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Who Was Marco Polo? · Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hey Alex, Arriva Derchi, Buenos Aires.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: How you doing?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: How are you?
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing great, man.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm super stoked.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um I have a person today that I think fits right in our our wheelhouse and is somebody also that um I feel like I don't know, it's just this sort of mythical person that I had heard the name many times, but really didn't know much about before.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm excited about that.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we always say the wheelhouse is people that you that is kind of universally known.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: Most people just know of just a thumbnail, could give you maybe one or two words, and then not really any history on the person.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this this guy did a lot.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um he is not our our uh 20th century hero.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, we like those 20th century guys, but this guy was actually born in 1254.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Whoa, yeah, 1254.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty far back.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: He was also born in the same town as our pal Casanova.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Remember where that was?
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh wow, it was uh the town itself?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the same same place, Venice.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, and it wasn't Italy.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, it was uh incorporated uh Venice.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was it was its own thing back then.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Venetian you wonder how accurate 1254 is too, when it was that long ago, if it was around 1254.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it is interesting because it it you know, in my research, it is stated that they don't know or it's not known the day he was born.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: They they they're pretty sure on the year, but it's not known the day.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: But they know um they're pretty sure on the day he died, but not the day he was born.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I guess, you know, when you're when you're a baby and you're being born in you know, 1254 in Venice, uh you know, who cares, right?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: The 1250s were uh not as great as the 1260s.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, they got more into that hippie thing in the 1260s, right?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Is all the same to me.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, well, um this this is a little different, I think, because um this guy uh had a nickname and his nickname was Mione.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: Millione.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Millione.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Does that mean like um millionaire?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: It means million.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: It means million.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he was an explorer.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And he explored the Far East.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: All right, and he uh he has a lot of things named after him, but probably the thing that you're gonna know the be the most familiar with is a game you play in the swimming game.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: I was just gonna say, I was just gonna say Marco Polo.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: Marco Polo.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: So so it's interesting how that um that game came to be, but I want to save that for the end.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Talk talk about talk about him, and then I'll tell you about that game at the end.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Marco Polo.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Marco Polo was born in uh Venice, and he was Venetian, and what's interesting, he did not know his father, who he ended up traveling with for a long time, or his uncle, because his father was away when he was born.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, his father's first trip to uh the Far East, where you know he traveled through Asia.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is his father, Nicola, and his uncle Maffeo.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: They traveled for I believe 17 years in uh, or maybe it was even like 16, 15 years, a long time, like more than 10 years.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: They took this trip.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And while they were gone, Marco was born, and while they were gone, Marco's mother died.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: So Nicola returned to find his wife dead.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: He's got a 15-year-old son who he's never met before, because the son was uh born, you know, maybe that was the the the night he said goodbye to his wife and and uh never met never met her or never met him, Marco.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so he's got this 15-year-old son.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: He comes back, he's he's done some pretty big things.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, he met uh Kublakan, uh Nicola did in uh in Asia, and he had promised Kublakan he would come back to the East after returning to uh Venice because Kublakan was actually very interested in religion.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he was very interested in Christians, he was interested in the politics and the the monarchy and the hierarchy of of um Europe at the time.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, you know the group that Kubla Khan was the leader of.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Have you heard what they're called?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: The Mongols.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: I actually would have was gonna guess that, but I was afraid that would be no, it was the Mongols, and so Kubla Khan was uh the grandson of Gingis Khan.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: You've probably heard of Gingis Khan, right?
