A Geek History of Time - Episode 322 - Madgeburg Fossil with Andre Wakefield Part I

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

See, people when they click on this, they'll see the title, so they'll be like, poor Ed. What does that even fucking mean? However, because it's England, that's largely ignored and unstudied. I really wished for the sake of my sense of moral righteousness that I could get away with saying no. He had a goddamn ancestral home and a noble title until Germany became a republic. You know, none of this highfalutin, you know, critical role stuff. So they chewed through my favorite shit.

No, I'm not helping them. I'm going to say that you're getting into another kind of, you know, Mediterranean, or psyche archetype kind of thing. Makes sense. Also trade winds are a thing. Ha ha, just serious. Like, no, he really has a mad on him. Yeah, we'll go upon a tangent. As we keep doing.

Like, yeah, this is how we fill time. I'm going to go to the bathroom. This is a Geek History of Time. Where we connect nerdery to the real world. My name is Ed Blalock. I'm a world history teacher at the middle school level here in Northern California and I today I got to spend two and a half hours at the emergency vets office because My cat has decided that he's going to engage in expressionary or impressionist art all over my living room Repeatedly for a couple of days running now

Thankfully, it's coming out the front end of his body I've had it happen where it's been coming out the back end different cat but Yeah, so he's now on anti nausea medication and I have Thankfully not had to get out the Clorox wipes for several hours now So we're going to cross our fingers and hope that that holds So that's what I've been doing today How about you? Well, I'm Damian Harmony

I'm a US history teacher up here in Northern California at the high school level and as you know I have been watching Star Trek the Next generation with my children for the first time We're getting into the last quarter of season 3 which to me is where it really takes off real bangers Yeah, we just watched the episode with data creates lol. Oh And okay, I've seen that episode a bunch of times Yeah, when I tell you watching shit with your children changes you it change. I was tears in the eyes I was crying at the end when data saying goodbye to law like I'm getting a little misty right now I was like, oh damn

So, you know, my children have enhanced Star Trek even more than it could be Which is amazing and I was talking to them afterward and they're like, oh wow, like, you know, because they noticed I was crying because I don't hide that. And they're like, wow, this is, you know, it's different when you're watching with your own kids, watching a man lose his. Like, that's hard. I said, this is right up there with Solo getting killed. And they both, like, were taken aback, like, oh, because they know, know like they both reach out their hands to hold mine when we're watching episode 7

Every time because they know I'm gonna start sobbing when Han Solo gets killed so It was it was good episode. They were both very very pleased with it the next one We get to watch is where wharf meets his Klingon brother And that's gonna just be really cool. Yeah, that's gonna be a thing too But uh, yeah, it's um Have kids they say it'll make watching star trek better. They say and they're right Apparently, yeah. Hey ed. I don't mean to brag but uh, i've managed to cure us yet another guest

um Yeah, you have yes and i'm grateful for that I really am yeah, I just wish you didn't somehow try to turn it into a competition when It hasn't been one. Oh you might have taken it that way into what I I didn't mean it that way at all I get sorry that you feel so insufficient as to way at all. I'm sorry that you feel so insufficient as to think that it's a competition. Ah, see, yeah, there it is. There you go. So, while you lick your wounds there, I would like to introduce Dr. Andre Wakefield. Andre, without a W. He's a history professor at the Claremont Colleges. Specifically, he is interested in deep time police states and the history of soccer.

Dr. Wakefield, Andre, to his friends, welcome aboard. Hey, thank you both. I do have some bad news to start with, though. Ed, I had my own Jackson Pollock cat and it didn't end well. Right. Like, I wish you would. But we, yeah, we he didn't make it very far. Yeah. What I'm heartened by the fact that the x-rays I just spent way, way more money than you

would think you would need to pay for indicated there's there's nothing there's nothing that it points to that is imminent so We have a follow-up appointment with another vet who's gonna do blood work and hopefully will Rule out any any longer term other stuff, but we know it's not like an obstruction You'll have an answer after you yeah, yeah All right. Well, I mean Jackson Pollock himself didn't end well so fair. This is true. Yeah, yeah, all right. Well, I mean Jackson Pollock himself didn't end well, so Fair this is true. Yeah, so

Dr. Wakefield Andre to his friends. Um, what is deep time just oh But we're diving right in I want to know yeah, they like history of soccer. I'm like, okay He knows about the Hundred Hours War got it right, right. But deep time, I am fascinated by this concept. Well, this is a term that's been making the rounds. And we'll probably get more and more into it if we get into live nets and company. But it is, I guess in the simplest terms, time beyond imagining, right?

Time that is incapable of being expressed in terms that we can comprehend as human beings, right? We tend to use spatial metaphors to make sense of it. John McPhee, I believe, may be the one who coined the term. Don't necessarily quote me on that, but I think John McPhee may have come up with the term deep time, he's a kind of a genius on his own for terms like that. Right. But even one of John McPhee's books, there's there's a way in which you can express these things in spatial terms. So I think the image that he used was, you know, something that may have come from one of his high school teachers,

right? Which is, imagine that the king stretches out his arm and he points at the far wall. And imagine now that you take a little nail file and you go to the front of your your kind of pointer finger there and you shave off a little piece of your nail. That's human history, right? So that, you know, that kind of trying to get a grasp of like how infinitesimal we are, how vast the universe is, like this kind of thing. And so the interesting thing in terms of historical thinking, and I teach a class that is maybe appropriate to Pitzer College because it's all too groovy,

and stone kids like to take it. It's like basically explorations in deep time. Whoa, dude, like, what are you doing? So you start to think about what it meant for people to be confronted with deep time, and then there's a whole debate within the history of science and the history of geology. Like when, first of all, when did deep time become a thing?

When did people start to accept it and then What's more interesting to me somehow like when did? Common people come to grapple with it like it's one thing, you know when the scientific community comes to her When it hits people, what does it mean? What does it mean for biblical understanding? What it mean for how you understand the world around you. It's pretty terrifying. Yeah. It reminds me of the hallucinations I used to have when I was falling asleep in middle school. Like all of a sudden you're in a vast, terrifying, cold, empty universe,

which is not by the way, the way, you know, my characters in the 17th century by and large did not conceive of the universe at all that way. Right. No, no. They did have terrors that started to diverge on this. So this kind of metaphysical existential terror of deep time is a really interesting topic, you know? I wonder if somebody could go back in time. Obviously not. But if somebody did with the song Ruby Tuesday by the Rolling Stones and induced the same hallucinations in those people as it did in me, because it was horrifying.

