Dan Snow's History Hit - Lockdown Learning: The 19th Century Medical Revolution

Episode Date: February 26, 2021

The 19th century saw the world in the grip of the industrial revolution, a firepower revolution on the battlefield and a communications revolution with the telegram. But there was another revolution happening at the same time; the medical revolution. This led to giant strides forward being made in the fields of public health, surgery and pharmaceuticals. Monica Walker, Curator at Old Operating Theatre Museum in London, joins me for Lockdown Learning this week to talk me through jus what happened in the 19th century to take medicine into a completely different realm.Many thanks again to Simon Beale for creating this downloadable worksheet for students: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GQW0ql9LsuvQDB5PozNuZtIsepir5ByH/view

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Hello everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's history hit. In the 19th century the world was in the grip of the Industrial Revolution.

There was a firepower revolution on the battlefield and at sea. There was a communications revolution going on as railways and telegraphs banned the world. But there was another revolution as well. In fact, there are probably a few more I'm not thinking of, but there was another particular revolution. There was a medical revolution. The medical revolution that saw giant strides made in the fields of public health, but also in things like surgery and pharmaceuticals as well. This is a very, very popular subject for UK students to take at school. And so, as we've been doing every Friday for the last few weeks, we're doing a lockdown learning episode. We want to support students, teachers, and parents as we all navigate our way through these crazy times. I've got the wonderful Monica Walker on the podcast now. She

works at one of the best museums in London, the Old Operating Theatre. It's one of the hidden gems of London. When you're next in London, folks, go to the All Operating Theatre when it opens. And she talks to me in this episode about just what happened during the 19th century that took medicine into a completely different realm. This episode has been recorded in response to many of you requesting it. We hope it's useful. Don't forget the wonderful Simon Beale, history teacher in the UK, has produced a worksheet to go along with this episode. Absolute hero. Well done, Simon Beale. That worksheet is available in the description for this podcast. Just click on that link and go to the Google Doc.

If you'll listen to the other Lockdown Learning episodes, please check the feed wherever you get your pods. If you want some history documentaries, head over to historyhit.tv. We've actually got the most watched documentary of all time. I mean, we do have a lot more subscribers now than we did a year ago. So I suppose it's inevitable that the top of the charts will be dominated by the more recent releases. But we've got an episode about the Bronze Age, the first Britons. That is actually our most popular ever documentary that we have made and posted onto History Hit TV. So please go and check that out. And if you want to come and watch the live tour, we have announced dates for the autumn in all of Britain's biggest cities. You're going to love it. Come and watch

an episode of the podcast being recorded and come and listen to a wonderful historian tell you all about the history of the city in which we're recording. Go to historyhit.com slash tour. But in the meantime, everybody, here is the very brilliant Monica Walker talking about 19th century medicine. Enjoy. Thank you so much, Monica, for coming on this special lockdown learning version of the podcast. Perfect. Thank you so much for inviting me. Pre-modern medicine has got a pretty bad reputation, hasn't it? Before we talk about the kind of 19th century, which we want to focus on today, where are we at the end of the 18th century, the Georgian period? We think about the madness of George III and the treatment he

received. What is the state of medicine? And if you're sick, can doctors actually do anything to help you in this period? Wow. Well, the state of medicine before the advent of change that happened in the 19th century was definitely kind of grim. We are talking about a time period where people are still looking into the old traditions of Galenic medicine. So basically physicians created a type of diagnosis based on the humoral theory. You pretty much mentioned that the body is divided between four humors. You have black bile, yellow bile, you have phlegm, and you have blood. And that all diseases can be explained because there is an imbalance of the humors. And of course, what the physicians will do at that point

when somebody came to them would be to make kind of like a holistic assessment. Okay, so let's see, do you have a cold? Do you have a fever? You're sweaty, you're moist, you're hot. That pretty much means that you probably have some sort of excess of blood. So how do we cure an excess of blood? Well, we'll just either apply leeches to you, or we'll do some bloodletting just to make sure that you take all of that excess blood out. And of course, that was probably the preferred method of treatment for something like a fever. It was just going to make you a little bit more uncomfortable, probably making things a little bit more difficult for your body to recover. So the good thing about the humoral theory and the way that physicians apply it is that it also looked at things like diet and it also looked

at things like lifestyle. And sometimes, even though that some of the treatments obviously did not work that well, on the other hand, some of them could have like a beneficial effect, especially because they will basically suggest, well, you should eat these kind of foods that are going to help you. So that's more or less how medicine was at the turn of the 18th century, especially with physicians. But some of that food stuff is probably quite useful. Or were they recommending the wrong food and irrelevant food? Oh, no, they would work on that sympathetic magic.