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the Khan Khan basically means king.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh Kubla was it spelled actually K-U-B-L-I-A, I believe.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: They were also called the Tartars.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Have you heard heard of that?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Tartars, yeah.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh you know why uh we have steak tartar?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever heard of steak tartar?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, it's like raw steak, basically.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well it is, but that's because the Mongols would cook their steak by putting it under the saddle or the blanket on their horse, and the horse's the horse's heat as it rode would would cook the meat.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's different than the Mongolian barbecue that I'm used to.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And and it would salt it as well.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, the Mongols were uh they were they innovative.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was they were innovative, you know, and they were um they were very much um uh they were the boogeyman of Europe at the time.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody was afraid of them because they were so fierced.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they they didn't take prisoners, they generally would ravage.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually said that at one point they had wiped out 10% of the world's population.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I've heard that just about everybody on earth is related to Genghis Khan.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Some somehow.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we're cousins with Kubla, Kubla.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, so the the Mongols terrified the Westerners, but somehow um Marco's dad, uh Nicola, and and his uncle Mafeo made a good impression on Kublakan, and he sent them back to um to um Venice to kind of check in with things, but they were also supposed to bring back a couple of things.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: So they wanted uh Kubla Kon wanted them to bring back a uh a note from the uh Pope.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: He was very interested.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, while they were in Venice, the Pope died, and it took like two years for them to name a new Pope.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a difficult thing for them to do because they were waiting for this new Pope to be named.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing he wanted, and they did bring back to him when they when they went back, and they went back with Marco, by the way, who was age like 15 at the time, they wanted him to bring back some the they wanted Kublan wanted them to bring back uh sacred oil from the sepulchre where where Jesus is said to be buried.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's oil there that is supposed to be like have a healing thing.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting too that the Mongols, while they were vicious and they were considered kind of um really, really tough warriors and wiped out entire countries and groups of people, they were also very tolerant of other religions.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Within the Mongol Empire, there were Christians, there were Jews, there were uh Muslims, there were uh Buddhists, and and the Mongols found it easier to not try and impart their religion on people that they conquered.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, so uh these people were in what's now like mainland China, right?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: They were in Mongolia, you know, what would be considered Mongolia, and I believe uh China was east of them, like was even further east.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: The the interesting thing about um where where Kublakan was located and where um Marco Polo traveled to was it was kind of all over the east.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: He went to Vietnam, what would today be Vietnam?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: What would today be um different parts of China?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And China is such a huge, huge landmass, right?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a really big landmass.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a very large area, but the big thing that um Kublai Khan was able to keep going was trade.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because he ruled and everybody was a little bit afraid of him, they had developed this trade route through the Far East called the Silk Road.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I think today, you know, we we have we had I don't know if it still exists anymore because I think it got shut down by the FBI, but Silk Road was a a place to buy illegal stuff online, right?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I I don't I don't I yeah, that sounds I think I've heard of that.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: So how how far was this trip?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: How how many miles are we are we talking here?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was said that um according to uh it was thousands, like like halfway around the globe, basically.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: So if the globe I don't know what the circumference of the globe is, like 14,000 miles or something.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it was 7,000 miles.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was said that by the time uh Marco returned to Venice, he had traveled like 15,000 miles or something.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: He had documented this takes years off your life.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: So he lived when he was 15, and by the time he got there, he was probably 18.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: He he came, he was actually 21 when he finally finally met Kublakan.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: And when he returned, when he returned to Venice, he was in his 30s.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to tell you a couple more things about the Mongols, um, because they're really interesting people.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: They were again they they terrified Westerners, they were kind of fearless, and they they were very good on horses, they were very good archers, they could come in and just rain down arrows on people and then run you over with their horse.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they also uh had this relationship with their horse where they cooked their meat um by putting it under the saddle or under a blanket.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: They also drank the um milk of a mare, so they all rode mares and they would they would take the milk that the mare would have and they would ferment it, and it was called kumas.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a big delicacy there, and it was supposed to be really terrible.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm still can't get past the hairy food.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, okay, and then here's the here's the real clincher.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when they had to, because they were traveling such great distances, sometimes they wouldn't eat for a while, they would cut a small, make a small cut in the horse or camel they were riding's veins and suck their blood out because it had nutrition in it.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: That is pretty gangster, isn't it?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: It is gangster gangster at the top of the list.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: So no wonder everybody was terrified of them.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but but KublaCon, he was very taken with um these three uh European traders.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, um the Polos, you know, they they called them the Polo Company.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: They were actually called the Merchants of Venice.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: You've maybe heard that term.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think that was a musical or something.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they were they were called the the Merchants of Venice.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Kubikon was taken with them.