some stuff to
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: think about. We can say the hypothesis or the theory
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: often gets overblown and pop culture, but it is pretty
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: tough to look at all this evidence and not think
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: exposure to lead had some kind of influence on ancient Rome. Right,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: they did something, And if you take nothing else away
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: from this episode, please, fellow ridiculous historians, the next time
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: someone at a bar or on a street corner offers
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: you a tasty dose of lead.
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: Just say no, dare to say no to lead.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: Thank you again so much for tuning in, fellow ridiculous historians.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: Thanks to our super producer, mister Max no Led Williams.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: Max has this episode persuaded you to finally get off
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: the lead.
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: I don't think the condition allows for ingestion of lead.
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: Get the lead.
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: Actually, oddly enough, it's like one of the seven things
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: I can have. I'm not giving up my lead, cage
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: free lead. That's a prit from Max's Cold Dead.
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: There we go, big, thanks of course to Eves, Jeff Coche.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: Chris vassiotis here in spirit just talking with both of them.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: And hey, Noel Eaves had a birthday.
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: Quite recently she had a birthday and she also joined
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: forces with the Tennessee Pal Dylan Fagan for a really
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: sick yoga meditation sash that I was not able to
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: get into because it's so exclusy and it's sold out,
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: But I'm looking forward to getting in on the next one.
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: Jonathan Strickland aka the Quist, he loves that he rubs
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: it on his bald head. Not sure. A. Jbahamas Jacob
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: is the puzzler.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lance, also our compatriots over
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: a ridiculous crime. If you dig us, you will love
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Zarin and Dave and Noel. Thank you so much
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: for this one. I know we've been cogitating.
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: Over this for several years.
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: Now, and I can't wait for everybody to tune into
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: the dark side of let exposure on stuff they don't
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: want you to know.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: to your favorite shows.