Like a bad Ruby Tuesday. Yeah, well, so the song, you know how you like- I have good Ruby Tuesday memories, but you have bad ones, okay? Well, yeah, the song was, you know, du du du du du du du du du du du du du, you know, and it would do that. And that contrast would cause hallucinations in me as I was on my way to sleep

And it messed with me like it like I would immediately be amidst a infinite ocean and then I would be on this tiny little chair that I would just lose track of and Then that was it and I've never done drugs, which- Yeah, that's the part that's really getting me as you're talking about. Yeah, like how you've never done drugs and you're hallucinating about, you know,

it'd be Tuesday, wow, okay. Yeah, yeah. This is why I've never done drugs, probably. Like- Yeah, you know, you're already- Christ, it could've made sense. Yeah. You know, as you're describing

that specific experience to me Mm-hmm have you ever watched the venture brothers no? Okay, there's there's there's and at some point I'm going to have to find and find the clip by itself because it's too much to explain, but the the favored at that point in the series son of the main character as teenager and As his as his introduction to super science his father says alright So now I need to give you one of my trade secrets and that is prog rock

And and his son is you know looking through all these old LPs And he's you know just an album covers themselves can be a trip through psychedelia. Yeah. And, and the son says something about, Oh, and this is, uh, you know, King Crimson and the father snatches it away from his eyes is you're not ready for King Crimson yet. You're going to start with the far side of the moon, you know, and right, right. And they wind up doing this actually really well done psychedelia sequence of the kid in an egg chair, right? You know, okay phones on yeah anyway

Just a picturing you you know, yeah Circumstance now it would have been just me. That's how I used to fall asleep. I would I would play music to fall Yeah, that too. Yeah Yeah Only for four minutes at a time. It was. Yeah, there you go. It was more like soft boil rock.

Yeah. But but yeah, I used to fall asleep to music amongst the songs I would listen to or amongst the artists I would listen to to fall asleep to Rolling Stones because they had hot licks. So it was two sides of a very

long tape because these are cassette tapes. And then a bunch of Alice Cooper tapes and Those didn't give me nightmares Yeah, oh regularly Fall asleep to a little bit I just I was fine with it right but like it was Ruby Tuesday that would mess with me I would not Alice Cooper It was ruby tuesday that would mess with me. What the fuck not alice cooper

I don't know. It'd be like I guess if penicillin made me sick, you know, it's just weird, you know, but Yeah, i'm somewhat relieved that you were never in my explorations in deep time class. It sounds like we might have hit Most of my professor friends are relieved that I was never in their classes I actually I got a letter of recommendation from Dr. Margaret Goodhart. I'm going to drop names there because if anybody listening knew her they would know how hilarious this was. This woman like scared people.

She would tell kids kids we're you know college students. I don't know where you thought you learned to write but you really need to get your money back from them like shit like that. Right. And I love her. I loved her. I loved her. She was a second wave feminist from the 70s teaching women's history to a bunch of dumbasses. We're not worried about some kind of like, yeah. No, no, no. I'm vulgar, Ed swears, it works, yeah. But she wrote me a letter of recommendation for my teacher credential program, and she said, in the 30 years of teaching

that I have had as a professor, I have never met a student who asked more questions than Damian Harmony. And I met my second wife. I'm like, yeah, in her way, but curiosity, that's a hit. It is. I met my second wife in a class and then we took a class together later. And then she's like, I remember that you were

in this other class that I had back before we dated. I was like, yeah, she's like, we all wanted to get out of there, but you were asking like all these questions. You know, syllabus day. Like, yeah, you did meet me then. Yes. Like, we were all terrified of that one. We want to leave.

And so anyway, the reason I had you on is because you've done something that I was doing kind of for funsies. And you got published doing it. is because you've done something that I was doing kind of for funsies and you got published doing it and That is that you translated something that will work its way into tonight's episode Tonight's episode is the first in a series of I imagine many that I call dumb moments in museum history Okay, so now I know I've done an episode on the dumbest, weirdest and coolest museums in the United States. Yes. Are we are we heading toward the unicorn here? Yeah. Oh yeah. Dumb moments. But now I'm going to focus on the dumbest things ever to be in

a museum in world history. I'm going to approach this chronologically, so there's going to be some overlap, but I'm going to start with the cultural historic museum of, help me with pronunciation here because I can't pronounce anything. That's kind of one of my gimmicks. Magdeburg. Magdeburg. Magdeburg, okay. Which opened in 1906.

It was originally intended to be another art museum in Germany the Kaiser Friedrich Museum Magdeburg had originally Originally for the 19th century anyway had been the capital of the Prussian province of Saxony The oh Jesus Culture historic Jesus um culture history Yeah, what is it cool to a historical dish, but we're all friends here. Thank God

So I I only know sign language in Latin and English and The first two have messed up my pronunciation of any other language. That's it. It's ruined. Yeah. It's just kaput. Why are we talking about culture, history? Is that the Lagenberg Museum? Yeah. Lagenberg Museum of Cultural History. Is that what it is?

Yeah. And which contains within it the museum for Naturkunde. Oh, yeah. Naturkunde. That. That one. So glad you're here. Oh, yeah. Not to a Conda that that was so glad you're here. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, I've had him. I don't know. It's like natural history stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'd have had him spelling it for me so I could try to explain it because yeah, so you knew what was going to happen at. All right. Yeah, no, I, yeah. Everyone I started grinning in the moment when he started talking about, you know, help me with the pronunciation. I was like, yeah, this is going to be good. They're drinking games about our podcast.

Really? The funny thing about it to me is his his his pronunciations are all completely whack. But the worst ones are French. Yes. Like he has the most trouble with French. And I look at him and like all that is is is Latin with an accent. French can be unforgiving, you know, I mean, I've had that experience like in a taxi cab where the guy pretends like you can't understand me and I'm like, you can understand me.

Like, I'm not that bad. Right. Yeah. No, I know French. I pronounce all the letters and apparently French is Latin and cursive. So basically, yes. Yeah. So so the the the Museum of Culture History in Magdeburg has the Museum of Nature stuff in it. Yeah. And originally, its collection consisted of art and other exhibits privately gifted to

it by the kind of people who did that kind of thing. It was designed tangentially by way of a contest, by the way, and it kind of combined a few aspects of other architectures. So it had period rooms, which not what I assumed they were. But instead, they preserved the cultural heritage of internal architecture in rooms that displayed that sort of thing. But also a great hall, which copied the style of the 1952. Oh, boy. the 1952 oh boy Germanic cheese national museum style yeah yeah there's got it okay yeah which itself was in going off like you're like yeah compensating guests on the show so I get a compensate somehow but that itself was in Nuremberg and it looked like a church with a crypt. Oh, okay.

So the natural history part is the focus of this entry on the podcast. But I would be remiss if I didn't mention the tons and I literally mean tons of metal coins and metals that they had there. Four hundred thousand plus archaeological finds, medieval history of the city itself, more modern collections in the history of the city, 1,100 different paintings, six permanent exhibitions. All this to say it's not some fly-by-night museum without a serious collection or approach to collecting things. Like these people were museuming hardcore. Even the Nazis took notice of it and tried to have it removed all the objectionable stuff. I Sorry, are we like are we are you kind of setting up a praise sandwich here? You try to like talk about how good it is before we talk about how stupid it yeah Yeah, I did because I want people to know how dumb trash it you're gonna say hey

want people to know how dumb it is. Before you trash it, you're going to say, hey, it's got something to do with gaming. Exactly. Okay. So the very next sentence in my script is, but I'm here to talk about the dumbest and most embarrassingly dumb thing that it has ever displayed. So yes, well done. This is the fun part. Now, now it's the fun part.