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: He was really taken with Marco, and when Marco arrived, he treated them very well to the point where he gave um gave them a passport that allowed them to travel all over his kingdoms, and his kingdoms were very far reaching.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: So this was something that was inscribed onto gold, and it would allow them to pass without not only without harm, but if they were coming through, the people were obligated to um take care of the polos as they came through these areas, and a lot of these areas were pretty dangerous.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: And polo was actually their like their last name, or was that kind of like okay?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: No, it was uh it was um Nick Nicola and Maffeo and Marco Polo, and that was actually their last name.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's a good name.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: It is Marco Polo.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's a that's a good name.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so they they actually um their home in in Venice was called Coppola or Coppolo.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um Ca was actually an abbreviated version of Casa, or you know, I'm saying it like Spanish, but in Italian casa meant home, and so Ca Pola was the home of Polo.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Not not related to the game of Polo, by the way, I don't think.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: You don't think?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: I never saw anything about that, but or Ralph Lorenz Polo.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: They they had no relation to Ralph Loren.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Although, although they did trade in silks and I was gonna say, when I picture Marco Polo, he's always wearing a collared shirt.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: He was he was a very fashionable guy.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um with a little horse on it.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and the horse has a little a little cut in its neck where they suck the blood.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: And and maybe uh maybe the the teats of a of a mare where it where it would give its where it would give its milk.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: You're talking about a logo redesign that I'm all in favor of.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Come on, polo.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Let you should you should uh sponsor us and let us do your thing.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um well, so he's he's 15, 16 years old, never never met his um father, was actually raised by his aunt and uncle because his mother had died.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: He had gotten a pretty good education, and they were all they were all considered um the polos were considered merchants, right?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: That was their thing.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: They were traders, they would go to places, they would trade in in precious jewels.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and one of the tricks that they did was they never carried cash, or they tried very, very hard not to carry cash, but they carried gems and and rubies and diamonds, and they would, you know how they would protect them from uh getting stolen?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: They would they would sew them into their garment.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh so they had cloaks and they would sew them into the cloaks, and they were robbed many times, and that would kind of save them from losing their most precious stuff.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: So they they'd pack their stuff and it would be sewn into their packed clothes.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: Are you talking about the clothes they were wearing?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: No, the clothes they were wearing, because usually their bags would get stolen.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: So why wouldn't people just rip their clothes off then?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they were stupid.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Sir, give me everything you have, but you can keep that fine cloak.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's cold out here.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: So there was like kind of blinged out their clothes.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: No, but they were hidden.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: They wanted the clothes to look as soon as sort of inside, like you couldn't see.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Not not I'm not talking bedazzled or or what are those things called when you bejeweled.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um they they were they were sewn inside and hidden in such a way that you couldn't really see it.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: So they um arrived, you know, after they had after they had returned, so after um his his uncle and uh father returned to Nicola and Mafeo returned after their time, the first time, they they took Marco with them, and they arrived back in um 127.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they left in 1271, and they traveled uh until about 1275.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it took them about four years to get there.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And by the time they finally got there, so have you ever heard um like of Cathay Pacific or Cathay Airlines?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, Cafe, yeah.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: You you know what that's from?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: Is is that what they called that area?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: Is China?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, China was known by Westerners as Cathay.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Got it.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't know why.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: C-T-H-A-Y, yeah.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, C-A-T-H-A-Y.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: So by the time they reached um Cathay or or it was Shangdu, China, is where uh Kubla Khan's palace was.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um he was Marco was introduced, and you know he by first of all, um his father and uncle scored big by bringing the oil from the sepulchre.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: That was a huge, huge win for them.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Kublicon was very impressed by that.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: It was just a little sample of the oil.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how much I don't know how much it was, but apparently they had had to uh give a big offering in order to get it, and it you know, it had taken a while to to to get it, but but it was a it was huge and it kind of endeared them.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Kubla Khan had also asked them to bring a hundred wise men with them back from back from literally a hundred.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he wanted a hundred wise men, but but they didn't do that.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: But the the offering of the oil was um was big and also um basically uh Nicola offered Marco to be a servant of Kublan.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I offer my son as a servant.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: So oh geez.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm not sure if that was um something that that was expected or not expected, but um apparently it was okay um because with that um Kublican was taken by Marco in that he liked Marco's uh humility, he liked his style, he liked his intelligence, and so he made him an embassary emissary.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And what that meant was he sent Marco Polo all over Asia to travel his empire and gather information for him.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: That was Marco's job, was to was to travel around and gather information for Kubli Khan.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so Marco did that for years and years.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think it was 24 years that he actually uh was gone.