A Geek History of Time - Episode 323 - Madgeburg Fossil with Andre Wakefield Part II

Episode Date: July 4, 2025

Item one, get the grocery store item to laundry item three over through capitalism. You know, for somebody who taught Latin, your inability to pronounce French like hurts. Oh, look at you getting to the end of my stuff. Motherfucker. But seriously, I do think that this bucolic, luxurious live your weird fucking dreams kind of life is something worth noting. Because of course he had. I got into an argument, essentially,

with with some folks as to whether or not punching Nazis is something you should do. And they're like, no, then you're just as bad as the Nazis. I was like, the Nazis committed genocide. I'm talking about breaking noses. Drink scotch and eat strychnine. All right, you can't leave that lying there. Luxury poultry.

Yes, yes. Fancy chickens. Yes, fancy chickens. Pet, pet fancy chickens? Pet fancy chickens. Pet Fancy Chickens? Pet Fancy Chickens. This is a Geek History of Time. Where we connect nerdery to the real world. My name is Ed Blaylock. I'm a world history teacher here at the middle school level in Northern California.

And this week I got very excited for, I don't know, half an hour or an hour when I found out that Games Workshop is going to be releasing a whole new set of models for my true first love army for Warhammer 40,000 for the Space Wolves. And I was really, really excited about it. And then it struck me that I don't have time to paint anything right now, let alone try to actually play any games. So I'm very excited for probably next summer when I will have completed my masters and I will actually have time for hobbies other than this again That's what what happened to me this week, how about you? Well, I'm Damian Harmony I'm a US history teacher at the high school level up here in Northern, California and

As people know we record these episodes back-to-back And the previous recording I went to save it and walked away as I usually do and come back and it says hey you need more space on your computer for this and I mean that's a first so I had to go back and I had only five gigs available and the file was much larger because of what we're about to talk about but yeah, I had to delete like 30 back episodes You know just like the raw files and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah, so that was that was sad But also I was like, oh my god. I I didn't realize I was keeping over a hundred previous episodes on my computer

So yeah. Yeah, there's that so anyway, um Before we get too far going One of the reasons why it was such a large file is because yet again with a guest we had so much fun That we had to cut that episode in half. So apologies for last episodes, last week's episode, not having any plugs at the end. They will be at the end of this episode, but basically we just ran through about,

I would say three hours and some change of just getting to talk with our upcoming guest, Dr. Andre Wakefield, about the Maddeburg fossil. So what you're hearing now is part two of that, and it was never planned to be a... A two-parter. Two-parter, it was, and not in the same way

of Damien never plans for a two-parter and then it's 14 parts, but like... Yeah, no. I literally only wrote eight pages on this so um and yet here we are so anyway hope you enjoyed the last one I know you're gonna enjoy this next one so here we go So that leads us to Rudolph Virchow. Oh my god, we're going to Rudolph Virchow now. Did I skip some stuff in between that you want to throw in there? Please do.

We're way into the 19th century now. I know, I love Rudy. Let's go. OK. He was a Pomeranian-born polymath of his own. So we have human-animal hybrids now. And of interest these days, like a bona fide liberal international who believed in the beauty of science and international cooperation.

And bona fide. Yeah. Some of his like nationalist fuckhead colleagues. Idea. Yeah. Because it's 1872. Like we have like German nationalism running kind of right now. There's about to be a war like, you know, Oh god, there's about to be a war like, you know

So Yeah, he's known as the father of pathology Who had forgive the pun? Made his bones studying the typhus outbreak in 1847 and 48. Wow ed You have to deal with this a lot. I don't like just like puns are all the time All the time and you know, i'm not going to be D jokes. And oh, my God. Oh, yeah. So now there's a type of outbreak in what we now identify as the Czech Republic and mostly Poland.

Back then, they called it Upper Silesia, like you do. And it was a huge industry. You know, upper Silesia don't. Oh, man, like I will never get to bed if we go upper Silesia. I like one of my best friends, like just writes about upper Silesia. Like so like, wow, neither German nor Pole Catholic, this German stuff like all happening in upper Silesia. Wow. Industrial zone for sure.

I've been there because of him. So I went and visited, like we went to Poland, we hung out with him. It is still an industrial zone. Yeah, that's I mean, I hearing this, I just feel like I've made bad choices in my life. I don't have nearly as interesting stories. My best friend knows how to like do really good zombie hunting in the red zone So but So it's this huge industrial spot and it was it was a convergence of several factors, right you have

Virchow actually wrote a report on the outbreak and in the report Virchow wrote about how the social impact of the disease Which is how he's also considered the father of social medicine. Incidentally, he looked at get this at starvation, poverty and typhus as all interplaying, not just God hates poor people. He saw them as interconnected, quote, a devastating epidemic and terrible famine simultaneously ravaged a poor, ignorant and apathetic population. In a single year, 10% of the population died in the Pless district. 6.48% of starvation combined with the epidemic, and according to the official figures, 1.3% solely of starvation. He then went on to discuss other districts as well, including the startling fact that

quote at the beginning of the year, 3% of the population of both districts were orphans. So he's looking at the data, he's looking at the numbers, he's looking at censuses and stuff like that He's not any so yeah He's also looking at it through a Very again social sociological lens which you know immediately has me thinking who is this proto commie? Right Like what is what is with all this sympathy for the poor? Like dude come on.

Right? Oh it gets better. Right. Because. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Virchow also doesn't just look at the disease as its own course of study.

He's genuinely interested in the causes of the disease beyond typhus itself. So not just the cause of the disease, but the cause of the disease. Which, wow, yeah. His examination of the pathology took on the ineffectiveness of the bureaucracy of Prussia to keep them safe. He actually looked at their fecklessness. He was an editor of the Medical Review, which was a periodical that got started in May of 1848, of all years. Yeah, where you go. With this editorial quote.

He was a 48er. Yeah. Which is interesting, like he was right. So yeah. And he's in Upper Silesia. Like, Central Europe in 1848 is, I don't know, one of the most boring years ever, I'm sure. You know, nothing happened in 1848 ever. So he started it with this editorial.

The medical reform comes into being at a time when the overthrow of our old political institutions is not yet completed, but when from all sides plans are being laid and steps taken toward a new political structure. What other task could then be more natural for it to undertake than that of participation in clearing away the old ruins and in constituting new institutions? In this situation, medicine cannot alone remain untouched. It, too, can no longer postpone a radical reform in its field. So you were not off the mark when you said Proto Kami. Yeah, is not yet the phrase is not yet completed right rings rings out at me is like yeah Wow

There's there's some purposefulness going on there. Mm-hmm And and you know what strikes me is this is also in history. This is the era of von Ranke You know, we're starting to look at the professional wrestler who did the claw attack That's bald. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, totally. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Leopold the Claw. Yeah. Yeah. And having seen contemporary images of Leopold, I have to say, I wish somebody would do that. somebody would do that. Doing that. But yeah, no, uh, uh,

Rankin or von Rankin historiography, the, the, you know, look at all of the evidence, look at the data, provide all of your sources, right? You know, everything down, you know, um, the, the birth of, you know, a very significant portion of what we take for granted nowadays is modern historians. You know, the ideas that we would look at as well. This is just historicity. Like, you know, you're just being accepted.

You got it. OK. If we're going to do a sidebar on Ranka, like so. So one thing a picture of him up in the chat. So we all know one thing, Ranka, of course, in Virchow, very different people. Right. Because Ranka is like he's like a retro eventually very conservative guy. Virchow is like a 48 liberal, like like a protocol. Yeah. Like you said, Ed. And the other thing, do you guys know Novik's take on von Ranke

in American Historiography? Oh, wait, in American Historiography? Yes. Yeah. Like because Peter Novik wrote that noble dream that, you know, so and and his take, I love his take on on Ronka because he's basically like, well, dumb shit. American historians assumed that he was talking about objective history, my activity like scientific objectivity. But they got it totally wrong because when he talked about Wies Eichenglisch Gewezen

in German, he was coming out of a German idealist tradition, which was like basically the idea that if you put all the pieces together, you could literally still read the mind of God in a proto-Hegelian way, right? And so there's a misreading of Ranke as like a objective scientific

Historian who's just doing the facts Jack Whereas in fact much more groovy romantic see Gaelian then we give him credit for you know so very Yeah, it bigger right and a lot of the American historians like the fathers of American historiography Yeah, just ran with it like that. And I was thinking what I was saying. Ed said, like what Ed said, like then. Yeah. Then these American historians totally. It is the foundation of the modern historical profession.

