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CLASSIC: How the Black Death Came To Norway On A Ghost Ship · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Fellow ridiculous historians. We are fun at parties, and in
0:04
Speaker 1: a classic episode from twenty nineteen, we got super obsessed
0:10
Speaker 1: with just telling random people about ghost ships and the
0:15
Speaker 1: Black Death, ghost ships, plague ships, Dealer's choice.
0:19
Speaker 2: We were recently talking on our sister podcast, Stuff They
0:22
Speaker 2: Don't Want You to Know about the hantavirus and the
0:24
Speaker 2: way it potentially may have been brought on a ship
0:27
Speaker 2: of sorts, a cruise ship, not a ghost ship. But
0:30
Speaker 2: this is something that throughout history we often hear about
0:33
Speaker 2: rats in the galley carrying all kinds of icky diseases
0:39
Speaker 2: that come from far away lands and then infect the
0:42
Speaker 2: places where the ships dock.
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Speaker 1: In the thirteen hundreds, what we call the Black Death
0:47
Speaker 1: today sprang up in Central Asia, and it swept across
0:52
Speaker 1: continents and it killed millions millions of people. Have fundamentally
0:56
Speaker 1: changed history. And you know, to that earlier point, man,
1:02
Speaker 1: I gotta say, history does rhyme a little bit, and
1:06
Speaker 1: ghost ships are fascinating.
1:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, history has got bars for sure. Norway, however, might
1:11
Speaker 2: have been spared from some of this Black Death were
1:15
Speaker 2: it not for the aforementioned mysterious ghost ship. Tune in
1:21
Speaker 2: find out how.
1:25
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeart Radio. Ridiculous History
1:29
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show,
1:57
Speaker 1: fellow Ridiculous Historians. My name is Been. My co host Nol,
2:02
Speaker 1: who usually fills in here with me, is on adventures. However,
2:06
Speaker 1: never fear, because we have our returning special guest with
2:12
Speaker 1: us here today, Christopher Hasiotis. Thanks again for saving the show.
2:17
Speaker 3: Good afternoon or good evening, good morning. I really have
2:21
Speaker 3: no idea what time it is. We're here in the studio.
2:24
Speaker 3: There's a fake sun outside, a fake moon. I think
2:28
Speaker 3: that maybe actually that's just Casey's face shining and beaming
2:32
Speaker 3: in a rays of goodness.
2:34
Speaker 1: The radiant face of super producer Casey Pegram. Thank you, Casey.
2:39
Speaker 1: We need your light for this episode because things are
2:44
Speaker 1: about to get very very dark.
2:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, Ben, let me set the stage for you. It's
2:50
Speaker 3: a gloomy evening. You're in the northern northern reaches of Europe.
2:54
Speaker 3: The sun doesn't get too high, the clouds get low,
2:58
Speaker 3: the light even lower. You're sitting by the water by
3:03
Speaker 3: a fjord, maybe because you're in Norway, and just in
3:07
Speaker 3: the distance you start to see a shadow coming. It's moving,
3:12
Speaker 3: it's on the water, it's listing from side to side.
3:17
Speaker 3: It's a ship. It's a dark ship. It's a big ship.
3:21
Speaker 3: But there's something different about the ship. The sails are
3:24
Speaker 3: slightly tattered. There doesn't seem to be much life on board. Ben,
3:28
Speaker 3: what you're looking at it's a ship of death. And
3:33
Speaker 3: that's what I'm gonna tell you for right now. I
3:36
Speaker 3: just creeped myself out a little bit.
3:37
Speaker 2: Wow, that was great.
3:38
Speaker 3: There's a ship of death coming towards you. Uh, Let's
3:42
Speaker 3: let's rewind a little bit and get a little context.
3:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's let's rewind. So I was spellbound, man, Casey,
3:49
Speaker 1: did you like that? I was wrapped with attention over here? Yeah,
3:52
Speaker 1: Casey on the case.
3:53
Speaker 3: That was great.
3:55
Speaker 1: Uh So, yes, let's let's step back just a tad here.
4:00
Speaker 3: Why why are we talking about Norway now? And when
4:03
Speaker 3: are we talking about? Right? Why? And when?
4:06
Speaker 1: Two very important questions were the show whom?
4:10
Speaker 3: Wherefore?
4:11
Speaker 2: So?
4:12
Speaker 3: Whence? Whether I'm going to toss them all to you?
4:16
Speaker 1: Well, don't forget whither. I feel like whither needs to
4:19
Speaker 1: get whither the point of this story. Yes, yes, to
4:23
Speaker 1: the very same Christophers. So we are traveling back to
4:28
Speaker 1: the fourteenth century to the thirteen hundreds. If you are,
4:34
Speaker 1: you know, on some level aware of European history at
4:37
Speaker 1: the time, then you will have heard of the catastrophic
4:43
Speaker 1: fatal affliction known today as the Black Death. From the
4:49
Speaker 1: years thirteen forty six to thirteen fifty three. This spread
4:55
Speaker 1: across the European continent. The name only came several centuries later.