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, think about though back then though um the the West and the East, just broadly speaking, Europe and Asia were fascinated with each other because they just had different, like different foods and different spices and different uh jewels, and uh and those trade routes that opened up really gave themselves access to this whole new world that they didn't have access to.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: And they were all fascinated with the with each other.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and and I think one of the things the themes that I learned was Kublan was was as fascinated by the West as the East was or as the West was fascinated by the East, sure and of him.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Although I think he everybody was terrified of him, everybody thought that Kublan was, you know, a murderous guy, and and he was maybe on a macro level, you know, when it came to like ruling and big picture.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: But it's interesting you said, you know, the the trade routes that opened up and things like that.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: What actually happened uh years later, I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but it's relevant to this, is that once Kublai Khan was not in charge anymore, um, a lot of those trade routes actually collapsed and you couldn't travel between all these countries because they were instead of being unified under um under Kublai Khan, they became fractioned or factions and they they were fighting so much that you couldn't travel from one area to another.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: There was a period of time after Kubla Khan that the trade routes actually kind of dried up.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: So because of like pirates and barbarians and more because of fighting between the different uh factions of people, the the you know that lived in these areas.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't have one common ruler anymore that was kind of I mean, imagine if imagine if the US every state broke into its own thing, how much fighting there would be between the states.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: You're saying you could you could literally make the trip, but nobody there was nobody to trade with.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: You could make the trip, but it was much more dangerous because you were going, you know, if you were going from Texas to Louisiana, the Louisianans didn't like the Texans, and the Texans didn't like the Louisianans, and so they they might cut your head off.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas when Kublai Khan was around, everybody was under him and afraid of him, and so they kind of kept law and order.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: It was a little bit of a uh law and order by um fear, I guess, rule by fear.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Different, different time back then.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: But um they they spent, as I said, 24 years.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um they they ended up returning around 1295 back to Venice.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before they were able to go back to Venice, they actually had asked to go back on more than one occasion.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't want to stay that long, but Kublikon refused.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: He he liked having them there, he liked having all three of them uh the the uncle, the father, and and Marco, and would send them on these trips.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: He felt like they were very good at what they did.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: They were good emissaries, they were good at observing, they were good at note taking as they traveled.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: They were respected in his court.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so finally, what allowed them to return home was in 1291, he granted them permission to escort his um a Mongol princess named Kaka Kakochin.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Kokochin.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's either Kokochin or Kokochin.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she was to be escorted and become the bride of another Khan in another region in Persia.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so they um escorted her.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: They traveled to Constantinople and they ended up staying with her for like three years.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: This trip took three years.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't want them to leave because she was being married off to somebody she'd never met before.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: And she basically told them, please stay.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, so that was in 1291 when they left.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, in 1295, they made their way back to Venice after traveling 15,000 miles.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's crazy.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's so many miles.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: So they get back to Venice, and guess who Venice is in a fight with?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Genoa.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: The Genoese, um, which I guess is now also part of Italy, right?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right, yeah.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: So they're in a fight.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the Polos return to their home.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they're able to um convert their gemstones and the things they had brought back into quite a bit of money, and so they've become wealthier.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they've become more of the aristocrats of Venice at the time.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Marco Marco Polo decides in 1295 that he's going to help in the war, and he ends up selling some of his gems so that they can buy treveges and weapons to fight the Genoens.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, not he he not only does that, he also uh accompanies the um Venetians out on a ship as part of this war, and he's aboard the ship when there is a battle, and he ends up getting captured by the Genoese and ends up in jail, in Genoese jail, and it is there that he decides to write his memoir.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, because he was uh upper class, you know, and and more of a statesman or a gentleman, the the jails apparently try treated him fairly well.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like he didn't he didn't have some of the hardships that some of the other prisoners had.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: He had spare time, and so he met this other um met this other uh inmate who was named uh Rusticello.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Have you heard of Rusticello?
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of a famous name.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: Rusticello was a writer, and he basically ghostwrit um Marco's book for him, and it was it was called The Travels of Marco Polo, and the Italian name was um the million, and and that was because of his nickname as The Million.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, why they called him the million was under debate, but the main reason that he came to be known as The Million was because his stories about the Far East were always so on such a high scale, like like it was always millions, it was never a thousand or a hundred, it was millions, you know.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so the stories were were very uh fantastic.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so he embellish his stories, or he just oh well you you you hit the nail on the head.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: So this book, um the the travels of Marco Polo, uh got translated from uh Venetian into Latin, and then from Latin got translated into other um other languages.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Marco ends up getting released in 1299, so that was you know, after several years in prison from the Genoese, I guess the war ended.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: He got released.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, that was a big debate about that book about how much of it he made up, because some historians referred to things that he um that he would have seen, like for instance, paper money.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody was using paper money at that time except the except in China, right?