So basically the idea that, for example, if something is red and you're suffering from blood loss, that eating something that is red is going to help. from blood loss, that eating something that is red is going to help. So maybe someone that has suffered this blood loss can actually be recommended to eat red meat, which of course it has iron. So in a way it could actually work. But in other ways, some of the other treatments that they had were horrendous, where for example, if you were suffering from something like syphilis, this comes a little bit later, but the treatment with mercury became quite extended afterwards. So they're trying to sweat it out by rubbing your entire body with mercury, which of course is also poisoning you. So it's just not the best answer to disease. Okay. So in 1800, if you get a disease, going to a really expensive doctor, it may even do more harm than good.

In some cases, quite possibly, because as with every other profession, you do have good doctors and you do have bad doctors, in the sense that they were trying to help. I mean, herbal medicine had come a long way. We're talking about herbal remedies being used by the apothecaries at a time period, which had been more professionalized and understanding what type of plants could have some sort of beneficial effects in the human body. I mean, I don't know about a lot of people, but I still swear by chamomile tea when I have an abscessed stomach. So, I mean, a lot of these

things had had a really long standing tradition of certain types of herbs that were actually quite good for the human body. So it was kind of like a 50-50 in a way. It's a lot of trial and error. for the human body. So it was kind of like a 50-50 in a way. It's a lot of trial and error. Sometimes things worked, sometimes they just didn't. Sometimes it was just a bunch of quacks trying to extort money from the poor people that could not afford a physician or even an apothecary. And sometimes you actually did get the occasional kind of like healer that was capable of actually helping out a little bit. Let's talk about the 19th century now, which I know is on lots of people's syllabus. What happens in that vital hundred years that means that by the end of it,

doctors are pretty much for real. You can go and get yourself sorted out. Absolutely. Well, the 19th century saw an incredible amount of change taking place at various levels. Obviously, physicians are starting to work more and more and more on an observational basis. So the birth of clinical trials start to take shape. So it's not just that they're blindly following Galenic medicine from the past, although the humoral medicine still is quite important throughout the period. I mean, St. Thomas' Hospital spent, I think, was about £5,000 in purchasing over 100,000 leeches for treatment. So we're still seeing that leeching or bloodletting is still kind of a fairly popular remedy to deal with some of the issues. But at the same time,

we see more and more that physicians are starting to use more observations, and they're starting to take more time recording those observations. And so instead of just blindly following what others have said in the past, they're taking the time to continue to do this clinical test, this trial and error. And this doesn't happen overnight. This is a process that gets its roots already in the 18th century, towards the end of the 18th century. And then it just moves all the way into the 19th century, working its way quite successfully towards modern medicine. But the changes are incredible. So you have these trial and errors being done by physicians trying to figure out the causes of disease, trying to figure out how to best treat their patients. That you have on the one hand. Then on the other hand, you also have new advances made in surgery,

where originally surgery was done to cases that have absolutely no other way of getting fixed. So let's just say that someone has gotten into an accident and of course they have gotten a compound fracture. That pretty much means that the bones have splintered and they have opened and gone through the skin. Apintered and they have opened and gone through the skin. Apologies. I should have said a court and warning there. But there is no way of setting those bones back. And of course, because in the early 19th century, there is no understanding of germ theory, it pretty much means that a lot of these cases got infected, got gangrene and died quite a slowly and painful death. Now, when the surgeons saw this, they

could make the decision of actually doing a surgical procedure, which involves amputating the leg in the case of an accident where the leg has been fractured. And of course, surgery had to do quite fast. You had under two minutes to complete the procedure because you had to take into consideration the blood loss and the pain, as in the first half of the 19th century. Patients will undergo these kind of surgical procedures without any sort of anesthesia. So they will be completely awake. They will be seeing what is happening to them. And of course, there will be very little as in terms of pain management at that point. So in order to avoid shock or an excess of blood loss, for example, the one thing that the surgeons had going on for them was to be very speedy. And therefore, most operations had to

