Do Go On - 470 - The Great Library of Alexandria

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

The Ancient Egyptian city of Alexandria was regarded as the capital of knowledge and learning, all because of the city's great library that held documents from across the world. But what happened to it and where would we be if all of its knowledge hadn't been lost? To answer these questions and more we're joined by our dear friend Alasdair Tremblay-Birchall. This is the 6th most voted for topic of Block 2024!This is a comedy/history podcast, the report begins at approximately 15:51 (though as always, we go off on tangents throughout the report).Support the show and get rewards like bonus episodes: patreon.com/DoGoOnPodSupport the show on Apple podcasts and get bonus episodes in the app: http://apple.co/dogoon Live show tickets: https://dogoonpod.com/live-shows/ Watch Do Go On The Quiz Show: https://youtu.be/GgzcPMx1EdM?si=ir7iubozIzlzvWfK Submit a topic idea directly to the hat: dogoonpod.com/suggest-a-topic/Check out our merch: https://do-go-on-podcast.creator-spring.com/  Twitter: @DoGoOnPodInstagram: @DoGoOnPodFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/DoGoOnPod/Email us: [e-mail] Check out our other podcasts:Book Cheat: https://play.acast.com/s/book-cheatPrime Mates: https://play.acast.com/s/prime-mates/Listen Now: https://play.acast.com/s/listen-now/Who Knew It with Matt Stewart: https://play.acast.com/s/who-knew-it-with-matt-stewart/ Our awesome theme song by Evan Munro-Smith and logo by Peader ThomasDo Go On acknowledges the traditional owners of the land we record on, the Wurundjeri people, in the Kulin nation. We pay our respects to elders, past and present.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Melbourne and Canada, we got exciting news for you. And we should also say this is 2026. Jess, what year is it? 2026. Thank God you're here. Right now, I'm in Melbourne doing my show with Serenjai Amarna, 630 each night at the Cooper's Inn Hotel, having so much fun. We'd love to see you there.

Canada, we are visiting you in September this year. If you've somehow missed the news, we are heading up Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and Toronto for shows. That's going to be so much fun. Tickets for all this stuff, I believe, are online. And I'm here too. And welcome to another episode of Do Go On. My name is Dave Warnocky.

And as always, I'm here with Matt Stewart. Hello, Matt. Hey, Dave, happy Block. As always, what are we? What are we? Week 4 of Block. Week 4, so this is the sixth, the most requested topic. Oh my God, I'm so excited.

Quickly for people who don't know what Block is. It's our most requested and voted for topics of the year. So we do a huge poll. It had nearly 500 possible topics on it. And we're counting down the top nine through October slash Block. and November slash Blovember, which has been annexed now to be a part of Blocktober as well. To make it even bigger, badder and better. Eventually, if my plan comes to fruition, we'll end up annexing all 12 months of the year for Block.

Perfect. Well, with 500 topics in the vote, we could easily do it. Yeah. And as has become a Block tradition, we are joined this week by one of Dugelon's favorite sons. And he's joining us live from Canada. It's Alistrambley virtual. Hello, Al. Are I the sixth most voted for guest?

Yeah, we count them down. It's funny because the tradition started with when we got you in to tell us about the history of penises. Yes, that is correct. We had this long-running joke about keen for pain and it ended up getting voted for as a topic. We didn't know what to do with it. So we got our most scientific friend in. And then you did a follow up from that, which was lit for. clit and then completing the trilogy with Wacker for Clowacka.

People, you were so close. I think the, from adding to that, I think the 12th or 13th most voted for topic was along those lines, maybe like, yeah, let me look it up. But Dave, you talk about Al. Talk about Al or talk to Al? Well, talk about me. Talk about Al with Al. Al, since we've last had you on the podcast, you have moved to Montreal.

That's correct, Dave. You are 100% right about that. I am currently a Montrealer living actually off the island and I'm not actually a Montrealer right now. But I have been a Montrealer for most of the time I've been away. It's very exciting. Yeah. Because you're doing a lot of stand-up comedy in English but also in French these days. That's right. I moved to try see if I could just do stand-up in French. and it is working. Like, it can, it can be done, even though there was a whole community of people that already were doing it, but I am proving that it can be done.

That it can be done by a Scottish-born French, Canadian, Australia. That's right. Yeah. I mean, you know, I kind of stopped speaking French for a lot of that 25 years, 26 years I was living in Australia. So, you know, it was, that's where I'm impressed with myself to have kind of brought my French up back to it. a good fluid level.

And even though I still have the vocabulary of a 13-year-old, I do sound like I'm from Quebec. So a lot of the, well, maybe this is appropriate because the topic that came in at 12, so only three out of the top non, hankering for wankering, a history of wanking. Wow. That's what, yeah.

So, and obviously that's the, topic you would have been doing if it made the count. We ended up just picking the one that we thought was the closest to scientific, which was about a library. I mean, it's very nice. I mean, if you want somewhere quiet to wank, whether you go. Yeah, that's right. I mean, I'm wanked. I just like, I like that you give me any kind of hole-based thing. And a reading hole, a library is perfect for me. A nook or cranny. That's right. Think of, think of a, it's kind of a, erythera, like a nook or a cranny. Yeah.

A library. It's similar. It's basically a knowledge orifice. But, so you're in, in Canada gigging. I'd love a listener to come up to you at a show and say, hey, Al, heard you on, do go on recently. Because this happened on who knew it last month. I had Annie Louis join me. from Hong Kong

and I said oh we got some Hong Kong listeners where are you performing she said her regular gig and like two days later Saraj

a listener of this show and who knew it was at the back of the room and it was all on tape she's like oh who's this guy at the back and it's like

she's doing crowd work with him and she's like oh what brought you here and he said oh the comedy I heard you on a podcast yesterday.

She's like, what? It was good fun. Yeah, I mean, I've already had two people who listened to, do go on, approach me. One on the metro and one after a show. For real? That's always on the metro. I like off the show's the better one. He's like, yeah, I heard you would be on this train.

So, yeah. Yeah, just coming to check you out. I'll be over there having a look. Well, somebody recognized me from being on DoGo On, which is an audio podcast. Were you talking at the time? I was being very quiet. Okay. You could just recognize my aura.

Yeah. Your orifice. Yeah. My or... Oh, my goodness. That's my seventh chakra is my orifice. Dave, how does this show work? Now, what we do here is we're taking in terms to report on a topic, which is often

suggested to us by one of the listeners. We go away, do a bit of research and bring it back with a little report. The other two people usually don't know what they're going to talk about. But because for Block, we had to divvy up the topics. We had to assign one to L. Matt and I, we've already alluded to it a little bit. We know what you're going to talk about L, but we have been, I don't know if we mentioned this to you, still asking a question to get us on the topic. Do you have anything to get us on a topic, which we do kind of know what it is.

But, you know, it could be tangential. Who knows? Well, where was all of the world? accumulated knowledge once lost. We've already done Atlantis. Okay. Is this going to be about the first iPhone? Do you think?

And then someone forgot the password. Yeah. Or no, when those Samsung started exploding. Is this about the Samsung phone exploding thing? It's about the Library of Alexandria. Oh my goodness. It's about the Library of Alexandria. I'm very excited to be able to present this to you, you too.

If you hadn't suggested it, I was about to suggest doing it. To be honest, of all the block topics we've heard over the last couple of years anyway, this one's probably the most surprising to us, Matt, that it made the top nine because, I guess it's because we don't know too much about it. Obviously, the listeners, maybe they know something we don't. Yeah, I'm guessing they must know more because just the topic name in itself doesn't get me excited. Sure.

I mean, it's always had a lot of mystery around it. A lot of, there's a lot of strong beliefs and a lot of like conspiracy stuff around it. That we would, that would, you know, if we hadn't lost everything that was there in the burning of the library, then we, then society and technology would be thousands of years ahead of where it currently is. Oh, that's like that is. Okay, that's exciting. And also, I've got to say, pay my respects to the libraries. My mom is a librarian.

So I'm a big fan, spent a lot of time in libraries. But yeah, I didn't think we'd be doing a full report on one, but here we are and I'm very excited to learn. Just for the listeners, Dave just poured some of his whiskey out for libraries. That was really beautiful. I thought I was a really beautiful. That's a tribute. Yeah. No, his laptop is sparking.