Yeah. The Magdeburg, okay, say it again for me. You mean which, Naturkunde Museum or Kulturhistorische? Magdeburg. Magdeburg. OK, say it again for me. You mean which a Natura Kunda Museum or Kultura Historic Magdeburg, this the name of the town Magdeburg. OK, Magdeburg Fossum. I like Gericke. Is that where we're like? They were going to get to him. Yeah. And which is not how I had it pronounced.

This is why we have people more educated than me on just just so they can laugh. It's like it's a good night. So, okay, so this fossil in 1663, a gypsum quarry just outside of the village of Schar's Feld Schatzfeld Schatzfeld. There's an R in it. God damn it. Okay. Um Which is in the highlands of West Hare, which I bet you is not hare Haughton I Don't know where that is. Well, yeah, like that's but it's where garrekey dug this thing up, right? Yes

Yes, so it was being worked near Magdeburg and the workers found a strange skeleton The workers broke it up by accident. No, they actually broke it up on purpose to bring it out and they brought it to a local leader in the area. And this is 1663. He kept the bones and didn't really do much about it. And then five years later, a fellow named Otto von Gereke, then mayor of Magdeburg came to have a peek. von Gericke, then mayor of Magdeburg, came to have a peek.

Otto von Gericke, the man with the third most German name I've ever heard, studied law and philosophy at Leipzig University as the scion of an upper class family would. He had to come back home when his father died in 1620 and then he finished his education at the University of Helmstedt? Helmstedt, yeah. Helmstedt. And then the Friedrich Schiller University at Jena? Jena. Jena, god damn it. And then the Leiden University? Yeah. Okay. So he's all over the place, largely at public universities, and got exposure to military engineering which was basically physics back then. I mean I might be wrong I think they're all public. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like there was one in there well yeah yeah yeah they were at that point yeah. And math and as a rich upper class twit he spent nine months traveling abroad in France and England. Right that that tour. Right. As you do.

It's the upper class twit tour. Oh, yeah. Exactly. And now, he, speaking of people who hallucinate listening to Ruby Tuesday, he was obsessed with sound that couldn't be detected. OK, so like hypersonic and ultrasonic kind of frequency kind of stuff.

Like, we're talking about Otto von Gehrigicke. Yeah, I didn't know that yeah, and he's in matter that could move without being Detected or that could move without hindrance actually is what it was said So he's kind of trying to figure out the science of nothing Yeah, which is cool like it's it's it's Seinfeld before it's Seinf nothing. Yeah, which is cool. Like it's it's it's Seinfeld before it's Seinfeld. Yeah, this led him to studying and inventing various vacuums. He is actually this got him.

And this is how we get to the air pump thing. Yes. Yeah, that makes sense. And so he got an audience in front of some of the highest placed upper class twits in the Holy Roman Empire, which of some of the highest placed upper-class twits in the Holy Roman Empire

That's not easy to do Yeah, I love that I introduced you to that phrase yeah, you've just seized Ronan whole whole whole Sorry, whole in Hogan but This resulted in a lifetime pension for him, which I'm like Can I please get an audience with like George Lucas for our podcast like I'd be happy please Well, you'd have to do it without me though because he probably wouldn't like what I had to say about his opinions on food It or his well, I'd use use the straw man. He would see me as the hero, you know Yeah, okay

So and then we'll find someone for you to edit fine. Okay, right, but you have two incomes. I need this. All right So even the church got involved actually buying his vacuum apparatus and sending it to the Jesuit college at I'm going to say Wurzburg. Wurzburg. Wurzburg. Yeah. And by the time of this pension, he was also the mayor of Modgaberg. Wow. He was elected mayor. The burgermeister. Yes. In 1646. See, I play Dungeons and Dragons. So yeah, a burgermeister. You. In 1646, see I played Dungeons and Dragons.

So. Yeah, so Burgermeister, you got it. No problem, yeah. We're in Strahd's world, so it's fine. But in 1646, he's Burgermeister, and he held that position until he retired in 1678. Oh wow. Yeah.

Now Otto von Goerke, two of his friends, continued his experimentation while there he continued his writing and he continued his advancement of scientific study In fact, he was the first in Europe. I'm sure somebody in China did it like a thousand years earlier I'm sorry, and there's probably someone in the Ottoman Empire or its predecessors who did it like 500 years earlier But he was able to demonstrate electrostatic repulsion. Oh, cool. And he wrote about this in a book. Now this I can have no problem translating

because he wrote it in Latin. Otonis de guerequi experimentia noa ut vocantur madgeburgica de vacuo spatio. Also known as a new experiment, as they call it, of Otto de Gerke in Madgeburg about empty space. All right. Nice. And De and Von, same thing, right?

Yeah. Which he claimed to have finished in March of 1663, but he delayed his publication until 1672. Anyway, he wrote it in 63. Five years later, he ends up in dropping by this forgotten person's home and examined the bones. He's the mayor, after all, the mayor comes to Collins, says, I hear you have some bones. And the guy's like, oh, yeah, come on in. And he's a famous scientist at the time, right? And since we've always been fans of transferred expertise, witness Einstein's quote about bees or anything that Bill Gates or Peter Thiel have touched,

a physicist is also an expert on fossils. Naturally. I mean, duh. Like, obvi. Now, the bones were actually a collection of several different beasts, including a woolly rhino, a woolly mammoth and somehow a fucking narwhal. Yeah, a narwhal. The narwhal is my favorite.

Right? Yeah. When I talk to my students about this book, I try to give them a sense of the just massiveness of this fossil. Yeah, it's not your grandma's cute pink unicorn. This thing has got a big ass narwhal horn on its nose. It's just so big. Right. Yeah. It is huge. Yeah.

It's it's the yacht of of unicorns. It's the yacht of Dump trunk of a horn, you know, it's a terrifying unicorn it is Gary I mean I mean in in the lore Unicorns weren't actually, you know Fluffy rainbow farting, you know ponies true true. They were they were you know wild, you know, ponies. True, true. They were, they were, you know, wild, you know, dangerous beasts. Part of it might be because of this fossil. So,

Could be, certainly. Nobody knew at the time that these were all different bones, of course. Otto von Gerke's description was published in a book after he died, quote, this skeleton was broken and taken out in pieces due to the ignorance and carelessness of the excavators. But the horn, along with the head and some ribs, as well as the spine and some bones, were brought to the local abbess. Now what was

fun about that was that I found that quote in Latin and just set about translating it and then I Found the link below and I'm like, oh it's in English So Well, you could check their translation. Yeah, it was nice. It was fun. But also so I'm now a US history teacher I used to be a Latin teacher. Yeah. Public school. Like so you're like, yeah. Yeah. And I used to translate.

In fact, I I just finished translating for fun the Steiner math promo into Latin the other way. Yeah. Yeah. So you're you're well ahead of me. Like I would sure that direction. Well, it's because of my love of pro-ref wrestling right there Okay, yeah, so

It was a labor of love, but it was it was wonderful I was just telling my partner the other day about this the kind of shit I would have students translate I would take jokes that I knew and put them into Latin So that the kids would have then they'd have to write right so they they would learn six Exactly they would learn six different words for poop Or I would do a Ric Flair promo up on the board for them in Latin yeah, and then they would have to figure out a Luxury chariot, I'm like kind of like a limousine There you go limousine riding riding. Jet flying. Oh god, it was fun.