But it's a foundation based on a misunderstanding. Yeah. Which is as American as it gets. Yeah. Like we just just. But all up and then we ran with it. Yeah Yeah It's the theme of the year yeah Yeah, that's what we do problematic steps forward. It's You're welcome

So I put a picture of von rashke in the chat. Yeah, like bearded up Yeah, no, he's no, where is he? Oh wrestler? Yeah the clock Yeah, yeah, yeah try to keep up there Andre. Come on. I know I'm falling behind All right, so So in Virchow's report, which was published in the archives for pathological anatomy and physiology and for clinical medicine in 1849 which is I mean we all know that's that's proto playboy Which he had helped found Because I mean you you read the archives for pathological and anatomy and physiological for and

Physiology for the clinical medicine for the articles as one does yeah Yeah, as one does yeah, so and in German they have a lot more articles dare D die so So So anyway, he had helped found it in 1847 because fuck having a short title, quote, the bureaucracy would not or could not help the people. I'm just going to break in here. This was in 1847 that he said this. Wow. I'm gonna go back.

The feudal aristocracy used its money to indulge in the luxury and the follies of the court, the army and the cities. The plutocracy, which drew very large amounts from the upper solutions as human beings, but only as tools or as the expression has it, hands. The clerical hierarchy endorsed the wretched neediness of the people as the ticket to heaven.

Any nation that still possessed inner strength and an urge to liberty would have risen up and thrown from its temples all the rubbish of hierarchy, bureaucracy, and aristocracy, so that only the sacred will of the people should reign there. In Upper Silesia it was not so." In Upper Silesia, it was not so. Again, this is from the archives for pathological anatomy and physiology for the clinical medicine. And he's saying this. Yeah, because he knows that, like, again, that causal thing. I mean, O'Lantern said the same thing much later, right? Like, there's a weird unicausal approach to medicine.

Like, of course, like, health might matter. Yeah. But it's interesting because he's just such an old school liberal in that quote, which is really interesting. He's in some ways not a proto-communist there, and he's not echoing Marx because he sounds like a French revolutionary Right. He very much does like you know and Marx is gonna take it one step farther and be like well That was the French Revolution and then the next step but he like in that thing Damien that what you were reading He really sounds like a French revolutionary, right? He does cuz he mentions like two of the three of states right there breaking it down Yeah, super interesting at the same time though, like look what's being bandied about

It's not like marks just thought it up in a vacuum. No pun intended given the topic so like It's it's you know, it very much obviously in the thoughts of many people who are looking around going like things are messed up here Yeah, You know, I mean, Virchow eventually is going to catch it later because when 48 fails, right, the real 48 or he's going to be caught up in that backlash. Right. Yeah. There's gonna be post 48 backlash and then he's going to catch it for absolutely this

stuff. Yeah. So Absolutely. And stuff. So. And Virgil wasn't finished either. He all but called for a revolution that he knew would never happen. I think he went pretty hard in the paint against the fecklessness that led to the outbreak too. Quote,

accustomed for centuries to extreme mental and corporal deprivation, poor and ignorant to a degree rarely found in any other nation of the world, the Upper Silesian had lost all energy and all self-determination, and exchanged for them indolence, even indifference, to the point of death. In Ireland the people rose in arms, and even with the unarmedarmed hand once its misery had exceeded the limits of tolerance The proletariat appeared on the battlefield rebellious against law and poverty Threatening in great masses in Upper Silesia the people silently died of starvation

Wow, that's Yeah, that's Yeah It's it I have to sit with that for a sec, you know, yeah Comparison to Ireland is crazy. Yeah, right, especially in that in that year British famine like yeah like where Frederick Douglass goes and he's like, oh you all got it bad like Like he raised money the Cherokee sent money they're like, oh yeah, we we had the Trail of Tears

But now we need to send you all money. Yeah, like yeah like like you all are cooked Yeah, as the kids say now. Clearly in 1849, he's reading something critical of such systems. I don't know what it could have been but Now Virgil went on Calling basically for a revolution for their very lives quote the population had no idea that the mental and material impoverishment to which it had been allowed to sink were largely the cause of its hunger and disease, and that the adverse climatic conditions which contributed to the failure of its crops and to the sickness of its bodies would not have caused such terrible ravages, if it had been free, educated, and well to do. For there can now no longer be any doubt

that such an epidemic dissemination of typhus had only been possible under the wretched conditions of life that poverty and lack of culture had created in Upper Silesia. If these conditions were removed, I am sure that epidemic typhus would not recur. Whatsoever or whosoever wishes to learn from history will find many examples. The logical answer to the question as to how conditions similar to those that have unfolded

before our eyes in upper Cilicia can be prevented in the future is, therefore, very easy and simple. Education with its daughters, liberty and prosperity. Medicine has imperceptibly led us into the social field and placed us in a position of confronting directly the great problems of our time. Let it be well understood. It is no longer a question of treating one typhus patient or the culture of one and a half millions of our fellow citizens who are at the lowest level of moral and physical degradation. With one and a half million people, palliatives will no longer do. If we wish to take remedial action, we must be radical. If we therefore wish to intervene in upper Silesia, we must begin to promote the advancement of the entire population and to stimulate a common general effort. A population will never achieve

full education, freedom and prosperity in the form of a gift Form of a gift from the outside the people must acquire what they need by their own efforts Now I'm just gonna break in here for a second because he's gonna keep going and I will too But this guy is trying to solve a disease Like His approach is is I mean this is yeah, this is 40 years before germ theory really like Yeah, yeah

Like I'm thinking Semmelweis and like his beginnings, but also like when doctors started washing their hands in America With alcohol like this is a good 30, 40 years before that. Yeah, but he's already seen all that connected. Everything else. Like my question for you, Andres, is is he an outlier or were there lots like him and we just don't read about them much? Man, I'm not a great 19th century guy. I'm not a historian of medicine guy.

But I like I know like I had a friend who worked on Virchow and I think he's. You know who you know who he's connected to is this guy named Dubois Raymond too. So he's like that liberal late mid 19th century German visionary. So I don't think he's all out there by himself, right? Okay. See that liberal view, medicine, like, you know, we tend to see it as Marxist, but it's much more like,

Yeah. It was widely spread, right? So I think he's, yeah, I don't think he's all out there on his own. Okay. A way of thinking in that time that's very conducive to this, right? So I think he's yeah, I don't think he's all out there on his own. Okay. A way, a way of thinking in that time that it's very conducive to this, right? Yeah. Especially like the dreams of the 48ers, right?

Yeah. Bodies like it goes together with that kind of vision of a socialized medicine, right? It does. Yeah. And I don't, yeah, I don't think he's some freakish outlier. I mean, famous, but yeah, that's Yeah, it is shocking to hear now, isn't it?

