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I Modi: The Scandalous Erotic Blockbuster Banned By The Vatican · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: of this episode before playing it for your your students,
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Speaker 1: or maybe give it a go, and it will make
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Speaker 1: you grow up a little bit. You will have you,
2:23
Speaker 1: You'll have that Aladdin a whole New world moment. Right.
2:27
Speaker 1: That's my favorite part of that movie. It is such
2:29
Speaker 1: an amazing movie overall. Are you going to see the
2:31
Speaker 1: live version? I gotta say that the physics of it
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Speaker 1: absolute garbage. They would be torn to shreds or they
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Speaker 1: would like suffocateing on the carpet. Give me a break.
2:39
Speaker 1: I always thought the carpet sort of created this field.
2:42
Speaker 1: You are vetsy magical thinking. I like that. It's it's
2:45
Speaker 1: a story about magic. Is quality, suspension of disbelief, my friend,
2:48
Speaker 1: well done, speaking suspension of disbelief. Yeah, that's a weird
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Speaker 1: that's a weird segue. But today's episode addresses a little
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Speaker 1: bit of hypocrisy in Catholic Church. Uh, addresses something that
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Speaker 1: you and I both I think found fascinating but maybe
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Speaker 1: not entirely surprising. Yeah, possibly a little titilating, Yes, yes,
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Speaker 1: a little a bit of twitter patient indeed, we should
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Speaker 1: get right to it. Um. Today's episode is I don't know,
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Speaker 1: you could kind of this is a bit of a
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Speaker 1: miss number to refer to it like this, but I
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Speaker 1: still like it. The band sixteenth century pornographic sex guide
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Speaker 1: made in you guessed it, the Vatican True story. True story, folks, Yes,
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Speaker 1: this is this is entirely uh, this is entirely nonfictional.
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Speaker 1: So nowadays, when people think of the pope right the
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Speaker 1: the head of the Catholic Church, we typically are going
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Speaker 1: to think of maybe someone who's kind of isolated, kindly
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Speaker 1: older man in white with a unique set of hats.
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Speaker 1: But in sent trees leading up to the modern day,
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Speaker 1: popes were somewhat uh, salacious or what's that other word
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Speaker 1: we were, Yes, well, I mean, you know, here's the
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Speaker 1: thing too, there's a public facing pope ness, and then
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Speaker 1: there's the private facing Pope nous. I made up the
4:17
Speaker 1: word pop nous just now, but I thought it was good.
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Speaker 1: I think I'm okay with it. Um, But think about
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Speaker 1: I mean, we know this from all the expose a
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Speaker 1: s that have been going on about the Catholic Church
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Speaker 1: for decades now and beyond. Where As it turns out
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Speaker 1: some of these kindly older gentlemen in their you know,
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Speaker 1: robes and whatnot, we're actually not so kindly at all,
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Speaker 1: and we're doing pretty terrible things behind closed doors when
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Speaker 1: they thought they could get away with it. Um, this
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Speaker 1: is not that necessarily. This is a little more just
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Speaker 1: being a little on the naughty side and perhaps commissioning,
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Speaker 1: as legend would have it. There's different version of the
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Speaker 1: story some pornographic art in a particular space in the
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Speaker 1: Vatican that is now referred to as the solid Deconstantino,
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Speaker 1: Well done done, what an authentico accent? Oh thank you?
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Speaker 1: Do you remember that earlier conversation. Uh, this is the
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Speaker 1: point you brought up, Nold, that I thought was very
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Speaker 1: interesting where I can't remember whether this was on air
5:11
Speaker 1: of whether we were just hanging out after work, but
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Speaker 1: you said you said to me, like, Ben, you notice
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Speaker 1: that we're always very careful not to stereotype people were
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Speaker 1: do unfair caricatures, except for Italian people and apparently Australians.