Because I wanted them to learn gerundives. Yeah, but no more, I take it no more Latin. No more Latin at the school. So a few things happen when you stand up to Yeah, to structural white supremacy. Then there's some trickle-down effects. And I mean that literally. Okay, so that was retribution stuff, like they took that away. I can't point to it directly.

There is no smoking gun, but when it came time to fund positions, once we came back, there was a choice. Either you fund small school, small fledgling programs that have been harmed by the pandemic because nobody's been able to recruit, or you fund more social workers because kids are having mental health issues. Got it. The choice is clear. You do need to fund those programs, right? And as a result Latin, so might've had something to do with the

fact that you know I'd stand in front of the school board and spend six minutes telling them why they should fire the superintendent to his face so I don't know but not on my recommendation but they did but they did eventually yeah yeah maybe you got through Partly there was also an eight-day strike. There was like there was a lot that happened so anyway, he He published it. It was published in 1672 72. Um He is checking out these bones at this guy's house

He proposes a reconstruction of the bones, assuring people with his expertise that it was all one creature, because of course. And I found a drawing that was attested to him, but actually all evidence actually points to Leibniz crafting the first drawing of this magnificent beast based on something he read that Guernicke wrote. And because he was a scientist, Leibniz, a philosopher, a mathematician, a metaphysics expert, a poet, a pirate, a pauper, like 14 other things, everyone took his word as gospel.

Now, Godfrey Wilhelm Leibniz was a contemporary... W. Say again? We just call him GW. GW. No. No. Another one?

Yeah. You want to say Gottfried Wilhelm every time really? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I would like to say Gottfried Wilhelm. Yeah.

To cast his having. Okay. Yeah, please. Yes. Awesome. Yeah. I'm gonna say GW. You do you. This will be sufficient inspiration. So he was a contemporary rival and professional rival to Sir Isaac Newton.

He also probably created calculus. Yeah, that's just still up in the air. They've been fighting about that for a long time. So what's the deal there? Was there some lateral thinking across the channel? Was there... Well, back in the day, of course, there was a full-on national struggle about who had done it first.

Germans thought Leibniz did it first. The English thought Newton did it first. Of course, that shit all blows up in World War One when like and just before when nationalism is running rampant. And when they use trigonometry to kill each other. Yeah. Yeah. And then it seems to me that they came to a kind of a truce, right? That they're kind of like, hey, let's just say that they developed it independently. And there seems to be some evidence for that. But I don't know. Jury's still not completely out. There's some some issue about a letter that took like a long time to get to Germany.

And during the time that that letter was in transit, supposedly Leibniz was ripping off some calculus, but maybe the letter arrived, maybe it didn't. So there's a lot of stuff like that. Historians have done deep dives on this. Oh, that is so't arrive. So there's a lot of stuff like that. Historians have done deep dives on this. Oh, that is so fun. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. And so I'm actually like it's funny that you guys should ask me this because I'm up here in the woods kind of fucking around and having a good time.

But I'm also finishing a book that I should have written a long time ago that started with this one, but it is about it's a story about how something that Leibniz absolutely did steal. So that's just what I'm writing about. Wow. Was it the George Carlin's Seven Deadly Words? How did you know? You know, history of comedy is a thing. I worked so hard and you already knew this.

I thought of it independently. It's fine. It's good. There was a letter in the mail like, yeah, you know, yeah, yeah. You know what? The post office being shut down a bit. No, he's he stole a wind machine. Like there's like these gotten all this love for this wind machine. He's created and the Germans are crazy because they're like, he's the founder of not Haltesgut, which is like basically it's not H was not halted. It's like sustainability, right? He's like, I was ahead of the time.

He was using wind power. He's Mr. Sustainable. And I'm like, no, no, he stole that shit. So he just wrote an amazing thing. You heard it here first, but he stole it from like a Dutch Japanese guy. And there weren't many Japanese people in Europe in the 17th century. So he really had to go out of his way to fuck that up. I mean, Ed did six episodes on Shogun,

and therefore four of the episodes were on. Well, this was also like Shogun, it's not irrelevant here because we're talking precisely at that time when Europeans are being tossed out of Japan and my arts thing, who's my real hero of the story, is actually three years old when he gets booted out of Japan, which with his Dutch father and his mother dies mysteriously on exit because exactly because they're being booted in around 1640 from Japan.

Oh wow. Is that at the time of the martyrs? Yeah. No, the martyrs was under Hideyoshi. Yeah, okay. It was either Hideyoshi or Nobunaga. But yeah, that's after you said that they were leaving in 16 in a well they they had out I think around 1640 Okay, so that's that's second. That's this is Tokugawa this is Ieyasu's son second Shogun Who in a fit of peak got got pissed off at all of them? And of course like infamously the Dutch managed to stick around because they're willing to stamp on the cross the Portuguese get run out of right yeah yeah oh wild uh because

you know basically as I said in the episode EES it was like uh yeah you guys just the Dutch you guys just want to make money I can deal with you you're Yeah, but these crazy people, you guys, you want converts and that's not happening. So yeah, wow. To like he read that he read the room. Yeah. Yeah. So Leipzig stole from you mean Leibniz Leibniz. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Leipzig is the place where Leibniz was born. So here's the thing. Like I probably well, what the hell?

You know, I'm it'll be extra incentive for me to finally finish this fucking thing. But you know, but but the Germans don't agree with me at all. But I think I have proven it. So this is like, you know,

I I think I need to get this thing to my editor now if I'm going to say this on the air. Yeah. Don't worry. This we're recording now. This probably won't release for two months. So you've got time. So I got time. Yeah. I'm actually going to ask you to like put that manuscript. Ed's got eight episodes on the White Wolf game setting first. So fantastic. I could use I could use the buffer. Yeah Okay, so so Leibniz famous wind thief um

Yeah, with the wind machine. Yeah, he's he's a windmill thief. Yeah. Yes. Okay, the thief of winds. Yes Exactly. See there's the if there's no so many possible titles. Oh, yeah. See, there's so many possible titles. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So he was born in Leipzig right around the time that de Guericke, von Guericke became mayor of Magdeburg. If de Guericke was given a moon's worth of gravity due to his expertise, the fact that Leibniz was such

a polymath, especially in the mid 1700s, as these things were spreading faster, that meant that Leibniz would have gotten Jupiter's gravity. Like just everybody had all the regard for him. Like to the point where I knew his name, I did not know. Wait, wait, wait, we're gonna back this up. Which do you think he had all the? I think Leibniz got all he had all the ground in which year.

Oh, by the time the by the mid seventeen hundreds. Oh, you mean like, yeah. OK, are we talking? You mean like 1750 here? Like, what do we know about? Yeah. OK, so we're talk much later. Yes. Yes Okay, so I just comparing the two in terms of their relative Yeah, regard by people now. I think like at the time it happened. We're like, oh no later when yes

Yeah, they get up and go. Yeah. Yeah Cuz just saying around the time, like earlier, like you were saying, 1663 or whatever, like like this was just born. Ricky was a much bigger deal in 1670, probably than Leibniz. Yeah. Right. And but you're saying after Leibniz's death, once you canonize like, yeah. Leibniz is to Gki what? Michael Jackson is to Paul To Paul yeah of the beardening oh

Partney I was like which Paul Paul McCartney. Yeah, yeah, like he he just goes by he's like yeah Yeah, he's Beyonce for you because he's just Paul. Okay exactly. Yeah Actually, I think I was brain farting on his name. So I was like, everybody will know who Paul is. Come on. Yeah. Yeah. But so Leibniz had grown up as the son of a professor of moral philosopher.

