Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Nostradamus: Predictor of the future? Not so much.

Transcript

Nostradamus: Predictor of the future? Not so much. · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
0:04
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
0:12
Speaker 1: Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry. I
0:17
Speaker 1: predicted this will be the best podcast of the new year. Man,
0:23
Speaker 1: I don't know about that one, and I think that
0:25
Speaker 1: prediction is coming true. And the first month when Gray
0:28
Speaker 1: Filled the Sky, the recorders of Gobbledygook hit high water mark.
0:37
Speaker 1: It's a little on the nose for Nostre Damas. Actually
0:40
Speaker 1: it's I should have been even more vague, like way vaguer. Yeah,
0:44
Speaker 1: that was like explicit for him. Yeah, because no, stredamis
0:49
Speaker 1: used to like to just basically take concepts and words
0:53
Speaker 1: and put them together and pretend like they were going
0:56
Speaker 1: to happen. Yeah, no, Stredomas snort a little nutmeg. I Um.
1:02
Speaker 1: When I was a younger person, I realized like from
1:05
Speaker 1: this and esp that, uh, I was into some pretty
1:09
Speaker 1: cool occult stuff. Read lots of books about ghosts and
1:13
Speaker 1: things like that. Meet you a little bit. And then
1:15
Speaker 1: now it's like an older person like I wanted to
1:17
Speaker 1: go to Duke University to study parasychologist. I was into
1:21
Speaker 1: like that kind of way. And then now as an
1:23
Speaker 1: older person, I'm like, and some of the things I
1:26
Speaker 1: used to believe just do a faith palm here there,
1:30
Speaker 1: Like for example, we got into real science, and that's
1:33
Speaker 1: usually what happens. Yes, so the pseudoscience is kind of
1:37
Speaker 1: fade away and once you start educating yourself. Well, we
1:39
Speaker 1: shouldn't say parasychology is necessarily as pseudoscience. It's not. We're
1:45
Speaker 1: here to poopoo. No stradomas, not esp paras psychology in general.
1:49
Speaker 1: But for instance, you were I remember not only believing,
1:53
Speaker 1: but frequently saying, dude, no stredamus. He had to be
1:59
Speaker 1: exu oomed once, like at the church he was buried at.
2:03
Speaker 1: They were like expanding and they had to exume his
2:05
Speaker 1: grave and they opened his casket and he was holding
2:08
Speaker 1: a tablet that had the day they exhumed him. I
2:13
Speaker 1: thought that was real. I thought that really happened. When
2:16
Speaker 1: I was a slightly younger man. That's awesome when you
2:19
Speaker 1: are in your late twenties, right, Yeah, I remember I
2:23
Speaker 1: didn't read up on stuff like this, but I was
2:25
Speaker 1: a big fan of like literary moys in search of
2:29
Speaker 1: and TV shows that kind of dabbled in the fringe
2:34
Speaker 1: and what's wrong with that? Nothing, There's nothing wrong with
2:36
Speaker 1: enjoying that kind of thing, liking it, been wondering if
2:40
Speaker 1: possibly some of it could be real. Nothing wrong with
2:42
Speaker 1: the exploration, right, But the key to keeping egg off
2:47
Speaker 1: your face as much as possible is to doing research,
2:50
Speaker 1: especially when a claim is very extraordinary, really look into it,
2:57
Speaker 1: Like had I had I looked around, had the Internet
2:59
Speaker 1: been invented yet, and I looked around, and I probably
3:02
Speaker 1: would have found somewhere some entries saying like that is
3:05
Speaker 1: absolutely not true. Well, that's one of the Internet is
3:09
Speaker 1: one of the big reasons, I think, because before that
3:11
Speaker 1: was around, you know, it's you'd have to go search
3:14
Speaker 1: out a book that was written, including Nostradamas in the
3:18
Speaker 1: card catalog, and uh, it was just a lot harder
3:21
Speaker 1: back then, you know. Yeah, But the Internet is a
3:23
Speaker 1: double edged fiber optic line. I mean, there's a lot
3:26
Speaker 1: of sites out there that I mean, No Stredamas has
3:29
Speaker 1: gotten probably even more popular and even more play since
3:33
Speaker 1: the Internet was invented, you know. Yeah, So let's talk
3:36
Speaker 1: about this guy. Let's try to separate the man from
3:39
Speaker 1: the myth and really get into who No stre Damas was.
3:43
Speaker 1: Because he was a lot more than a crack pot
3:46
Speaker 1: writer of vague predictions. That's true. He was. One of
3:51
Speaker 1: the tough parts is though, is that there are so
3:53
Speaker 1: many disagreements about his biography, even Um I didn't find
3:58
Speaker 1: that necessarily. Yeah, I saw one guy wrote a book
4:01
Speaker 1: at him that said he wasn't even a doctor. Oh, okay,
4:03
Speaker 1: that is a disagreement. Yeah, well let's go ahead and
4:06
Speaker 1: go there then. Okay. So he was supposedly born in
4:09
Speaker 1: fifteen oh three. No, not true. In France, he was
4:14
Speaker 1: born Michelle de Nostre Dame. He became Nostre Damis because
4:18
Speaker 1: he latinized his name after he graduated medical school, which
4:21
Speaker 1: apparently was custom at the time. That's right. But when
4:24
Speaker 1: he was born he was Michelle de Nostradam. Yeah, and
4:26
Speaker 1: he was his family was educated and they believed in education.