For that for libraries. Yeah, but I don't need it. I've got books. I'm saying libraries weird. And now I'm not going to be able to get. get out of it. How do you say it? Library. Library. Library. I think I say library. Library. Yeah, it is one of those words. As long as you don't say library, I think you're okay. Oh, no, don't put that in my head. It's like another option. Oh, Al, before you get onto it,

I was trying to figure out, like, is, all, usually block topics have so many suggestors. But this one, uh, just the one I can find in the hat, I think it must have been a Patreon suggestor over recent years that got a lot of upvotes in my pre-block pre-pol poll. So we got a Patreon first. That's a long system. But anyway, the only official suggestion of the hat is Mel Cleary from Wellington in New Zealand. That's awesome. The windy city.

A beautiful city. Beautiful city and a beautiful name and a beautiful suggestion. And a couple of beautiful do-go-on hosts. Thank you. Oh, Jess is fine, by the way. Oh, we should mention Jess is fine. Jess is fine? Okay.

We'll be right next week. Yeah. She is crook and she's been having a rough trot. So just quickly, pray for Bob. Pray for Bob. Pray for Bob. Hey, Dave. Pour one out for Jess.

Oh, ruin your laptop as well. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, all right, the library of Alexandria was built on the 16th of October 2002. apparently to great pump. So there you have it. Thank you very much for having me on the podcast. Wait, what?

22 great years. Oh, no. There was a recreation that was created in, in, in partnership with UNESCO. But let me get into the real stuff now. Wait,

was that a classic ATB fake out? Yeah, feel free to, feel free to delete that. All right. I was, my attention drifted for a second and I came back in and went, wait, what? I thought you were getting at 2002 years ago and I loved the balls. Oh, that's it, great.

All right. I want you to cast your minds back to antiquity, a time when antique dealers would be in hog heaven, right? And specifically, I want you to picture yourself in the Mediterranean. Right? We're talking olives. We're talking olive oil and we're talking olive skin tones. Maybe I don't know if that's true. Okay.

But now I want you to picture yourself as Alexander the Great. You know, you may have just heard about him. After about three hours last week. Yeah. After he had defeated the Persian king, Darius, the third at the Battle of Isis. And he had overwhelmed powerful cities. like Tyre and Gaza, maybe tear. I'm not sure on the Eastern Mediterranean. Yeah, we'll stick with that. Yeah, we'll stick with that. Okay, it's, it's 332 BC.

Alexander the Great, who's, it was being welcomed as a liberator in Egypt. And he first went to the capital of the, of ferionic, ferionic, oh my God, that word, pharaonic Egypt. He went to the Capital City, Memphis, because he wanted to see Graceland. Pay's tribute to the king. Yes, the Pharaoh of rock and roll Elvis. Now, apparently, wait, is it, so the original Memphis was an Egypt center of power, was it? Yeah, it was the game player. It was the ancient capital, yeah.

I don't think I knew that. When did Cairo come about? I'm not sure. Question without notice. I'm not sure when it transitioned, but that's often a trivia question, which is what is the ancient city, a capital city of Egypt, yeah. Put that down in the Qantas quiz or something. Walking like an Egyptian in Memphis.

What a great mashup hit that could have been. That's great. I know. I mean, there's still time. There's still time. There are modern day Egyptians who could write this. Yeah. The modern Egyptian version of Walk like an Egyptian and the film clip is just people walking to the shops.

Walk like an Egyptian. Going for a stroll. Exactly. Now, Egypt at the time... Because of course the ancient Egyptians really did walk like they were hieroglyphics. That's right. Oh, why else were they put them in stone like that? Yeah.

It's a beautiful position and very natural and it doesn't hurt your wrist at all to do that thing. Yeah. Now, apparently at the time, Egypt was under the control of some Persian kings, right? who had shown complete contempt for the belief system of the Egyptians at the time, and in particular, the Apis bull deity that many Egyptians worshipped, right? And so the kings there went so far as to have the sacred bulls, the living incarnations of Apis, slain. And it was a gross sign of Persian contempt for Egyptian religion. But Alexander, the great one, he had had had read his history. And so he decided to come in and distinguish himself from these Persian

occupiers and be like, hey, oh, you like this cow god? Well, how about this? And then he would sacrifice a few things for that god, for that deity. And then the Egyptians were like, you know what, you can become our pharaoh. Wow. I love that they're like, we hate it when you kill, like when you sacrifice cows. But when you sacrifice stuff for the. cows? We love that. Yeah. It's, it's, I love it when you kill things for the thing that we don't want you to kill. It would be tricky if what would happen if he, um, sacrifice the cow for the cow. It cancels itself out. He didn't do anything. Yeah. That's fine then. Yeah. And so, and so without any kind of battle, he managed to take over Egypt and be, and he went to, I think,

Memphis and he became crowned Pharaoh. Right. That's it. And then he decided to go to the village of Rakotis to the west, and he founded Alexandria, whose perimeter he drew himself, and then he ordered an architect to draw up the plan, and then he left Egypt. And when you say, drew up the perimeter, did he, like, get a stick and go, I wanted to start here and keep going to here? You know what? I actually don't know. Well, I'm pretty sure he had one of those things that the, you know, the grounds

keepers at a football ground have. The kind of chalk one. Chalk line. He just rolled out a white chalk line in a big circle. He just drew a tennis court. Yeah. The MCG, that's how big Alexander is. And then they would just build sort of, you know, houses and stuff like that to just

fit within that line. If the line was squiggly, the house had to be squiggly. If you're on the other side of that, or the line you lived in the country. That's right. If you've seen Alexandria, you'll see their asses. some squiggly houses and that's why. Absolutely. Not a lot of people know that.

Now, only, nothing, like, only like 10 years later, Mr. Mr. the Great died. And, uh, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, you've got nearly no whiskey left, mate. Actually, do you even like that whiskey? Uh, and then a dude named P.T. O-L-E-M-Y. Is that what you were thinking when you heard it? Oh, yeah.

We love Tolemy. I mean, yes. Tolemy heads. So it's related to teradactals and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And P-T-Barnum. And Helicopter. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I don't know. Now, Ptolemy had been like a trustworthy troop commander under Alex the Great. And by the way, I've been one of the great. want to do this the whole time. Alexander, he's great.

Anyway, okay. That's why before, uh, because that's, uh, that's, uh, an American ad slogan. Am I right in saying that's right? You are absolutely correct. Don't worry, I've seen Frosted. It's a Jerry Seinfeld movie. Oh, great. That's really good.

I, I'm yet to watch it still, but I, at least when I'll watch it, I'll get the references. I think, uh, I think Hugh Grant plays the guy who says, great. But he's, the, the, the, the, the, is he's like a Shakespearean actor. Of course. Of course. Well cast. He's been really doing some different roles that he says, hasn't he?

Apparently he was the only one that asked to be in the film. I think something like that. That's amazing. Does it show? All right. He put in a big. It was good. No, he wasn't good.

He was great. Okay. So after Alexander the Great's death, Ptolemy, who was his trustworthy troop commander and also one of his bodyguard companions, he was appointed a sat trap. You ever heard of that? A sat trap. Oh, I guess I was a lot. I said a lot, way. Wow. Oh, good. You're getting all my references, all my Egyptian references. He was a satrap of Egypt in 3,023 BC, and later on in 305 BC, he declared himself Pharaoh, Ptolemy the first. Whoa. Is it, oh, and he, I think Dave mentioned Ptolemites.

Is that like his followers or something? Oh, they're his, it's the dynasty, because they divide Egypt into dynasties, it's called the Ptolemaic dynasty. And it ended with Cleopatra a couple of hundred years later. Isn't that crazy just to find that out that Cleopatra was like Macedonian and not really Egyptian? Yeah, I think there's debate as to even what language she even spoke, which is while. I think she was the first of the Ptolemaic dynasty to speak Egyptian as well as... To actually bother learning it.

And they've been in charge for what 200 years or something by that point. That's incredible. Yeah, I think it was maybe over 200 years even. All that timeline has really blown my mind. because this is our third episode that's sort of Egyptian related in the last few months because we did that one I told that story about

Hat Chapsut Hatschepsut but who was like and just that how long the ancient Egyptians were like such a powerful Yeah because I was a thousand years before all this year Yeah Australia only managed

I don't know Like we had the Sydney Olympics. I think we had two weeks as a center of the world. Yeah. Yeah, but it was a good two weeks. That was. Best Olympics ever. Best Olympics ever.

Isn't that what that guy said? Yeah. And he wouldn't lie. Why would he lie? Why would the boss of the Olympics lie about something like that? The boss of that Olympics? But I genuinely haven't heard any of those other guys say the best one. This has been the best one so far.

Yeah, probably. Oh, do you think maybe, well, part maybe because you haven't been paying attention, but also maybe. It's probably. Maybe because the others are like a bit uncouth, mate. Like, yeah. Guys, we've done like 30 of these things. Come on.