happen under two minutes, which was quite fast. If you think about trying to amputate a limb like a leg or something like that, but they were absolutely capable of doing this. And some of them were really good at it. You have the example of Robert Liston, who is supposed to be the fastest knife in England, who was able to amputate a leg in almost under 30 seconds. I mean, this is like incredible feats that they managed to do. But the risk to the patient was quite high, regardless. If they didn't die of shock in the operating table, they could die of blood loss, or later on, they could die of the infection. So at the beginning of the 19th century, we still have a lot of challenges that are present to the physicians and of course, also to the surgeons.

What are the developments through the 19th century that just transform medicine? What are the most important developments, do you think? There's two extremely important developments that take place in the 19th century. And these two are the two that really change and reshape the entire history of medicine in a way. On the one hand, I would say the introduction of anesthetics into surgical procedures, because these definitely revolutionize in many ways how surgeons approach surgery. So before the introduction of anesthetics, like I mentioned, the surgeons didn't have the chance to take their time.

Everything has to be fast. They had to be quick. Only three different surgical procedures were allowed, like lithotomy, the removal of bladder stones, the amputations, and of course, anything that's external to the body, as well as trepanations. You know, somebody hits you in the head and you can actually open up the cranium and allow the excess fluids to come out. So these are the only operations that they did, and they were considered to be the last ditch effort to save someone's life. If you had to be on an operating table, you were already dead, so to speak.

So this was your last chance to survive. Then, of course, in the middle of the 19th century, you actually have the development of anesthesia. First tested in the United States by a dentist by the name of Morton. He basically used a substance called ether in the removal of a tooth where he basically lessened the pain of the patient. This was done in September 1846. And very quickly, the use of this new agent, ether,

reached the UK quite quickly, actually. By December, the first attempt had been done as well by a dentist. And then Robert Liston, who I already mentioned, also introduced it as a way to see how it will work also in surgery. So if you anesthetize somebody, you can put them under and then you can get to work on them. So you can chop someone's arm off. You can drill through their head. Thank you, Trapani. But now that you've got anesthetics, you can open someone's arm off. You can drill through their head. Thank you, Trapani. But now that you've got anesthetics, what you can open someone's torso up and have a little route around,

get their appendix out, have a little check what's going on elsewhere. Exactly. It actually gave surgeons the ability. First of all, the patients didn't have to move. So originally what the surgeons will have are what we call dressers, which are basically his apprentices

holding the patient down while the procedures are being taken care of. And if it's a very strong patient, it's like, it doesn't matter how composed and how mentally prepared you are to undergo an operation without anesthetics, it is going to hurt and your body's going to tense and you're going to try to move because it's the normal human reaction when we are faced with pain, right? So having all these people around as well, holding you down, it does impede in a way the actual process of surgery from the actual surgeon. Now that the patient has gone under and it's not moving, it pretty much means that they have a better chance

of starting to do more internal medicine. Because up until now, most of the surgeries have been more external, like with the limbs and very little things that they could do. But now, because they're not moving, they're also not feeling pain while this is happening to them because they are under, then it pretty much means that they could take longer. And of course, this is when internal medicine starts being a thing, but we still have at least three really big problems. One of them, of course, is they still don't understand how to replenish blood at this point. So there are no blood transfusions.

So the loss of blood is still a really high risk when you actually start doing these internal surgical procedures in the early stages of the introduction of anesthetics. So blood loss is still a thing, as well as the fact that because they are opening deeper into the human body, but we're still talking about a time period where antiseptics had not been introduced, it pretty much means that you are allowing for germs to actually get further into the human body and attacking more delicate parts of the human anatomy. And of course, the infection increased exponentially after the advent of anesthesia because it's not aseptic. So all the germs are still all around. Surgeons were wearing