4:30
Speaker 1: So he was from an early age an academic in
4:34
Speaker 1: a traditional sense. Um, nothing wacky right out of the gate. Well,
4:37
Speaker 1: his grandfather um instructed him as when he was a
4:41
Speaker 1: younger man, taught him languages and kind of sparked his
4:45
Speaker 1: interest in all sorts of different topics and all things learning. Yeah,
4:49
Speaker 1: and do you remember when we did the Inquisition UM
4:52
Speaker 1: episode where there are a lot of Jewish people who converted,
4:55
Speaker 1: but just converted in name only. Apparently Nostra Damis his
4:59
Speaker 1: family was one of those. Oh so that wasn't a
5:01
Speaker 1: genuine conversion supposedly not Again, it could be myth, it
5:06
Speaker 1: could be whatever. Because he was on good terms with
5:09
Speaker 1: the local inquisition uh and the local church officials for
5:13
Speaker 1: most of his life. So I guess either they didn't
5:17
Speaker 1: suspect him, or they he had a pass. I don't know. Oh,
5:20
Speaker 1: that's interesting, that makes sense. Uh. He studied a straw no,
5:24
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, astrology um, which was UM at the time,
5:28
Speaker 1: respected well respected as a science and um and supposedly
5:33
Speaker 1: his fellow astrologers thought he was full of it. His
5:37
Speaker 1: contemporary astrologer pals Well, one of the things that he
5:40
Speaker 1: did was he studied and this would play out throughout
5:43
Speaker 1: his Uh well, I would say his career as a predictor.
5:47
Speaker 1: But he really just wrote the book, the Centuries book,
5:51
Speaker 1: which we'll get to. But he studied astronomical patterns that
5:56
Speaker 1: coincided with historical events. That's astrology. Well yeah, but he
6:03
Speaker 1: he would basically use those to predict the future of it.
6:07
Speaker 1: Like by some accounts he didn't even say that he
6:10
Speaker 1: was a prophet. He said, I study history, and basically
6:15
Speaker 1: history repeats itself, and so I'm going to use the
6:18
Speaker 1: stars and when these things line up pattern wise in
6:22
Speaker 1: a certain year in the future, this may happen again. Yeah.
6:25
Speaker 1: So I'm that's like real astrology. Yeah, we should do
6:29
Speaker 1: an episode on that. Yeah, I've been thinking about that
6:31
Speaker 1: one for a while. This one, well, the the article
6:35
Speaker 1: we have like almost like spits in the middle. It's
6:40
Speaker 1: so one sided and skeptical. It's just a picture of
6:43
Speaker 1: a big lube, right. But I looked into Um, I
6:46
Speaker 1: looked into it and like, there's the It's fascinating what
6:50
Speaker 1: they used to believe in all of the holes you
6:52
Speaker 1: can punch in it, you know. But um, it's a
6:55
Speaker 1: pretty We should do that for sometime. Yeah. I had
6:57
Speaker 1: my chart done one time, like for real by my
7:00
Speaker 1: friend's mom, and um, I remember looking at it and
7:03
Speaker 1: thinking like, wow, that's a lot like me. Yeah, it's
7:06
Speaker 1: pretty accurate. But and even even remove that last part,
7:11
Speaker 1: the amount of thought and effort in what it's based on,
7:14
Speaker 1: in the ancient tradition of it and everything that in
7:16
Speaker 1: and of itself is fascinating, you know. And then you
7:19
Speaker 1: can get into we're totally doing astrology at some point.
7:23
Speaker 1: But um, so what he was doing was astrology. Apparently
7:27
Speaker 1: where he ran a foul of his fellow astrologers was
7:30
Speaker 1: to make predictions of how something would come about. Rather
7:33
Speaker 1: than the next time Venus is in the seventh House
7:37
Speaker 1: of Mars and a cat catches fire, um, the there's
7:43
Speaker 1: gonna be an earthquake something like that, he went further
7:46
Speaker 1: and like made predictions about you know, what was going
7:49
Speaker 1: to set this off, and like where the people involved
7:52
Speaker 1: we're going to come from, and like um, and then
7:55
Speaker 1: he was very very vague. So all of that added
7:59
Speaker 1: to the astrologers disdained for him because he gave him
8:04
Speaker 1: a bad name pretty much because they were all right
8:07
Speaker 1: exactly uh so uh he left home, supposedly in uh
8:13
Speaker 1: to study medicine legit medicine and became a physician. Most
8:18
Speaker 1: people agree that he became a professor in a physician
8:22
Speaker 1: in southern France, and apparently it was pretty good doctor
8:26
Speaker 1: uh at treating plague victims. He's very ahead of his time. Yeah,
8:31
Speaker 1: even though he lost his wife and son, I'm sorry,
8:35
Speaker 1: his children to the plague and yeah, and that had
8:38
Speaker 1: a big effect on his life. Obviously, he basically sent
8:42
Speaker 1: him on the road for a decade um, which is
8:45
Speaker 1: where he kind of came up with this uh plan
8:47
Speaker 1: to write this book. So he um he was he
8:51
Speaker 1: was a progressive doctor in that like he prescribed sanitation practices, um,
8:58
Speaker 1: he prescribed fresh air. Um. He also apparently came up
9:02
Speaker 1: with a rose hip lozenge to help cure plague, mild
9:06
Speaker 1: cases of plague, and that actually makes sense because rose
9:09
Speaker 1: hips are packed of vitamin C. So he was a
9:12
Speaker 1: pretty good doctor and had a good record. And from
9:14
Speaker 1: that he lived in this village with his wife and
9:17
Speaker 1: children and had a patron who basically supported the family.