5:27
Speaker 1: We got an email where people were like, hey, I
5:29
Speaker 1: really like the show, but all you ever do talk
5:31
Speaker 1: we would talk about about my home country is bad
5:33
Speaker 1: Australian accents and Genitalia references. I believe little Australia. But
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Speaker 1: that's that's neither here nor there um. But yeah, we
5:41
Speaker 1: do try our best to being to be thoughtful and
5:43
Speaker 1: uh in courteous. So if there is anything that sounds
5:46
Speaker 1: like a stereotypical or Italian accent or caricature where thereof
5:52
Speaker 1: it is simply our bad pronunciation and feel pretty gell
5:55
Speaker 1: at us. So. The Satellah Dick Constantina is one of
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Speaker 1: the largest rooms in the Vatican and at this point
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Speaker 1: in time it depicts um kind of Fresco paintings of
6:06
Speaker 1: the first Roman emperor to convert Christianity, constantine Um, and
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Speaker 1: it is believed by some, though I don't I have
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Speaker 1: not found any equivocal and equivocal evidence for this that
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Speaker 1: those were painted on top of some rather selaceous uh
6:23
Speaker 1: let's call it Renaissance pin up type type paintings, right right. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: The way this story goes is that once upon a time, uh,
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Speaker 1: there were a series of there were there were a
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Speaker 1: series of very explicit paintings of lovers historical figures throughout history,
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Speaker 1: in explicit, explicit uh romantic positions. Yeah, and I mean
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Speaker 1: more so than just depictions, like they were almost intended
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Speaker 1: to be like a guide book, sort of like the
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Speaker 1: Commis or something like that. And I think there were
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Speaker 1: how many of them? Were there been sixteen? Yes, there
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Speaker 1: were six sixteen for the sixteenth century. That's totally why
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Speaker 1: they did that. And um, we'll get to this in
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Speaker 1: a little bit. But Raphael was one of the most
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Speaker 1: well renowned artists of the time and adorned many a
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Speaker 1: room in the Vatican with his incredibly elaborate what would
7:23
Speaker 1: you call the style of Raphael ben uh. He was
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Speaker 1: the he's considered the architect of the High Renaissance. Full
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Speaker 1: name rafael O Sonzio da Urbino, and he was born
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Speaker 1: in fourteen eighty three, passed away at the age of
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Speaker 1: thirty seven in fifteen twenty, allegedly after a night of
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Speaker 1: wild passion. Wild passion. Yeah, all signs point to Rafael
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Speaker 1: being a bit of a of a horny boy and
7:48
Speaker 1: keeping company with some others of that ilk um. There
7:52
Speaker 1: was sort of a cabal of these sort of letchy
7:55
Speaker 1: older men that kicked it in this particular palazzo that
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Speaker 1: belonged to a man who was a patron of the
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Speaker 1: arts by the name of Augustine. No cheege cheese. Is
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Speaker 1: it like gelie chee cheegye. I'm gonna do a hard
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Speaker 1: g What do you think? I think it was a
8:11
Speaker 1: very smart move to put both of those pronunciations out
8:14
Speaker 1: there so yell at me about the wrong one and
8:16
Speaker 1: praised me for the correct I it is. It's going
8:19
Speaker 1: to be okay, do you think so? I think it'll
8:21
Speaker 1: be okay? Dude. The the ire of the Internet never
8:23
Speaker 1: ceases to terrify me. Well, it's spelled c h I
8:27
Speaker 1: g I c h I. Banker to the Vatican, Banker
8:30
Speaker 1: to the Vatican, like iron bank kind of dude, right serious,
8:33
Speaker 1: like like power behind the purse to the Vatican, one
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Speaker 1: of the most powerful institutions in the world. And he
8:39
Speaker 1: would have Uh, I don't know, I've I've heard them
8:42
Speaker 1: referred to as wild garden parties. Um. And he owned
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Speaker 1: a palatial estate by the Tiber River and had a
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Speaker 1: vast collection of erotic art, including a particularly lewed statue
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Speaker 1: of uh Greek god and fellow horny boy Pan or Puck. Right,
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Speaker 1: likely anatomically correct, I think, is what we're getting at.
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Speaker 1: Despite his day job, his private life was extraordinarily hedonistic,
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Speaker 1: there's a fair way to say this. And he and
9:12
Speaker 1: his pals were considered libertarian, but not the way we
9:15
Speaker 1: think of libertarianism today, in terse of you know, being
9:18
Speaker 1: pro weed and anti anti government in any sense. Right, yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 1: this means that they were, in contrast to the official
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Speaker 1: doctrine or public view of the Catholic Church. They were
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Speaker 1: very now let's say open, right, they are at this
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Speaker 1: point kind of polyamorous swingers. They're yeah, they're seeking all this. Uh,
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Speaker 1: They're they're seeking the carnal pleasures. Uh. It's similar to
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Speaker 1: Hugh Hefner's playboy mansion. This is this is a surprisingly
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Speaker 1: apt comparison. They likely had a grotto in this particular
9:55
Speaker 1: state as well. I would imagine, Yes, Uh, and they
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Speaker 1: had a lot of guests uh the upper echelons of
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Speaker 1: society at the time. One regular guest was a writer
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Speaker 1: named Pietro Aretino, and he described the erotic art in
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Speaker 1: this famous villa by saying, why shouldn't the I see
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Speaker 1: what delights it most? Exactly? Because the Vatican was infamous
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Speaker 1: for covering up nude sculptures, any kind of depiction of
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Speaker 1: the male nude form or female new form, they would
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Speaker 1: require the artist to drape it like um, I believe
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Speaker 1: Michelangelo's one of his famous some of his famous nudes
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Speaker 1: were required to be added onto with additional material to
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Speaker 1: cover them up, kind of like the Statue of Liberty
10:36
Speaker 1: originally had the exactly that's right, I totally forgot it,
10:41
Speaker 1: or like the famous fig leaves of that dam and
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Speaker 1: even on that's totally but I think that Artino very
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Speaker 1: accurately summed up what this whole kind of cabal of dudes,
10:50
Speaker 1: with their whole like kind of therapy of life, kind
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Speaker 1: of Fidelio kind of vibe, was all about, why shouldn't
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Speaker 1: the I see what delights him most exactly? So in
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Speaker 1: his bedroom, the banker Cheegy had a fresco of Alexander
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Speaker 1: the Great in a in a sexually explicit position with
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Speaker 1: his wife Roxanne and Rafael himself. Like Rafael is famous
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Speaker 1: at this time, he has a team of people working
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Speaker 1: under him. So it's a big deal that he himself
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Speaker 1: paints some of the most famous frescoes in the villa.