Like you're like wow like we don't seem to be able to process right right, right? Like how we backslid a little bit quite quite so yeah Like I I speak very frequently and then I'll get back to the rest of this quote I speak very frequently about the amplitude of change Yeah in 2016 Specifically, yeah, we were on the verge of free college Yeah on the verge of a more nationalized health care system Yeah debt relief my daughter's rights being enshrined and instead

we've slid back to like the 1840s right twice yeah yeah and you know you know that theme that we started like deep time the things that we take for granted with time are clearly incorrect. You talk about the amplitude of change, Damien, but also the idea that somehow things are linear, moving. We have cycles, backsliding, whatever you want to call it. That is in some ways quite depressing what you read from Virchow because it's like, wow, have you not what it could have been. Yeah. Like, have we not gone that direction or what? And now we're completely the opposite direction. Yeah. Well, and that also highlights the need for progress is not a given. It requires engagement. I mean, and he's saying that he's saying they have been

It requires engagement. I mean and he's saying that he's saying they've been It's been beaten out of these people over generations of deprivation They can't possibly imagine. Yeah, and I feel I mean frankly feels like current policy is to recreate Upper Silesia. So yeah, let's do it again. Yeah. Yeah. Here's something else. He says speak. Oh, go ahead Ed Yeah, what what talking about the cycles and talking about you know The relation of it to the idea of deep time and all of that reminds me of Carl Sagan You know the demon-haunted world when when you know he he explicitly called out the anti-intellect the forces of anti-intellectualism and the, you know, we have, in a way, we have put ourselves in the recipients of a world in which smallpox and measles and these other diseases

you know were were de-fanged in our consciousness because of vaccines, because of the scientific advancements, and because of those things being taken for granted We're now learning how we can't take them for granted the hard way the downside to Vaccines working is that you forget that they work. Yeah, you know, I mean I was I was I was telling my wife the other day It was just like the most obvious thing to do right now would be an emergency, super basic course in the history of medicine. I don't mean like anything complicated, like social history, medicine, or like, let's just do a day in the life from like it from, you know, 1750 and the epidemics and the like, we just have lost all sense of like what that was

right, so so in my US history class, I just finished a unit on the The response to disease. Yeah, and so I started with and and I only let them write their essay on the 20th century But to get to the 20th I I took them through the six smallpox outbreaks in the 1700s including all of the literature where Boylston is like being harangued as a murderer because some people died from the smallpox vaccine or is inoculation or variolation at that time? Yeah Yeah, like yeah that little inoculations right and then I showed them the letters between

Washington and others about how he's dead set against Variolation for smallpox in his army and then within three months. He's like, oh we got to get to everybody Everybody needs and I was like I'll say a lot of bad things about Washington because he deserves it but he was right here yeah like yeah he switched and he switched largely due to Abigail Adams okay and and just so they read that and then I had them look at the San Francisco bubonic plague outbreak and And we spent like weeks on that. And then they looked at the Los Angeles pneumonic plague outbreak just 20 years later. And those were the two 20th century ones.

And then I had them look at three different anti vaccination responses to smallpox in the 1900s. And I'm trying. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. I mean, that's exactly it. Right. Yeah.

And and give them a sense of what again, everyday life and those like, what was it like to be in those outbreaks? Right. Think about. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And and our lens was specifically looking at the impact of structural white

supremacy. There I go again. But the impact of structural white supremacy on the responses to those outbreaks. I don't think you're allowed to say that anymore. Like, like, yeah, find that. You got to rename that now. Yeah. But you know, like, because in San Francisco, they blamed all the Chinese people and they said, there's even an article in the newspaper that said Was it Europeans could never get the bubonic plague Wow? And I put a question under that said what happened in the 1300s that makes this inaccurate You know and then and another reason they gave was that because the Chinese don't eat meat and so I put another another question under that. I said, go look up a Chinese menu right now and tell me how it's organized. Like, yeah, and this is the newspaper. So as it turns out, the media has never been very good

at taking care of us as a fifth estate, or a fourth estate, I forget which. But like, one really, yeah, you know, know of course it was a hearse newspaper but still um yeah yeah one a day actually um but and then we look at the pneumonic plague and they they're like oh god well it's because of their mexicanness that they're all getting this disease and i'm like okay just switch out one word It's the same bacterium just in a different system, you know Pneumonic and bubonic it's just ones in your lungs the other ones in your lymph nodes and They're just doing the same game again. And you know, and so the kids are kind of getting it the ones who paid attention so

Yeah, it would be nice if we had basic understandings of science, but no, this is cool, too um So anyway back to the backward times of 1849 vertjow goes on says quote The people must be taught on the broadest basis on the one hand By means of adequate primary trade in agricultural schools by popular books and popular journals primary trade in agricultural schools by popular books and popular journals and on the other hand there must be freedom to the greatest extent especially complete liberty of communal life I'm just gonna break in real quick. He's advocated for communal life as well as

popular books and popular journals, that's mass media and These are the things that he is recognizing would teach people. Hmm. Huh. Quote, the absolute separation of the schools from the church, necessary as it is everywhere, nonetheless is nowhere more urgent than in Upper Cilicia. The earth brings forth much more food than the people consume. The interests of the human race are not served when by an absurd concentration of capital and landed property in the hands of single individuals Production is directed into channels that always guide back to the flow of profits into the same hands

With that quote like like put that one up on the wall Thank God for unions, um yet, thank unions for unions. God wanted a six-day work week. So, quote, constitutionalism will never wipe out these abuses since it is itself a lie which can never truly draw the conclusions to be drawn from the principles of general equality before the law. Therefore, I abide by the doctrine which I have placed at the head of this discussion free and unlimited democracy. So that's him trying to solve typhus.

That's right. That's that's his read on the disease. Yeah. Yeah. He then went on to discuss what kinds of agriculture and government Upper Silesia should have and by proxy everyone else. He ended his article with this quote, capital and labor must have equal rights and the living force must not be subservient to nonliving capital.

In every case, the worker must have part in the yield of the whole, and as moreover with reduced taxation and with better education, his will be a happier lot. These are the radical methods I am suggesting as a remedy against the recurrence of famine and of great typhus epidemics in Upper Cilicia. Let those who are unable to rise to the more elevated standpoint of cultural history smile Serious and clear thinking persons capable of appraising the times in which they live will agree with me. I Got fucking death threats for this kind of stuff, but you know, yeah, but he's just thrown out there in 1849 Right in a medical journal. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean cuz he's cuz he's you know writing it to a bunch of you know Educated elites true true And I had my post set to public instead of friends instead of yeah, you know

Wow yeah um Yeah, so there's there's a lot to unpack there. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know like like I'm trying to think back to a specific point in it And there are so many of them. I machine gunned you. Yeah, sorry. Yeah. How about the fact that the workers? I machine gun you yeah, sorry kind of yeah How about the fact that the workers the workers rights should be on par with capital and in in conflict? with capital Workers should always get primacy because capital doesn't fucking live. How about that? How about how about where he explicitly called out income inequality, right?

like in How about where he explicitly called out income inequality? Right? Like in 1849. Yeah. You know, and it Oh, the other thing you got me Constitutionality is a lie. Right? Yeah, that was Yeah, the the the immediate question that came to my mind was so okay Molotov isn't gonna be born for another. I don't know how many years This at this time period. What do you call an improvised fire bomb made out of a liquor bottle in a rag? What's the name for that right he's he's lobbing bombs like I Mean he's here's what he's doing. He is Doing what our friend who who joined us for the the episodes analyzing and or does

He's calling out liberals for their bullshit He's like y'all y'all know you keep giving it away to the rich no Like we need everyone in on this. We want them every, you know. Yeah. Like he is he is delineating between liberal and left. Yeah. And and clearly advocating the left.

Yeah. Well, he's like classically. I mean, he's he's known as a classical liberal, which is interesting. But I think it's also it's just also pointing to the fact that the 1848ers were so much more radical than what we're comfortable or familiar with. Right. The 48ers ready to tear it down. Right. That's what all the powers that be around Europe, like Berlin elsewhere, were fucking terrified.

Yeah. Right. Like what was what was liberal. We're fucking terrified. Yes, right Like what was what was liberal there was pretty fucking radical, right? Yeah Well and like I think the all the powers of be looked around like didn't metternich solve this like 33 years ago Yeah, yeah look we agreed that Napoleon was bad Now can we go back to being in charge? They're all having flashbacks to the terror. Yeah. Yeah. That far back in memory, and they're like, uh-oh.

Yeah. Press again. Yeah. Now he participated in the German Revolution of 1848, because, like you said, he was a forty eighter and he got kicked out of the charity hospital before founding the medical reform newspaper.

So he he suffered for this. He had been among the cutting edge. You mean that the child they take the big hospital in Berlin, right? That yes, yeah, yeah, that's that one's still there, which is pretty cool. Yeah. Her child statue out in front.

Oh, wow. That's that's a fun little circle round like that's massive hospital in Berlin. Yeah. Wow. So he had been among the cutting edge of disease descriptions, by the way, accurately describing the following thrombosis, embolisms leukemia spina bifida Yeah, he was he was a brilliant man who also rejected the concept of arianism at the time He was also a brilliant man who rejected both germ theory and evolution

so Can't hit them all no yeah, I mean I swing when you swing that hard Yeah, I mean you know what's his name? God not Jeffrey Leonard Reggie Jackson Famous for hitting so hard and so many home runs right I think he's still in top 10. Yeah also has a strikeout record I bet you know Yeah, that makes sense. He's swinging through the fences every time.

Every single time. Yeah, he's going yard. Yeah. So anyhow, in addition to all of this stuff, furthering cell theory, linking cancer's origin to healthy to begin with cells, the concept of inflammation itself, and the life cycle of the roundworm, Birchow also developed a method for autopsy which has been influential levels ever since Now my friend would tell you that he my friend Robert Berry who's a comedian that he tested it on baby animals And that's why it's called

autopsy But yeah, it's a long line of that, right? Like you think of the sections, Harvey, right? No. Yeah. So it was pretty well. And you can keep a whole bunch of babies like in a freezer, you know. So it's just about volume. So anyway, he's been influential ever, ever since.

And then I guess because he was bored with all of his own brilliance, he dove into anthropology and prehistoric biology. Everyone's gotta have a side hustle. Sure, which still didn't bring him around to evolution, which, okay. Again, winsome, losersome. He saw Neanderthals as simply deformed early humans, okay

He called Darwin quote and ignoramus and Haeckel was a fool That's interesting Can you just wonder because by the time like okay? Yeah, heckle starts popularizing around 1860, 59 as a virgin. So he's pretty fricking old by the time that stuff shows up. Like I wonder if it's one of those set in your ways things. Like, you know, I have my Lamarckism,

maybe I got some other stuff from the Juvier, but I'm not buying this newfangled stuff, right? That could be, you know. Well, and I mean, again, getting back to the, to the idea of our ability to conceive of time, one of the things that evolution relies on is the, the, the incredible long timelines. You've time for evolution to work. Yeah. And so, I mean, it could just be that the concept of incremental change over that long a span of time just, you know, to anybody who didn't, you know, have the vision. I mean, I don't want to sound like I'm overly fanboying for one side of the equation, but you know, it would

take a certain paradigm or a certain flexibility of your paradigm to be able to wrap your head around that. And you know, if you weren't one of the people who did, it could be very challenging. I mean, it would be an open question though ed like it's it's actually a good question Did he accept the Hattonian Revolution because that one came earlier? So I won I wonder if he did accept deep time I have no idea right. Mm-hmm walked at the Darwin phase But yeah, I mean given that I had to ask you what deep time was I clearly didn't find Hutton at all. So What deep time was I clearly didn't find Hutton at all so

Now in 1872 Virchow the guy that I've been fawning over for for paragraphs upon paragraphs He carried out an excavation in the unicorn cave the Einhorn Holland. Oh now we're coming full circle. Okay. There we go Yeah, 72 1872 So what is this? That would make it US grant second term. Yeah, when he finally weaponized the Department of Justice against the KKK. Meanwhile, this guy is going into Unicorn Cave.

And he determined that none of the bones in there were of a horned equine But rather from bears lions wolves mammoths and other pachyderms not unicorns unicorns So Virchow was the one that destroyed our beautiful dream. Yes. Wow. What a buzzkill I know God, you know, you know, he's okay with typhus, but he really dropped was killed. I know. God damn.

You know, he's okay with typhus, but he really dropped. I do love though that he's like, there's no single great monarch who will save us. There's no fucking unicorns. Also in this whole, no unicorns. In any context, they don't exist. You know, I wonder if he got this from his wife because he was looking for a third For the two of them. She's like there's no unicorns shut up like Yeah, he probably kind of a drag at dinner parties. It's true. He just nothing but the facts Jack

And then he would just monologue and monologue and people like this is ice cream. It's supposed to be cold like My cream puff is just soggy now like thanks So it was undeniably proven to be at best a mistake Right Leibniz had taken the word of a man who was brilliant and who had come before him and because Leibniz was such a powerhouse Everyone took that to be the truth despite it being a really really weird drawing and Then that brings us to 1925 Because after all this is actually just a history of the thing that Leibniz drew Kind of dug up or yeah, you know found in some guys drawer, you know

In 1925 it was further verified by Otheneo Abel Or a bell an Austrian paleontologist an evolutionary biologist He was brilliant. He was a brilliant paleontologist who was one of the first people to suggest that dwarf elephants were the source of the Cyclops myth. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Um, no able Wow, I can't believe I brought him up. Okay, that's pretty okay. Because he's the one. Yeah, he I believe he's the one in his book like around 1920 who called it the first

Paleontological reconstruction like we're coming full circle. Oh, did he? Cool. Yeah, actually He's next sentence. Um, so He did two things about the fossil First he noted that Leibniz was the first to actually attempt a reconstruction. Even if only in an illustration, the fossil remains of a prehistoric animal, right? Second, he identified, Abel did, identified the various bits of the skeleton as mammoth and rhino bones, specifically. And to confound things a little bit more, some people claim that Abel was the first to identify Otto von Gurecky as the first to note

the bones Because he talked about it in 1918 But that he then left no notes That Gurecky left no notes Okay, all right. All right, so in Leibniz's protogia though He clearly references that von Gurecky He references von Gurecky when he said quote

testis rei in Otto Gureckius madge burgensis consul qui nostrum aetatam novis juentis ilustravet primusque mortalium antillam illustravet primusque mortalium antillam reperet per quam voasis aere eductur miraeque speculata, no, spectacula ab inventore in comitis ratis bonensibus Bon in Bon Encibus Ani 1653 so Like you do. Yeah So perhaps Abel didn't have access to Leibniz's writing on this specific thing that that's I think that's my theory because

Yeah, again like given that this comes from But it was it was the introduction to a book that he never published Right. So even if you're like, oh, I know about proto Gaia. That doesn't mean you would have read the intro You mean Wait, the what's what being the intro the the part about about the the mad good burg fossil? That that comes from his or no protoguy Protoguy has it in there. Yeah, it's in there. Okay

Yeah so But given that he went through all the trouble to name what the specific parts were from it's a little weird to me That he wouldn't have read leibniz so i'm I'm I'm not sure what I mean I think you'd think he would have right I mean it was available also because it was available in printed editions at that point like right better known right yeah slated into German at that point and in 1918, but it just read it in German. Yeah, that's true That's true. And in 1918, that's kind of a thing you brag about. Oh, yeah

I've like well, I've it's like like that was big high point for the Leibniz propaganda in 1918 So you would think that he'd be yeah Right. Yeah, so I don't Yeah, I don So I don't. Yeah, I don't I don't know. Yeah, I don't I don't know. People want the mysterious Abel. Yeah, I've just I've just seen him like,

you know, I've cited and everything, but I have not read a thing by Abel. OK. Well, he also was super anti-Semitic. Yeah. No, I'm not. Or in I Austrian. Yeah. But he was super he was super anti-Semitic going back to the 1890s. So it's not like he was a fly by night anti-Semite. He he took part in the University of Vienna's anti-Semitic riots of 1897. Early adopter. Yes.

Yeah. Got in on the ground floor. He also doubled and tripled down on it, too, because after World War One, when he became a professor, he started a secret group of professors who worked behind the scenes to frustrate and thwart the careers of both Jewish and left wing academics and scientists, because he feared, quote, communist, social Democrats and Jews and more Jews tied to both. And where was he at this point?

University of Vienna. Vienna, yeah, okay. And they travesty. When Abel was forced to retire because Austrian pro-Nazi violence started spreading beyond attacking Jews into attacking Catholics, something that Austro-fascists really didn't like,

specifically the Fatherland Front, Abel emigrated to Germany and got work there. Oh. So. Huh, okay. Now once the Nazis annexed Austria, Abel went back in 1939 and he said of the swastikas hanging over his old

university that it was quote the happiest moment of my life. Wow. There's another quote to hang up over the door. Right? Wow. The happiest moment of my life. Yeah. Okay. So after world war two, he ended up living out the rest of his days on the town of monsi How do you spell it m-o-n-d? Uh, I got him What's it called monsi monsi it sounds like the moon sea, yeah like yeah

Which is on the lake of the same name Uh, it was it was something of a retirement home for Nazis who wanted to get Away from the hustle and bustle of denazification Yeah, yeah, it's in Austria it's called Lake Muncie M0 nds like I didn't know anything about this month say Nazi retirement place. There's no It's a thing you learn like like you said it's the Reno of Austria. Tahoe. Yeah. Lake. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. So also it was the town in which the abbey for the sound of music is located. Yeah. Okay. That actually that does work right? Yeah, yeah, right totally tracks

God he must have been so pissed like showing up to watch Christopher Plummer That is that's yeah, Abby from the Son of Music is located on the moon say yes or in the town of Montesay Yeah, what the hell? Okay? So those bones, right? Yeah, there there there was a Translation of protogia into English that was published in 2008, which was the first of its type that I could find Though most editions that I found were from 2010 out of the University of Chicago Press And it was by Claudine Cohen and

Andre Wakefield, who is here with us tonight. So Cohen is OK. This is all in French. So get ready for your ears to be insulted. Oh, this is where it's lucky that Claudine's not with us.

Yeah. All right. I'm so glad she didn't answer her emails for to follow up then, because I am going gonna butcher her language Cohen is the Mitra day conferences at the school conference a Oh sure. Yeah that at the school for advanced studies in the social sciences in Paris, right?

She's a philosopher who got her doctorate in 1989 as the author of numerous studies on prehistory, on prehistoric art, and on the notion of prehistory and paleontology, as well as transforms, which I don't know what that exactly is. Yeah. She's written the fate of the mammoth. Right. Yeah. Mammoth. Oh, She does good mammoth stuff.

And also... And on women in prehistory. I was going to say, representation of women in paleontology. Or paleology, rather. She's also a member of the Center for Research on Arts and Languages, commonly known as CROL, which... CROL, okay. Which, not to be confused with Krall, that's different, and is also an associate

researcher at the College of Global Studies and a university professor. I grabbed all of that from an academic website because holy shit that's impressive. Now Wakefield CV is no less impressive, I might add. So I'm going to embarrass you a little bit here. I think it is less impressive, I might add. So I'm gonna embarrass you a little bit here. I think it is less impressive. It's not French for first of all. Well yeah, but my French is not impressive. So, lower the bar. Got your PhD with distinction.

What does that mean? You know, that's just something, like little stamp they put on it. And I don't, oh, you know, you's just something they like little stamp they put on it and I don't know you know you would have to know how many people do or do not get it with distinction to know if it matters at all. I'm not Rudolph Orchardt so I didn't do that math. I don't actually know if that matters at all. So it's a distinction without a difference.

Yeah, there you go That was in 99 and Let's see you went for you went from the University of Chicago to Claremont and specifically Pitzer Ended up. Yeah first we'd like floated around for a while first as as one does with a PhD So sure Boston for a while. Oh, wow around to Berlin and then ended up eventually in Claremont, California Yeah, and you've been there ever since 2002 according to the site that I thousand two three exactly so yeah All right, and you wrote the disordered police state German camera lism in theory and practice yeah, and you focused a lot of your time on continental German science history specifically

Yeah, yeah, like like we were saying police state sciences like go like that Like kind of what you were talking about with virtual so like state and science and yeah Does or did not does not you know? How does it feel to have like the thing you studied to be completely extinct because now we live in a utopian socialist world? It's remarkable. Just that, you know, I never would have thought that we'd come around to this world. But you know, I was talking shit about everything, but I didn't realize that we would enter the

world of age. So I didn't. Yeah. I actually do you feel like Cassandra? Because I always do. I always. Well, that's why historians. I mean, it's like it's almost tiresome. It's like, yes, I've been teaching what I didn't like. I've been teaching, I guess guess for about 14 years teach a course called propaganda that's been very popular and fun right but it was you know the funny thing is then people are like oh my god history history must

teach you so much about propaganda and Donald Trump it's like yeah well at this point it's totally fucking obvious so you we don't need, you know. 20 years ago, maybe you'd be like, oh no, this is coming, but guess what? It's here, like we don't really need, like, you know. It's like somebody comes to you and they're like, I've cracked the code. A tractor pull is just a tug of war. It's like, no shit, really?

Like these days, it's so different, you know, like 15, 20 years ago, people would be thinking about fascism and resonances of fascism. And these days it's like, I think they're acting like fascists. It's like, well, yeah, come up with that all by yourself. It's that scene from I don't think you need historians of Nazi Germany to tell you that. Right. Right. We're past that. It's that scene in Beetlejuice. Coach, I don't think we survived that crash. What was your first hand? Oh, yeah. It's because to me, like, it's people like, I can't believe this is something really, really? You've been saying I'm an alarmist for 15 years. Yeah, I've been kind of saying it for decades and decades

I'm glad you came around. It's late. It's too late now Would have been nice if you could have got on the train like yeah the train was only a few stations ago, Chicago Yeah, yeah, it would have been nice if you you know thought of this last September, right? If you you know thought of this last September right just you know you know maybe like just or or the you know It feels very I feel like the big Lebowski's like the plane has crashed into the fucking mountain Like I don't know what you want now like But yeah, okay, so Andre's CV is seven fucking pages long Yeah, OK, so Andre's CV is seven fucking pages long. Of note to me, of course, he speaks German, Latin, French, ancient Greek, Japanese, can read Dutch and has a smattering of Yiddish.

Yeah. Yeah, like, well, but I cannot speak Latin. That is not like I do. You speak Latin. You might. I used to I don't do the speak them like I just read it. Yeah. I used to have a conversational component in my classes because language acquisition and their kids.

Right. That's like it was. And you know, the funny thing is the other thing is that I never studied Latin after high school. So I should I should shout out after high school so I should I should shout out my high school Latin teacher mr. Corrigan okay so I the funny thing is I studied a lot of those things I studied Japanese Greek Yiddish all that stuff in college but what ever did like that was just like so I was like auto

didac plus mr. Corrigan. There you go Yeah, I never studied it until I got to college there there you go and and I learned it from one guy who was Gerald Carr who's a linguist professor linguistics professor He's like the Yiddish I took was from the physics professor and like yeah, Chicago Yeah, so you just ran this Yiddish course for fun Yeah And then I took it from the other two guys who'd like basically been the Latin teachers at Sac State since the 1970s

Like they're part of that second generation of teachers Because Sac State started in 1949 I want to say or 47 and so they came in in 72 so that's right as the other guard was leaving yeah so you know like second pressing as it were and now there's no way to teach it at your school no no we were the only public school program in about an 89 mile radius from where I am um there there are much more common, like I grew up in Minneapolis, in Minneapolis, St. Paul,

and there were still Latin programs around back, that was the 80s, right? That stuff, we know that stuff is just. It's cascading downward, yeah. So, a true dying of the language now. That's it, it's like dying of a dead language. Yeah Aim for the head Andre

Wrote an introduction with with professor Cohen. Dr. Cohen that also contextualizes Leibniz's work in the time in which he wrote it. So which is you know our bread and butter Ed now Cohen had also written the fate of the Mammoth, like you said, and through every version I found of that, it goes from 2002, which is when it was translated into English for the first time as far as I could find. I think that's right. I remember when she I thought it was later when it like it

might have been right around 2002-3 when it got translated but I remember. Yeah. She did what we try to do Ed in that book she used the mammoth and the theories that naturalists constructed around the mammoth to examine wider social and historical issues in the history of science and through it she showed how single discoveries would often shift the paradigm completely in terms of scientific method when it came to discovery, reconstruction, display, and interpretation of fossils. And that of course tells us as much about the scientists as it does about the science being examined, which is kind of what I tried to do tonight. In her book Cohen

said that quote, the four teeth in the animal's mouth certainly look like mammoth molars. Also, the scapula is that of a mammoth, as are the dorsal vertebrae. Though the spinal column is reversed, curiously, the first cervical vertebra has been placed at the base of the tail. And, and Andre is that your take on the little that we could have looked at that little remember we're looking at a little circle yeah cervical thing that little circle at the very bottom right yeah so weird so they put it down there right as Ed was saying is some kind of weird stabilizer but I don't know why they put it down there, right?

Maybe like it was just in a in a drawer Fast it just sure it kind of looks cool down there. You know yeah, I mean it it Let's see that's barely like a finial on the end of the tail Yeah, you know it's like you've got the circle, and then you've got I think three or four more bones beyond that to curb it Yeah, it's like you've got the circle and then you've got I think three or four more bones beyond that to curb it. Yeah, so I Lost my spot This happened with certain dinosaurs as well for instance there was What was it was it the brontosaurus which now we know is the apodosaurus which they had it reversed

Yeah, I'm trying to remember which part of the They literally put the head on the wrong part and yeah back then guys were racing to be the guy yeah, and Because yeah because of the competition for patronage and and prestige and what-have-you Yeah, they were they were racing to do it and so a whole like you could write a book on the mistakes They made right. Well, there was a podcast a friend of mine recommended to me about that, but I forgot it. Yeah The race to name dinosaurs or yeah Now Cohen also said that it was very unlikely that the horn would be a rhinoceros horn,

woolly or otherwise, since those are made, quote, of keratin, only becomes fossilized under very unusual circumstance. And as I recall, she also disputed the possibility of it being a narwhal tooth, because the horn wasn't described as spiraled in any way, which is being a narwhal tooth, because the horn wasn't described as spiraled in any way, which is what a narwhal tooth is. But Occam's razor and Cohen both could come to some sort of accord here, because Cohen maintains that it's possible that, quote, the fossilized straight tusk of a young mammoth with the jawbone still adhering to the base of the tooth, which makes sense given how much else of it is from woolly mammoth. Okay, okay.

So what stuck out to Cohen and Andre, please tell me if this also stuck out to you was that it was easier for Leibniz to imagine a unicorn than it was to imagine a woolly mammoth. Oh, I had forgotten that take. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that does kind of track, right? I mean, yeah, wooly mammoth in 1670 ish. Like, how are you going to get your head around that? Because other things.

I mean, what's interesting, like what they're still trying to get their head around here is fossils, right? Right. Weird things about this book, like this one is like basically they're trying to figure out what fossils are. Right. Because the big disagreement he has at the time with people, Jesuits, are that they think fossils are sports of nature, that God is just fucking with you. And he's trying to prove along with other people's Geno that they are the

remains of real animals who actually existed. So that's the level of argument that's happening. Imagine if that's the argument, how you get your head around a woman, wooly mammoth. Yeah. Well, I'm am at those like, you might as well be on Mars. Yeah. Right. You can't even imagine them to be on Mars. Like you why mammoth? It was like, you might as well be on Mars. Yeah. Right? You can't even imagine them to be on Mars.

Like, you would have to imagine. Whereas a unicorn might be some mythical thing that you could actually conceive. Right. You've heard of it. You have imagined it. It's in stories that you've read or been told. Right. And so the idea is kind of already there.

Yeah. Right. So the idea is kind of already there. Something something like a mammoth is so alien to any kind of of experience of yours. That, yeah, it would. Yeah, I can I can I can see why. Yeah, there's not even a drawer to put that thing in. Right. Is that right? Well, actually, so in 1722, a Scottish adventurer and doctor at the time, that self declaring that you're a doctor was all that you needed, John Bell called a mammoth tusk that he'd found on the Aub River, Mammond's Horn.

Oh, Mammond's Horn. And that's 1722, so that's 50 years after this, right? Mammoths were first described in a scientific journal in 1725. So that's the first reference to them. That's when they did all those crazy Siberian tours too. You're going to Siberia, these things are still under the ice.

Like, crazy. Yeah, and nobody had been to La Brea yet. I think it was the first time they first one of those things. Yeah. And so that was by Russian elephant with fur on it. Imagine how that would blow your mind. This whole, cause they didn't know how to deal with extinction. Like it wasn't a thing. Like there's no space for extinction in that worldview. That's true.

How do you deal with things that have disappeared from the earth? It doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Because, I mean, it's in the 1720s is still 120 years before Darwin. Right. Right. So and, you know, we're in William Paley's world where there's a full creation And there's space in the full creation for things just to go extinct and disappear that doesn't happen well, have you seen the pictures that people drew or the the the Photographs that people have taken of taxidermed lions Where like and you know what I'm talking about

Have you seen these photos? No taking photos of taxidermied lions? Yeah, so here I'll pull one up for us. Um So Ed, can you describe it so I don't have to type and talk at the same time? so so I think what Damien is referring to is There were there were several I am trying to remember what time period it was there were there were several I am trying to remember what time period it was but you know taxidermy lions being sent from you know, Africa or wherever back to Europe to be put on display uh and or or there were there were lions being you know they wanted to put they wanted to taxidermy even put them on display and what got sent back to Europe. I just saw the photo. Okay

Yeah, we got sent back to Europe was just a hide and so the taxidermists are looking at it like You know what to do with it, right? They didn't they didn't have any ability to figure they had no frame of reference for like, okay The eyes need to go. This is what they put together because they got it from like coats of arms Yeah, and and so the one that I just sent you is one from 1731 the king of Sweden's and They didn't literally know what to do with this exactly My I think I think I think I have to say my favorite part of the whole thing like the googly eyes are one thing So that's that's that's a whole that's a whole thing on its own, but it's the it's the

sculpted carved wood teeth Like yeah the fact that this thing has insiders like a human The teeth are too much yeah, you know and like very like cuddly goofy look to it Yeah, it does. Yeah And again, it does look like what you would see on the top of a shield Yeah, yeah, you know and even the pose right the right paw up. That's very like Immensely heroic. Yeah, very very king of swedish. Um, but yeah, so in 1725 The russian empire's vasily nikitich

tatechev Nobody. Yeah. Yeah, i'm not doing any russian About the russian than you guys do Now he was an ethnographer and an historian, but he never used any reference notes in his writings because it was 1725. Now there was a prior mention of a mammoth in 1618 in the Dictiunarion nar Dictio nar eolum russicum a russico on geek on Glee cum but there's nothing there that shows that Leibniz would have had access to that specific book or to know to go to look for it Leibniz couldn't have read the the Tadyshev book nor would he have ever known that Bell gave a horn to Hans Sloane, who declared,

or Hans probably, who declared it an elephant tooth in England, because he had died in 1716. So the mentions of mammoth come just six years after he dies. So we get back to what Cohen noted, that unicorns were far more graspable in the imagination of Leibniz, who'd gone to Unicorn Cave to check out where the bones had come from, and to Gureki, who had seen the bones themselves. Both these guys saw the bones bones themselves then it was to understand mammoths or many mammoths even And because von gurache was such a good scientist when science was far looser in its boundaries and demarcations Leibniz believed that and because Leibniz was Leibniz everyone believed him Despite the fact that the the appearance of these things was so ridiculous, what he'd constructed based on von Gurecki's notes, Leibniz found this far more attractive an idea than the idea that fossils were simply puzzles that happened to resemble living creatures' remains.

To him, it was far more possible that this construction was likely than a giant sized furry version of an elephant because that strange credulity Yeah, but you know the the real thing too is that yeah Not many people cared that much about the unicorn because that wasn't the big message Like big takeaway from the book was the dangerous stuff The spinoza stuff, the mechanical world stuff, the imagining, you know, deep time stuff and creatures crawling out of the ocean and all these heterodox, theologically dangerous things.

That's what really put people on edge. Right. So also the fact is that the the unicorn probably was not the headline of this book, right? Despite it having a 15 foot headline. We find entertaining, but it's not like what people focused on at the time, right? Oh, wow. We're worried about Cartesian and it is this like atheism and he says stuff like that in there like atheism and he says stuff like that in there. But he suggests these crazy ideas about

verging on deep time and animals coming out of the ocean and everything and then he says, but that conflicts with the sacred writers with whom it is forbidden to disagree and so he just sidesteps it. But that's the stuff that put people on edge. right? Okay. And it's like even in mid 18th century, this was seen as a very dangerous book and not because of the unicorn. Yeah, the unicorn was just kind of window dressing. Yeah.