coats filled with blood and pus from previous operations. The instruments were clean after the operation, but if you were the first one, yeah, fine, you may have a clean blade. But if you were the second one or the third one, you were be cut with the same blade that is already bloody from the previous operation. So it's quite a grim kind of circumstance when you think about the fact that, yeah, the patient might have gone under. Yes, you can actually stay longer and check for more internal medicine. But at the same time, the chances of infection increase exponentially. The chances of blood loss increase exponentially, not to mention the fact that there is a very big possibility that your anesthetist, although they

were not called anesthetists, but the person that was giving you the anesthetic substance, which at the beginning was ether, but later on changed to chloroform, could give you an overdose and kill you even before you had a chance to go through the surgical procedure. So it's an important step within the 19th century, the introduction of anaesthetics. But with that alone, it was not going to get ahead as much. You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. We've got Monica Walker on talking about 19th century medicine. I hope it's useful for all the students out there land a viking longship on island shores scramble over

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was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. But what about antiseptics? When does that start to come in? When do we start to learn about cleanliness?

This is really good because this happened like simultaneously. This is a really strange thing. So I'm just going to see if I can explain it in a way that sees how great this was in the second half of the 19th century. Because the introduction, of course, of anesthetics happens in 1846-47, around Christmas time, between 46 and 47, right? We'll give you that. That's okay. Yeah. And then, of course, we are going to see that Louis Pasteur is already studying the development of germ theory in France. And he's actually discovering that these microorganisms are the ones that are actually causing the infection, not what they used to think, which was the idea of miasma theory. A lot of surgeons and physicians thought that miasma theory was the primary cause of disease and also of infection. And miasma theory pretty

much says that diseases were transmitted through foul odors. So something that was really, really, really smelly could actually be the carrier of the diseases. So if you put those two things together, something that smells really bad, then you have this idea of miasma theory. And it was believed that that's how infection was transmitted and how it actually got started. Well, Pasteur discovered it wasn't spontaneous as they thought that it was going to be. He basically just looked into it and discovered there were microorganisms that were actually producing these infections. And then here in the UK, we actually have Joseph Lister, who is very concerned with this idea that trauma alone could not be the reason why really strong men keep dying in the operating table. It took many years of research and study trying to figure

it out. What was it that in the end took away the lives of so many strong men that had gone through surgical procedures? And of course, it was infection. But at that time, it wasn't well understood. So he basically started reading Pasteur's theories. And he said, well, if he's right, then it pretty much means that this infection is actually taking place while I'm operating. So he came up with the idea of introducing carbolic acid into his operations. What he used to do is that he created a machine that will spray carbolic acid in the space where he was. So the idea was that

carbolic acid is capable of killing germs. Then he also kind of like dipped his hands and his instruments in carbolic acid as he was doing the whole operation. And then he made his dressers dip the bandages that they were going to use in carbolic acid as well, which pretty much meant that throughout his surgical procedure, the amount of germs that surrounded him and his patients had minimized because suddenly you have the introduction of these antiseptic that, as a matter of fact, increase in many ways the survival rates of his patients. But again, this is one of those things that the introductions of antiseptics by themselves were not going to be enough. At the same time,

you actually have a movement in the rest of England about how hospitals should be designed and how this idea of miasma theory makes someone like Flores Nightingale think that, well, hospitals needed to be clean. They had to have open windows. So there is this idea that if there is no bad odors, there is no way to transmit diseases. And therefore, cleanliness becomes a really important aspect also within the hospitals. And this is a parallel development. You're actually having these ideas at the same time that we see the introduction of antiseptics, at the same time that we see this introduction of cleanliness in the spaces inside of the hospital that need to be increased. And then suddenly, instead of having great spikes of infection rates, they started to drop. And of

course, suddenly, we are going to see that towards the end of the 19th century, the beginnings of the 20th century, instead of just doing antiseptic surgery, they actually understood that what they needed was to have aseptic surgery. So literally, nothing could enter into the operating theater or the operating table. So the surgeons had to have their head covers, they had to wash their hands before they did that, have all of the instruments washed before the operation. And then with the introduction of anesthetics and antiseptics, that's when everything is revolutionized in a way, at least in the surgical department throughout the 19th century. Plus, you know, these new kind of ideas surrounding cleanliness inside of hospitals,

it just all comes together to make the perfect storm for the development of the type of modern medicine that we have come to know. Well, that's fantastic. So now let's move on. When you talk about cleanliness and cleaning up the environment, that brings me on to kind of public health. So that's surgery, that's dealing with your appendicitis or something wrong with your body. What about looking more generally at society, these terrible waves of pandemic disease? What about looking more generally at society, these terrible waves of pandemic disease or in the military sphere, armies would get incredibly sick when they gathered together with gastrointestinal diarrhea, dysentery.