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Speaker 1: But according to his biographer, an author named A. V. Sarry,
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Speaker 1: Raphael himself uh couldn't work properly in this environment because
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Speaker 1: uh the sorry says the guy had a sex addiction. Uh.
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Speaker 1: So Raphael's lover at the time had to be given
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Speaker 1: a bedroom in the in the location, so he would
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Speaker 1: paint and then go full around and then go back
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Speaker 1: and paint, rinse and repeat. Uh. And this, according again
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Speaker 1: to his biographer, is what is what actually, this is
12:02
Speaker 1: the situation that led to his death at the early
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Speaker 1: age of thirty seven. And he left. When he passed away,
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Speaker 1: he left his his business, his work to his most
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Speaker 1: talented assistant, a guy named Giulio Romano or Gulio Romano.
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Speaker 1: Let's think about him the way we might think of
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Speaker 1: a modern street artist today. Right, A lot of these
12:23
Speaker 1: folks are known as the you know, power behind the throne,
12:26
Speaker 1: and like the style guide of like this, you know,
12:29
Speaker 1: everything associated with this person's brand. But everyone from like
12:32
Speaker 1: a shepherd ferry to likely a banks or whatever has
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Speaker 1: like teams of people working with them to help them
12:37
Speaker 1: recreate their work and like do it in different locations,
12:40
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to like reproducible stuff. And so
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Speaker 1: this assistant was kind of his right hand man and
12:46
Speaker 1: could literally take the baton and kind of like keep
12:48
Speaker 1: the business going after his uh, you know what would
12:52
Speaker 1: you call it his master? Now his boss, I guess
12:56
Speaker 1: his boss. Yeah, after his mentor after he uh you know,
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Speaker 1: I had a very erotic death, very erotic death the
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Speaker 1: story of Rafael. Yes, and so now now this guy
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Speaker 1: is the successor. Here, Romano is in charge of this team.
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Speaker 1: He has inherited this. One of the connections he inherits
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Speaker 1: is a printmaker named Mark Cantonio Ramondi. I want to backtrack,
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Speaker 1: You're just slightly not backtrack really, but this is where
13:25
Speaker 1: the story diverges a little bit. I've seen a couple
13:27
Speaker 1: of spots that say, okay, he was hired to paint
13:33
Speaker 1: that Constantine room, which was considered one of the Raphael
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Speaker 1: rooms in the Vatican because Rafael had done many of them.
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Speaker 1: But then this room was left uncompleted, uh when he
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Speaker 1: had passed away, So his assistant was supposed to go
13:45
Speaker 1: in there and finish it. I've seen that. And then, um,
13:49
Speaker 1: I know Pope Leo the tenth was going to make
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Speaker 1: Rafael like an honorary high Church officials because of all
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Speaker 1: his work that he had done. It's really funny considering
13:57
Speaker 1: that he was a known sex addict and kind of letch.