5:03
Speaker 1: We called it the Black Death or the Black Plague
5:08
Speaker 1: as a retronym. But Genoese merchant ships brought this plague
5:14
Speaker 1: to Sicily in the early thirteen forties, and no one
5:20
Speaker 1: was quite prepared for the magnitude of damage that this
5:26
Speaker 1: and havoc that this thing would wreak.
5:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the the bubonic plague as it's more
5:32
Speaker 3: technically known, because you know, one of the symptoms are
5:35
Speaker 3: these bubos or growths that infected people get, and it's
5:39
Speaker 3: just got such a magnificently high mortality rate. And when
5:44
Speaker 3: a human contracts a disease, you have a couple of
5:48
Speaker 3: days for it to show up, a couple of days
5:50
Speaker 3: of symptoms, and then you die. It's it's a miserable,
5:55
Speaker 3: miserable way to go. The plague and the time we're
5:58
Speaker 3: talking about it. In the middle of the fourteenth century
6:02
Speaker 3: was generally regarded as the first Black Death and Black plague.
6:05
Speaker 3: Right Europe, the Middle East, Northern Africa, parts of Western
6:08
Speaker 3: Asia all kind of experienced different waves. And then there
6:11
Speaker 3: was a bigger return of the plague in kind of
6:15
Speaker 3: the seventeen hundreds. But yeah, it wiped out massive portions
6:19
Speaker 3: of the population. Estimates are really hard to come by,
6:23
Speaker 3: and sometimes, you know, things are inflated. Population counts aren't
6:27
Speaker 3: as accurate. But if you said a third of the
6:30
Speaker 3: population of Europe died over the span of time, that's
6:35
Speaker 3: pretty pretty right on, right right. Yeah.
6:38
Speaker 1: Nowadays we can reasonably guess that this was caused by
6:44
Speaker 1: a bacterium called Urcinia pesties. This resulted in several different
6:50
Speaker 1: forms of plague, and our best guess for the origin
6:55
Speaker 1: point of this affliction is somewhere in Central Asia, the
6:59
Speaker 1: dry places of Central Asia, traveling along the Silk Road,
7:03
Speaker 1: reaching Crimea in the as you said, the mid fourteenth century.
7:09
Speaker 1: Most likely it was it was carried by not rats,
7:15
Speaker 1: but the fleas living on the rats, technically black rats
7:20
Speaker 1: that traveled on these merchant ships, which was one of
7:24
Speaker 1: the most efficacious If you wanted to spread a disease
7:30
Speaker 1: internationally at this time, spreading it via a merchant ship
7:34
Speaker 1: is brilliant. You could not have planned it better if
7:37
Speaker 1: you were trying to, you know.
7:39
Speaker 3: So there's this concept of rats being plague bearers and
7:44
Speaker 3: carrying this pestilence. But I believe and our good friends
7:47
Speaker 3: at house stuffworks dot com may have dug into this
7:50
Speaker 3: in the past, that there's something is ringing a bell
7:53
Speaker 3: in my deep in my memory that there's been some
7:55
Speaker 3: research done that it was actually not rats that originated
7:58
Speaker 3: the black plague kind of rodent zero, if you will,
8:03
Speaker 3: but it was more something like a squirrel or a
8:05
Speaker 3: chipmunk or something much cuter but still more sinister.
8:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, you know what, I could see that because
8:12
Speaker 1: the flea would probably not discriminate and a lot of historically,
8:19
Speaker 1: a lot of human leisure time has been spent vilifying rats.
8:24
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, what I will do is I will dig
8:26
Speaker 3: into the archives at houstuffworks dot com, and when I
8:30
Speaker 3: figure that out, I will share that on Ridiculous Historians,
8:33
Speaker 3: the Facebook group for this podcast that you're listening to
8:37
Speaker 3: right now. If you guys are not on Facebook, let
8:39
Speaker 3: me just switch from Death and disease mode to promotional
8:43
Speaker 3: and social media mode. Point your machines over towards Facebook
8:48
Speaker 3: and look at ridiculous historians. You can chat with Ben,
8:52
Speaker 3: you can chat with Noel. Casey's there sometimes I'm around. Yeah,
8:56
Speaker 3: I was sharing info about stories. But I will post
8:58
Speaker 3: a link to that story over there on the site.
9:01
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Christopher, trying to find some light
9:04
Speaker 3: in this, this grim grim tail.
9:06
Speaker 1: This is a very grim grim tail. And we know
9:09
Speaker 1: that the disease itself appears to be ancient. We have
9:14
Speaker 1: some fairly compelling arguments that it hit parts of the
9:17
Speaker 1: world in the human population way before the thirteen hundreds.