9:22
Speaker 1: And then once his wife and children died, he couldn't
9:24
Speaker 1: cure them. His star really fell in this village. And
9:28
Speaker 1: about the same time, he also had a pretty good
9:30
Speaker 1: sense of humor. About the same time, they were raising
9:32
Speaker 1: a statue of the Virgin Mary in the local church,
9:36
Speaker 1: and he thought it was the ugliest thing he'd ever seen.
9:39
Speaker 1: And he was making a comment on the artist's abilities,
9:43
Speaker 1: not the Virgin Mary, but he said, these guys are
9:46
Speaker 1: casting demons, like basically saying, that's a really ugly Virgin Mary. Well,
9:51
Speaker 1: the artist didn't like this and turn him into the
9:53
Speaker 1: Inquisition and that's about the time when he ended up
9:56
Speaker 1: on the road. Yeah, and he went all over Europe.
9:58
Speaker 1: Um just uh. Basically he was described as sort of wandering,
10:04
Speaker 1: but he did meet another woman, uh and get remarried
10:08
Speaker 1: on his wanderings, I think towards the tail end of
10:10
Speaker 1: his wanderings about eight years later, and moved to Salon
10:14
Speaker 1: uh in France, and then he started kind of getting
10:19
Speaker 1: his uh, getting his act together in in a in
10:23
Speaker 1: a real way to publish. Like he he he said,
10:27
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna put together this book of prophecies.
10:29
Speaker 1: I've been messing around, I've been kicking the idea and
10:32
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna do it. So we'll talk about what
10:35
Speaker 1: came out of that. Right after this, So Chuck Nostre
10:54
Speaker 1: Damas is settling down in Salon Salon, Yeah, selectives and
11:03
Speaker 1: um he is deciding to put his awesome thoughts down
11:07
Speaker 1: into quatrains that's right, into a book called the Centuries.
11:13
Speaker 1: But at the time he just called it the Prophecies. Yeah,
11:16
Speaker 1: the Prophecies of Michelle Nostradamis. I think when did they
11:20
Speaker 1: rename it? Um, I think after his death. Yeah, And
11:23
Speaker 1: apparently the centuries had nothing to do with time, but
11:25
Speaker 1: it was in the structure, the organized structure of the
11:27
Speaker 1: book itself, because there a thousand quatrains dreds for some reason.
11:35
Speaker 1: So that's the centuries. And it wasn't it wasn't chronological
11:38
Speaker 1: or anything like that. No, And it was, um, it
11:41
Speaker 1: was a It became a huge sensation due to a
11:44
Speaker 1: few things. Um. One, simply enough was that the printing
11:49
Speaker 1: press was a recent invention and books were a big
11:54
Speaker 1: deal now, you know, like widespread books like there was
11:58
Speaker 1: now something could literally be a best seller for the
12:01
Speaker 1: first time. So it aligned in that way. And another
12:06
Speaker 1: is that he just sort of fit the dark times.
12:09
Speaker 1: It was a book for and of its time, with
12:12
Speaker 1: all his dire predictions. It was you know, when the
12:16
Speaker 1: Catholics and Protestants were warring and there were all kinds
12:19
Speaker 1: of people saying the end of the world was coming,
12:21
Speaker 1: and it was just it was basically put out right
12:25
Speaker 1: at the right time and widespread because of the printing press.
12:28
Speaker 1: And then Queen Catherine de Medici of France was a
12:34
Speaker 1: really superstitious queen, and um, he predicted her husband Henry
12:38
Speaker 1: the seconds death, yeah, pretty specifically for once. Yeah, but
12:43
Speaker 1: we'll poke holes on that too. Um, And it happened
12:46
Speaker 1: a few years later, and so she invited him to
12:49
Speaker 1: the court, which was like the most popular court in
12:51
Speaker 1: Europe at the time, and so he got a lot
12:52
Speaker 1: of attention there. So he was sort of like a
12:55
Speaker 1: big uh writing superstar of his day because of all
12:59
Speaker 1: these things. All yeah, I mean, like he wasn't one
13:01
Speaker 1: of those posthumously honored authors like he was celebrated during
13:05
Speaker 1: this time. Supposedly he met some monks on the road
13:08
Speaker 1: once and um correctly said that one of them was
13:13
Speaker 1: going to be the next pope. Bam case salved No
13:17
Speaker 1: Astronomicus is the real deal, because that supposedly happened. So um,
13:22
Speaker 1: he had like a whole whole jam going where he
13:26
Speaker 1: would retire in the evenings and um, he would concentrate
13:31
Speaker 1: on maybe a fire, the flames of a fire, yeah,
13:35
Speaker 1: or he would take a bowl with some herbs or
13:38
Speaker 1: something in it and just zone out on those, try
13:41
Speaker 1: to read the herbs. Like you said, I don't know
13:43
Speaker 1: if he was doing lines of nutmeg, but he was
13:45
Speaker 1: ingesting nutmeg most likely, yeah, which could be hallucinogenic, right,
13:50
Speaker 1: and he had to have been rich to just be
13:52
Speaker 1: doing nutmeg, you know, um, because they had just discovered that. Um.
13:58
Speaker 1: And he would just kind of zone out. He would
14:00
Speaker 1: apparently he got help from an angelic figure, that's what
14:05
Speaker 1: he says, and then he he would just see the future.
14:08
Speaker 1: It would come to him. The thing is is no
14:11
Speaker 1: str Damas. These prophecies didn't come to him, all convoluted
14:17
Speaker 1: and kukie and however he put them, he understood exactly
14:22
Speaker 1: what was going to happen. Well, he supposedly convoluted them
14:25
Speaker 1: on purpose to avoid persecution during his lifetime. Yeah, that
14:29
Speaker 1: is supposedly what he told his son from a second
14:32
Speaker 1: marriage that, yeah, doing all this on purpose. And um,
14:39
Speaker 1: because they will, you know, string me up as a
14:41
Speaker 1: heretic because I'm so you really accurate, they will find out,
14:46
Speaker 1: which I mean at the time, it was a genuine concern.