I'm sorry. Yeah. Leibniz had in. I'm really I'm just really stuck on that. This is to this is this is to this. OK, I love those. Like, OK, can we do it again? Yeah. What like Leibniz is to Gerrard Key as Jupiter is to the moon. No, no. I would position as as Leibniz as Michael Jackson is to Paul McCartney.

Really? They both. Michael Jackson is that much more of a shining light? I would say in pop music. Well, yeah, actually. Palmer or well. OK, so a few things here. Yeah, a few things.

There was that early rub early in Michael's solo career. Yeah, right. With Ebony and Ivory. And then who got all the rights to the Beatles stuff? Michael and who created like, I got all the rights to the Beatles stuff. Okay. So you're saying, so he, you're okay. So I see there's this thing. So we're saying we fast forward like the equivalent of 1750 and then he has outshone him.

Yes. Good time. Yes. OK. Yeah. But having been exposed to him at a young age when he was clearly him working with Paul was good for Michael, it didn't matter to Paul. Yeah, I'm still going to have a hard time with Paul McCartney being outshone that much, but I'll just chew on it You can move ahead. I'll just i'm gonna just like chew on it. Okay. Yeah Cardney, um crossover appeal uh Multiple different genres. I'm not denying, you know, like michael jackson big deal, but yeah, oh mccartney

Okay, thriller was the biggest selling album ever We're starting to make the case Yeah, like Leibniz did moonwalk. It's fair exactly exactly so Walked around like his hair was on fire strange For a commercial for a soda pop so pop almost killed the king of pop Thank you, just yeah, let's like I'm gonna lay that down there. Yeah, let's let's get get back to the folly unicorn How all of this other stuff was going on I Wow, how all of this other stuff was going on I

Yeah, I heard what you were saying about how big this fossil is yeah, you looked it out and I looked it up and So my daughter's my daughter looked it up and she's like where its back legs like her first go the legs is weird, right? Like construction is just like is it a a fish, a mermaid? Like what's what's going on back? Yeah. Yeah. I guess the wings keep it afloat or something. I don't know. It's a pegacorn. Really clear that paleontology was not established yet as a meaningful science. This is it. But this like that was one of the things like in lore, this is the first attempted paleontological reconstruction in history.

Right. So that's what's super interesting. Yeah. It's a remarkably bad step forward. It's a bad mix, but they tried. Yeah. It's like looking at the rules to earliest baseball. You're like, what the f- really? What's happening? Yeah. So, okay, his dad was the professor of moral philosophy in Leipzig, and Leibniz himself had access to his dad's library after his dad died.

His dad died when he was seven. I didn't even remember that. I knew he was seven. Yeah, now by the time Leibniz was 12, he'd learned enough Latin that he was able to read all the books in his dad's library. By 13, he had written a 300-line hexameter poem for a school event. Yeah. Now back then, rich kids could get into college much younger than they do now, albeit they were more mature back then than they are now too. And in the year 1661, Leibniz attended Leipzig University,

confounding my spell checker, and he earned a bachelor's of arts in philosophy the following year. So in many ways, Leibniz was following in de Gurke's footsteps unwittingly, I'm sure. You might even say he was falling over backward into them, as one might do in a moonwalk. His BA. And so, yeah, okay. So we're just so we're in 1662 now? Yeah.

Okay. Right. Just trying to track like, yep. His BA thesis was called and here it's in Latin, so no problems. Disputatio metapisica De Principi Individui, The Metaphysical Disputation on the Principle of Individuation. Very Leibnizy. Already, yeah. A year after that in 63, when the bones had been discovered, is when that came out. In 1664, he got his masters in philosophy from Leipzig

with his master's thesis being Specimen questionum Pilii so Pilii so picarum ex lurei collectarum, an essay of collected philosophical problems of right. So light reading. Yeah. After that, he spent a year earning his BA in law when he wrote De Conditionibus Concerning Conditions, which. OK. A year after that, he got his habilitation, which is the highest thing. Yeah, it's the highest thing that you could get in many continental universities. I think it's our equivalent to a PhD no no More because like the habilitation is usually like a second book. Oh, okay

You'll do your PhD thesis and then people write a second one, which is like habilitats young gosh. It is It's a lot and yeah, he's not that old when he does that. No, no. I think that was he was 19. So yeah, that's. I know. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Usually people this is the habilitation is when you meet people over there. That's what they're doing after they finish their PhD and they already like kind of a professional life. Yeah. OK. It's a 17th century. But still. life. Yeah. OK, it's the 17th century. But still. Sure. Yeah. The game.

So he wrote De Arte Combinatoria, Regarding the Combinational Arts, which doubled as a book. So that tradition has been around for quite some time. So because he's so young, Leibniz turned down his application to apply for a doctorate in law, or no, I'm sorry, Leipzig turned down Leibniz's application, because he's so young. So yes, you've done all these things, but you're too young. So you're like, yeah. So he had to take a show on the road. And he went to the

University of Altdorf. Did I get that right? Got you nailed it. the University of Altdorf. Did I get that right? Got you nailed it. Yes. That's my one. For in the free in the free imperial city of Nuremberg. Obviously, he'd already done a ton of work at Leipzig. So it comes as no surprise that he wrote his doctoral thesis so soon after enrolling at Altdorf. In 1666, Leibniz got his doctorate in law and his license to practice. This time it was called Disputatio Inauguralis de Casabas, Casabas perplexus in Lure, or

in Jure, the inaugural disputation on ambiguous legal cases. So now he's 20. And he's done this. So fuck him. So, after that he really took off, hobbing and knobbing all over the place with hella smart people. He went all over

Europe doing math stuff, physics stuff, and then teaching himself the math stuff and the physics stuff that he was shaky on. And then he came up with a form of calculus like you do by the time he was 26. Yeah, he was a little slow form of calculus like you do by the time he was 26 Yeah, he was slow on that one. You know the very next sentence so he's slowing down on his old age He also developed mechanical calculating devices during that time like you do

So it's understandable why he only invented calculus in those six years of travel. He was doing other stuff As a lark, you know. See. He showed it off to the Royal Society in 1673, and they were duly impressed. He was famous to a level that's very hard to explain. Maybe famous like the way that Matthew Mercer is famous from Critical Role. I mean, yeah, it's very tricky during his lifetime because, you know, he wants to hobnob in Paris.

He wants to hang out with all the people, but he doesn't, you know, actually things don't always work out for him so well. You know, he's pitching all these ideas. He's not getting the love from the Royal Society he'd like. He's trying to connect with the right people. And then partly he ends up in Hanover because that's where he gets a job but then he's like the court librarian in kind of a backwater town, right? I mean, you know, it's kind of like he ends up in Reno. You know, it's like, oh shit, like I thought I was going to be in LA but I'm in Reno. Because that's where I got my librarian job. Right. Yeah.