9:22
Speaker 1: In How Stuff Works by our own In an article
9:25
Speaker 1: by our own Tracy Wilson, good friend of ours, good
9:28
Speaker 1: friend of the show, one of the hosts of stuff
9:30
Speaker 1: you missed in history class. In her work on How
9:33
Speaker 1: Stuff Works, she notes that Justinian's plague from five p
9:38
Speaker 1: forty two to five forty six AD was thought.
9:42
Speaker 3: To be.
9:44
Speaker 1: One of the pandemics caused by you know, the bubonic
9:49
Speaker 1: plague or the black plague. As you said, Christopher, this thing,
9:53
Speaker 1: when it strikes strikes hard, it strikes fast. It doesn't
9:58
Speaker 1: tick all the boxes for a perfect disease, because a
10:02
Speaker 1: perfect disease would hopefully have a longer gestation rate such
10:08
Speaker 1: that it allows for more infections. And this thing was
10:12
Speaker 1: knocking people down left and right. So we mentioned Norway. Right,
10:21
Speaker 1: when we mentioned Norway, we need to talk a little
10:24
Speaker 1: bit about the cycle of infection for this disease. So
10:28
Speaker 1: plague was spread considerable distances by these rats on these ships.
10:33
Speaker 1: And the first thing you would think is, well, how
10:35
Speaker 1: long does a rat live in the wild? How long
10:37
Speaker 1: does a rat live running for its life in a
10:40
Speaker 1: ship right where it's probably going to be maybe tolerated,
10:44
Speaker 1: but killed if the opportunity.
10:46
Speaker 3: Pretty so swept overboard, tossing a bag eaten, Yeah, eaten,
10:51
Speaker 3: worse comes to worse.
10:52
Speaker 1: So these rats would and did die at a.
10:56
Speaker 3: Pretty high rate, right, I mean they had plague, they
10:59
Speaker 3: had had the plague.
11:02
Speaker 1: That's a really good point. But their fleas would survive
11:05
Speaker 1: and they would find new rat hosts wherever they landed,
11:08
Speaker 1: because docs were dirty, filthy places that were home to
11:12
Speaker 1: lots like rats and insects and other.
11:16
Speaker 3: Acum of things for all of those things to eat.
11:18
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, exactly, And.
11:20
Speaker 3: Those rats would die. But then the fleas who lived
11:24
Speaker 3: on them didn't necessarily die and they needed a new
11:28
Speaker 3: place to live. And when you're on a ship, if
11:31
Speaker 3: you don't have the rats to live on, who are
11:32
Speaker 3: you going to jump to? People? Whatever?
11:34
Speaker 1: The next warm mammal is yeah.
11:36
Speaker 3: You and me and old Swaby over there on your
11:39
Speaker 3: pony from their previous episode. My pony's name is not Swaby.
11:42
Speaker 3: My pony does not swap that day, although you know what,
11:47
Speaker 3: actually maybe she does. I think if we could train
11:50
Speaker 3: a pony to tie them up to her tail and
11:53
Speaker 3: swab decks and avoid the plague. Okay, I'm down with that.
11:58
Speaker 3: All right, let's let's uh, let's listeners. I don't know
12:01
Speaker 3: what we're talking about. And if this is your first
12:03
Speaker 3: episode of Ridiculous History, go check out last our most
12:07
Speaker 3: previous episode, where we talked about something a little more
12:10
Speaker 3: lighthearted than boils and pustules and death, where we talked
12:14
Speaker 3: about ponies and princesses. It was a little more fun, yes,
12:17
Speaker 3: a lot more fun. I know.
12:19
Speaker 1: It's always fun being here with you, Ben and Casey,
12:22
Speaker 1: thanks man. And Noel of course is here in spirit.
12:25
Speaker 3: He doesn't have to deal with boils and pustules and
12:28
Speaker 3: black death and rats and fleas and scratching and itching
12:31
Speaker 3: and bleeding and ghost ships.
12:34
Speaker 1: I don't know that.
12:34
Speaker 3: I don't know.
12:35
Speaker 1: I don't know what he's doing.
12:36
Speaker 3: That's true, Yeah, he might be. Nole's idea of a
12:39
Speaker 3: vacation is very different than mine I have found over
12:42
Speaker 3: the years.
12:43
Speaker 1: That's quite true.
12:45
Speaker 4: So, speaking of what we could call Nole's idea of
12:49
Speaker 4: a vacation, the bubonic blague, at least at the time
12:53
Speaker 4: of this particular wave of plague, this particular pandemic, people
12:57
Speaker 4: didn't have, for instance, theory, the idea of washing one's hands,
13:03
Speaker 4: the idea that infections could be carried by a life
13:07
Speaker 4: form as small as to be invisible to the naked eye.
13:13
Speaker 3: It was.