14:50
Speaker 1: So it's it's not like this is just a preposterous
14:53
Speaker 1: claim on no stredamss part. It's just that for skeptics
14:57
Speaker 1: of no Stredamas, it's just one more venient little thing
15:01
Speaker 1: because if you read the quad trains, they make almost
15:05
Speaker 1: no sense in all sense. Simultaneously. Yeah, depending on whether
15:11
Speaker 1: you're reading them on their own or whether you're trying
15:13
Speaker 1: to look at them in context. Well, yeah, well we
15:16
Speaker 1: might as well go and talk about that. That's one
15:18
Speaker 1: of the big reasons you can poke holes in it
15:21
Speaker 1: is because there were even experts say, it's hard to
15:26
Speaker 1: find two copies of this book that are the same. Yeah,
15:30
Speaker 1: because it was translated, you know, hundreds of times. It
15:33
Speaker 1: was the early printing presses were you know, they weren't
15:36
Speaker 1: super accurate, and they would if the printer maybe didn't
15:40
Speaker 1: know exactly what he meant, they would say, well, I
15:42
Speaker 1: think he meant to actually have an apostrophe here, and
15:45
Speaker 1: in Middle French, that apostrophe could completely change the meaning
15:49
Speaker 1: of the word um. So beyond that confusion and the
15:53
Speaker 1: translation confusions, there are, like you said, there are many
15:59
Speaker 1: different ways to enter for something, and if something didn't
16:01
Speaker 1: come true, you could probably find a version out there
16:03
Speaker 1: of it that supports whatever you think he predicted. You know. Yeah,
16:08
Speaker 1: there's a pretty good example that people give of a
16:12
Speaker 1: translation problem um after nine eleven, which we'll talk more
16:17
Speaker 1: about in a second. They some some quatrain of or
16:22
Speaker 1: I guess an assemblage of no sudamisis quad trains were
16:26
Speaker 1: kind of bandied about his proof that he predicted it right.
16:29
Speaker 1: One of them was there would be smoke in the
16:32
Speaker 1: new city. Well, in his actual text in the centuries
16:37
Speaker 1: he wrote Villaneuve Vienneuve, which means in French the new city,
16:44
Speaker 1: But it was also a city in France at the
16:47
Speaker 1: time that he was probably talking about. So there's a
16:52
Speaker 1: lot of translation and interpretation that can come together and
16:57
Speaker 1: really lead to a misunder standing. If there is even
17:01
Speaker 1: such a thing at all with Nostre Damas. Can you
17:03
Speaker 1: misunderstand him? I don't think it's possible. Can you misunderstand
17:07
Speaker 1: what's not understandable? Yeah, Well, since we're talking about interpreting,
17:12
Speaker 1: we might as well go onto the famous Hitler prediction.
17:16
Speaker 1: Beasts ferocious with hunger will across the rivers. The greater
17:20
Speaker 1: part of the battlefield would be against into a cage
17:24
Speaker 1: of iron. Iron will the great one be drawn from
17:26
Speaker 1: the child of Germany? Observes the man. I wouldn't I
17:32
Speaker 1: hope we added some effect to that, Jerry, Yes, vocal effects, Yeah,
17:38
Speaker 1: something menacing maybe, or maybe we should do like clown music.
17:44
Speaker 1: Um so histor this was has long been looked at
17:47
Speaker 1: as the prediction of the rise of Hitler. Yeah, he
17:50
Speaker 1: says Germany in there. Yeah, it's Germany and histor Um.
17:56
Speaker 1: But histor was actually the lower Danube River, and so
18:00
Speaker 1: most people, um or skeptics would say, well, he didn't
18:04
Speaker 1: say Hitler, he said Hstor since that was a place, Um,
18:07
Speaker 1: that's probably what he meant. Or he would have said Hitler. Yeah,
18:13
Speaker 1: it's kind of a miss right there. Um some people say, well,
18:17
Speaker 1: Hitler was born around the Danube, so he still met Hitler.
18:23
Speaker 1: That's exactly the point is that people will find a
18:27
Speaker 1: way to interpret it if they choose to. But the
18:30
Speaker 1: Nazis still use this to their advantage. They actually dropped
18:35
Speaker 1: pamphlets containing this prediction onto France from plains because they
18:40
Speaker 1: wanted to scare them, like, hey, even Nostradama said we're coming,
18:45
Speaker 1: and we're coming, and it worked. I guess it did
18:47
Speaker 1: for a while. So there's basically the if you're a
18:51
Speaker 1: skeptic of Nostradamus, you say, Okay, first of all, he's
18:56
Speaker 1: not really saying anything or anything crete, right, And a
19:00
Speaker 1: believer of Nostre Dams would say, well, he even said that,
19:04
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to get it. Unless you're one of
19:05
Speaker 1: the enlightened, few can happen to be one of them.