Why are we, we're choosing favorites now. Yeah. Bit uncouth. I know, but it seems, it seems awful to start saying it and then to stop. Oh, that's true too. Yeah. Athens is like, come on. No one's, no one's going to say it.

No one's going to say it. Commonwealth Games. no one's ever said it though. That's wrong. Another very average Commonwealth games. All right. And so began the Ptolemaic Empire. Ptolemy the first and his son Ptolemy the second.

Then, and then the whole dynasty of Ptolemies developed the city of Alexandria, built numerous grandiose monuments and decorated it in the fashion of both the Greeks and the Egyptians. So they would mix the cultures. Oh, there's a pub near the studios. Here, Al, you'd remember this, the Molland Hotel in Brunswick. And the man who made that was like an eccentric millionaire, not billionaire. And if you saw it, you probably get that. But I don't know that for sure.

But yeah, he's like, I really like that ancient Egyptian look. So, and then he says, but oh, I like some Greek elements. Yeah, the Acropolis is cool. And he's trying to like, so the lettering sort of like Greek style. there's like, like Pharaoh related stuff, and then there's also Roman stuff in there as well. He's like, oh, actually, and he was having these ideas that they were building it apparently. Oh, you know, I ought to be cool. And they're designers like, that's a different, that's a different style.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, great. Yeah, Alexander's David is in there, right? Oh, no, Michelangelo's David. Is that what it is? Michaelangelo's David? Maybe, yeah. I don't know if Alexander's ones made it in there. A long time later. You're the original.

Well, you did say it was a million. Yeah. Well, I don't even know. I mean, to build a pub in Brunswick, it must be a millionaire at least. That's a big one too, yeah. Yeah, I mean, well, housing was a lot cheaper back in the day. You know, he could have done it for 18,000. All right.

I'm going to take us through this. Let's get a photo in front of it later, Dave. I've never been inside. I've never been inside. I've never been inside either. Should we go inside? Should you have lunch there? Should you have a pub lunch?

Yeah. I think it would be a really good idea. And I, yeah. Palmer. Can you photo, photo, Photoshop me in? Yeah, yeah. All right. Here we go.

Hold that. We got it. Correct. You got it. Yeah. Snap. All right. The library of Alexandria was established in the early third century.

I hate the century system, by the way. That's the 200. Wait. Is that the 200th? Yeah. It's not a good system. No. Under the reign of Ptolemy, the first.

Or, Ptolemy the second. Now, some people say Ptolemy the first really just came up with the concept and Ptolemy the second made it happen. Oh, okay. So it's sort of like Stanley and Steve Ditko with Spider-Man. Almost exactly like that. Wow. We were all thinking that. Yeah.

Stanley is like, oh, I had the idea. So I created Spider-Man and Dick-Co's like, if I didn't draw it, it was just an idea. Mm. So, and I think both make strong points. That's true. Yeah. And now let me just explain here at the beginning how much uncertainty there is in this thing. Because like some scholars believe that like, firstly, like there's almost no descriptions of the beginning of this library. Right. There's almost no evidence of people talking about it. The very first mention of it, people are like, this is actually a forgery. Somebody made this. This is propaganda. You know, and it was made like 200 years after. You don't bother writing it down anyway.

You know, you've got no way to put the scroll or the book or whatever. Genuinely, one of the mentions of the library is somebody's like, the library, why would I even talk about it? It exists in all men's minds. Right? I mean, yeah. And so there's actually people who are not even sure that there ever was a library. There's no definitive archaeological evidence that it's been found, that has ever been found. But there is lots of evidence along the way of it being mentioned.

And so some people think that it's part of this museum, which is a house of muses, right? A museum. I thought it was going to be a house of cows. No. And apparently there was a library at Pergamum that, in their ruins, if you look at their ruins, their great library is inside their museum. And so it could have been a style at the time, right?

I'm just telling you this because there's not a ton of evidence. And the first few things I read about this was just people going, most of the stories about this, I think are probably bullshit. Oh, that's, I mean, that was the same with Alexander last week. You know, it's so long ago and he's such a legend that it's like, I mean, a lot of this. He probably didn't even say this because it sounds super cool, but we talked about it because it sounds super cool, you know? Yeah. And so I'll tell you most of the fun stuff, but I'll also explain probably what actually happened based on what people think these days.

Okay, so now, the museum, which may have housed the library, also served as a residence for a diverse group of international scholars, poets, philosophers, and researchers. Now, according to the first century BC Greek geographer Strabo right that's a great name Strabo it's just a mono

what do you call those one namers yeah a lot of this mononym mononym mononym a lot of those guys they didn't have regular last names they just have like it'd be like Strabo of Athens or something like that you know it'd be you know so Strabo

Strasbourg I reckon Strabo would be so good People would be stoked when Stravo Strabo rocked up to the party. Strabo's in. A local legend. Travo, you don't. Come on in here. Strab dog.

Strab dog. Come on, come on. Tell us the story you were telling last week. God. Tell us. You are so good. Patterson bloody stitches, Strabo. Tell us about that library, Strabo.

Strabo. Strabo. Strabo. Strabo says that these, uh, Strabo says that these, uh, these, poets, philosophers, researchers were very generously supported by with large salaries, free meals, accommodation, and tax exemptions. And apparently by 283 BC, there was between the 30 and 50 of these learned men. I guess no women made it in, but, and they dine in a big round hall and with a high dome ceiling. And in the museum, there'd be numerous classrooms where these

scholars would occasionally teach students, but they would try to relieve them of everyday burdens to allow them to focus entirely on their research and intellectual pursuits. And it's believed that Ptolemy II, who had a strong interest in zoology, may have even established a little zoo of exotic animals within the museum. That's where the cows come in. That's right. Finally, the mention of the cows. Do we think they're free range, these animals? They're just like, you know, got a lizard wandering around. Well, Isidore of Seville says that among these exotic animals, which had never before been seen and were objects of amazement, was a snake more than 50 feet long. Such creatures were called boas, he would say, because they killed cattle and oxen boves by entwining themselves around the udders and sucking them dry. Whoa.

That's how they got them. It's like sucking their life force right out of the others. I mean, I don't, I've never heard of a snake drinking milk. That is so funny on an episode of Who Knewit recently. My side project, a podcast from this, which, I don't know, it doesn't really matter, but it's, you know, it's a comic quiz podcast. It's a wonderful show. I consider it to be a perfect game show. That's so good.

It's up there with facty, facty fact. I mean, no, whatever facty fact was name was. That was it. Facty fact. No. No, just one fact. Facty fact. Yeah.

But yeah, there was a bird who that's known as the large-eared night hawk, no, nightjar. And Aristotle back in the day thought that they were basically dragons. who would suck the milk of goats. So they were known as milk, a goat suckers for a long time. What was it with these, these old-timey dudes who just assume animals are sucking the milk out of unrelated animals? Yeah. I mean, it's around the same time. Maybe they were just tricked in some way.

Yeah. I don't know. But apparently Aristotle also thought eels just came into being. through bogs. It just came out of bogs fully formed. Aristotle, one of the smartest people in the world at the time. I reckon that eel came from a bog. Wow.

I actually think it was only a few hundred years ago that people still believed that matter could pop out of nothingness. Like, they weren't sure where disease and germs and flies came from. And some of them thought that flies could just. appear into existence. They didn't know that they came from maggots and stuff. They travelled from another galaxy and just suddenly appear. That's the fun of world they lived in, though, is it? Yeah. It's kind of nicer. It's nice. And maggots are gross. I don't want to think about them.

Yeah. I don't want to think about them having multiple lives. Yeah. No, thank you. All right. So now these, the Ptolemy's would send emissaries and scholars throughout the Mediterranean and beyond to purchase or copy texts, often translating them into Greek, which was the lingua franca of the time, which I would call the lingua greca. But that is just me, right?

Another, another, another first century writer with a fun name, Plutarch. Plutarch, get a classy. Plutarch. Who described, who described how the, the Ptolemaic authorities would seize books from ships that docked at Alexandria's harbor,

and the books would be taken and copied, and then they'd keep the originals and then give the copies back to the ship owners. Because they'd have, yeah, they had a big Epsom color printer and copy. That's what they would do. So they'd just take them. You can barely tell the difference once they copied it. They'll give it back to you. Yeah.

You staple it yourself, but. But, you know, Aristotle or Plutarch or whoever, they'd often, um, they'd photocop with their ass. A bit of fun. That sounds like Strabo to me. Strabo. Strabo's photocopying his ass for sure. Check out, Strabo's ass.