13:13
Speaker 1: It was an alien concept, you know, And a lot
13:16
Speaker 1: of what we would consider medical treatment at this time
13:22
Speaker 1: was fundamentally intertwined with religious belief.
13:26
Speaker 3: That's true. But while the specifics of transmission of bubonic
13:29
Speaker 3: plague weren't known to people at the time, there was
13:32
Speaker 3: knowledge that people would transmit it from person to person,
13:36
Speaker 3: perhaps from animal to person, not knowing how, but knowing
13:39
Speaker 3: that it did happen, And so word of plague spread
13:44
Speaker 3: before plague it self spread necessarily, and so a lot
13:49
Speaker 3: of these communities, especially the merchant marine communities, the ones
13:52
Speaker 3: on the on the coast, put in place safeguard so
13:57
Speaker 3: they knew that an infected person could spread plague to
14:00
Speaker 3: another infected person. So if we're back in Norway, you know,
14:07
Speaker 3: they essentially established offshore quarantines where if a ship is
14:11
Speaker 3: coming into trade goods, you couldn't just bring the ship
14:14
Speaker 3: into harbor and have no control over who or what
14:18
Speaker 3: gets off board. You would have to stay a little
14:20
Speaker 3: bit off offshore and only uninfected sailors or crewmen could
14:25
Speaker 3: then come into town. And this was a way of
14:28
Speaker 3: these cities, which are in pretty remote places, remaining plague
14:33
Speaker 3: free and trying to protect themselves and putting in place
14:36
Speaker 3: as much as they could preventative measures to keep their
14:40
Speaker 3: population safe. And it totally worked. When a ship that
14:44
Speaker 3: had let's say half the crew had plague, they wouldn't
14:49
Speaker 3: come into the shore. They would stop and the ones
14:52
Speaker 3: without plague would come in and do the trading. Everything
14:55
Speaker 3: was working fine, ideally, ideally right, And that worked fine
15:00
Speaker 3: when a few of the crew members had plague. It
15:02
Speaker 3: worked fine when some of the crew members had plague,
15:05
Speaker 3: or even many of the crew members had plague. It
15:08
Speaker 3: did not work so well when everybody died.
15:13
Speaker 1: Right, right, And this is where our story takes the
15:17
Speaker 1: turn to Norway. In thirteen forty nine, an English merchant
15:27
Speaker 1: ship carrying wool set out northward. They were bound for
15:33
Speaker 1: the north and along the way they realized they had
15:37
Speaker 1: lost the lottery of disease and crew members were getting
15:42
Speaker 1: the plague. They didn't all die once, but they were
15:45
Speaker 1: dying one by one and not being dummies themselves. The
15:51
Speaker 1: people who were surviving or who had not yet contracted
15:56
Speaker 1: the plague, attempted to quarantine the sick. These people have
16:00
Speaker 1: the plague. Again, they don't know that it's carried by
16:04
Speaker 1: these parasites, on these smaller creatures, or on these parasites,
16:11
Speaker 1: these fleas that are probably on all of them to
16:13
Speaker 1: some degree. So they try to quarantine the people who
16:16
Speaker 1: are ill, and it doesn't work. They're a buck short
16:21
Speaker 1: and a day late.
16:22
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the thing. When everyone on the ship dies,
16:25
Speaker 3: you have no control over what happens to the ship.
16:29
Speaker 3: And so, you know, let's go back to the way
16:31
Speaker 3: we started this show. We have this looming, hulking, empty vessel,
16:37
Speaker 3: somewhat devoid of human life, but teaming with rats. The
16:42
Speaker 3: rats still have fleas on them, they're still plague on them.
16:44
Speaker 3: And so we're near the town of Bergen in Norway.
16:49
Speaker 3: Normally this would have been, you know, not a great situation,
16:52
Speaker 3: but they would have dealt with it. But no, this
16:56
Speaker 3: ship had a completely dead crew and just it ran aground,
17:02
Speaker 3: it crashed.
17:03
Speaker 1: Which is such an unfortunate lottery to win because it
17:08
Speaker 1: could have also plausibly just drifted off into the sea
17:13
Speaker 1: and then sink in rough water.
17:15
Speaker 3: The very last living person aboard could have could have
17:18
Speaker 3: thrown down.
17:19
Speaker 1: An anchor or scuttled it, yeah, you know what I mean.
17:21
Speaker 3: But didn't. And that's the thing. It's it's literally a
17:24
Speaker 3: ship of death, and that, you know, there's not too
17:29
Speaker 3: much ridiculous about this history today, but that, to me
17:32
Speaker 3: is is what touches on the verge of the absurd,
17:35
Speaker 3: and that it's it's so scary, so cinematic and terrifying
17:41
Speaker 3: to have a literal ship of death going to the
17:44
Speaker 3: frosty North where it also seems like sort of a
17:50
Speaker 3: death metal kind of way to go. Yeah, you know,
17:52
Speaker 3: and that music is super popular up in those parts,
17:56
Speaker 3: but to have this, yeah, just a ship of death
17:58
Speaker 3: crashing into your town despite all your preventive measures and
18:03
Speaker 3: everything you've tried to do to save your town from plague.