19:09
Speaker 1: It's not for this time. It's for people far from
19:13
Speaker 1: now to understand. And so the skeptic that's arguing wild
19:16
Speaker 1: sigh and then say, okay, um, here's the thing though,
19:20
Speaker 1: even if, even if he is saying something like even though,
19:23
Speaker 1: if there's something clear, he's making a prediction, and it
19:26
Speaker 1: does seem to come true if you look at events
19:31
Speaker 1: in human history as numbers on a graph. Eventually, statistically speaking,
19:39
Speaker 1: one of nostre dams is very vague predictions about the
19:42
Speaker 1: rise of a power, a war, an earthquake, something like
19:47
Speaker 1: that is going to happen, and maybe something will have
19:52
Speaker 1: even a couple of predictions that will fit one event,
19:56
Speaker 1: like the date might align somehow something because every once
20:00
Speaker 1: while he used dates, but for the most part he didn't. Um.
20:03
Speaker 1: But if you look at it statistically, yes, even Nostradamis's
20:08
Speaker 1: predictions are going to come true over a long enough
20:11
Speaker 1: period of time. If again, if you read the predictions,
20:15
Speaker 1: it's hard to say his predictions come true because he's
20:18
Speaker 1: not really predicting anything. It's not like he sat back
20:20
Speaker 1: and said, uh, sometime in the twentieth century, a guy
20:24
Speaker 1: with a terrible mustache is going to come to power
20:27
Speaker 1: and there's going to be a a horrific war as
20:31
Speaker 1: a result. Nothing even approaching that. I mean, you read
20:35
Speaker 1: what the Hitler prediction was like, it could be anything.
20:39
Speaker 1: But even if you have predicted something, if you take
20:41
Speaker 1: his predictions as predictions, if you put them over the
20:44
Speaker 1: arc of time, eventually you're gonna get hit. So that's
20:47
Speaker 1: one argument. A skeptical argument against no stredamis yeah, especially
20:51
Speaker 1: if you believe um, like most people do, that history
20:55
Speaker 1: repeats itself in some fashion over a long enough timeline.
20:58
Speaker 1: When he himself said that that's the model he used,
21:02
Speaker 1: was using the stars to look at past historical events
21:05
Speaker 1: to predict future events, So it kind of makes sense. Um.
21:09
Speaker 1: And also some people say these aren't even predictions because
21:11
Speaker 1: the prediction is something that you realize before the fact. Uh.
21:16
Speaker 1: And despite the fact that thousands of scholars have studied
21:21
Speaker 1: Nostre Damas and millions of people have read him, no
21:24
Speaker 1: one has ever pointed out something before it happened. It's
21:27
Speaker 1: always afterwards that they go back and see, look, see
21:30
Speaker 1: here he said this was gonna happen, and it happened
21:33
Speaker 1: because we interpreted that way. But no one's ever said
21:36
Speaker 1: stopped anything in its tracks because No Stredamas predicted it
21:40
Speaker 1: as an excellent point. You know, it also raises another
21:42
Speaker 1: argument against um nostre Damas, and that the people who
21:46
Speaker 1: follow no streams, like you said, it's always the interpretation
21:50
Speaker 1: is always after the fact, and allegations of shoehorning occur
21:54
Speaker 1: where basically you make something fit, you've shoehorn it in
21:59
Speaker 1: to the cont x and in doing so you cherry
22:02
Speaker 1: pick stuff that makes sense and you ignore stuff that
22:05
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense. Yeah. In fact, I think this article,
22:08
Speaker 1: this one line says it best imprecise language lends itself
22:11
Speaker 1: well to subjective interpretation. Yeah. I mean, if you throw
22:14
Speaker 1: something super vague out there, you could come up with
22:17
Speaker 1: a hundred different interpretations of it. You know, that's what
22:21
Speaker 1: poetry is exactly. And you know, uh, despite all of
22:25
Speaker 1: these very great arguments, there's still plenty of people out
22:29
Speaker 1: there who believe in No Stredamas. Almost seems like there
22:32
Speaker 1: should be a phase in life where you do go
22:34
Speaker 1: through believing that No Tredamas is real, because it does
22:37
Speaker 1: kind of lend some sort of something to life. It
22:41
Speaker 1: also coincides with being really into Pink Floyd exam it's true.
22:45
Speaker 1: So um, we'll talk a little more about some of
22:48
Speaker 1: the people who argue for and against no stre damas
22:51
Speaker 1: specifically centered around nine eleven. Right after this, okay, Chuck,
23:08
Speaker 1: nine eleven happened, and almost immediately people said, Nostra dam
23:12
Speaker 1: has predicted this. Yeah, his sales went through the roof apparently,
23:17
Speaker 1: and supposedly his name was Google's more than Usama bin
23:22
Speaker 1: Laden or George Bush after nine eleven. Really, that's what
23:25
Speaker 1: they say. That sounds like something someone just writes on
23:28
Speaker 1: the internet exactly, but I believe it. Well, here's why
23:32
Speaker 1: his star rose again is because this quatrain emerged where
23:36
Speaker 1: it was like, yeah, that's pretty close to what happened. Yeah.
23:40
Speaker 1: I remember hearing it and thinking, oh my gosh, so
23:42
Speaker 1: you want to read this one. You're pretty good at reading.
23:45
Speaker 1: Can we get the sound effect again? Please heep the
23:47
Speaker 1: clown music. In the City of God, there will be
23:51
Speaker 1: a great thunder, two brothers torn apart by chaos, while
23:55
Speaker 1: the fortress endures. The great leader will become the third.
23:59
Speaker 1: Big will begin when the big city is burning. That's
24:03
Speaker 1: super specific Yeah. The only thing I don't know if
24:06
Speaker 1: most people would agree on is calling New York the
24:09
Speaker 1: City of God or George Bush the Great Leader. Yeah. Uh,
24:13
Speaker 1: but the two brothers, clearly those are the two towers.