Photocopying your ass back in those days. Of course, when I say books, we're talking about big parchments. They're not foldable books either there. And so to copy them, they would have a scholar write it out, right? And so if you were getting your ass photocopied, you're just getting an educated man to draw your ass on some. parchment and then rolling it up. That is what Strabo's like, though. That is Strabo.

A very educated fellow. Parch me ass. This practice allowed the library to accumulate texts from various cultures, including rare works that were difficult to obtain and would have been lost otherwise, but then we're lost anyway. Oh, it's so sad. Yeah. Now, other ways in which they would, they would acquire books or, or, or, you know,

parchment and stuff would be, uh, they would just get these, these scholars to just write stuff. And so there would be just, you know, a lot of these scholars would just be, you know, paid to just be writing and creating stuff, right? Um, they would, they, some of the famous things that were created in this, uh, in this very library. I mean, Zenedotus, the library's very first head librarian

who's known to have written a glossary of rare and unusual words, which was organized in alphabetical order, making him the first person to have employed alphabetical order as a method of organization. Whoa. And how do you spell Zenedotus?

Zenedotus would be like Zed, E, N-O-D-O-D-T-. It's up to Zendodotus to the order of the alphabet and he put himself last. Oh my gosh. That says a lot about Zanodotus, I think. Put everyone else first. What a guy. It's truly incredible.

I mean, and I don't even know if there is a Zed even in the Greek alphabet. So, I mean, think how far down the line he would have been showing up with his, this Anglo name. He goes, I don't even exist yet. Yeah. But Ian, he hasn't been great. It sounds like he's got all 26 letters in his name. That's true. Then there was, look, a lot of these names I'm going to be absolutely murdering.

Calamacus. Kalamacus, who was never the head librarian, he compiled many catalogs and lists, each called Pinnikis. His most famous one listed authors and their works, and thus became the first known bibliographer and the scholar who organized the library by authors. and subjects. His work has 120, was 120 volumes long, and Calamacus's system divided works into six genres and five sections of prose, rhetoric, law, epic, tragedy, comedy, lyric, poetry, poetry, history, medicine, mathematics, natural science, and... You say seven?

Miscellaneous. Oh, miscellaneous is fantastic. Love a bit of misk. So, and each category was alphabetized by author. So Zinidotis's ideas already catching on. Wow. That's so good. I, um, that's a lot of, that's a lot of, I don't think my local bookshop would have

that many sections. I think they should bring back all of those. Bring them back. Bring back epic. Yeah, they've taken away epic. The heck. But you know, when they talk about poems as well, like Homer's Odyssey and stuff like that,

that's a poem. That's supposed to be a poem. It's a full novel, but they consider that a poem. But it's also pretty epic, so where do you put that? It is an epic, I think. It might be an epic poem. That's another section.

Yeah, straddles the genres. They've got the hybrid sections as well. The fusions. He's already doing genre fusion. I was wondering if Dewey Decimal is going to pop up here as well. I mean, he really is the, you know, Kalamakis is the precursor to Dewey. Oh my God. The Dewey of the day.

Is Dewey a guy? Is that like, and he came up there? Yeah, it's a person. I don't know. Yeah, it's a person, isn't it? Not that long ago. Yeah. Dewey Decimal.

I don't remember much about it. It was numbers and letters. Yeah. Look, I'm going to. Should I wait for? Dave to tell us about Dewey? Tell us about Dewey. Oh, it was.

In 1876, originally in a 44-page pamphlet. It's since been expanded many, many times to multiple volumes. I think much like how you can't have a poem that goes for a full book. I don't think you're going to have a pamphlet that goes for 44 pages. You know, that's the size of a novella. Yeah. Well, this is a grim part of his wiki page. his first bit, it's like all about his due decimal.

Although, due his contributions to the modern library are widely recognized, his legacy is marred by his sexual harassment of female colleagues, as well as his racism and anti-Semitism. Jesus. There's in the, like, the opening paragraph of him. Even the Dewey Decimal system, even in the system that organizes libraries, we can't have a place where women are safe.

Amazing. Born in New York, died in Florida. Isn't that a classic, isn't that a classic, uh, lost soccer of an American? Of a per. Of a perv. Yeah. Absolutely. All right.

So now I'm going to tell you a few more people who, who had attended the library and were scholars and what they achieved. We got Archimedes. I mean, Archimedes, the inventor and mathematician, he visited the library of Alexandria. And while he was in Egypt, it is said that Archimedes observed the rise and fall of the Nile, which inspired him to invent the Archimedes screw, a device used to transport water from lower areas into irrigation ditches. Anyway, that doesn't really feel like he did that at the library, but he did go to the library and then see the Nile.

With the Nile, how close to the Nile was the library? Since they don't know exactly where it was, I can't tell you, but the one that's replacing it, they're saying it's, somewhere close to it. And it probably is close. You'll know that it's close to the water based on some stories that I have for you later on, but it's pretty close to the water. Yeah, cool.

So, yeah, maybe he could have done it from the, you know, maybe the balcony of the library. That's right. Looking out over the, the no one. Maybe in the pegola. Maybe they had a peggola. They had a begalo? They might have. I don't know.

Maybe a bungalow out the back? Yeah, bungalow, a granny flag. That's where Strabo lives. Strabo. Let me go get him in the bongolo more like. We had Apollonius. Strabo, you dog. Strabo.

He comes Apollonius of roads. Apollonius, love that. Jesus, that's great. Yeah. He was the second head librarian. He's also best known for writing the Argonautica, an epic about Jason and the Argonauts that survived in full, that does survive in full still. the poem showcases his deep knowledge of history and literature, drawing on numerous events and texts while mimicking the Homeric style. That's Homer that we were talking about earlier. And though some of his scholarly works remain, he is more renowned as a poet than a scholar. According to unreliable accounts, due to the negative reaction to his first draft of Argonautica, Apollonius was forced to resign as head librarian and move back to Rhodes.

What? How bad can your book be if you can't be a librarian from that point? That's right. I mean, this is why you don't show people your first draft. Yeah. He goes, oh, I'll work out. Like, you know, you'd be telling them, you'd be like, look, it's not, it's not there yet, but just, you know. Yeah.

And then people are like, this is so bad you can't be a librarian anymore. Yeah. And you're so bad at writing that you can't even store books. Yeah. Go back to where you came from. Apollonius of Rhodes. Probably Rhodes. That's where he went from.

That's where he went back. And that's probably also how he'd get there. Yeah. I had a good time with that. Maybe it's because I'm the only one who can see that it's spelled R-H-O-D-E-S. So there was a change there. Maybe for you guys, it wasn't a flip. Okay, we've also got Eritostanies of Cyrene.

He was the first scholar to apply mathematics to geography and mapmaking. and in his treaties concerning the measurement of the earth, he calculated the circumference of the earth and was only off by less than a few hundred kilometers. Whoa. That's amazing. And that is amazing? I mean,

I mean, it still sounds like a lot of kilometers, but I think back in those days when all you could, you know, when all you had was just like, you're just looking at the, you're kind of just looking at the world and just going, yeah,

like that. Like I think that's so pretty good. Like in his finger, fill in the braids. Yeah. Like this. looking up at the sun, looking at the ground. Just thinking about what's your favourite number and writing it down.

Yeah, that's right. But also, he just had all day to think about it because they'd taken away their daily struggles, their grinds. Exactly. I'm guessing they're having food made for them. Yeah. This sounds great. I don't know why more countries don't do this. They go, we're going to be a haven for the arts.

You come here, or even not country, city, like smaller city, states, or whatever, they go, you come here, you'll be looked after, you create, we're going to build up the new library of Alexandria. Why don't we do? I think if Kuda wins the mayor of Melbourne, Kuda the ex-cultural is currently campaigning for the... I think that that's the kind of thing that Kuda, I mean a man with Greek heritage himself. Of course, is Kuda pushing for a new library of Alexandria? to be built in a moment. I don't know that for sure, but I assume I haven't read, I haven't read his, his platform.

I don't actually live inside of his, uh, in, in, in the city of Melbourne itself. Right. So you won't get to cast a vote, but you aren't pushing for Cuda. Yes. If he is indeed pushing for the library himself. Yeah. I think he should make the city of Melbourne some sort of a haven for artists. Yeah, make it Melbourne, Alexandria.

Alexandria again. Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, Kuda, Kuda is a beautiful name for like an ancient Macedonian scholar. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Strabo and Kuta. Strabbo and Kuda. Yeah. Because it's all named Kudafetes, but. Oh, this is Anthony Kuttafeetis, yeah. I thought it was going to be Kudamundra. I think Strabo's full name is Stratafetes, isn't it? Oh, yeah. Strabbees. I thought it'll stradamundra. Now, I got one more guy who worked there, and then I'll just talk about it a little bit. We got Aristophanes of Byzantium. That's a big one.