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: So that was something he referenced, which which is said to be accurate because that was something that the Europeans weren't doing.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: They had coins and they had gold, but they didn't have paper.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's funny too, verbal storytelling, just telling stories around the campfire, just you know, shooting the breeze with your friends.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay if you make some stuff up, especially if you've talking about traveling 15,000 miles and and meeting Kubla Khan and all that.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: You can throw in and and the the idea that his nickname was a million kind of tells you that he you know boasts exaggerates.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: Historians, though, hundreds of years later, aren't okay with that.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: Thousands of years later aren't okay with that because you're trying to figure out what happened.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Even uh even in short term, like even in the 13 and 1400s, historians like people were were questioning, like like they got they would get really deep.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: And this is this is where this podcast could be two hours long, but I cut some of it back down.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: But they argued things like uh he never mentions the Great Wall of China.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when did when was the Great Wall of China built and what part of China was he in?
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Would he have seen it if parts of it were built?
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there was all that discussion, but then there were things, like I said, about uh paper money that he talks about.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um he talked about um things like uh oh, I mean, there were so many things.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: Let me see here.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um to make that trip, and here he is just kind of making stuff up.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's pretty funny.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm all for it though.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: He talked about burning of coal, which wasn't um wasn't something that they did a lot back then.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, he did actually learn to speak the language, the local language.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it was Chinese or what it was considered at that time.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he before that also had spoken, you know, like French and uh Viennese and maybe Italian.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he spoke several languages, so he was he was a good communicator.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: But really, the the question comes down to a couple things.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, he had this um he had this guy ghostwriting for him, right?
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: And supposedly the guy who was ghostwriting um who was in prison with him was someone who had written uh adventure stories before and had written stories more in line with um uh fiction.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Rusticello had written these fiction stories, so he had actually maybe embellished as he was writing to make the story more exciting.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: He wasn't he didn't know that people were gonna use it like for history.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then and then the second thing was the translations had to happen.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, right, if it was originally done in in uh Viennese and then it had to be translated to Latin, and then it had to be translated to French, and it had to be translated to English, and it had to be translated every time well, and also this was before the printing press.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: So every copy of this book was handwritten.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine if you're handwriting this book, you you might you might shorten some things just for your own sake, you know.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: So every version might be a little bit different.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: Every version was different.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, it said there is no there is no real um knowledge of what the original book was.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody has a nobody has copy number one of this book.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't exist.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: But you know who did carry a copy of this book?
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: Who?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Christopher Columbus.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh and not only I think that was copy of it years later, right?
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think that copy of it, yeah, 1492.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: That copy of it uh still exists, and it has uh Christopher Columbus wrote notes in the side of it, you know, because he he was going, and the reason he was carrying it is because he was going to try and find the East.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he was using it like a travel log.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, absolutely.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: He actually didn't expect to bump into North America, he thought he was gonna end up in China and and was gonna meet the descendants of Kublakan and have this book and be able to, you know, kind of use it as a guide, but you know, that all went out.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: A few other things from the book that um were interesting was some descriptions um that uh Marco Polo had.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: He described a large sack-like sack-shaped um light in the sky with a long silk tail behind it.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine what that would have been in the sky?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like Haley's comet.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: A comet, yeah.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh at one point he described that.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: He also described animals that were um had like unicorns.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he talked about some horses that supposedly had horns.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: He talked about a certain kind of sheep.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: What were they?
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: As a matter of fact, what's that?
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: Oryx or something, or like uh I it's unknown.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's unknown.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um the sheep, however, actually are now known as Marco Polo sheep.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: That Icers.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there are there is a there is a breed of sheep in in Asia called the Marco Polo.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like bighorn, like some kind of bighorn sheep in the islands.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh was something and and even though there were omissions, uh, you know, he didn't he didn't ever mention like some of the omissions that he didn't talk about were um tea.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't talk about the importance of tea in their culture, which people think is kind of weird.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, like tea that you drink.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but if I wrote a book, I wouldn't talk about tea either.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like tea.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: But but here's the thing is Marco Polo was not the first European to travel over there, he was just the first person to write a book about it.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that really became kind of the the basic um reason that he was considered the authority.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: Have you read any parts of that book?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh only excerpts that were online.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like, is it compelling?