24:17
Speaker 1: The Fortress endures, the Pentagon. Uh, the Great Leader Bush, Yes,
24:22
Speaker 1: some people said, and then the third war will begin
24:25
Speaker 1: when the big city is burning. Well, at least one
24:28
Speaker 1: more war. I don't know if it was World War three,
24:30
Speaker 1: but a pretty huge couple of wars started up as
24:34
Speaker 1: a result. So people are saying, here it is finally
24:38
Speaker 1: evidence that shows almost incontrovertibly that Nostre Thomas was the
24:43
Speaker 1: real deal. What's the argument against the chuck? Well, it
24:47
Speaker 1: was made up. Yeah, Nostre Thomas didn't write that. Now,
24:50
Speaker 1: it was apparently written by um several years ago by
24:54
Speaker 1: a guy named Neil Marshall was a student in Canada,
24:57
Speaker 1: and said he was actually using that as a demonstration
25:00
Speaker 1: and of what Bunk Nostre Damas was like. I could
25:04
Speaker 1: write something like this and people would think he predicted
25:07
Speaker 1: nine eleven, and somehow it became something that no stre
25:10
Speaker 1: Damas wrote. He actually proved it by writing there and
25:16
Speaker 1: then it getting picked up in two thousand one. So
25:18
Speaker 1: what he set out to do worked perfectly. He and
25:21
Speaker 1: you have to wait more than four years. So he
25:24
Speaker 1: basically showed just how um man. I hate to use
25:29
Speaker 1: this word, but global people can be when they're reading.
25:32
Speaker 1: No stre damas is work because no one checks anything. Dude.
25:35
Speaker 1: They see it and they click on it and they
25:37
Speaker 1: post it to social media and then it's done. And
25:41
Speaker 1: here's a here's another really good example of that a
25:43
Speaker 1: little while ago. This still cracks me up. ClickHole you
25:48
Speaker 1: know the onions like, uh, BuzzFeed like site? Oh is
25:52
Speaker 1: that onion? Yeah? I didn't know that, I believe so yeah,
25:55
Speaker 1: I'm almost positive I know. ClickHole Yeah, okay, so ClickHole
25:58
Speaker 1: satirical site of buzzfeedee charts. Um, they released something called
26:04
Speaker 1: five Tragedies Weirdly predicted by Adam Sandler, and dude, they
26:10
Speaker 1: are so can I read a couple? So, in the
26:14
Speaker 1: wake of the tragedy, um, apparently people went back and
26:19
Speaker 1: saw that Adam Sandler, during his early stand up career,
26:23
Speaker 1: would mutter something's coming to Waco, something dark like during
26:28
Speaker 1: his stand up show. Is that true? None of this is? Okay?
26:32
Speaker 1: I thought they just picked apart real things and no, okay.
26:35
Speaker 1: So car crash that killed Princess Diana. Apparently if you
26:41
Speaker 1: go back and watch Happy Gilmore, which was made in
26:45
Speaker 1: Sandler looks directly in the camera and says our Queen's eldest,
26:49
Speaker 1: the beautiful flower will will under a Parisian bridge. Can
26:53
Speaker 1: I keep going? So the BP oil spill that happened
26:56
Speaker 1: in two in the Gulf, apparently Adam Sandler was on
27:00
Speaker 1: Conan O'Brien in two thousand five and he was just
27:02
Speaker 1: wearing a T shirt that said BP oil spill. In
27:06
Speaker 1: five years the two thousand ten Haitian earthquake, the UN
27:14
Speaker 1: estimates that two d two thousand, five hundred seventy people
27:17
Speaker 1: were killed. Apparently in Adam Sandler's Funny People, he estimated
27:22
Speaker 1: two hundred and twenty thousand on the notes. And then lastly,
27:26
Speaker 1: in Malaysia Airlines flight three seventy, Adam Sandler um when
27:31
Speaker 1: he was operaman, there was a operaman sketch where he says,
27:36
Speaker 1: I'm missing plane. It's from Malaysia. Makes me insane. This
27:41
Speaker 1: will all make sense in due time. Here's the thing, man,
27:47
Speaker 1: people believe that viral. I'm not kidding you. It went
27:53
Speaker 1: viral that like somehow Adam Sandler had made all these
27:56
Speaker 1: crazy predictions and this is a real thing. Apparently they
28:00
Speaker 1: didn't announce that when click Bait came out that it
28:03
Speaker 1: was a satirical site that bp oil spill and the
28:06
Speaker 1: teachers pretty good. Um, well, let's get into some of
28:11
Speaker 1: these then. Uh. First of all, to further the nine
28:15
Speaker 1: eleven thing, there were a couple of um other quatrains
28:20
Speaker 1: which have been cobbled together to try and support the
28:24
Speaker 1: nine eleven thing. Um. But like I said, they weren't
28:27
Speaker 1: as he wrote them. They like would combine things, which
28:30
Speaker 1: is just silly because that goes against everything that he
28:33
Speaker 1: was saying was each quatrain is its own thing. Uh,
28:37
Speaker 1: one of them century ten Quatrain seventy two. Uh. The
28:41
Speaker 1: year seven months from the sky will come the Great
28:44
Speaker 1: King of Terror to resuscitate the Great King of the
28:47
Speaker 1: Mongols before and after Mars reigns. By good luck. That