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Speaker 1: But that didn't come to fruition because he of course
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Speaker 1: passed away. But whoever employed his assistant to supposedly paint
14:08
Speaker 1: this room, Um, the assistant got irritated at him, legend says,
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Speaker 1: and he instead decided to paint these sixteen erotic scenes
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Speaker 1: on these panels. That's one version of the story. Yeah,
14:19
Speaker 1: and there are a couple of different versions. So before
14:21
Speaker 1: raw Fael's death, just just to rewind in time a
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Speaker 1: bit in fifteen sixty and a guy named Cardinal Bibiana
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Speaker 1: commissions Rafael to decorate his personal bathroom with these nude
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Speaker 1: nymphs bathing while uh, very anatomically correct satyrs are spying
14:38
Speaker 1: on them. And this only flies because the cardinals bathroom
14:43
Speaker 1: is considered a private place, right so these various works
14:48
Speaker 1: of art, explicit sexual art, were never meant to be
14:52
Speaker 1: a matter of public discussion or even public knowledge, right,
14:56
Speaker 1: uh it goes. Is the same way with the erotic
14:58
Speaker 1: frescoes on the wall alls of the solid Diconstantino. Whether
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Speaker 1: they were commissioned or drawn out of spite, right, that's
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Speaker 1: the that's the big divergence on the story. They were
15:07
Speaker 1: either commissioned on purpose or drawn as kind of a troll. Well,
15:12
Speaker 1: it is a divergence of the story. But then I've
15:14
Speaker 1: also seen a version of the story where the Vatican
15:16
Speaker 1: doesn't come into it at all, like where this guy
15:19
Speaker 1: just drew these himself and then had them and then
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Speaker 1: had had them maker, the printmaker dismate, disseminate them. Because
15:25
Speaker 1: that's where we get into more of the idea of
15:27
Speaker 1: this thing, as this collection of nudes, as being the
15:31
Speaker 1: first form of widely circulated pornography, right the sixteen postures
15:38
Speaker 1: as they came to be known. So so the printer
15:42
Speaker 1: Marcantonio Rimondi engraves and prints these explicit illustrations of sex
15:49
Speaker 1: acts drawn by Romano, and he publishes this in fifty
15:54
Speaker 1: four under the title I Moody, which translates as the positions.
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Speaker 1: And this is not erotic cu this is not you know,
16:03
Speaker 1: some sort of sensitive exploration of the human esthetic visually.
16:07
Speaker 1: This is pornography. Yeah, dude, I'm looking at him right now.
16:10
Speaker 1: They are They're really They're in SFW. They really really are.
16:14
Speaker 1: If you want to get a look at them, if
16:15
Speaker 1: you're really interested, you can go there's an article on
16:18
Speaker 1: Dangerous Minds dot net that has all of them. Actually
16:20
Speaker 1: that's not true, that we'll get to this. They ultimately
16:23
Speaker 1: are lost to time, but the idea of what they
16:25
Speaker 1: are were was recreated because it created like a whole
16:28
Speaker 1: new genre of stuff, you know, which is like, let's
16:31
Speaker 1: depict sex x and as frank away as humanly possible,
16:34
Speaker 1: often with satyrs and mythical creatures as well, so that
16:37
Speaker 1: you're gonna see a lot of that stuff. So if
16:39
Speaker 1: you want to catch that yourself, it is n SFWS.
16:41
Speaker 1: Ben said, you can go to dangerous mind dot net
16:43
Speaker 1: and the headline is an eighteenth century guide to sex position.
16:46
Speaker 1: So you can just search for that right there. Great site.
16:48
Speaker 1: And I'm sure many people have just probably run into
16:51
Speaker 1: that earlier. Why wouldn't you have? Why would you not? So?
16:54
Speaker 1: According let's go back to this divergence in the story.
16:57
Speaker 1: According to Lynn Loner, who is an art story and
17:00
Speaker 1: focusing on the Renaissance in Italy, in fifty three, Giulio
17:05
Speaker 1: began the decoration of the solid de Konstantino and the Vatican,
17:09
Speaker 1: and the pope at the time, Clement the seventh, was
17:13
Speaker 1: tardy in paying the bill, and hence the beef, and
17:17
Speaker 1: hence the beef, and so then he says, all right,
17:20
Speaker 1: you know what, I'll keep working, but I'm gonna draw
17:23
Speaker 1: these sixteen postures. That doesn't make sense. That would be
17:27
Speaker 1: a real risk to do that when don't you think
17:29
Speaker 1: do you think he felt like totally above the law
17:31
Speaker 1: that he could like essentially graffiti this guy's walls with
17:36
Speaker 1: what would be considered filth, you know, because let's not
17:39
Speaker 1: forget the collected versions of these we're jumping around time
17:42
Speaker 1: a little bit. Ultimately end up getting the printer whose
17:47
Speaker 1: name I'm is escaping me now Ben, who's the printer
17:50
Speaker 1: Raymond getting him thrown in jail by the pope. So
17:54
Speaker 1: the idea of maybe some of these nudes existing behind
17:58
Speaker 1: closed doors, like you said, Ben and private um, maybe
18:01
Speaker 1: wouldn't have caused the pope to totally go full ham
18:04
Speaker 1: on it and trying to, you know, censor it out.
18:06
Speaker 1: But once it starts being disseminated, you now in printed form.
18:10
Speaker 1: It it's it's um. It's like something that has to
18:13
Speaker 1: be squashed. Right. Let's talk a little bit about Pope
18:16
Speaker 1: Clement the seventh as well. He's a real peach. So
18:20
Speaker 1: he was pope from three to fifteen thirty four. Uh.
18:25
Speaker 1: He was known for being a bit of a flip flopper.