He, during his time there, he edited poetic texts, and I can tell you what, he probably did one of the most amazing things. He introduced the division of poems into separate lines on the page. Oh, my God. Doing God's work. Yeah, that makes it much easier. Previously, they had been written out just like prose. They're just like, here you go. He's a blocker poem.

Oh, that's not good. As in, it was just pros. It was just pros, yeah, yeah. And then, well, that's probably why they call the Homer, the epic poem, because they just hadn't learned how to, but then imagine printing that with, with all those line breaks. And then just the whole stop being invented yet? I don't know. I don't know when the full stop.

I mean, I use some in this document that I wrote out. Yeah. But I don't know if it's been invented now. Yeah. But we don't know between now and then when it came in. It could have been yesterday. Yeah. I have no idea what the punctuation the ancient Greeks had. David, this guy invented the space bar.

Well, the Egyptians might have had just like a photo of a dog and that meant stop. Stop, end of sentence. Oh, that's true. You know, or like a pharaoh or something like that. And that meant, oh, this is the beginning of a sentence. Which is where the saying get a dog up here comes from. It means, well, I'll put a stop to this. That's right.

I think that's what put a dog up you next. Yeah, Egyptian phrase. Yeah. I don't think the space, he didn't invent the space bar either. He invented the enter button. Yeah, enter. Otherwise, if he invented the space bar, that is an inefficient way of going about it. Return, return, return.

Neil Armstrong invented the space bar. Is that true? I guess you couldn't have done that from Earth. No. Are you sure it wasn't Yuri Gagarin? The first man in space? It could have been, yeah. Well, but he didn't speak English, so that's probably...

Oh, true. This was probably a Cosmo bar. Yeah. But it's that epiphany that astronauts have when they go up into space and they see the Earth as a little marble by itself like that. And then they have an epiphany. It's often just new forms of punctuation and ways of writing and things like that. I think QWERTY was up there, wasn't he? Gary Quirty?

Yeah, he went up with John Dvorak. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. All right. Well, now, so the library just was just collecting books and books and books and books. right and so they would they were trying to get they were i mean the this was they had basically uh they invented the idea of the universal library something that would have all the knowledge and so they

would have like they would try to they tried to acquire all of plato's writings aristotle's works they got had some of euclid stuff you know i mean i was hoping to do another episode which is uh lit for euclid um that's next year it's a foundational text in mathematics um we got pythagoras's Hippocrates's medical texts. They had the epic poems. A lot of this stuff was just poems. Like, you know, like, they were like, at some point, they're like, oh, when this new head of the library came up, it just advanced the world of literary criticism by, you know, centuries.

Like, this is the kind of stuff that they would happen here. So they would have, you know, Homer stuff, uh, Hesiod stuff. You know, they would have, eventually they got the, all the scrolls. from Pergamams library. They have, you know, works from the Persians and the Babylonians, Egyptians. Do they have any of John Grisham's novels? They had a couple of Grishams. They had a couple of Tom Clancy's.

Yeah, great. Oh, they got have some popular stuff too, you know, to get people in. Absolutely. Epic's Jurassic. Oh, come on. Yeah. Michael Crichton. Michael Crichton.

I think at the time, I don't know. if it was open to everybody. I don't think that this is the way that it was. I think they were like trying to collect all the knowledge, but I don't know if just anybody could go in and borrow a book or borrow a scroll. Oh, right? They hadn't figured out the card system yet. Exactly. Yeah, they hadn't invented the card. They hadn't figured out the drop off slot yet. Yeah. Yeah. The library forgot about the drop-off slot. We need to figure out a system. As soon as we can figure out a After hours returning, we're going to start borrowing.

But at the moment, and that's when Pythagoras came up with Pythagoras's slot. Of course, that turned out to just be him sort of bearing his butt. Good people pushing scrolls into it. He's got weird methods, but he gets results. Yeah, but he could hold one scroll at a time. And so we could at that point, they could lend one scroll every day. if Barthagoras was available.

Which he also wasn't. Yeah. And so, yeah, I guess you get the point. They were trying to collect a lot of books, right? So they aim to collect all known knowledge, gathering works from Greece, Egypt. Now, after the battle of Raffia or Raphia in 217 BC, Ptolemaic power began to weaken uprisings among the Egyptian population and disruptions in upper Egypt became more common in the first half of the second

century. That's the one hundredths, right? B.C. B.C. Second, B.C. In response, later Ptolemaic rulers increasingly emphasized their Egyptian identity to try to maintain control. No, I'm like you. I'm an Egyptian, that kind of stuff like that. Look, I love the. The hugging cows. Look, look. I love this. Cows. Hey. Like you. They're getting tablets of them standing in front of the pyramids or with the sphinx and all that kind of stuff.

Saying all this stuff in a different language, though. Yeah, it's all through translators. I also love cows. Tell them. I'm telling that. I love your culture. My dad, it wasn't until tell them. Yeah.

And so, and then consequently, many Greek scholars left Alexandria for more stable regions with better patronage. So several of the later Ptolemy's used the position of head librarian as a mere political plum to reward their most devoted supporters. So Ptolemy the eighth appointed a man named Cytus. One of his palace guards is the head librarian. So you can see now like there's been a heyday. There's been a heyday. There's been a golden era of the library. Right.

And then suddenly, you know, it's like that thing when you kind of, when, when you go to a cafe that you really love and there's a sandwich or a meal that you love to get. And then somebody buys the cafe. And they still have that on the menu and they still make it. But they don't know all the reasons for why it was made exactly in that way. Yeah. And they're just, they're a new business person maybe. They're thinking maybe there's some ways that we could save some money instead of like hulumi cheese. I'll just put in some cheddar.

or something like that, you know, they find, there's things like that, you know, and, and the thing that you loved, you just slowly see it change as it does. Yeah, the halumi cheese. But you know what I mean? Like it's slow, it looks kind of the same, but it slowly becomes shitter and shitter. And that's kind of what's happening is the people who had created the library and had the passion for this knowledge and had the passion for building this thing and whatever pride they had that it would make them look good next, you know, compared to Athens and all that kind of stuff. Those people are gone and they're, you know, they're like 100, 200 years ago. And now the people who've got are just like, whatever, this fucking library that we got will just put the, my palace guard

as head librarian, who gives a shit? Yeah. So the palace guard wasn't like secretly a book lover. No, I don't think so. Yeah, yeah. People who didn't even give, give a shit at all. Right. And then in 48 BC, so a lot of time is passing. Julius Caesar enters the story. A guy called Pompeii and Julius Caesar were fighting as part of a larger power struggle within the Roman Republic, which culminated in a civil war. Now, after the battle of Farsalus, Caesar pursued the defeated Pompeii to Alexandria. He had just, you know, his army had lost Pompeii's had, and he went back to, he, no, he went to Alexandria to try to escape.

And when he arrived in Alexandria in the late 48 BC, where he hoped to find sanctuary, however, the political situation in Egypt was itself unstable with a young Pharaoh, Ptolemy the, oh, was that the 13th? And his sister, Cleopatra the 7th were vying for power. Right. So upon arriving, Pompei was betrayed. He was met by Ptolemy's advisors who feared Caesar's growing power and saw an opportunity to curry favor with him. So they deceived Pompey into thinking he would receive assistance. And then on September 28th, as Pompey stepped ashore, he was attacked and killed by Ptolemy's soldiers. His death was brutal.

His head was severed and presented to Caesar, who was absolutely horrified by that act. Was it really? No, thank you. I don't want this. No, no, like a cat bringing you a mouse. Yeah? For you. For you. For you. Because I love you.

Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. I guess I put this in the bin. Yeah, Caesar's response to Pompey's assassination was one of shock and disapproval. Although they had been rivals, Caesar had respected Pompey as a military leader and a former ally. The presentation of Pompey's head did not win favour. with Caesar, he reportedly turned away and disgust. And after that, Caesar found himself caught between Cleopatra and her brother, Ptolemy, who were vying to control Egypt. So, and so then Caesar's sort of

sided with Cleopatra. And now the Egyptians, who under Ptolemy, the 13th command, made efforts to seize Roman ships in the harbor, threatening Caesar's ability to receive reinforcements or supplies. So in response, Caesar ordered the burning of these ships and other ships in the dockyards. This action was partly defensive as his forces were too small to protect the entire harbor area. But it was also during this episode that some sources like Plutarch and Cassius Dio suggest that the fire may have spread potentially damaging parts of the Library of Alexandria. Whoa. No, Julius Caesar, no. That's a powerful fire.