It didn't work out all that great for him. No. Wasn't super famous at his time. Like he picks up. Right. Yeah. And among the 18th century, people are all on the live history. Right. Or the 18th. Yeah. 17th is a little tricky. Well, and there's other bigger, bigger stars in the sky. Yeah, so it's like well What have you done for me? So like like I say, you know, he's kind of like Mercer in that Among that circle and the adjacent circles to it people will be like oh Yeah, I know that cartoon. He's got huge that he builds over time like he's a huge network of correspondence, right?

Yes that he builds over time like he's a huge network of correspondence right yes absurd number of correspondence and that that's his claim to fame someone it's like he has correspondents all over Europe in the world right is there a modern equivalent to that a man of letters like that who has like you guys had no better than I do like you mean like like a social media superstar like what are we talking about yeah I guess like just you mean like like a social media superstar? Like what are we talking about? Yeah, I guess like just somebody who has like said, you got someone? Well, and what I'm what I'm what I'm thinking, as we're as we're

trying to kind of come up with that, you know, what occurs to me is there's, there's the kind of a qualitative change in what what constituted correspondence in this in this time period. Yeah. And what what the world looks like now in terms of things like in in that time period, you had to be maintaining circles of letter writing, you know, you had to be maintaining circles of letter writing. You had to have essentially your own committee of correspondence in order to collaborate with anybody, in order to bounce your ideas off of other people and all of that kind of stuff. You had to have this connection of other people.

And the individuals that you were connected to were like jewels in your diadem, right? Right. And so that was a really big deal in that era. And now the nature of, you know, travel is so much, physical travel, to be in the same place with people that you're working with is so much easier now. And...

That's like what we're doing. Yeah, yeah. And then Sounds like what we're doing. Yeah, yeah. And then... Like, hello, right? Yeah, and our ability to connect in real time. Yeah. You know, the fact that we're doing all of this as, you know, let's be honest, basically

a bullshit session, you know, over the internet. Again, we are huge in Austria. They love us Fucking Austria. Yeah, we're like in Austria like in the town of fucking specifically because Ed says their name all the time I think he's got a secret licensing deal with fucking I wish I did Fucking yeah, does that have an out saying like it does fucking have an emla omelette is that like no no No, it is in fact straight fucking a lot of breeze. Okay. Yeah, yeah, so But you know, we're we're maybe you have to reach out to the librarian there just so I can say I could talk to the fucking

librarian yeah Better yet talk to the librarian there just so I can say I could talk to the fucking librarian Better yet talk to the fucking mayor But You know the nature of the conversation that we're having right now It is fundamentally very different from What they would have the way they would have interacted? Sure, because in in a letter you you would have been Developing an idea. Yeah, right, you know fully to its completion like you're you're exchanging essays with people You know, you're having a treat us off almost. Yeah in a way. Yeah, and and so

I think it's really hard To find a meaningful parallel in their modern world. Yeah, you know because because qualitatively the way The communication that we are engaging in is changed. Yeah, it's based on the way we are doing it Changed yeah based on the way we are doing it Okay, I sound So postmodernist I am sick of having my own farts right now Yeah, I'm so frustrated with myself for saying it, but I think there is no author and You're putting the fuck in Fico.

OK, but if you think about live, it's like that. I hear everything you're saying. But yeah, in but within his time. Yeah. Kind of an extreme case. So you imagine like networks of correspondence going out. And I imagine like like a web with knots or like locations that are central, like nodes, I guess, nodes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He is one of those people because it is just absurd prolific prolificness.

Sure. Like what is it? Like prolific prolific prolificity, prolific proliferate proliferation, isn't it? Prolif hisiferate proliferation isn't it uh proliferate his proliferation he's not having a lot of babies because it's true that's procreation but yeah like and or proliferating like a lot of little ones but but anyway nodes right sure you imagine him as one of the big nodes in european correspondence networks right where things kind of congeal and come together and then go out again. Sure. Like if everybody's got a letter from him. Yeah. And he's got a letter from everybody. And partly because he takes over that librarian position.

And Michael Carhartt has written about this, like just that that kind of world of letters and how he's a real central node in that. And he kind of network of power and favors and everything out of having that right? So it's good to be a node in that sure Yeah, yeah, I don't know what again. Maybe you're right ed Maybe there's like no modern equivalent, but it would be like the idea of being a node in a social Yeah, you social that me explains why a lot of people, when they speak of him at that time, it's like, I knowed him. Yeah, I knowed.

Ah, yeah. Yeah. Oh. Ah, you know, but what you're saying there, the power that he would have had to kind of act as go between or to provide access to other people would be a big part of the social capital and the social power that would be involved in that. And you add to that the fact that he was in good with the House of Hanover and they kind of did some stuff.

Oh well, kind of. Well also, I mean, like the stuff that I'm writing about now, like he knew how to sweet talk and ass kiss a Duke like that's yeah He in fact wrote bad Latin poetry for the Duke to kiss up to him Yeah, it was that good right and there were two Sophia's and one Caroline and he was especially good at writing a lot of books about like him and the princesses right and a lot it's like you know and I I have read these books and I think they underplay the ass kissiness of what he was up to there.

They take those relationships very much at face value. Isn't that wonderful? Isn't like, here's what he's creating favor to use it to. And I took it as like, he's the kind of eccentricity that goes well with the rug so you keep him around Well, that's why they wanted. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, the Steve Jobs to the handovers Andy Warhol pretty good sweet talk Yeah, you know so and have too many sycophants around so that's yeah That's and he he published a ton. He was tolerated by the old class He was tolerated by the upper-class twits and he was sweet to a Caroline

There you go. He had it all he did the whole thing. Yeah Nothing Ed really no, I mean damn it no, okay Okay, so from 1691 to 1693, also known as the slow years for him, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz wrote the preface to a larger work called the Protogia, all in Latin of course. I had so much fun with this. He never published it in his lifetime because he's obviously a perpetual underachiever. But in the preface Leibniz said quote those who would trace our

region know our Origin back to its beginnings must also say something about the original appearance of the earth and about the nature of the soil And what it contains? Yeah, and then he wrote about unicorns. He said, the unicorn's horn and an enormous animal unearthed in Quedlingburg. Yeah, Quedlingburg. Quedlingburg. Still a nice place to visit. Yeah.

So I've heard. Yeah. So maybe I'll get one of my kids to take me there sometime. But he was duly skeptical of this, claiming that these giant horns were actually from the great fish of the sea Because some of those have horns Which we now know as narwhals And still he wasn't actually closing the book on unicorns. He said quote nevertheless We should not disguise the fact that a four-footed

Unicorn the size of a horse has been found in Abyssinia, if we can believe the Portuguese, Hieronymus lupus and Balthazar telusius. And then he did it. He mentioned the one that von Gurecky had analyzed. He said, quote, the skeleton that was found in 1663 near Quedlinburg on Mount Zunichenberg

Yeah, zunichenberg zunichenberg. I was closer than I wanted to be uh in the rock while lime was being excavated Also looked more like a land animal The mountain is a specific mountain within the andes, right? Wait zunichenburg or where? Yeah, you mean the Alps? No Alps. Yeah, I don't know what happened with my yeah, it's like the Andes are way the hell over there.