18:30
Speaker 1: He didn't really keep his word. He would make and
18:34
Speaker 1: break alliances with France, Spain, and Germany over the course
18:37
Speaker 1: of his papacy. He was inclined to changing his political
18:43
Speaker 1: views to match those of whoever was the most powerful
18:46
Speaker 1: and wealthy at the time, and as a result, his
18:49
Speaker 1: critics said that he was not to be trusted. So
18:52
Speaker 1: he was the sort of he, at least from what
18:56
Speaker 1: we can tell historically, he was the sort of person
18:58
Speaker 1: who would attempt to swindle people out of money, which
19:01
Speaker 1: is where where this whole thing begins. If you, if
19:05
Speaker 1: you trust the historians who say that the postures arrive
19:09
Speaker 1: out of spite. When the sixteen Postures are published, as
19:12
Speaker 1: you said, Ramondi is thrown in jail by Clement the
19:15
Speaker 1: seventh and because the printmaker has some powerful friends, he
19:20
Speaker 1: is eventually released. But you can't screw the lid back
19:24
Speaker 1: on Pandora's jar here now, and instead that not only
19:27
Speaker 1: do they not screw the lid back on Pandora's jar,
19:30
Speaker 1: they like bespoke the jar even further. Because you remember
19:33
Speaker 1: that guy ar and Tino we talked about, who had
19:36
Speaker 1: that fantastic quote about give the eyes what they want
19:38
Speaker 1: or whatever. Um, he really wanted to double down and
19:41
Speaker 1: lean into that because he uh composed sixteen absolutely filthy,
19:47
Speaker 1: raunchy sonnets that described each of the of the scenes
19:52
Speaker 1: in poetically graphic detail. Uh. And in a an introduction
19:57
Speaker 1: to this book, the new addition the just sort of
20:00
Speaker 1: an incantation to the reader, an invocation, yes, exactly, invocation
20:04
Speaker 1: of the muses of of of raunchiness. H quote, come
20:08
Speaker 1: view this, you who liked to okay without being disturbed
20:14
Speaker 1: in that sweet enterprise, I would have added a second suite.
20:17
Speaker 1: I would have been that sweet sweet enterprise. Yeah. Well,
20:21
Speaker 1: we have the benefit of retrospect editorialism. So this is
20:26
Speaker 1: a blockbuster, absolute smash, no pun intended. Yeah, yeah, it's
20:32
Speaker 1: uh It's strange because Romano, the guy who was made
20:37
Speaker 1: these images, has already absconded from Rome. He is a
20:42
Speaker 1: court artist in Mantua and RAYMONDI you know, before he
20:47
Speaker 1: was released, he was stuck in prisoned by himself, and
20:50
Speaker 1: the church attempted to seize and destroy all copies of
20:54
Speaker 1: the book. They didn't want that getting out. The Church
20:56
Speaker 1: is really good at eradicating unflattering literature, sure are, yeah,
21:02
Speaker 1: But in fifteen seven Imodi was reissued with those licentious
21:06
Speaker 1: poems we mentioned earlier, and it became a blockbuster. It
21:11
Speaker 1: was selling out across Europe, and the book had many names.
21:16
Speaker 1: It was called Imody, the posture, the fashion. It's also
21:20
Speaker 1: known as Tarantino's Postures, the sixteen Pleasures, or the omnibus
21:24
Speaker 1: venerischimatibus nias huh as Latin, what does schematibus man? It
21:31
Speaker 1: must mean some form of position. In fact, when I
21:33
Speaker 1: google the word, the first thing that comes up as
21:35
Speaker 1: emodi again, so that obviously just refers to the function
21:39
Speaker 1: and practice of moving the limbs around in particular arrays. Right, yeah, exactly.
21:45
Speaker 1: So this did more than just make money and get
21:49
Speaker 1: people thrown in jail. Though it was one of those
21:52
Speaker 1: rare works of erotica, or let's be honest, pornography that
21:55
Speaker 1: jumped from niche to mainstream. You know what I mean.
21:59
Speaker 1: It's sort of like, in a way, it's similar to
22:03
Speaker 1: fifty Shades of Gray. Yeah, that's true. And there's a
22:05
Speaker 1: really great article from Atlas Obscura called Europe's first pornographic
22:09
Speaker 1: blockbuster was made in the Vatican that makes that very connection.