Yeah. So part of the city, they say, started to burn after the boats were burning. Now, some people are saying that it's just like some parts. Like, I mean, this is where when people talk about the library of Alexandria was burnt, this is when they think it happened. This is when they think the whole thing was destroyed. But according to, you know, written evidence that's left over, it may have just been abridged. the library, right? So it was just made smaller. It's just a bit of a singe. Yeah, it was a bit of a singe, you know, they might have lost like 40,000 books. So it might have been a budget thing. It's the new abridged version of the library. Yeah, he's just shown up. He's like, I'm liking a few changes. I mean, he's not even leader of this area. He's just, I mean, he's the leader of the Roman Empire. But anyway, he's, they're still, they're still Macedonians and, you know, When you said, sorry, when you said Cleopatra the 7th, that is like Cleopatra, Cleopatra? I believe that that is our, our girl, Cleopatra.

Yeah. We did an episode on her, but I didn't remember there. She was Cleopatra the seventh. Oh, I remember last week on the Alexander the Great episode, his dad married a Cleopatra. And then there was so many Cleopatra's. Yeah, I didn't realize that was a direct bloodline or something. Like, you know, a couple thousand years later, we say Cleopatra. we think of that woman.

Yeah. Yeah. Back there you say Cleopatra, which one? Which one? Be specific. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I mean, we're talking 13 Ptolemy's and seven Cleopatra's. I don't know if they had a lot of creativity in the names there. But also, yeah, this one is the one, you know, because whenever they show Cleopatra, they talk about her engaging with Caesar and Mark Anthony and stuff like that. So this is our, this is our gal. Now, part of the reason that we know. Mark Anthony is a bass player from Van Halen.

I may have got the name wrong. but I think that... No, Mark Anthony. Mark Anthony. Markle Anthony, maybe. Yeah, Mark Anthony. His base has Jim Beam in it. Really?

Yeah. Wow. Wow. Was it from Dave pouring it out onto his... I was trying to ruin his balance. And he did. So part of the reason that we know that the library survived is because a guy called Didamus chalcenterous, a scholar.

Chalcinty. Some of those knives are so good. Who was a scholar in Alexandria. He earned his nickname Bronze Guts. That's great. For his amazing stamina and dedication to writing books. And he apparently wrote between 3,500 and 4,000 books, making him the most prolific writer of antiquity.

Wow. Yeah, I mean, they must have sucked. I mean, yeah. Is he writing? And today I'm sitting on a chair. Done. Next. Next book.

Well, but they also nicknamed him the book forgetter because he couldn't recall most of his works. The book forgetters. Because there's too many. And three and a half thousand. That's just unbelievable. Yeah. But just quickly, that's going to be Van Halen heads out there, furious.

It's a Jack Daniels base. Oh, right, right. Thank you. Thank you for fixing the. What do you think? As a bass player, Dave, what do you think of that? That looks like it would sound awesome. It's like the bottle is the bit where the pickups and where you play and then a neck just comes out of the bottle and extends it's very, it's very good.

Is it just a Jim Beam body? Like, sorry, a Jack Daniels bottle body. Yeah. It's so funny. I pictured it having liquid bourbon inside of it. It does not. It's just an illusion. Oh my God, I feel betrayed.

Yeah, it's just a branded thing. I feel betrayed by my bad memory. It's okay. It's, I mean, like, maybe it's full at the beginning of the night and then he drinks from his guitar throughout the night. Would that be the most badass thing ever? Yeah. I don't think you're playing much badder ass than that.

A bad, then like a straw coming out and just sipping through a straw while he's playing. He's sipping while he's doing a solo. with his teeth, you know what I mean? A bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. Lava bass solo. Hey, they happen. I mean, promise. I know, they do happen.

I'm being a bit facetious there. That was, that was very facetious. I was being a little too facetious. No, that was. I love a bass solo. There's some really good ones. I've seen some of them. Live with my own eyes and ears.

What about the one in always? steal my kisses in the Ben Harper one. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, do, do, don't, do, do, do do do do do do. Oh, that is a good one. That is a good one. That's awesome.

Yeah, what about the intro to, um, uh, That Metallica song from the Metallica song from, um, the Metallica album. Well, you know, that one, it starts with the, starts with the bass side. Do that one. Go on. No, no, no, no, no.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not really. That's not really solo, though, it's a risk. It's a risk. Right in if you know, if you recognize that from. description. I'd love to hear. Yeah, so old bronze guts, one of the reasons that we know why the library wasn't destroyed from that fire, Caesar fire, is that parts of his 3,500 or 4,000 books, the commentaries have survived and are key sources for modern scholars on earlier Alexandrian scholars. His, because it's like a lot of the stuff that we know about the

library comes from things that people have written and then other library has been copied and gone to other libraries, right? So there's not like, this is where all knowledge was. There were lots of libraries all throughout sort of the Hellenic, or Henelistic empire, right? And so all these places, you know, in Athens, in Asia Minor. Oh, yeah. I don't know, you know, I don't know why I find that to be funny, but I think it's just Turkey. Anyway, so then there's that. And then one of the most famous acquisitions attributed to the Library of Alexandria was 200,000 scrolls from the Library of Pergamum. According to Plutarch, Mark Anthony supposedly gave Cleopatra these scrolls in the years leading up to the Battle of Actium, although this is also debated. The Pergamum Library was a major rival to the Library of Alexandria, and its text presented a highly prestigious addition to Alexandria's holdings and may have given have been given because Caesar had accidentally burned a bunch of the collection. All right.

And that's nice for a rival library to be like, hey, we heard about the fire. Here's 200,000 scrolls from our library to sort of bolster your collection. Exactly. I think it's a really nice thing. Yeah. Now, you can see the kind of things have started to like fall apart a little bit more. There's more like uprisings. There's more like there's, you know, the Romans are starting to come down, right?

But then there's also other reasons why a library. would start to be in decline over time, right? Firstly, the scrolls are made of papyrus. Now, papyrus, as a writing material from days long past comes from a plant of the same name, right? And the papyrus plant just was like a, was cultivated along the Nile Delta region in Egypt, and was collected for its stem, which had a central pith that you could just slice up into thin slices and then mush it together and then dry it out to form a smooth, thin writing surface, right? But these things, they're like really fragile. Like even though that they still find some occasionally that like have survived somewhat, right?

But they can only really read through like x-rays and that kind of stuff like that. Those were found in like really dry places. This is like like Alexandria is super humid. It's like right on the river. And the library was likely right on the river itself. as well. So these things would just like, in order for this to keep existing, they would have to continuously be copied, which means that if the funding wasn't coming in to hire scholars to keep funding it, then this stuff wasn't getting copied. And so at most these things would

last like 100 years. And then they would just deteriorate. And then like there was even like a story about like when Aristotle died, he obviously bequeathed his own library to Theophrastus. who then bequeathed his thing to, who do you need to bequeath it to? He bequeathed it to Neelius, who bequeathed it to sepsis, who bequeathed it to his heirs, just regular people,

who then kept the books all locked up, but not even carefully stored. So then at some point when they heard that like the Adelaide kings were coming to the city, we're searching for books to build up their library, they hid their books underground in a kind of trench. And then much later,

when they got the books out, they were all been damaged by moisture and moths. And so then, but then their descendants sold them to, uh, to somebody for a large sum of money, but both the books, hey, dimmicks? Yeah, that's right. Borders, borders, which eventually filed unfortunately. And they're lost forever. Yeah. And no, but then he, he sold them. And then the, this guy, a Pelican who got it, who was a bibliophile, but not a philosopher. And he, when he found them, they were like full of holes and stuff. They'd all been eaten. And so then he tried to make new copies of the text, but he just filled up the gaps incorrectly. Like, he didn't...

He just had a go. He just had a go. And so then these were then copied and then used in the future, but they were published and full of errors. So this is the other problem with these kind of things, is that they're perishables, right? And so then... And every fourth word is absolute gibberish. Yeah. You know, and so then what, what are you keeping? Like, you're just keeping this thing that is like and a barely indecipherable or barely decipherable kind of code. So then after Egypt fell under Roman rule, things are even less known about the library of Alexandria and what happened as it gradually declined alongside the city.