Like looking at it like that doesn't make sense. So within the Alps my so I don't know what happened with my spell checker, but it got mad at me that time or something because acting out at you. Oh my God. And then he referenced von gernike directly He said quote in his book about the vacuum Gwerky mentions in passing that the skeleton of a unicorn was found with the rear parts of its body bent back

As is common with animals But with a raised head and carrying on its forehead an extended horn about five yards long. The horn was the width of one human leg and tapered gradually. And then at the size of that unicorn, that's like five feet, like, yeah, yards, five yards. Fifteen feet. And the size of the human leg. Right right yeah, so I just put into the chat The link to the picture it should work. Oh here. We go, so let me know if it doesn't Yeah loading there she is awesome. Yeah, I love that it showed up on a unicorn fandom wiki So I love that it showed up on a unicorn fandom wiki. So, um, yeah,

Ed or Andre, could one of y'all describe what you see in that picture? Oh yeah. Go ahead. Ed. I'm, yeah, I'm, my, my connection right now is garbage, so I'm going to have to leave it up to you. I'm still waiting for the, well, what, what, what you're looking at here is, you know, you you have two things, which is I believe a tooth above it, which is like superimposed and then an attempt at a reconstruction of a unicorn looking thing at the bottom. And so luckily, we we know the scale of this thing

because we realize that that horn we're looking at is what upwards of 15 feet. And then what looks like something like a horse head to attached to very large legs underneath it. And the key moment, of course, for historians of paleontology who took interest in the book is the little interpolated lighter section where he he kind of connects the missing bones and it looks like it connects to a tail. So the thing has no back legs. And so this is an enormous kind of two legged thing with a tail with interpolated bones in between and it's just a massive scary fucking unicorn

Is really what it is And again without hind legs Yeah, so when I when I went and looked this up earlier, yeah Like on my own because it was like, okay, I gotta figure out what, what the hell this thing is. It, it looks, it honestly, God looks like, uh, something that my son would have doodled, uh, in, in daycare. Yeah. Like, like, you know, just, just, yeah, I, I'm, I'm looking at it and I'm, I'm the, the shoulders,

if we want to call them those being so close to the bottom of the jawbone, it doesn't, it doesn't have a neck. Um, and, and yeah, and that is, and it is by the way, a terrifying fucking horn. Yeah. It's horn. Shit. the way a terrifying fucking horn. Yeah, it's horn shit. We're you know, like I said, is it just sweeping that tail at you? Like a scary dinosaur?

Like what's happening with the tail? Right. I mean, is it like does it just teeter totter? Like, yeah, it's scoops and bashes. Like how does it stand up? Yeah. Well, I mean, what it looks like looks like obviously is that it did it when it when it needs to stay in stationary Clearly what it does is it just leans back on what must have been an incredibly muscular tail. Yeah. Yeah, that's right, you know Yeah Those little office toys with the water

To like keep pressing the button. Right. Yeah. That's how it eats. Yeah, obviously. Yeah. But but it's rib cage. It's it. Yeah. Look at. Yeah.

Honest to God, somebody needs to like take the images of this thing in the museum and and CP around them could you imagine natural history museum where you build this thing? Oh, yeah You know real scale real deal original unicorn. That'd be pretty yeah Jesus and what I really love is there are a bunch of pictures that I found of And what I really love is there are a bunch of pictures that I found of people have actually tried to give good faith effort to come up with an extrapolation of, okay, now if we flesh this thing, what would it have looked like? Oh, really?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. People are trying to build a real life replica of this thing? They're artists reconstructions, but yeah, in the images. I just learned something tonight. I need to look this up. I just put one into the chat from just somebody. Oh shit! Yeah.

I didn't know people had done that. Oh yeah. Oh, that is awesome. I mean, you dig deep enough, you're going to find somebody having sex with it cuz rule 32, but Let's not make Doran's error. Okay, let's not do it. Where is this this thing on the left? Like it looks like it they built it somewhere. Yeah, so instruction some guy actually I Believe love to see this thing. Yeah, I I don't remember where I found that display picture That looks like a real the gallery or something. It is put it up Yeah, no, it was actually one of the first articles that I found. Oh, I had no idea Um had this kind of afterlife. Okay, so that is actually the display that was on display

At the museum in madgeberg. Oh, that's in the the museum you were talking about. Yeah It's there? Yeah. They're like, hey, hmm. Wow. I love the fact they did that. Yes. You don't have to go.

It's like Mount Vernon admitting to slavery. It's like, okay, yeah, there have been some missteps here. Here you go. Here's what we built. Yeah. This is been some missteps here. Here you go. Yeah, so what we built. Yeah This is an L we have to take yeah Like you know and here is the nail factory that Thomas Jefferson make children work in you know like And that furry thing on the right like look at the expression on its face. It's like it's like please kill me Need xlax and I feel judged. I don't know about you guys I

Do like that the person standing next to it is clearly like a a catalog model You know just like Walking around with my man, Gerberg. Oh I'm walking around with my mad geberg. Oh My god, he's he's he's modeling belts. He's like mad geberg the only belt that'll keep these pants up So Okay, so proto Gaia never saw the light of day until well after Leibniz died And it had a summary published in Latin in 1693 called Octa Eruditorum,

which is the accomplishments of really smart guys. That's kind of the journal where it showed up. Right. But that was to Protagaya what Bleach was to Nevermind. To protogale what bleach was to nevermind No bleach came out first, but people started noticing it after nevermind came out Yeah, no no yeah, they're not all gonna work Johan Georg von Eckhart alerted people to the unpublished work, and in 1749,

a version of it, complete with illustrations, was published. One of those illustrations was Leibniz's reconstruction based on the writings of Otto von Gurecky. And although other scholars who have translated, though other scholars who have translated the protoguy into English, specifically Claudine Cohen and Andre Wakefield, claim that it's far more likely that Leibniz's drawings was a take on the existing drawings that

were contemporaneous with his works in the 1690s. Did I get that right? I feel like I did. Yeah, I mean, the like behind this is the question of like where this drawing came from, right? Right. Which and you brought up before Damien, I mean, I think the idea is that especially the interpolation appears to be livenesses, right? Like there's, you know, you have the garakki animal, you have the other stuff, but this especially like what, you know, it may seem weird because obviously popular culture and everything is much more taken with other parts of this animal. But historians of paleontology being who they are, are really worried about the little interpolated right there. Like this little idea that you would just imagine

the reconstruction without the bones. You know, you don't have bones, so let's try to like put it together. And so that little interpolation becomes very important in the history of paleontology. And that's where Leibniz seems to get some credit and not von Gericke, right? Oh, that's so interesting.

Because Leibniz wrote about, well, von Gericke was the one who was trying to write about nothingness. Yeah. And interesting because Leibniz wrote about well von garak he was the one who was trying to write about nothingness Yeah, and it's Leibniz said Relation but but I guess that's like like he's actually putting somethingness in there, right? I suppose. Yeah, he's naming the nothing Yeah, and he I think Leibniz is much more about plenums then he doesn't like the the vacuum thing I don't right like he's right or the plenum guy. So it makes sense, right? Yeah, yeah So I do you guys you know that book Leviathan in the air pump mean anything to you?