22:13
Speaker 1: Or something like Deep Throat, which was a pornographic film
22:17
Speaker 1: that became pretty widely disseminated and almost like tongue in
22:20
Speaker 1: cheeckenly Uh talked about in you know, polite social circles,
22:25
Speaker 1: right right, people would performatively clutch their peoples and hide
22:30
Speaker 1: their faces gibbling. Yeah, so you refer to it as
22:33
Speaker 1: a joke, you know what I mean, to be a
22:35
Speaker 1: little bit edgy in conversation. Some people will even argue
22:38
Speaker 1: that William Shakespeare himself snuck a reference to this book
22:43
Speaker 1: in Uh in a Winter's Tale when he talks about
22:47
Speaker 1: that rare Italian master Julio Romano. There was a sixteenth
22:52
Speaker 1: century Italian phrase book that was aimed at English tourists,
22:56
Speaker 1: and it taught them how to ask in Italian for
23:01
Speaker 1: the works of Arantino at bookstores to must dude. But alas,
23:07
Speaker 1: I guess I'm gonna say, Alas, I mean, thankfully we
23:10
Speaker 1: have these these lovely recreations that you can see on
23:12
Speaker 1: the dangerous mind side. But the book itself, and as
23:15
Speaker 1: far as I know, the text of the Sonnets are
23:18
Speaker 1: pretty much worked successfully eradicated by the Vatican, and the
23:21
Speaker 1: original the original frescoes as well. If you'd like to
23:25
Speaker 1: believe that they're buried underneath those uh those you know,
23:28
Speaker 1: paintings of Constantine, the Life of Constantine. You know, that's
23:31
Speaker 1: possibly one way you could uncover that mystery, if you
23:34
Speaker 1: want to go in there and start scraping away the
23:35
Speaker 1: paint not recommending that. Wait wait, wait, I'll recogn serious
23:39
Speaker 1: business due they will throw you in some sort of
23:41
Speaker 1: like dungeon. Listen to me, carefully, grad students, art historians.
23:48
Speaker 1: I my spider sense tells me there might be a
23:50
Speaker 1: grant in here, maybe even a dissertation. Surely there's a
23:53
Speaker 1: way you could X ray them or something and penetrate
23:55
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not sure exactly how technology works. Really,
23:59
Speaker 1: that's not what kind show this is. But but it's
24:02
Speaker 1: true that there were illegal or bootleg copies of IMODI
24:05
Speaker 1: or things purporting to be IMODI that were printed for
24:09
Speaker 1: over a century afterwards, well into the sixt hundreds. There's
24:13
Speaker 1: no way to know how many works were printed, but
24:17
Speaker 1: because churches and governments cooperated to hunt down and destroy
24:21
Speaker 1: the copies, at least with as much enthusiasm as people
24:27
Speaker 1: sought to collect and print them. We don't have a
24:30
Speaker 1: record of the actual sixteen postures that were depicted. Well,
24:36
Speaker 1: there's a few. We don't have all a few little
24:38
Speaker 1: scrappys that remain in the collection of the British Museum.
24:46
Speaker 1: We do have the sudence I found some and off
24:48
Speaker 1: the air it sent these two as well. Uh there.
24:54
Speaker 1: You know, you can blame a little bit on the translation.
24:56
Speaker 1: But they're pretty. They're pretty body. Let's like Canterbury Tales
25:01
Speaker 1: body or like. So okay, so we'll I'll read one, okay,
25:12
Speaker 1: and we'll we'll need to beat this. So Paul, I'm
25:14
Speaker 1: gonna make eye contact with you. Be ready for this.
25:18
Speaker 1: That's some intense eye contact right there. I moved here. Yeah, okay,
25:22
Speaker 1: here we go. Stick your finger up my old man.
25:27
Speaker 1: Thrust caso in a little at a time, Lift up
25:30
Speaker 1: my leg maneuver well, now pound with all inhibitions gone.
25:33
Speaker 1: Oh I got bad. It's worse. I believe this is
25:36
Speaker 1: a tastier feast than eating garlic bread before a fire.
25:39
Speaker 1: It goes on. Okay, wow, I get what you were expecting. No,
25:43
Speaker 1: I don't see. When you start bringing the food metaphors
25:45
Speaker 1: in there, that's when it really turns turns me, dude,
25:48
Speaker 1: And we should talk about this. Can we talk about this?
25:50
Speaker 1: We can totally not read any of those effort again. Um, yeah,
25:54
Speaker 1: I took one for the team. God, Oh my good heavens. Okay, So,
26:00
Speaker 1: speaking of pearl clutching, I'm I'm being I'm i am
26:05
Speaker 1: very much blushing. Listen that we gotta we gotta get
26:07
Speaker 1: this out of the way. Before we went on the air,
26:09
Speaker 1: we were deciding whether or not to like, whether to
26:12
Speaker 1: use the word pornography or porn and you Ben mentioned
26:16
Speaker 1: that you always felt the word porn was more salacious nowadays,
26:20
Speaker 1: and we were trying to figure out why that was.