Emperor Claudius is recorded to have added to the library a bit, but after Alexandria came under Roman rule, both the city and the library's prominence waned. So membership of the museum was no longer based scholarly achievement, but rather on just political or military distinction. Again, it's just giving it, you know, giving cushy gifts to guys that you like. And the last known head librarian during this period was Tiberius, Claudius Balbulus, a politician with no scholarly background. Other libraries in Alexandria and throughout the Mediterranean gain prominence, further diminishing

the library status. By the second century AD, Alexandria scholarship lost its former renown and the term Alexandrian came to imply dullness and lack of originality. Whoa. Yeah. Isn't that funny, the cycle things go through? Yeah, it was like the center of world knowledge and later's like, oh, dull. But it always, it always comes back. That happens like in life cycles of bands and stuff, you know, they go through that dip.

They're uncool, like 20 years out, but 30 years out, they're legends. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. And they start touring their, they're. their albums in full. Yeah. And this is kind of like 500 years after this thing was started. So, I mean, like, they had a good run. I don't know any libraries that have really lasted that long. Of course, I live in very young country. So, but this, you know, that meant, maybe there are

actually, maybe a lot of libraries. No, no, there's no libraries in Australia that are 500 years old. What am I talking about? All right. Sorry, this is going back a moment ago, but is Tiberius one of the great names? It's such a powerful name. It's so good. Yeah. And, and it's a, It's actually quite amazing that it hasn't made a huge resurgence. Like, that is one of those names that has got to be on the cusp of being used a lot because people will realize it's like, this is a strong, an incredible, powerful name like that. And nobody uses it. That's right.

And it'll be the right person. And it'll come back with a flood. Yeah. But like the, I mean, it could be one of those like, if that's your name, no, you don't need to have a last name. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a mononym. You are, you're Beyonce. You're Rihanna.

Which, you're Tiberius. Tiberius. TIE is, I think Tires are pretty good shortening for it if you need it to sound, you know, if you don't want to be so out there and obviously powerful sometimes. You know, if you want to blend into the university chute, you probably go by TIE. Yeah. But if you want to, if you want to run for a student. body council, which I think they're doing in Canada. Is there? Tiberius. V-1 Tiberius.

I mean, you know, because we almost gave my kid's first name, almost called them Augustus. Oh, yeah. That's in the same world. It's powerful. It is in the same world. But then I was like, it's kind of, it's almost too, it's almost too powerful. Put it in the middle name. Oh, yeah. So we made it the middle name. I put the, I put the name that I don't have the guts to give my kid as a first name. I put that in the middle name. The second kid's middle name is Duke. Duke is fantastic as well. That's great too. That's the bar that

Dukes is where Fraser's dad would go to. I'll be at Dukes. Just going to see the fellows down at Dukes. Yeah, that's cool. Is that way you got it from? I'm sure you got it from there. Yeah, I picture people come and just having a couple of drinks with my kid.

Because your second child's first name is Frasier. Is that right? Frazier Dukes. Dr. Frazier Dukes. Dr. Fraser Duke. I think Tiberius is also, it's untainted by the work of Roald Dahl. And like Augustus Gloop, because I think when I hear Augustus, I think Gloop. Yeah, well, Gloop was the other name we were trying to choose.

We were going to call my kid. Gloop is fantastic. I really, Augustus Gloop. But I think that's maybe why Augustus is so good. it can go both ways. Yeah. It's like, Oh,

August is so powerful and big. But it's also gloopy. Yeah. Yeah. It gets more German, it gets more German with the gloop, I think. Yeah, that's right. Augustus bloop.

Yeah. You can see the leader hosen, kind of. Like, you can hear it, yeah. I think I'm picture, I'm here,

the name Augustus Gloop, but I'm picturing Uda from the Simpsons. Yeah, me too. Yeah. That's good. That's how powerful that name is. The library's reputation continued to decline and references to it disappeared by the mid-third

century 80. That's to 200s. Oh, man. And isn't this, this is the worst thing, right? They'd be like, oh, actually, it was better when you were saying bad things about it. It'd be talked about badly than not at all or whatever that's saying. Yeah, that's the worst thing, isn't it? And isn't this a weird time for a library to decline?

The Bible should be, the Bible's, you know, all that stuff's happened now. New Testament's out? I would have thought that would have been a bit of a revival. Bringing new people in, like when Harry Potter first came out, you know, it's bringing in the new readers. Yeah. I assume that New Testament came out about 34 AD. I think it came out pretty quick, didn't it?

Yeah, they brought out a year to work on it. Straight on the presses. Yeah. To just polish it off. I mean, there was like 12 of them working on it, right? Yeah, I think that's right. It was like a group project and like, oh, I'll write a couple of books. You write a couple of books.

So it's just they're all writing like a... Yeah. But their problem was their name, they were all like meekly named Thomas and Paul and Matthew. You know, they needed a Tiberius to grab it by the balls. Yeah. Yeah. Problem was that of Judas, which is probably the strongest name. Of course.

He was, yeah. Well, I think the, uh, the ancient, the ancient, uh, Hebrew Bible was translated at this library into Greek. And, you know, how earlier I was talking about that maybe some of the stuff that was the references to of the library were were maybe made out of like propaganda. There was an element in which that is linked to that. It was trying to get, it was like written by Jewish people pretending to be sort of like, you know, not like, you know, maybe like a pagan or, you know, whatever. And and trying to convince sort of Greek Macedonian Jews who are embracing Greek lifestyle to try to like follow the, the, the, the, the rules of, of sort of the,

the Jewish Bible a bit more strictly. So it was like writing of, hey, yeah, so I don't believe in the whole Jewish Bible thing. But I've just read and they're writing this. But, you know, I think it's got some really good ideas in there. Yeah. It's like a super important book. Yeah. I don't even care about this stuff.

And, like, it's like such a good. book that I think that we should like abide by its dietary rules really strictly. It's literally like a thing like that. It was written like 200 years. Like me putting up a blog going, hey, yeah, I don't really follow any football teams or anything, but they're St. Kilda football team. I think they got some really good ideas and I think they might. I think you should, if you don't have a team, maybe they're a good team to barrack for. Yeah, it's, it's like something that I would have done like, you know, 15 years ago on Reddit and been like,

man, I just found this great comedian. So original. Yeah. He's like, he's like doing cool stuff on the Melbourne scene. You know, and then just posted a video on myself.

Like, a few years in. I'm really, I think he's, yeah, he seems to be going around the open marks a bit. I'd keep my eyes peeled for him. Yeah, that wouldn't even been one year and that would have been like, I would have been like five months in.

You wrote the first joke the same day you started marketing yourself. Exactly. I was, I performed it, recorded it and was ready to blow up. Send it straight to Lorne Michaels. I do remember a guy I met in Melbourne one time telling me, yeah, I tried comedy. Did it for a month, but I couldn't catch a break. So I quit. That's very fun. Honey. Anyway, all right, so...

I hope he's going through his whole life like that. Yeah. I tried studying medicine, but, uh, you know, I did it for a month. They wouldn't let me do surgeries, so... So, forget it. Try something else. But he's, uh, he's since thrived in real estate. A bit of fun.

That is good. Um, the library's reputation continued to decline and references to it disappeared by the mid third century. AD, the library and the museum were likely destroyed during the Roman Emperor Oralians recapture of Alexandria in 272 AD with further destruction during Diocletian siege in 297 AD. Now, whenever they say that they've destroyed this thing, they don't, you know, there's never a record of whether or not they saved the books or they saved the, you know, like they saved the scrolls and stuff like that. I think maybe even at this period, there would have actually been books now.

at this point now the Romans are there, like regular books that you would recognize that open and close, that kind of thing. But that even you would recognize. You would recognize as a book. I feel it's time like you. But also like Alexandria had, you know, multiple libraries. Two of them were great. One was the great library of Alexandria that we've been talking about. And that one kind of has like a daughter library that is known as the surferralian.

Serapium, which was just a smaller thing that was also maybe like a pagan temple. And so things may have been moved into there. And then later on, when Alexandria was like invaded by the, I think the Byzantines, the final fate of the Library of Alexandria remains uncertain. But with several theories about its destruction, one of the most notable incidents was a decree by the emperor theophilus. Oh, Theophilus Thistula? It must be. You remember that song? Simon and a son.

I love it. 3,000 Thistles. That's the second time that song's come up in the last month. I can't believe it. Yeah. I can't believe Theodore lives on, but Theophilus doesn't. Yeah, Theophilus. Another fantastic name.

Bring it back. Tiberius and Theophilus. If I have twins, I'm committing now. And you know what? Agamonon. Beautiful night, boy. Gil. Giamamonon.

Agamemnon. Aggie, little aggie. Aggie. Aggie. You know, there are definitely people listening right now, late stages of pregnancy. Yes. Running through their lists and they're, I reckon they're putting lines through everything they've got so far and starting again.