28:51
Speaker 1: last part sounds like it's from a fortune cookie. Um
28:55
Speaker 1: that before nine eleven, back in nineteen ninety nine, some
28:58
Speaker 1: people for he was for telling the end of the
29:01
Speaker 1: world would be on July. And I remember this happening,
29:06
Speaker 1: and I remember it being a big deal. There was
29:08
Speaker 1: like genuine concern from some people, like some stores and
29:13
Speaker 1: France had like closeout sales. There was this one um
29:16
Speaker 1: French designer who like canceled his big uh. He was
29:20
Speaker 1: a big believer and he canceled this big show. And
29:23
Speaker 1: of course it didn't happen, and then it was recalculated
29:26
Speaker 1: and everyone said, no, no, no no, no. It was this
29:27
Speaker 1: supposed to be July twenty four. If you read it
29:29
Speaker 1: this way, it means August eleven, and of course the
29:32
Speaker 1: world didn't and then either August. How do you get
29:35
Speaker 1: August eleventh from seven months in the ninet Well again
29:40
Speaker 1: it was there were some different translations that maybe we're
29:43
Speaker 1: different enough to ye. But then that one was also
29:49
Speaker 1: used for nine eleven, was repurposed for nine eleven, right there,
29:52
Speaker 1: like he was this close, yeah, a couple of years off. Well,
29:55
Speaker 1: they combined that one with Century six Quatrain ninety seven,
29:58
Speaker 1: which says, at forty five degree reason, this guy will
30:00
Speaker 1: burn fire to approach the great new city. In an instant,
30:04
Speaker 1: a great scattered flame will leap up when one will
30:07
Speaker 1: want to demand proof of the normans. What is that
30:11
Speaker 1: last thing? I'm not sure that's the thing, Like you
30:15
Speaker 1: can't just pick part of it and then discount the
30:17
Speaker 1: rest and say that, you know, he was wrong on that,
30:21
Speaker 1: But that's exactly what people did. Well they did because
30:24
Speaker 1: Um several quatrains referred to an anti christ figure called Mabus,
30:29
Speaker 1: and if you rearrange the letters, it could be Usam
30:32
Speaker 1: b and so people use that as proof. But they
30:36
Speaker 1: also didn't they failed to mention that previous to that,
30:40
Speaker 1: they used it as Saddam, like up to the day
30:43
Speaker 1: before even yeah, they were saying it was Saddam Hussein
30:47
Speaker 1: was Maba's because maybe it's spell backwards a su bomb
30:52
Speaker 1: kind of a reach if you ask me, it is well,
30:54
Speaker 1: in that forty five degrees part of the quad trains,
30:56
Speaker 1: some people said that New York cities around forty degrees
31:00
Speaker 1: five minutes north latitude, so that's close. But again he
31:04
Speaker 1: was said the new city UM will burn at forty
31:07
Speaker 1: five degrees Villanueva or vienneuve Um is that about forty
31:13
Speaker 1: five degrees latitude? So it could just be interpretation. I
31:19
Speaker 1: don't know who's really at fault here. Is it nostre damas?
31:21
Speaker 1: Is it the people who UM just blindly accept no
31:25
Speaker 1: damas predictions? Is it though, because Nostre Damas purposefully obfuscated
31:31
Speaker 1: his stuff. So I think he's a little bit responsible
31:33
Speaker 1: for this too. I imagine since he has that great
31:37
Speaker 1: sense of humor. It made fun of that one guy's
31:39
Speaker 1: statue of the Virgin Mary. He is sitting in his
31:42
Speaker 1: coffin holding a plaque with some future date when he'll
31:45
Speaker 1: be exhumed. His laughing and laughing maybe. Uh. We mentioned
31:49
Speaker 1: Henry the second he predicted his death. Um this quatrain, Uh,
31:54
Speaker 1: the young lion will overcome the old one on the
31:57
Speaker 1: field of battle in single combat. He will put his
32:00
Speaker 1: eyes in a cage of gold two fleets one than
32:05
Speaker 1: to die in a cruel death. So that means two injuries.
32:09
Speaker 1: And this actually happened. King Henry was in a jousting competition,
32:13
Speaker 1: but it wasn't on the field of battle. It was
32:14
Speaker 1: a friendly. It was a party basically. And Uh, Captain Montgomery,
32:19
Speaker 1: who was younger, the younger lion did joust hit hit
32:24
Speaker 1: him in the in the eye and through the throat.
32:26
Speaker 1: So the two injuries supposedly from one. Yeah, but that
32:30
Speaker 1: was all that his his wife de Medici, Queen Demanici,
32:33
Speaker 1: needed to know. She was like, you know, Holy crap.
32:36
Speaker 1: This has come true and he knows what he's doing.
32:40
Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy, The Challenger, the Great Fire of London.
32:44
Speaker 1: People have said that he's predicted all these things. But
32:49
Speaker 1: we could sit here all day poking holes in the
32:51
Speaker 1: you know that, not that we're poking holes, but other
32:55
Speaker 1: people have poked legitimate holes. I think we poked a few.