26:21
Speaker 1: I don't know why. Yeah, it must it must entirely
26:24
Speaker 1: be a subjective thing. I guess. Um, pornography at least
26:28
Speaker 1: sounds a little more academic, I guess. And Also, there's
26:32
Speaker 1: something that puts me ill at ease when people describe
26:36
Speaker 1: non sexual things as porn, like when people say, oh,
26:40
Speaker 1: food porn, or even when you know, I saw somebody
26:43
Speaker 1: who was I met someone's dog. I love dogs, and
26:48
Speaker 1: uh I was. I was rubbing the dog's belly and
26:50
Speaker 1: the dog's owner says, oh, yeah, she's she's like such
26:54
Speaker 1: a slept for belly rubs, and that was really gross
26:56
Speaker 1: to me. We're just scratching this dog. Well, you know,
26:58
Speaker 1: I mean, people are taking that word back, but I
27:01
Speaker 1: think that that's a good point. I I really am
27:03
Speaker 1: with you on the food stuff. Like, I don't think
27:05
Speaker 1: either one of us like it when someone describes a
27:07
Speaker 1: bite of cake as orgasmic or or sumptuous. It just
27:11
Speaker 1: didn't know. It turns me, it turns, it turns my
27:14
Speaker 1: exquisite is fine, that's not exit. I was just feeling
27:17
Speaker 1: the riff. Yeah, no, it's true. But I think we've
27:19
Speaker 1: got to the bottom of it. I think both of
27:20
Speaker 1: us feel the same way. But I think we used
27:22
Speaker 1: a combination of porn and pornography in this episode because
27:25
Speaker 1: it was you know, it's about all the all the
27:27
Speaker 1: mini shades, fifty shades of of renaissance, uh erotica. And
27:33
Speaker 1: that's also I think why that Sonnet really did it
27:35
Speaker 1: for me, not in a good way, because once you
27:37
Speaker 1: started bringing garlic bread into the equation, I'm like, leave
27:39
Speaker 1: garlic bread out of uh. It's it's funny because this
27:45
Speaker 1: is UH sort of producer replise literal first day. We
27:49
Speaker 1: did warn her, we do, we try to. We're not
27:52
Speaker 1: a naughty show. We're not. We are we are if
27:55
Speaker 1: we are nothing if not wholesome. We are very old general.
27:58
Speaker 1: But this is this is fascinating because I think a
28:01
Speaker 1: lot of I think a lot of people who enjoy
28:04
Speaker 1: reading about the history of the Catholic Church. I think
28:07
Speaker 1: a lot of us are familiar with the scandalous popes
28:11
Speaker 1: of years gone by, but we're maybe not as um
28:16
Speaker 1: as aware of the the pornography that that the Catholic
28:22
Speaker 1: Church unwittingly created, unleashed on the world. That's it. That's
28:27
Speaker 1: the thing though, right, I mean, it's sort of like
28:28
Speaker 1: the idea of uh, I don't know, prostitution or sex
28:31
Speaker 1: work being the oldest profession. I don't know. That's sort
28:33
Speaker 1: of a misnomer probably, but it makes sense because it's
28:35
Speaker 1: a thing that people in some form or fashion need.
28:39
Speaker 1: It's like a gap people need filled. Well that's very
28:41
Speaker 1: very graphic sounding. Um, but in terms of like there's artists,
28:44
Speaker 1: why wouldn't artists do this, It's sort of I wonder
28:46
Speaker 1: if they didn't even realize, like the idea that that
28:49
Speaker 1: this can be a stand in for actual, you know, sex,
28:53
Speaker 1: because someone had to invent the idea of pornography, rightly,
28:57
Speaker 1: I think it's parallel thinking. I mean fairly certain many
29:01
Speaker 1: lonely people invented the idea of pornigraphy, erotic cave painting
29:07
Speaker 1: and sculptures, you know, the venus figures, that's right, I
29:13
Speaker 1: I you know, I've got to admit I'm usually laser
29:16
Speaker 1: focused when we're exploring these fascinating stories and all, but
29:19
Speaker 1: I still have this pdf up and it is startling. Yeah,
29:23
Speaker 1: and it is a it is a splash of cold water. Really.
29:27
Speaker 1: So you can find you can find this book. You
29:30
Speaker 1: can find translations of it available on Amazon. Again, again
29:36
Speaker 1: categorically emphatically not safe for work. But what a strange,
29:42
Speaker 1: amazing story and what a bizarre effect this had on
29:45
Speaker 1: the world. Were okay though, right we looked at it
29:47
Speaker 1: at work. Yeah, job, it is it is literally our job.
29:51
Speaker 1: We had a reason for. If I t comes at us,
29:54
Speaker 1: we can say we were doing this for an episode
29:58
Speaker 1: at least I was I don't want to. I mean,
30:00
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm along for the right before I'm hanging
30:03
Speaker 1: onto your coat tails, story going? We are going home
30:08
Speaker 1: or to the bar or something that's right. This concludes
30:12
Speaker 1: today's episode, but not our show. We do hope you
30:16
Speaker 1: enjoyed this, this strange journey we're in. Uh where in
30:20
Speaker 1: both of us? Uh? Did take? Did take some off
30:23
Speaker 1: air breaks? Laughing a bit? Because we're emotionally both Probably
30:28
Speaker 1: what nine between us combined combined? That's a cumulative effect.