How do they start to get a handle on that in the 19th century? becoming the time period where we actually have the introduction of the actual public health that is literally in the hands of the government as opposed to localized associations that were trying to relieve the poor and things like that. We actually see that at least in the United Kingdom, they actually tried to come up with a public health body that was an official government public health body to deal with issues like controlling of disease, and of course, to alleviate these areas of transmission. And we know, for example, that the 19th century is quite famous for having constant cholera outbreaks that were brought in from the East. And of course, a lot of these cholera outbreaks seem to be very much connected

where the poor lived. And of course, we know for a fact that, you know, England was extremely industrialized. And of course, cities grew. London was huge. It attracted a really large amount of people. But of course, those that couldn't work ended up living in slums with overcrowding, places that didn't have a proper sewage system, places that the moment that you had someone being sick, because of the conditions in which they were living, that disease spread quite quickly. And therefore, a lot of people saw that it was the fault of the poor that a lot of these diseases were taking place. But a lot of men actually decided, no, we have to find the real reasons. How can we stop the spread of these different pandemics? How can we make things better for the poor that we have in our country? And so again,

for the poor that we have in our country. And so again, this idea of miasma theory also helped in the introduction of going into these slums and actually cleaning them up, creating sewer systems, having running water, and just trying in general to ameliorate the lives of the people that were living in those areas. Because of course, if it's because of foul odors that diseases are transmitting, then it comes to show that if you actually have clean roads, clean environment, and you change the way that they live, then there is a big chance that poverty and disease and illness could actually be separated because body that is going to study the causes of illnesses and trying to prevent them by establishing a number of things like sewages and clear waters. And of course, ensuring that there are enough doctors in an area that people can actually go to in order for them to feel better. So diseases like typhus and dysentery can be hugely improved by clear water, getting rid of all the excrement, the poo and the wee off the streets, get rid of it all, and personal cleanliness and the cleanliness of your situation. Okay, so we've done surgery, we've done some public health. What about drugs? What about medicine? Is that kind of a 20th century thing or does that start in the 19th?

It depends on what we're talking about. The 19th century actually saw a great number of new plants being introduced into Europe. We are talking about plants that since the rediscovery of America, people that are traveling are bringing plants with different medicinal properties into the UK, which they start to experiment and start to develop. We have more morphine, we have the introduction of more opium, we have the introduction of cocaine. And even though today we actually know that these kind of drugs create dependency, in that time period, a lot of medicines actually contain some of these properties. As a matter of fact, there was an ad to give opium to fussy babies. Oh, do you want your fussy baby to calm down? Here, give them some opium. So yeah, they are starting to establish some of that chemistry, but it's going to take a little while longer

before we actually have a really good handling on what all of these different plants can do. There's a lot of trial and error, obviously, with absolutely everything. Some things work and they continue to use them. Some things don't work or they give you worse symptoms. So they start getting rid of them. So again, we actually see there's a lot more science going into how people actually deal with things, not just repeating things from the past, but actually putting together all of these different elements into kind of like a scientific method and start developing these kinds of drugs. But yeah, definitely the 20th century, it's much more connected with the development of

more effective drugs to alleviate the symptoms and in some cases, the diseases. Okay, well, let's finish up now with vaccines. We're all talking about vaccines at the moment everywhere in the world. We're vaccinating ourselves very successfully, we think, against COVID. Tell me about vaccines in the 19th century and perhaps just right at the end of the 18th century. How important were they? What were the diseases they started to take on? The most important disease that started having a vaccine quite early on is going to be smallpox. Edward Jenner was the one that basically in his studies while he was practicing medicine, kind of discovered that the milkmaids that used to have these disease called