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Is it good?
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Is it gripping?
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: So supposedly it was, you know, pretty difficult to read initially because it had so much detail and it wasn't really a story, it was more just a description, descriptions of things.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then um it was also written out of order, and there is some there is some um thought that he didn't actually like the the concept of time, the beginning, middle, and end.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: He if he went to a place, he only mentioned it once in the book, as if the three or four times he went there was one time.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it's I think it was kind of hard to read, but there was a um an English translation that was done not too long ago, um, that actually supposedly made it easier to read, like kind of took all of the versions that were known, because there were different versions of it that were published, um and and made it um well, it was in 1938 there was a version that was done uh and it was translated into English, and that one was supposedly translated from a uh close to original manuscript, and that the versions prior to 1938, you know, in the early uh 1900s and 1800s had been uh pretty far off from what that original was.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder why the ghostwriter, why Rosco Rusconi, is that his name?
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what was his name?
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: R uh uh not Ruschatello.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: I thought you said Rusconi.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, I forget I forget what his name was.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I I think at the time I think at the time uh writing was a um very unknown art, like something that even if you could, even if you were literate and you could read, you couldn't necessarily uh uh Rust Rusticello.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: Rusticello da Pisa from Pisa.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: So you wonder maybe he was the one that embellished the stuff.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and people think he did.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: People think he did, because he was a writer of adventure stories, and so you know it'd be it'd be like when you and I have our book written to have um you know somebody famous do it.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say we get J.K.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Rowling to write our our book, and then all of a sudden there's wizards and witches, and we're like, wait, okay, go with it.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's good.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: But what if his stories were boring and like nothing happened?
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, um, I mean, some of the some of the things again had to do with the the creatures that lived there.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: He did talk a lot about the customs of marriage and um kind of sex and what people could and couldn't do and how they were a lot more open with their relationships over there, and that was kind of fascinating to him.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: So he talked a lot about that.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now remember, he was he was uh 15 when he left on this trip, you know, and arrived at 21.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I think he ended up um becoming pretty fascinated with the women of the far east and the way they uh the the way they would um supposedly if you were a traveler and there was a um uh either a married woman whose husband was gone or an unmarried woman, they would take you in.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: Right, yeah.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: At the time, right.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this is uh this is all covered in that uh Shogun.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever seen a Shogun?
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't, but but um yeah, okay, so that that was a custom that they did then.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the other the other big thing that he uh did influenced was maps.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: So at the time of then there weren't many maps drawn of that region, uh especially in the West, right?
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: The West didn't have very many maps of the east, and so he didn't necessarily draw maps, but he described things, and maps were drawn from those descriptions, including um even some accounts of like the west coast of Alaska, which you know nobody had discovered at that point.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but maps of Japan, Siberia, uh Alaska, things like that um were things that uh Marco Polo influenced.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now there is a myth that he brought pasta.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna ask you about that.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone, when they say a spaghetti, uh there's always some wise guy that always has to tell you spaghetti was actually come from China.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: Is that not true?
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it is not true.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there actually had been, there already was uh pasta in Europe at the time, and supposedly that was made up by a marketing company to help sell Marco Polo pasta.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that was a brand of pasta?
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it was called Marco Polo, but it was it was a um it was a there was apparently apparently a trade magazine called the Maccaroni Journal.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: Did you subscribe to the Macaroni Journal?