30:33
Speaker 1: Are our powers combined? We are a nine year old boy? Great? Uh?
30:38
Speaker 1: So we want to hear your stories too. What are
30:40
Speaker 1: some of the weird scandalous tales of art in years
30:46
Speaker 1: gone by? Did you end up with a copy of
30:48
Speaker 1: the Commissuitra when you were fourteen? I did? You did? Sure? Did?
30:52
Speaker 1: I saw one? But I never had my old copy.
30:54
Speaker 1: I had it hidden under my mattress. That's fine, I'm
30:59
Speaker 1: going with it. No, that's good. Good for you, man.
31:01
Speaker 1: It feels kind of academic. It's academic, and it's also
31:03
Speaker 1: personally liberating for me. There there you go, man, Thanks
31:07
Speaker 1: for joining us for the show. Thanks as always to
31:09
Speaker 1: our super producer Paul Mission Controlled Decade La Bouche Casey Pegram.
31:14
Speaker 1: We'll be back very soon. It's true he's returning. Thanks
31:18
Speaker 1: also to Christopher Haciotis, Thanks to our research associate Gabe.
31:23
Speaker 1: Thanks to Alex Williams, who composed that nifty little riff
31:27
Speaker 1: you here at the opening of every show. And by
31:29
Speaker 1: the way, we promised to do this on a previous
31:31
Speaker 1: episode but did not get to it. I just want
31:34
Speaker 1: to point out that Alex's fantastic new show Ephemeral, is
31:37
Speaker 1: live in the feed on any place you get your podcast,
31:41
Speaker 1: and the episode he talked with us about concerning the
31:43
Speaker 1: Call Your Brothers, we had said on the episode that
31:46
Speaker 1: it wasn't coming out for another month or so. He
31:48
Speaker 1: actually switched it up and it is now out in
31:50
Speaker 1: the Ephemeral feed, So go catch that and get the
31:53
Speaker 1: whole story of these weird kind of hermidy horder brothers,
31:57
Speaker 1: good save, good save, well done, and well put. Because
32:01
Speaker 1: we did. We did assure him, yeah, we'll do it,
32:04
Speaker 1: We'll do it in a previous episode, but now we
32:06
Speaker 1: have finally made good on it. Alex, if you were
32:08
Speaker 1: listening every soon to be ardent fan of ephemeral, go
32:12
Speaker 1: check it out. Do not hesitate. So we'll be back
32:15
Speaker 1: very soon with a new ridiculous and hopefully a bit
32:19
Speaker 1: less salacious episode into it. I was perfectly comfortable, except
32:24
Speaker 1: when you said the thing about the old man and
32:25
Speaker 1: the garlic bread. That really threw meant to me. Yeah,
32:27
Speaker 1: like that's gonna stay with me. It really is. It's
32:30
Speaker 1: a it's an image, that's for sure. You and I
32:36
Speaker 1: have read the full things the rest of it. I
32:39
Speaker 1: stopped there. Um, But if you want to share any
32:41
Speaker 1: of this stuff with us, Comma Sutra, any of the poetry,
32:44
Speaker 1: any of this kind of you know, what your whatever,
32:45
Speaker 1: your sexual journey has been. Maybe that's too much. We
32:48
Speaker 1: don't need all that, but you can do it either
32:49
Speaker 1: by joining us on our Facebook group, which is called
32:51
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historians, or we have a really cool community of friends,
32:56
Speaker 1: folks that like the show, that are talking to each other,
32:59
Speaker 1: sharing memes, discussing the episodes. All of that. All you
33:01
Speaker 1: have to do is say either me and Ben's name
33:03
Speaker 1: kind of Genie style to gain entry, or honestly say
33:08
Speaker 1: something that gives either of us at chuckle also sure
33:10
Speaker 1: it's a good pun. I'm Missycher For those You can
33:13
Speaker 1: also find us on Twitter. You can find us on Instagram,
33:17
Speaker 1: both as a show and as our real life personas. Recently,
33:23
Speaker 1: I went to the Comic Strip Museum in Belgium and
33:26
Speaker 1: was very surprised by the deeply racist roots of that.
33:31
Speaker 1: You can see some of those adventures of my instagram
33:33
Speaker 1: where I am at Ben Bully and I am at
33:36
Speaker 1: how Now Noel Brown. If you want to do any
33:39
Speaker 1: of that stuff, just shoot us an email where we
33:40
Speaker 1: are ridiculous at i heart radio dot com. See you
33:43
Speaker 1: next time. Books. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
33:49
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
33:51
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.