Wowzers, okay. I mean, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Okay, that's I mean, yeah that makes a lot of sense that yeah so now in in the in the content in the Religio political context in which he was writing it now was he doing this in a part of? Europe that was predominantly Catholic or predominantly I mean at that time it would have been Well, it's a tricky question right because he's in

Braunfig, Lüneburg, like in Hanover and there they sometimes have Catholic princes in a Protestant land. The mining towns where he worked were like overwhelmingly Protestant and pretty intensely so and but he is also looking to unify the churches again. So like a peacemaker kind of thing. And so he's in touch with Catholics and Protestants and trying to find a break. But he is, he also visits Spinoza, but then he disavows connections because he thinks it's too dangerous. And right. So there's all edgy, dicey stuff. And so the mechanical Cartesian beginnings of the world that started to be seen as atheistic, essentially, because it's like, OK. Basically, like a lot of people were like, why couldn't God make it

just any way he wanted? Right. Right. Yeah. Like, why does it all have to obey all the mechanical laws and everything of a Cartesianism? Like, like God can do anything God wants to do, right? Like, by the time you get to the mid 18th century, even like, shite who puts out the addition and everything, it's like, basically like, well, this is like dangerous conjecture about the past. And this is the pop province of like theologians, and we shouldn't be meddling there. So so he's like, even 1750. It's

dangerous, right? And that's when you kind of start to see the growth of deism too, right? Like, like, wound up the clock and walked away. Yeah, yep. The early well, the deists were also seen as dangerous, right? Right. Among dangerous right right among them right like this this kind of idea that you could just have a non-interventionist god who just puts it together and lets it go. Yeah. Really give a shit.

Yeah, right. Yeah, go go do what you do now. I. Like, I, yeah. So let me ask you this, because literacy fell so unevenly in so many different places. Like, there's some place, like, France was highly literate, even at the time of Louis XIV in Paris, but in other places, literacy was almost a non-thing.

Was literalism compared to, like, no of course, it wasn't just Adam and Eve that's a that's a story that we use as an overlay to explain the the precepts that we need to understand about loving one another etc, etc, and the the the Temptation of knowledge and things like that like how much of it was literalism like what we see now versus things like that. Like how much of it was literalism like what we see now versus like people being like, no, of course we don't actually think there was a giant goddamn flood. Like it's a different story. You know what I mean? Like,

well, like the Thomas Burnett, who writes the sacred theory of the earth and get shit upon a lot earlier, but tries to make the geology fit the Bible like he tries to put it together. And it does in parts. But the time you get to live in it somewhat later, like he's already moved away from pure literalism because he's also thinking there are multiple floods and nothing. And I think Claudine may have had like sheep in the preface kind of had this little excerpt from when Leibniz was younger. And he believed in the sports of nature thing.

He didn't believe in fossils and everything. And he said in that excerpt, well, if these things were real remains of animals, the earth would be much older than the Bible says it is. And that would be a huge problem. And then by the time he writes, he's like, oh shit, these are fossils. These are the remains of real animals. It doesn't come out and say like the biblical timescale is wrong, but the implications are there,

which means literalism isn't quite going to work for him. Right. Yeah. So I think the answer is for Leibniz, like the literalism isn't quite gonna work for him. So I think the answer is for Leibniz, literalism no. But the danger is always that the authorities are worried about what's gonna get down to the common people, barely literate or illiterate. They're the ones that are the concern. so the real worry about spinnism or Cartesianism and all this mechanical stuff and creeping atheism for the authorities is not so much these guys It's like what are the parishioners hearing? What are they? Right, yeah, yeah

So to tie this up in 2021 oh God this name um Th I J s wait th I Js Why is this guy Dutch? I hope so sounds like types. Yeah, nice Tice van Koff Hope so. Sounds like types. Yeah.

Tice Tice van Koff Schoten. Oh boy sounds Dutch. Yeah. Dutch Van anything. Yeah. Right. I hope. Um, he's a mammalian paleo and archaeo zoologist at Leiden University.

Oh, there we go. Dutch. He is the former president of the International Union for Quaternary Research. Yeah. He said that quote, the horn is most probably the tusk, and he put that in quotes, from a narwhal, Monodon monoceros, a medium-sized whale that lives in the Arctic waters around Greenland, Canada and Russia. The left upper canine of the narwhal males forms a spirally twisted long tusk with a length of up to more than three meters. The skull of the unicorn looks like a fossil skull of a woolly rhinoceros and the shoulder blades and the bones of the two front

legs are from the extinct woolly mammoth. Wow. So he's got it being quite the chimera. Tice has got it put together it sounds like. Yeah. And I would trust anyone from Leiden. So Leiden literally brings us full circle because my man Hartzing, the Japanese Dutch guy who Leiden has ripped off, in fact, attended Leiden University. Oh wow. Best university in the world at that moment. So there you go.

And Tice has brought us full circle, right? Which is fitting, too, because he stole a windmill idea. Exactly. So I don't know. I found this just a, I don't even know how I ended up finding. How did you stumble across the unicorn in the first place? I don't even know how I ended up finding How did you stumble across the unicorn in the first? I don't know. I think I might have just been looking into Because a while ago I did the dumbest museums in the world

Yeah, I think there was just kind of a twigging of like here's dumb displays at museums Well one very important thing I learned from you today is that there is a literal reconstruction in this crazy museum in Magdeburg that I now have to go see. It's sitting there like they built it. That is so crazy to me. Yeah. It's yeah. So this is just like a pilgrimage. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Make sure you send us a picture. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. I think it needs to happen. We'll send you that. Yeah. So, now this is just one of many dumb museum moments in history. I meant for this podcast to cover a whole bunch of others. Piltdown Man, Ishii, Behringer's, Lying Stones

the Olympic circles Drake's plate of brass, Etruscan terracotta warriors, Peckham's rock Banksy did that one Himalayan fossil hoax. I wanted to cover all of them in this but it's me. So of course I barely got into one to cover all of them in this, but it's me. So of course, I barely got into one. And I decided to bring in an expert to talk about it with us instead. So now, as Cohen points out in her books, the culture around the discoveries absolutely influences how discoveries are made and interpreted, which is part of I think why this resonated so much with me Because at the end of the day in many ways this is

Smart people doing dumb shit to impress each other Because it's in an age before podcasts Yeah, imagine if we had fun gherki Leibniz podcast. We can only imagine. Oh, God. I'm sure we could get chat GPT in on that. Like speaking of dumb shit to impress. Yeah, Lord. So anyway, what I would love to hear your thoughts on on what this is. On what what is what the the Maguiburg fossil actually is? Oh, but the problem is, like, I don't give a shit about what it is. See, like I'm such a like I'm such a historian. I'm just like, you know, I just think the whole idea in the first place

is really hilarious and interesting. And so for me, when I think about that fossil, like, OK, one of the interesting if we go back, sure, interesting things when you look through the book. And I think this might come more from Claudine than for me, honestly, like because she she was like super into the mammoth. And anything having to do with mammoth was her territory right there Yeah, my so my take was I remember this too. I laughed when we put this thing together I was like that is the funniest shit like this is ridiculous. Like what an idiot and she was like, well Well Andre, it is not so stupid after all, right?

You have to understand in the context of the time that this made total sense because nobody could trust you, didn't know the witnesses you could trust or not trust. We didn't know what animals, even about extinction, you had no idea about evolution, things were being found, like you didn't know which animals roamed the earth and which didn't.

And you didn't know if the objects that people were looking at here were the remains of real animals or not, like you didn't have the vaguest idea. So given that context, this is not such a crazy thing to put together, right? That was her take. And so, as we're inclined to see this as the dumbest thing that you could ever put together and take, she. She was like, yeah, well, project yourself back to 1670. Not the craziest thing, because like it's such a different world. And I mean, it really the thing that blew people away in this book was the idea that there were shark's teeth on the highest mountains.