Like that came up in my research for this shape and Schaffer They're like it's very famous book in the history of science product dates from the 1980s but like it's very famous book in the history of science probably dates from the 1980s, but the the read here about fun garreky is like they basically write all about the royal society in that book and talk about Leviathan the air pump. It's basically Hobbes versus Robert Boyle and a big debate over what's happening in the air pump and about the nature of vacuums and all that kind of stuff. But one of the things that come up with that's relevant here in that book is the importance of gentlemen witnesses. So the idea that they bring up in that book, it's kind of a sociology of science, is that the reason that Robert Boyle was able to convince people about the spring of the

air and all his experiments in the Royal Society was the special status of gentlemen witnesses because they had a special kind of authority to what they said as witnesses. This is exactly what's going on with Gerrard Key. He fulfills this role because it's his personage being kind of a nobleman, being a mayor, having all this authority that gives that unicorn special meaning. It's actually because he vouches for it that it means much, right? So like Gherki's personage and his character, especially as a gentleman, gives extra credence to the idea of the unicorn in the first place.

So again, like ads, ads, a legitimacy. Exactly. And that's the same thing that's happening in society. Like those experiments have special legitimacy because of who the people in the room are. It's like, hey, gentlemen, we can trust them. They're not just some Tom, Dick and Harry, right? Wow. I mean that that is so to me that is so much along the same vein as Everybody you know credits

Einstein with being an expert on botany and entomology Yeah, because you knew before I like that trans Transferencing like yeah, but at this so you must be yeah. Yeah, like you made a lot of money. You must be really smart It's yeah. Although I guess the difference is that I mean, you like your your theme of the day. I guess it's actually Ed's theme about the well-placed twits or whatever the line is.

Right. Last twits. Upperclass twits. Well, Einstein, at least, is something more than that. I'm pretty close to like in some ways, a lot of the gentlemen, all they had going for them was that they were upper class twits, right? Yes.

They didn't have the theory of relativity alongside, right? Right. Right. Last, which was supposed to give them a certain kind of authority and trustworthiness, a gravity, if you will. Yeah.

Wittiness, if you will. Yeah. No, I do not disagree with that. Like that there is that distinction, that distinction that exists, but the transference of expertise is still the phenomenon regardless of you know, and that's the thing that we all tend to do. Like people listen to Shaquille O'Neal talk about things. I mean, asked for. I don't know, I mean, I guess I buy into the transference a little. Like I would be much more likely to buy something that Einstein told me about Botany

than say Hegseth, right? Like, you know, because he's a smart fucking guy and he knows shit in one area. He's not just a twit, right? Right, right. No, yeah, that is a good point. He knows get in one area Just a twist right right right No, I yeah, that's that is a good point Say again it There's a very low bar involved there Yeah, I dropped the bar real low yeah, well we kind of have to you know I make that point really yeah, yeah

The first tweet that came to mind Make that point really yeah The first tweet that came to mind yeah, that's fair you picked one of the more dangerous You know ones who has white supremacy tattooed on his skin, so All right, so we do need to go back a few years though to pick up this odd little wrinkle I found we're dropping back before 1691. Yes, okay 1686 Okay, all right Leibniz visited the cave from which the original story was dug. The spelunking! Some of my favorite stuff. That was part of my favorite stuff in the book where he's talking to the first person.

And then we had to go in. And then we're like, oh, I like shit, we're in the cave. So, yeah, definitely fill in what I miss here and deepen what I shallowly skim a rock over. But Leibniz visited the cave and he discussed with the local folks the importance of that particular karst cave. It was dubbed the Unicorn Cave or my favorite term in this podcast recording Einhornhalle. Einhornhalle, I think. Oh, even better. You have to put your omelette on there. Yeah. This cave had actually been known since 1541 and was

already local legend. Leibniz noted that there was a local trade in unicorn bones and the products that one can make from them. This largely involved different powders and pastes that were cut make from them. This largely involved different powders and pastes that were cut or suspended and all sorts of things from all sorts of ailments and enhancements. A legend around this grew as well at the same time as all of these products did because a story sells it when it's otherwise ground up bone dust, right? So here's some ground up bone dust. Yeah, but it's unicorn dust. Yeah, and even that, that's not going to convince you? Fine. An old wise woman had been accosted by

a bunch of warriors and a monk. Rather than let her get beaten up outside of his cave, a unicorn came out to defend her by killing or driving off the soldiers, but the monk seems to have gotten swallowed up by the caves. Now, what do you think? Two for one? Uh-huh. So Leibniz was convinced no two ways about it, and he planned to include it in his geological and human history of the world. OK, like I just have to say, speaking of like weird rabbit holes with one thing, one thing that's weird about like editing its book like this. It's not so much like the translating line by line, but you have to figure out what the fuck is going on.

And sometimes it's super confusing. And then you get into this cave and then you're all of a sudden it's a week later and you're like just down this crazy rabbit hole about the cave. And I ended up reading tourist literature from the 17th and 18th century about this cave, which actually existed. There were like guides about, and you go to the cave, and then you go in here, and you meet the guy at the entry. And it was like, holy shit, there was like a tourist books from the 18th century about people going into this thing. It was a whole thing. Yeah. I mean, they're cutting off

French King's heads. And also, here's a unicorn hole. And it was mean they're cutting off French King's heads and also Like like going into the cave with the local guy and you know and they go visit the bones of the guy who got lost In there couldn't find his way out Left his bones in there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so good. It's so good And it's a growth industry because when people die in there they become bones. You have more guys to visit. Yeah. He also died in there. Yeah. And I mean it helps with... That's Green Boots over there. Right. Exactly. Now you grind him up with a little bit of this and... Yeah, I want to try that that so your ED goes away another growth industry if you will um, but Oh, yeah

so It wouldn't be until 1872 that actual paleontologists would put the lie to this story So it's kind of just taken as as a bunch of buzz kills I know. Yeah, come on. OK, I admit it. We did it again. I don't know if this is becoming a habit or an indulgence or if just we record too late at night or what, but essentially we had so much fun with this guest that we recorded,

I want to say for more than three hours straight and there's no way anybody has that long of a commute who listens to our show. So I again had to cut it off, which this was actually a more reasonable place to cut it because I bring us up to the 1870s with a very interesting fellow that we'll talk about in the next episode. But you know, this episode, for all intents and purposes, done. Next week we will continue our interview with Andre Wakefield talking about the Maggeberg fossil. It was just so much fun.

And again, you can find us on Spotify, on the Apple Podcast app, on the Amazon Podcast app. You obviously need to give us a good review because of just the quality of our guests, if not the quality of our editing. And we had a really wonderful time. And as always, you can find me at the Comedy Spot downtown in Sacramento on the first Friday of every month I strongly urge you to go get your tickets early And you can find us at geek history time dot-com all the other plugs. We will put at the end of the next episode Where we can actually plug his book as well as other people's works that he really enjoys that dr. Wayfield really enjoys so For geek history of time. I'm Damian Harmony.

Ed Blalock's not here to say it, so I'll just keep saying it. Keep rolling 20s.