cowpox did not get smallpox. So he started experimenting and he actually inoculated one of the neighbor's kids with a small cowpox. So he basically introduced cowpox into his bloodstream and then exposed him into smallpox and he didn't get smallpox. So he started understanding how vaccines started to work in that way. And so very early on, he tried to show his results to the Royal Academy,

but at first they did not pay much attention to him. Thought that, you know, it was a fluke. But again, he did try very hard. And in the end, the idea of vaccination became quite important because for those that have not seen people suffering from smallpox, it is quite a horrendous disease in every possible way. And by the middle of the 19th century, the government actually created the Vaccination Act, where every parent was required by law to vaccinate their child in the first three months of life. And if they fail to do so, they will be fined. So smallpox is one of those diseases that has been eradicated because everybody followed the

instructions in some cases. Yes, of course, there was always, even that time period, a movement against vaccination. But the truth of the matter is that it was something that was quite demonstrable that it worked and therefore everybody should be doing it. And I think that that was one of those time periods when that was proven to be the case. Okay, Monica, this is a question I left field to end up on here. We all say, oh, the modern times, everything changes so fast. It's unprecedented. If you were born in 1801 and you died when you were 100 in 1901, in that extraordinary lifetime, would you have seen more medical transformation, revolution than someone who's 100 right now going back 100 years to 1920?

That's really difficult because in the past 100 years, medicine has advanced at giant steps. We're talking about people that can actually be in Australia doing an operation in London. It is incredible what people can do today, even though we don't see it as much because, I mean, we see it on the news all the time, but sometimes the general public doesn't see all of the advances that are taking place in medicine unless they actually need some surgical advancements. Meanwhile, in the 19th century, people were very much aware of all of these new developments because they saw them as the sign of progress,

a sign of modernity. So the news were always talking about these new developments in medicine, these new developments in public health. So it would have been something that people would have really paid attention throughout the 100 years that we're talking about. Once things started moving, they really started moving fast.

Although I'll say that I think that a person that has lived for 100 years now would have seen a lot more changes much more rapidly than someone that has been living in the 19th century up until the early 20th century. But still quite impressive because we're talking about 200 years of history of medicine and in a way how fast things have changed in those 200 years. It's not that long. Nope. Just a couple of lifespans, really. Two or three lifespans. Exactly. We have transformed life on this planet. We have no idea where this crazy journey ends. Exactly. Thank you so much, Monica, for coming on this planet. We have no idea where this crazy journey ends. Exactly. Thank you so much, Monica, for coming on this podcast. I hope that was of interest to students, teachers,

and parents helping students in these tricky times at the moment. Tell everyone about the Old Operating Theatre Museum. It's one of the best kept secrets in London. It certainly is. I think that there's one thing to be telling you about history, but another thing is actually being in a space where you can actually see it because it happened there. So London Bridge has in the church of what used to be Old St. Thomas' Hospital and the Church of St. Thomas' in the attic, there is the oldest operating theater is still in existence, which predates anesthesia and antiseptics.

And it's a treat to actually be able to go there because you actually feel that you step back in time. We have a whole section dedicated to the history of pharmacy, obviously, because it used to be a herb garret. So the apothecaries would dry and cure herbs there as well and use it for medicine making. And then it became an operating theater for the Women's Awards in 1822. So it's still there and it's a fascinating space to experience history because there's no other place in Europe where you can actually go

and experience this before the advent of anesthesia and antiseptics. So when we reopen, hopefully after the May deadline, I hope that people can actually come and join us there to really understand how dire things were, but also how incredible the labor of all of the medical practitioners that were there was and how important that was. I've been to thousands of historical spaces all over the world and very few of them are better than the old operating theatre in London. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

Thank you. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Hi, just a quick message at the end of this podcast. I'm currently sheltering in a small windswept building on a piece of rock in the Bristol Channel called Lundy. I'm here to make a podcast. I'm here enduring weather that frankly is apocalyptic because I want to get some great podcast material for you guys. In return, I've got a little tiny favour to ask. If you could go to

wherever you get your podcasts, if you could give it a five-star rating, if you could share it, if you could give it a review, I'd really appreciate that. Then from the comfort of your own homes, you'll be doing me a massive favour. Then more people will listen to the podcast. We can do more and more ambitious things and I can spend more of my time getting pummeled. Thank you. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the

recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs, and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold.