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

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