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: No, but I'm sure our our guy Chefboy RD did.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: He was probably see what they wrote in the journal.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, it was it was uh basically a way of promoting pasta to say that it was brought back by by him because it wasn't.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't no all this time.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a few other things that you might know about Marco Polo.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: He was uh his face was on the uh has been on the Italian um money in the past.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like the Lyra that they used to have.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there is, as I said, the Marco Polo sheep, which is a subspecies of Ovis Amon, uh, which was named after him because he discovered it kind of in the West.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: There was a three-mast ship built in 1851 in New Brunswick that was the first ship to travel around the world in less than six months in 1851, called the Marco Polo.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you fly into Venice, the airport is called the Venice Marco Polo Airport.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, cool.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the uh we talked earlier about Cafe Pacific, the the airline.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: Their uh frequent flyer program is called the Marco Polo Club.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, movies, lots of movies, lots of um TV shows, uh board games.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh board games.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there was a board game called The Voyages of Marco Polo uh that was made in 1977.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a Milton Bradley uh I think it's a Mattel jam.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, it could be Milton Bradley.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't say it, but uh there was also an episode of Doctor Who in the 60s where Doctor Who actually meets Marco Polo.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, yeah.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then I thought this was kind of cool, and this is of all these, this is one I kind of want to see.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, in nine or I'm sorry, in in 2009, there was a documentary on PBS called The Footsteps of Marco Polo, and it was about two friends who take a road trip to retrace his journey from Venice to China.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, I was gonna suggest we do that and film it.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's already been done.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: Ah, well, we can we can watch what they did and make it better.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then of course, Netflix, and I only found this out recently from 2014 to 2016, there was a drama series called Marco Polo's um oh called um what was it?
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's called Marco Polo.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's what I would call it too.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: So now if you stuck around this long, I'm sure you were just waiting for this moment.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: The question everybody wants to know.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: The swimming pool game.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, where did it sound like?
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now I must confess, I don't even think I know what how to play Marco Polo.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like I know it's it involves dunking people in a pool.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: And somebody says Marco, and then somebody like I don't even know how to play.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's like blind man's blind man's buff.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: Bluff.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: Blind man's bluff.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um you're basically blindfolded or you close your eyes, and you have to catch other people, and if you catch them, you you um they they become the blind man and they have to catch you, but you catch them through a call and repeat of Marco and Polo, and then if if somebody gets out of the pool and you you can somehow um I don't know, you can somehow get them and tell them they were out of the pool and they become the blind man.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just a really simple game.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: Something where you learn, I mean, for little kids, they're learning about like how to find things with their ears instead of their eyes.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: They're learning about call and repeat.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a call and repeat or a call a call and answer, you know.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um I say Marco, you say polo.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: But supposedly, the um the origin of it, there's several different stories about how it how it came to be.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: But the one I like the best was about Marco Polo was lost in the desert when he was traveling in China, and there are these things called the singing sands, and this is actually a real thing in in the desert, where the wind will whip up the sand and it will make a noise that sounds like a human voice.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: And he thought he heard people calling his name and he was calling back with his last name, I guess.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why you would do that, but um, but it was the Singing Sands in the desert.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's no way this is true, but I love it.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, the Singing Sands are a thing, actually.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: I looked there's no way that that's why we have the swimming pool game.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, oh, well, but I I love it.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: I like that story.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, so supposedly it came from the Singing Sands.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: The the other variations on that story was that uh he uh was on a ship and they were lost in the fog, and you know, same thing people were calling out to him, trying to find him in the fog, and you know, call and repeat.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: So it's crazy though that like that lasted like a thousand years that came to you know swimming pools in the suburbs in the eighties, you know.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh I I it's been around for a long time.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the last thing I want to tell you about Marco Polo that I think might blow your mind.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you and I went to San Antonio and we saw Primus, a band uh that we uh you know respect, do a uh an entire rush album, including the song Xanadu.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: Zanadu, right.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what's wild about that.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um the song includes lyrics from a poem written by a guy named Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: Xanadu did Kubla Khan, right?
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: That one?
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yes.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it's called it's actually called KublaCon.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and or there's an alternate, it's called A Vision and a Dream, a Fragment.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's the other part.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so do you know anything about how that poem was written?