Right. And that's still John McPhee says, like, if I had to teach one was the idea that there were sharks teeth on the highest mountains, right? And that's still John McPhee says like if I had to teach one thing to kids in geology is marine fossils on the tip of Mount Everest like just to give you a sense of all the crazy shit that this planet has gone through, right? And so in some ways, like that, you know, the implications of the implications of the vast kind of insane ruins of the planet and the disruptions and the violence of the past and everything that was still they were trying to unpack it all. Yeah. Unicorn is like, you know, small being. Way down low, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's, yeah. That, again, the myopia of deep diving and down a rabbit hole and all you think is like, the world is made of rabbit shit. Yeah. But, as it turns out, there's...

But it's like that's... but it's cool because the unicorn is like your way in, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, through looking at that unicorn, I learned about Virchow. Which is a weird thing, but like all of a sudden we do the Rudolph Virchow deep dive. Yeah. And by the way, he looked at a unicorn, you know, like, yeah, yeah. How did you and Claudine connect on that? This we were at we both landed at the sadly defunct Dibner Institute for the history of science at MIT, which now died. Okay.

Because I think this is another story. It's because the family fought with the faculty and all kinds of stupid shit happened. That place was pretty great and they broke it. But anyway, that's a good story. So it was great back in the day and it was this nice, like it was right there in the banks of the river at MIT. And they had fellowships for historians of science who were super young like me or established like Claudine.

And so we just started comparing notes. Cause at the time I was still working on camera lists and stuff like that. And she was working on mammoths. But then we noticed that I was working on Leibnizian stuff in a vein. And she was like, well, do you know that like Andre, do you know like Leibniz? Wrote this book like History of the Earth.

And I was like, you know, I was a mining guy and I was like, but yeah, I've heard of that thing. Yeah, sure. She's like, and do you know, it's never been translated into English? And she was like, we should do that. I was like, and I was like. No, I was like, crazy. Like, I only took Latin in high school. You're French.

Like, what are we talking about here? Like, I got like completely unqualified. And then and then we started like getting the manuscripts out and checking it out. It was like, you could do this. And then it was pretty accessible to me. Yeah, it's like once once you looked at it, it was kind of doable. And I had the extra added advantage in those years of being completely broke and unemployed.

And I desperately needed that fucking NIH grant. Sure. So we like I was motivated, you know, to feed myself. So so that, yeah, that that helps that that helped because it did. It bought bought us a little extra time in Boston and I stayed on and worked on it. So it was good. You know, that's cool. How long did it take you guys to translate it? For fucking ever, man. That's what it felt like.

I mean, it was just like just late nights, just kind of like like pawing through the stuff because it's also you have to do the manuscripts. You got the A manuscript, the B manuscript. And it's just I think we have an image of one of those pages. But the the dude does not write well, like it's bad I think we have an image of one of those pages, but the the dude does not write Well, like it's bad handwriting even by 17th century German standards Scrawls things crossed out so a lot of it is just like going through the manuscript trying to get a clean manuscript The A&B manuscript then trying to figure out where all this stuff is and then figure out all the weird

Shit, he's talking about in the hearts mountains that has no Latin translation so right because it's neo Latin right the Latin stuff was brutal trying to find 17th century dictionaries of Germanish Latin stuff just right talking about and so that was the hardest project was useful I'll shut out them. Like you know, Perseus project, you know, Oh, yeah. that super helpful just because when you have on decipherable

things and you're trying to make connections and find out like that is a very useful tool for Yeah, it's really good at collating and, and just when you want to find references like where it showed up before and right So that for the any classical references stuff was old but that neo latin 17th century stuff

Cool, you're on your own. Yeah, one of my latin professors. He translated a 1620s, I want to say um grammar book. Oh, wow. And so I, being the loyal student of his, was like, because he sent me the PDF of the Latin version of it, I'm like, okay, cool. And then his version of it, you know,

he's translated into English. And I was like, oh shit, I can use these for exercises for my students. Yeah, like go back and look at that. Yeah. Perfect, right? And it's a grammar book, so you're like two birds, one stone, right? Right, yeah. for my students Book so you're like two birds one stone right yeah, so but cool well geez um

Thank you for this this has been a blast Yeah Normally what we do is we we ask what people are reading so we're gonna leave the last plug to you but We asked what people are reading. So we're going to leave the last plug to you. But Ed, what are you suggesting to people to imbibe media-wise this week? Media-wise this week, I'm going to very strongly recommend, and the moment I got to the title, it disappeared, Vagabond, the manga series, because that's what I've been doing between work for my master's degree and student stuff,

so as a little bit of escapism, but with some history involved in it. It's of course the life of Miyamoto Masashi. And based very heavily on the novel series, the novelized biography of him. And so yeah, it's the the art is amazing and it's a it's a very Very entertaining very compelling version of that story. So nice. That's my recommendation How about you? I'm going to recommend a book called protoguy. Ah by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Translated and edited by Claudine Cohen and Andre Wakefield Surprising absolutely nobody um y'all get the book. I'm sure there's royalties

Involved I know that academia is a money-making institution He needs a second yacht. I think Thing is just yeah, it's just generating cash. Exactly. It's talk about sustainability. It is a windmill of cash. So a license to print money. Andre, what are you what are you recommending for people?

Well, you know, it's funny, I could go to the extremely dweeby and the really like trashy I like or fun like on both sides. So I would say. When I'm not knee deep in 17th century mining literature, it's like I am day to day up here, I've just been reading back through the McCarran stuff and I got to say, you know, like Sloughhouse, shut up, this stuff is great. You guys, you know this? No. The books, the Sloughhouse. Shout out. This stuff is great. You guys, you know this? No, the books, the Sloughhouse books.

OK, I have one. I'm like like it's I think. Yeah, they made it into a TV series, which is not doesn't is good, but doesn't nearly do it justice, right? Like with Gary Oldman and everything. But it's a series of. it's basically a series based on what are failed MI5 operatives, right? They all screw up and they end up in this place called

Sla House. And it's just like a beautifully done, delightful read, McCarran. So that's just fun. And then on the much more dweeby side, I've been reading a book called The Silver Empire. But it's a guy named Fulkert. I assume he's German, but the book is in English. You'll be happy to know. Yes.

But like, but this guy's Oliver Fulkert, and he's writing about the he's writing about like what would be a 16th century silver empire in the German lands. And it's like super interesting because it's just talking like it's kind of like the first monetary union. So it's like a whole different take on a monetary union based on silver. Oh, wow. So that's a very deep dive versus the very trashy mcharren thing, but it depends for me It's like what time of day, you know, sure late at night after I hang up with you guys I'll finish my beer and read my mcharren. Maybe I'll do a little more silver empire in the morning, you know, sure

You go. Yeah Cool, uh ed where can we be found? We collectively can be found on our website at wubba wubba wubba geek history time calm Please you know take your time to go through that site Look at our archive find anything that catches your interest and you know jump right in We can also be found on the Apple podcast app the Amazon podcast app on and on Spotify and Wherever it is that you have found us app, the Amazon podcast app on and on Spotify. And wherever it is that you have found us, please take the time to give us the

five star review that you know, Damien's exhaustive research has earned us. And be sure to hit the subscribe button too. And so how about you, sir? Where can you be found? As of this release, I would say June 6th in Sacramento at the Comedy Spot at 9 p.m. Me and the crew of Capital Punishment will be slinging puns. It will be a very very important iteration of the show and also if this comes out after that, if we've already missed that, then July 11th, probably one of, if not the most,

the second most important iteration of the year. You don't wanna miss it. 15 bucks for tickets. We're still selling merch. We just got a new order of shirts in. We still have our pins. So come on down, check us out. Pun battle win.

And Andre, do you want to be found? Do I want to be found? Yeah. Do you want people to be able to access you and find you? If not, that's perfectly fine. I mean, look, you if if you want to drop me an email, anyone out there, I'm always happy to talk and communicate about this stuff because I love it. So you can find me at Pitzer College P ITZ er In beautiful Claremont, California. Just look up Pitzer College look up Andre Wakefield and you'll find my website right there

Always happy happy to talk and answer questions. Awesome well On behalf of a geek history of time Andre, thank you so much for joining us tonight. It's been a blast. This has been wonderful. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me, you guys. And as always, I'm Damian Harmony.

And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until next time, keep rolling 20s.