18:08
Speaker 3: Ship of death going to get you.
18:10
Speaker 1: The ship of Death's gonna get you. To the tune
18:13
Speaker 1: of the rhythm is gonna get you. I think our
18:18
Speaker 1: syllables are slightly off, but the gist is there, and
18:21
Speaker 1: this is a terrifying moment. I think that's why Casey
18:24
Speaker 1: and I both felt so enthralled when you were when
18:29
Speaker 1: you were painting that image for us at the beginning,
18:32
Speaker 1: because this, like most of the scariest of stories, is
18:37
Speaker 1: a true story. And when we say that it ran
18:41
Speaker 1: around in Bergen Harbor, we don't mean that it just
18:47
Speaker 1: infected the people of Bergen Harbor. Contemporary accounts, although exaggerated,
18:55
Speaker 1: seem to indicate that around a third of the population
18:59
Speaker 1: of or Away died. And the thing with you know,
19:03
Speaker 1: I think you made a tremendous point about how much
19:06
Speaker 1: margin of error we have with any kind of population
19:10
Speaker 1: estimate or death toll estimate for things that occurred at
19:14
Speaker 1: this point in time in history. Despite that, you have
19:17
Speaker 1: to admit that even if it was just twenty percent,
19:20
Speaker 1: it's still one out of every five people dying. It's
19:24
Speaker 1: a lot of people, So it's more than one out
19:26
Speaker 1: out of every five, possibly around one out of every
19:30
Speaker 1: three people died because this one ship washed up in
19:34
Speaker 1: this one place. And it didn't stop there, did it
19:37
Speaker 1: because it expanded beyond Norway.
19:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, it just all over. And what this really reminds
19:42
Speaker 3: me of is you know, in any zombie film or
19:47
Speaker 3: TV show where the people have taken all the safeguards
19:50
Speaker 3: they can, They've holed up inside of a safe house, right,
19:54
Speaker 3: and then someone makes a fatal mistake, one bite comes
19:57
Speaker 3: through and then that's it. Then things crumble from there.
20:02
Speaker 3: So all the Walking Dead and all those series and
20:07
Speaker 3: show there may be something to it. That's how that's
20:09
Speaker 3: how society crumbles, perhaps.
20:12
Speaker 1: Perhaps not with a bang, but with a whimper. And
20:16
Speaker 1: here's another thing. This plague, this catastrophe affected Norway in
20:24
Speaker 1: more ways than one. It did not just kill one
20:29
Speaker 1: fifth to one third of the population. It made a
20:33
Speaker 1: fundamental impact on their culture and folklore which remains in
20:38
Speaker 1: the modern day.
20:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is not a story just about corpses and
20:43
Speaker 3: people dying. I mean the experience of the Black Death
20:46
Speaker 3: and the Black Plague really manifests itself, not just with
20:50
Speaker 3: a death count, but in the culture. In the story
20:52
Speaker 3: of Pesta, the witch Pesta, as listeners may guess for
20:56
Speaker 3: themselves rightly, is related to the terms of pestas and
21:00
Speaker 3: pst pstules.
21:02
Speaker 1: And not pesto.
21:03
Speaker 3: Uh that's everything that I just thought because of what
21:08
Speaker 3: you just said is disgusting to me and disgusting to everyone,
21:16
Speaker 3: but I had to do it. Yeah, No, so Pesta right,
21:18
Speaker 3: So Pesta is in Norwegian folklore, this witch a harbinger
21:23
Speaker 3: of doom and death. She's the embodiment of the plague,
21:28
Speaker 3: but she's not an embodiment of complete annihilation, right, because
21:31
Speaker 3: the plague didn't kill everyone. So what do we know
21:35
Speaker 3: about the story of Pasta and who she is and
21:37
Speaker 3: what happens if you encounter her on a dark and
21:40
Speaker 3: gloomy Norwegian road?
21:42
Speaker 1: Oh yes, check this out, Christopher. I love the way
21:45
Speaker 1: you're differentiating to between pestilence and straight death. Right, they're
21:50
Speaker 1: two very different but related things.
21:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, in this case, they're usually you know that then
21:57
Speaker 3: diagram is almost just a circle. But yes, yeah, yeah,
22:00
Speaker 3: but it's not always that way.
22:01
Speaker 1: It's not always that way, but it's a tremendously unfortunate
22:04
Speaker 1: occurrence to encounter Pesta. You see, Pesta travels from one
22:10
Speaker 1: village to the next. She has a broomstick, but she's
22:14
Speaker 1: also doubled down. She possesses a rake. If you happen
22:18
Speaker 1: upon the witch Pesta with her rake, then you know
22:23
Speaker 1: she will spare some of the people in your community.