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: No, I I I think I looked it up right around that time when uh whenever I think about Xanadu, I look it up and then I forget instantly.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: So Samuel Taylor Coleridge was reading a book, but he was also high on opium.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: So he had taken some opium opium, supposedly for a medical reason.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was some there was something he had, you know, he had something, they didn't have any leeches available, so he took some opium instead.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: And he was reading this book called Purchase, his pilgrims, or relations of the world and religious religions observed in all ages and places discovered from the creation to the present.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not done with the title.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, geez.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: From the creations to the present by and it was written by uh the English clergyman named Samuel Purchase in sixteen thirteen.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: That book contained a description of Xanadu, uh, which was actually the summer of.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Palace of Kublakan, and that description came from Marco Polo.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'll be in this just like um almost a mythical palace with magical stuff.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, I think part of part of that was the fact that he was high on opium at the time.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: But um the the book um that was written by this guy, Purchase, P-U-R-C-H-A-S, and then translated into a poem or or interpreted into a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, uh originally he had talked about a large palace made of gilded and lacquered cane and bamboo, which could be taken uh apart and moved.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: So Xanadu was actually sort of a mobile palace that could be taken from place to place.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: And this uh sumptuous house of pleasure that was mentioned by Purchase was transformed into a stately pleasure dome.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the and the dome part comes from the fact that the the canes and the bamboo that were bent uh served as the the roof and they were kind of bent into a dome shape.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have that line that in Xana Dude did Kubla Khan?
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: What's the what's the line?
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: Held within the pleasure dome decreed by Kubla Khan to taste anew my mortal life.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: I actually looked up the entire poem.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but the the last line is for I have dined on honeydew and drank the milk of paradise.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of that is straight out of the poem.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like, like you do you know the song Limelight by Rush?
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's taken from uh Shakespeare, but not exactly word for word.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: This the song has some changes to it, as does Xanadu by Rush, but trace traced back through this this purchase guy and then back through um our boy, the opium guy.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that's that's uh Marco Polo.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh explore, again, not the first to explore the Far East, but the first to really write about it and write it with a lot of detail.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: And again, he spent 20-something years there.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: So he did know the place pretty well.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: He was very respected.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: They were actually, when they were released to to escort the um the niece of Kublicon to get married, you know, that's kind of how they got released.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: They were supposed to come back, they were actually made to promise to come back, but then Kublacon died, and then what happened after that?
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: There was a period of time afterward where you couldn't travel on the Silk Road, you couldn't go to the Far East because when KublaCon died, everything kind of fractioned and people became um they went to war, and there were so many wars going on that it was much less safe to travel without KublaCon.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, well, you love the explorers.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: You uh you seem to be fascinated with people that just leave their homes and say, I'm gonna dip out for like 10 years, I'm gonna walk around the world and then I'll be back.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it's uh um Johnny Applesede Johnny Appleseed or um Shackleton or Shackleton.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: You love these these uh these uh guys that uh have wander lust.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: I do, I do.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and uh it was certainly I it's funny because most of what I was reading about this wasn't it's almost like that song Tribute by Tanacious D.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't the book of of um Marco Polo's travels, it was about the book of Marco Polo's travels, right?
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: What what was actually in the book?
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there was some stuff about some unicorns and a comet and uh paper money and concubines, but you know, not not a lot of detail in it.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: Too bad he didn't have Getty Lee as his actual ghostwriter.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: Or or Neil Peart, because then he would have got a really great drum solo out of it.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: All right, well, that's cool.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh KublaCon.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: We talked a lot about KublaCon, and maybe I should do an episode about him at some point.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: But that was Marco Polo.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: Next time you dive in the pool, think of us, and be sure to listen every week to Dirtnap City, where we talk about interesting dead people.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: Marco Polo.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_03: Marco Polo sells teams, Matt Cool Black Con.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_03: Now kids and fools got me feeling like a pawn.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_03: Explore an agent, yeah.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_03: That's what he did.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_03: But played a game.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_03: Started foolish with the lid.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_03: Marco Polo.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_03: We're the real three in the full platform.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's flashed in the calling out of stay that he picked, swimming to self stop bold, now it's swimming from the story that's gold.
• 48:54
  unknown: We're the real three in the full blood folding for each three.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_03: Let us do the cloud, if let us go wild, now it's marked out.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_03: Navigate it closer to it, cut it now stabbed under water, and understand Mark.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_03: We're the wheel of three in the full platform, it's flashed in laugh and call it out of stain, that he picked, it's a swimming state.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_03: Marco Pulse LC at gold.com.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_03: Now kids and fools be feelin' like a pawn.
• 49:33
  unknown: It's more an easy, yeah.
• 49:34
  unknown: That's what he did.
• 49:35
  unknown: But play the game.
• 49:36
  unknown: Sound of foolish with the lid.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_03: Marco Pulse Yeah, the real OG in the full five fold ain't what he see.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_03: Kids flashing and laughing, callin' out his name, that he think it's just a swimming shame.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.