33:00
Speaker 1: Well yeah, but I mean it's all been from other
33:01
Speaker 1: people's stuff. That's true. You know, I didn't do my
33:04
Speaker 1: own whole poking. No, we should probably say we'd never
33:07
Speaker 1: begrudge anybody that believing in something like that or enjoying
33:11
Speaker 1: like I don't think behind it or anything like that. Yes,
33:15
Speaker 1: you can go out dump all your stocks and sell
33:18
Speaker 1: your worldly possessions, or you cancel your big fashion debut. Yeah,
33:22
Speaker 1: that's all that just hurt you. Although that may have
33:25
Speaker 1: hurt the fashion world. Yeah, you probably had it the
33:29
Speaker 1: week after. You want to hear something crazy about the
33:33
Speaker 1: day before September eleven, this group called The Coup. They're
33:36
Speaker 1: a rap group out of Oakland. They're pretty awesome. They
33:39
Speaker 1: were releasing their album I can't remember what's called. I
33:43
Speaker 1: want to say, like party Time or party Fever, party
33:46
Speaker 1: something and um, like the day before they and it
33:52
Speaker 1: had the the guy Boots Riley, who is like the
33:56
Speaker 1: m C for the group. It had him like standing
33:59
Speaker 1: there pressing a button in the twin towers were coming down,
34:02
Speaker 1: like blowing up. They were going to release it like
34:05
Speaker 1: the day before. It was scheduled to release in September
34:08
Speaker 1: two thou one, and then nine eleven happened. They're like, well,
34:11
Speaker 1: let's change the cover. And that's why you've never heard
34:13
Speaker 1: of the coup I wonder Actually, yeah, well they were
34:18
Speaker 1: getting kind of big right around that time. The album
34:20
Speaker 1: had like good buzz around it, and then yeah, they
34:23
Speaker 1: just went away. They're still around them. Well, all the
34:26
Speaker 1: all the entertainment that was released around that time notoriously suffered. Yeah, um,
34:32
Speaker 1: I can't remember what movies in particular, but yeah, exactly,
34:36
Speaker 1: there are a lot of things later around the people
34:37
Speaker 1: are like, well, we've released it right before nine eleven,
34:39
Speaker 1: so we were you know, we were doomed, but it
34:43
Speaker 1: was a movie. Who cares, you know. So if you
34:46
Speaker 1: want to know more about in Nostro Damas, you can
34:48
Speaker 1: go look this up on how Still works dot com
34:51
Speaker 1: by skin in the search bar, or you can just
34:54
Speaker 1: kind of look around the internet because there is plenty
34:56
Speaker 1: of stuff about that dude on there, and enjoy yourself.
35:00
Speaker 1: And since I said enjoy yourself, it's time for listener. Now,
35:05
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this um trailer builder. Um. Hey, guys,
35:10
Speaker 1: Chuck and Josh or Josh and Chuck, whichever you prefer.
35:13
Speaker 1: Prefer Josh and Chuck. I think he goes either way. Yeah,
35:17
Speaker 1: well that's what we kind of settled on, consistent branding. No,
35:20
Speaker 1: it goes both ways. We go both ways, all right,
35:23
Speaker 1: Chuck and Josh, Josh and Chuck. Hey, guys, I must
35:25
Speaker 1: admit that I tried very hard not to listen to you.
35:28
Speaker 1: I was told by several of my friends that I
35:30
Speaker 1: absolutely must subscribe to your show. However, is to stay
35:33
Speaker 1: at home dad by day to a beautiful three year
35:35
Speaker 1: old and three month old boys. Very busy small business
35:38
Speaker 1: owner by night had trouble finding enough time to go
35:40
Speaker 1: poop let alone indulge in any form of entertainment. Needless
35:44
Speaker 1: to say, I did listen and wonder and became instantly addicted.
35:48
Speaker 1: I had forgotten how much I enjoyed learning. The two
35:50
Speaker 1: months since I first gave you, guys a shot, had
35:52
Speaker 1: been on a steady binge and quickly running out of
35:55
Speaker 1: back episodes to listen to, which is a frightening prospect
35:58
Speaker 1: to me, considering podcast is a fuel that powers my
36:01
Speaker 1: motivation engine. While I work, my brother and I own
36:05
Speaker 1: and operate Oregon trailer. Uh, that's trail apostrophe are where
36:10
Speaker 1: the two of us built high end, tiny, tear drop
36:12
Speaker 1: style camp trailers. Have you ever seen those? Really cool? Like?
36:17
Speaker 1: I want one of these? Um, he's gonna send anyone.
36:22
Speaker 1: I found that while my hands are on autopilot building trailers,
36:25
Speaker 1: my brain has been totally neglected listening to my requisite
36:28
Speaker 1: Pandora stations. But now that I'm listening to you fellas
36:31
Speaker 1: and receiving constant brain stimulation, getting more done than ever
36:34
Speaker 1: and enjoying every second. Uh, my wife and sons thank you,
36:37
Speaker 1: as well as my general mood is improved despite the
36:40
Speaker 1: potentially unhealthy lack of sleep. However, my lovely wife is
36:43
Speaker 1: still getting a little tired of the phrase. So. I
36:45
Speaker 1: was listening to stuff you should know last night dot
36:47
Speaker 1: dot dot. So I just want to say thanks for
36:50
Speaker 1: everything you guys do, have done, and we'll do in
36:52
Speaker 1: the future. Large amounts of platonic love that is Sawyer
36:56
Speaker 1: Christensen and uh, I'm gonna plug Oregon trailer dot net
37:00
Speaker 1: just because these things are really cool. Yeah, Oregon trail
37:04
Speaker 1: apostrophe or no on on the website, it's trailer, Okay,
37:09
Speaker 1: Oregon trailer dot Net. Good point. And um, if you're
37:12
Speaker 1: in the market for one of those, like check them
37:14
Speaker 1: out small business handmade, send me one, send Josh one
37:19
Speaker 1: and i'd be sweet. Yeah, they're pretty neat. Thanks a lot,
37:22
Speaker 1: Syr Christensen, great name by the way, and uh, we
37:25
Speaker 1: appreciate the kudos. And if you out there, everybody else
37:29
Speaker 1: who isn't so your Christensen wants to get in touch
37:32
Speaker 1: with us to say anything at all. You can tweet
37:35
Speaker 1: to us at s y s K podcast. You can
37:37
Speaker 1: join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know.
37:40
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
37:42
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com and join us at our
37:45
Speaker 1: home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
37:53
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
37:55
Speaker 1: it how stuff Works dot com