22:27
Speaker 1: But if she begins sweeping with her broomstick, there's no
22:33
Speaker 1: point in running.
22:34
Speaker 3: You're dead and so is everyone around you. Yeah, that's
22:37
Speaker 3: the thing. So Pesta the embodiment not just of death,
22:40
Speaker 3: but the embodiment of this specific type of death link
22:44
Speaker 3: to this illness. If she rakes through your community, those
22:48
Speaker 3: claws will tear up your loved ones, your neighbors. But
22:52
Speaker 3: there are gaps between the teeth of a rake, and
22:54
Speaker 3: some people will make it their way through. But if
22:57
Speaker 3: she's sweeping with a broom you're all done for. And
23:00
Speaker 3: it's just a it's a really creepy, kind of terrifying
23:04
Speaker 3: embodiment of this experience to think that it's not just
23:10
Speaker 3: not just something that happens, but that there's some will
23:13
Speaker 3: behind it, that there's this terrifying woman in a deep
23:17
Speaker 3: red skirt who will just clean the earth as she
23:22
Speaker 3: sees fit, and you and your friends and neighbors have
23:27
Speaker 3: little to do with with the way things turn out.
23:30
Speaker 1: And there's a fatalism there as well. You know, because
23:33
Speaker 1: your odds of survival are already very, very low, the
23:36
Speaker 1: best you can hope is that some survive. I do
23:39
Speaker 1: want to point out one myth busting thing here, let's
23:42
Speaker 1: do it that may be of interest to many of
23:45
Speaker 1: us listening. You know those really cool masks that they
23:49
Speaker 1: always show the doctors wearing.
23:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, they show up in like in you know, Brazilian
23:55
Speaker 3: Carnival and in New Orleans and then also in the
23:58
Speaker 3: sci fi remake of that Monkeys series.
24:01
Speaker 1: Ah yeah, yeah, those pestilence masks. The the way that
24:06
Speaker 1: they're depicted is this the concept being before they were
24:11
Speaker 1: totally taken over by goth kids in this country, the
24:15
Speaker 1: concept was that the people wearing them were protecting themselves
24:20
Speaker 1: from exposure to diseased bodies, and that that long bird
24:25
Speaker 1: bill snout looking thing is actually a container for herbs,
24:30
Speaker 1: and that the herbs would be ignited sometimes and that
24:33
Speaker 1: they would gently burn.
24:35
Speaker 3: And the mask you're talking about is to get that
24:37
Speaker 3: sort of conical, long proboscis. That's sort of like creepy
24:41
Speaker 3: bird ibis Egyptian god.
24:45
Speaker 1: Kind of vibe going on right, right right, sort of
24:48
Speaker 1: abstract attempt at rendering an anti.
24:51
Speaker 3: So there's a there's a myth about that is that
24:53
Speaker 3: is that not a thing?
24:54
Speaker 1: There's no concrete evidence that people in the fourteenth century
25:00
Speaker 1: were wearing these, and medical historians were wearing these at
25:03
Speaker 1: the time, and medical historians will say that they were
25:06
Speaker 1: not invented until three hundred years later, when a sixteenth
25:10
Speaker 1: century French doctor named Charles de l'Orme designed what could
25:14
Speaker 1: be described as one of the world's earliest hazmat suits.
25:19
Speaker 1: So it did occur in response to the plague, but
25:21
Speaker 1: in a later wave of the plague. Okay, that's the
25:24
Speaker 1: other myth that I think we busted pretty effectively.
25:26
Speaker 3: Not just one black day.
25:28
Speaker 1: It was no. No, things just kept being terrible, great, great.
25:34
Speaker 1: We don't have to end it that way.
25:36
Speaker 3: No, let's talk about some good news.
25:38
Speaker 1: Yeah.
25:44
Speaker 3: I don't know how much good news this is. But Ben,
25:47
Speaker 3: let me ask you, you seem like the kind of
25:48
Speaker 3: person who likes all of these things. Do you like
25:51
Speaker 3: some suit models.
25:53
Speaker 1: I like in general in general?
25:56
Speaker 3: Yeah?
25:56
Speaker 1: Sure, you know, I'm not opposed to swim suits or
26:00
Speaker 1: people modeling.
26:01
Speaker 3: Okay, do you how do you feel about European men
26:05
Speaker 3: in flashy cravats.
26:07
Speaker 1: I'm in yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not opposed to either.
26:09
Speaker 3: Okay, what about zombified knights, Templar.
26:13
Speaker 1: I mean, if I have to choose between the three,
26:15
Speaker 1: I'm going with number three.
26:16
Speaker 3: What if I told you Ben ben Bollen that you could,
26:21
Speaker 3: in one film have all three of those, I.
26:24
Speaker 1: Would say thank you for saving my weekend. Christopher hasiotis
26:29
Speaker 1: all right.
26:29
Speaker 3: Nineteen seventy four's film The Ghost Galleon is a film
26:32
Speaker 3: that I want to put on your radar. Then it's
26:35
Speaker 3: a Spanish movie. It's not great. I don't know that
26:40
Speaker 3: it's even good, but it's really enjoyable. In Spanish it's
26:45
Speaker 3: called El Bouque maldito, which means like the you know,
26:48
Speaker 3: the damned vessel or the ship of the damned. Yeah,
26:51
Speaker 3: but in English it's The Ghost Galleon. It's really campy,
26:55
Speaker 3: but it's got a lot of zombie knights. Templar. Who
26:59
Speaker 3: there are these there are these two swimsuit models who
27:01
Speaker 3: to see a ghost ship off the coast and decide
27:05
Speaker 3: to Hey, let's go see what's on that ghost ship.
27:08
Speaker 3: The answer is zombies. So yeah, zombie zombiefide Knights Templar
27:13
Speaker 3: who have come back from I guess crusading. And then
27:19
Speaker 3: there's like some real like flashy dudes wearing ascots and
27:23
Speaker 3: trying to punch skeletons. This is another thing I will
27:27
Speaker 3: share with the Facebook community group. I will put the
27:30
Speaker 3: trailer for the Ghosts Gallon up for your enjoyment, and
27:34
Speaker 3: you can decide for yourself if you want to dig
27:35
Speaker 3: into the film as a whole. I love it. I
27:39
Speaker 3: also really love low budget, questionably acted horror from the seventies.
27:45
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, as you should. Christopher. Thank you for this recommendation.
27:50
Speaker 1: Beat me to the punch. We have to put the
27:52
Speaker 1: trailer up. I'm actually I'm gonna watch this after after
27:55
Speaker 1: we finished recording today. I did, I did. While you
28:00
Speaker 1: were talking about this, I did remember one piece of
28:03
Speaker 1: good news that baffled me. I kid you not. This
28:07
Speaker 1: is actual good news. From the series of pandemics known
28:11
Speaker 1: collectively as the Black Plague or the Bubonic Plague, there
28:15
Speaker 1: is a book, which I may have mentioned in previous episodes,
28:18
Speaker 1: by a fellow named Norman Cantor the name of this
28:21
Speaker 1: book is in the Wake of the Plague. When I
28:25
Speaker 1: first read this book, there's something that Cantor tosses aside
28:31
Speaker 1: in a fairly cavalier fashion, and it is that there
28:35
Speaker 1: is compelling evidence that the evolutionary pressure of the Black
28:41
Speaker 1: Plague led to the HIV resistant genes that exist in
28:47
Speaker 1: parts of Europe today. Because you remember, we've seen those
28:50
Speaker 1: stories in years past about bone marrow transplant recipients who
28:55
Speaker 1: also find that their HIV had their viral load has
29:01
Speaker 1: gone down and then it has disappeared. It appears that
29:05
Speaker 1: there is compelling evidence, While not one hundred percent, there's
29:09
Speaker 1: compelling evidence that the same infection disease that killed so
29:13
Speaker 1: many people in Europe, Eurasia and beyond may have made
29:17
Speaker 1: us more resistant to HIV and ultimately aids.
29:21
Speaker 3: No, that's fascinating, and yeah, there are myriad ways you
29:26
Speaker 3: can look at a terrible, terrible instance in history like
29:31
Speaker 3: the Black Death and glom some sort of positive from it.
29:35
Speaker 3: I mean that that is a wonderful thing and not
29:38
Speaker 3: the sort of thing you would ever expect, but it's
29:39
Speaker 3: the way history unfolds. I mean, there are a number
29:43
Speaker 3: of other things attributed to the Black Death and kind
29:45
Speaker 3: of what society had to do afterwards. There's an idea
29:49
Speaker 3: that a lot of the smaller universities around Europe really
29:53
Speaker 3: developed because people didn't want to travel when they went
29:57
Speaker 3: to school, because the more the more you travel, the
30:00
Speaker 3: more you risk coming across people who had plague. So
30:03
Speaker 3: more schools, more communities had to develop their own local
30:09
Speaker 3: universities and colleges, and so that led to some education.
30:13
Speaker 3: It is also credited with perhaps popularizing English across the continent.
30:19
Speaker 3: The idea was that so many learned monks and scholars
30:23
Speaker 3: passed away because of Black Death, that more people who
30:28
Speaker 3: spoke the vulgar tongues you're German, your English, they had
30:33
Speaker 3: to assume those positions of power in universities, in higher learning,
30:36
Speaker 3: and so English became more widespread. It's the same idea
30:39
Speaker 3: why the printing press had to be invented because so
30:44
Speaker 3: many monks died, they didn't have enough people to hand
30:47
Speaker 3: copy bibles, so they needed to find a way to
30:51
Speaker 3: kind of adapt to a situation where you've lost a
30:54
Speaker 3: significant portion of your population. You know, whether you can
30:58
Speaker 3: say it's a one to one causal relationship is a
31:01
Speaker 3: little tricky, but these are some theories that are out there,
31:03
Speaker 3: and I think they're pretty interesting.
31:05
Speaker 1: That's fascinating, and it feels like we are on the
31:08
Speaker 1: verge of a completely new conversation the upsides of terrible
31:13
Speaker 1: events throughout world's history. That may be an episode for
31:19
Speaker 1: another day, but for now, why don't we throw it
31:23
Speaker 1: to you, fellow ridiculous historians? What are some of the unintended?
31:30
Speaker 1: How do we put a silver linings of terrible events
31:34
Speaker 1: throughout human history? I think we illustrated just a couple
31:39
Speaker 1: with the Black Plague to keep what may indeed be
31:43
Speaker 1: our most death metal of episodes from being completely grimy
31:48
Speaker 1: and grim. But let us know. You can visit us
31:51
Speaker 1: on Facebook, as you said, Christopher, at our community page
31:55
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historians, you can see Casey Nol, Christopher hasiotis self
32:00
Speaker 1: and yours truly dropping in to field questions to check
32:06
Speaker 1: out and share some of the amazing stories throughout our
32:10
Speaker 1: species collective adventures. Let's see what else in the meantime.
32:15
Speaker 3: In the meantime, I have a question for any listeners
32:18
Speaker 3: here who happened to be around about northern Wales, maybe
32:23
Speaker 3: over near Liverpool. I read about a ship of Death
32:27
Speaker 3: that they've got going on right there. It just launched.
32:30
Speaker 3: Apparently for the past thirty years there's been a ship
32:32
Speaker 3: called the Duke of Lancaster which was kind of run
32:36
Speaker 3: aground and abandoned near I think the town is called
32:39
Speaker 3: whole Well or holy Well in Wales, Northern Wales, and
32:43
Speaker 3: there's this company who kind of I think is comparable
32:46
Speaker 3: to like escape rooms here in the US, and they
32:48
Speaker 3: kind of put on those haunted houses. But they've turned
32:51
Speaker 3: this ship into a ship of death and you can
32:54
Speaker 3: kind of go on there and experience a zombie attack
32:57
Speaker 3: on the ship. What Yeah, I just read up. I
32:59
Speaker 3: read it. I remember reading about this at the end
33:00
Speaker 3: of twenty eighteen, and apparently this is a thing that
33:03
Speaker 3: has opened in this year twenty nineteen. Zombie infection, as
33:09
Speaker 3: I believe the company. Not that we're giving props or
33:13
Speaker 3: speaking to their merit, but if anyone's listening, who is
33:16
Speaker 3: in kind of like around the corner from Liverpool, and
33:19
Speaker 3: you've been on this ship of death or you want
33:21
Speaker 3: to go on the Ship of Death and report back,
33:23
Speaker 3: I'd like to hear about.
33:24
Speaker 1: It, me too, Sign me up. I want to hear
33:27
Speaker 1: if it lives up to the hype. You can tell
33:29
Speaker 1: us about that on the aforementioned Ridiculous Historians Facebook page.
33:33
Speaker 1: You can find us on Twitter. You can find us
33:35
Speaker 1: on Instagram. You can find my pal Nol on Instagram.
33:40
Speaker 1: He's at Embryonic Insider. You can find me on Instagram
33:43
Speaker 1: as well. Follow my adventures as I get kicked into
33:46
Speaker 1: and out of various countries at Ben Bolan. In the meantime,
33:51
Speaker 1: we hope that you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so
33:54
Speaker 1: much as always to super producer at Casey Pegram. I
33:57
Speaker 1: know we can't see it because it's an audio podcast
34:00
Speaker 1: in Casey. I know you can't see me do this
34:02
Speaker 1: because there's a barrier between us. But every time I
34:05
Speaker 1: say your name, I like to throw my right arm
34:08
Speaker 1: wide in a grand gesture towards you, sir. We'd also
34:13
Speaker 1: like to thank Alex Williams who composed our track. As always,
34:17
Speaker 1: thanks to Noel Brown, and thanks to you Christopher Ahasiotis.
34:22
Speaker 1: You know, I know, after we did our Grifter episode
34:26
Speaker 1: you have me questioning everything, so I'm still gonna stick
34:30
Speaker 1: with the alias you provided when we met all those
34:32
Speaker 1: years ago.
34:33
Speaker 3: Remain questioning. It's good to be a skeptic. Thanks for
34:37
Speaker 3: having me. It's been really really nice talking about the
34:40
Speaker 3: end of so many people's lives.
34:42
Speaker 1: We'll see you again soon.
34:51
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
34:54
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
34:58
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from my heart radio at the iHeartRadio app,
35:01
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.