That's right. Eric? No way. Eric, why have Eric when you're going to have Agamemnon? Exactly. Or Ifienia. Oh. So one of the most notable incidents.

was the decree by Emperor Theophilus in 391 AD, which led to the destruction of many pagan temples possibly affecting the remnants of the library. The accounts point to later invasions and political upheaval contributing to its demise. By the sixth century, little remained of the once great institution. Just this idea that they keep getting hit and they're like, no, we think that there's still a bit left. We think the books might have been saved. we think, you know, things like that. But despite its physical loss, the library's intellectual legacy lived on through the works and ideas preserved by scholars elsewhere, influencing future generations of learning in both the Islamic world and the medieval Europe. And this

account, it went in, when in 642 Muslim troops took over Egypt, I believe this was the Byzantines or the, like, you know, yeah, the conquering general was told by a Christian man of letters of the needs to protect the books, the general said, well, if their content is in accordance with the book of Allah, we may do without them, for in that case, the book of Allah more than suffices. If, on the other hand, they contain matter not in accordance with the book of Allah, there can be no need to preserve them. Proceed then and to destroy them. Heads win, as Owen tells you lose. All right, this guy.

Yeah. Why, why go through the speech? Just say we're burning. Yeah. And then like this, I think this is considered a myth. I'm not sure. But they say, and then the books were sent to Alexandria's 4,000 bathhouses. There, they say that it took six months to burn all that mass of material.

Hot baths for everyone. I didn't like, do you think they were sent there to protect them to stop the invaders from burning them? or they just divvied it up and said, take them to the bathhouse and then burn them there. Like to heat the baths, heat the water. Yeah, I think that they were, yeah, I think that they, that's what the, that's what the general was saying. Oh, he's like, guys, we've got, we've got kindling for months. This is awesome. I think that, is this papyrus?

Is that a good, is that a good burner? I mean, I guess if it's been dry for a bit, but I have more, unless, but unless they've been really, the really wet scrolls. Oh, yeah. You know, you got your wet scrolls. I mean, you know, but yeah, I mean, I mean, I imagine most. do burn pretty good if you dry them out. Although I did see, I did see somebody put a hot metal ball on a pineapple skin and it couldn't

burn through. Al, I'll say this, I've seen someone put a hot metal ball on every possible surface or object. Okay, is this a series? It's just in the algorithm. You watch one of them, you're going to get all of them. Some of them are so unsatisfying, like that pineapple one. I'm like, I don't, yeah. I guess I've learned something here, but it wasn't satisfied.

Yeah. It's like there's a red hot ball versus. Oh, the dream outcome is that it will melt through it. Yeah, like if they do it on a candle, bloody satisfying to watch that. Colorful candle. Good fun. Okay. Or they put it in a thing of oil and it bubbles. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. Or like in something that like some chemical that you don't know and it just foams and it just does all sorts of, because it does that. Yeah. And then people will call it. comment things below like, me after I had a certain restaurant's food recently or I miss a better call or stuff like that. Yeah.

Everything makes me think of her. And that's the thing. And that's, they do those two jokes under everyone, basically. And every time it's, it's fantastic. It's really funny actually every single time.

It's actually, sometimes he put it in like a few jokes that works even better every time. Yeah. It's like, you put it in quite a thick thing. It kind of, that makes it like a, kind of like...

Yeah. That one is so good. That's always good. That is the best. So, uh, in conclusion, um... You know, like all things... I just want to think that people like real academic types are, oh, interesting.

The history of the, uh, the great library of Alexandria. Hmm, yeah, this might be the one I listened to. They wouldn't have got this far, but it would be fun to think of them. finally turning off when Al's doing that sound. I do hope that like if humanity has to end, and there's only a few documents that do survive, if this is the only document of the Great Library of Alexandria, and it's just gone from,

well, this hot ball, it melts heaps of stuff too. But not punition. Then it makes a farty sound. So, in conclusion, it genuinely like it seems like all the stuff that they say about you know this thing being burnt and destroyed and they lost the world's knowledge like it seems like the whole time knowledge was being swapped with other libraries scholars that were there went to other libraries while things were buildings may have been destroyed you know documents may have been saved

I think a lot of stuff was probably lost I mean we don't have that much recording that many recordings of information about the library itself, but it wasn't because it was burnt. Mostly, it was just because things deteriorated. The funding, yeah, the funding went away. People didn't care. And things are just, information is just lost nonstop along the way. And we just didn't have the ability to store things and save things properly. And so unfortunately, it's not some big conspiracy and it's not a fun story and we may we may not have been even ahead you know i mean we have the we have the archimedes screw and it's just not helping you know just not getting this thing we have the placegorous slot you know livers around the

world have that so that that but that does help that does help yeah but yeah it is like like with Most things like that, if that, if everything was brought on by a thousand years, we wouldn't be here. Nothing would be the same. Hmm. Yeah. So is that better or worse? I don't know. Yeah.

Well, you'd be doing, if you would be doing something else right now, not listening to this very podcast. That's got to be worse, surely. You know? I meant we wouldn't be alive. But yeah, we certainly wouldn't be here. Yeah, yeah. You meant like humanity would be completely different. It would be like your mom and dad wouldn't have met.

Yeah. Probably they wouldn't have been alive because their mum and dad wouldn't have met. Yeah. You know, it's almost like a butterfly flapping its wings. Okay. So you're glad that a lot of the scrolls got burned. I don't know. That's what I'm not sure.

I mean, if I never existed, maybe everything would be better than this. Okay. I don't know. But you've just got to accept what it is and this is what it is. It is Al making fart noises down the line. from Montreal to Melbourne and into your beautiful ears, this block, dear listener.

Dear listeners. Oh, we can thank the great library for that. It's interesting, Al, that you said that some people think that it never even existed, but it sounds like there's so many references to it over the centuries. Like, surely it's got to have at least been something there. Yeah, they think that maybe there was just no individual building. It might have just been all the museum, museum. And, you know, and like, you know, it's...

The scrolls might have just been held a lot in just like storage, you know, bunkers of some sort. So they're like, it's, uh, technically the library never existed. It was the museum of Alexandria. Yeah. I think like that old definitions of Greek word, the bibliotech, you know, can just mean a collection of books. And bibliotech is the word for library.

Right. That we use. Yeah. Is it possible that there was an Alistair, like person back then on Reddit going, geez, what a great library we have here in Alexandria. Yeah, we should all check that out, that library. I mean, part of the reason that the rulers were creating it, these Ptolemaic people were, was so that they could like gain, you know, make their city look incredible and make themselves look good compared to, you know, Athens and the Greek

empire that was around at the time and things like that. So there is, I think, elements of that where they do try to make themselves look good. Yeah. And if that's true, then it's true, right? It did make it look good. And if it's not true, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know what's true, you know? But I mean, they had all that knowledge at their fingertips, you know, all the world's knowledge and they still couldn't come up with that many kid names.

It was all just Ptolemy and Cleopatra. Yeah. Clear Pats is fantastic. Ptolemy, I don't know. Don't know about Ptolemy. Petolome, yeah. That's a weird one. Wow.

Oh, what a tale, Al, thank you so much for telling it. Al, thank you so much. I mean, it's been such a great opportunity to tell you, to tell you this tale from my parents' bedroom. And, Al, you, you are gig in regularly in Montreal and anywhere else, any, any gigs coming up that you want to tell people about. Where would you like people to come, apart from on the metro? Yeah. Where would you like people to come up and say, hey, I'm going. listen to you on, do go on recently. I mean, they can approach me on social media. They can approach

me in person. Everybody's been very nice. Um, if, if you run into me, approach me, it's fine. Um, and, but, but, but you can just find, you can just find, you can just come and listen to me on the two in the think tank podcast where I'm there with Andy Matthews and we're just, we keep plugging away at this, just finding sketch ideas, you know. Have you got to count on how many there are together. I guess that wouldn't be too hard to find out because it's five per episode. Well, it's worth of the time. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. But we could come up with a minimum. We could come up with a minimum. Just a quick like elevator pitch or whatever of what the show is for people who don't know it. It's me and Andy Matthews. And we're mostly talking. But we're, so we're, we do talk about everything.

But we're also, our goal is to come up with sketch ideas. We are like it. like these gentlemen who are here with me, we are creators of comedy. And this is the fun part where you come up with ideas and when the ideas could be anything. And it's a fun journey. We have a lovely fan base and Discord

that also like to participate on there as well. It's just a fun little old time. It's become, you know, at first it was just a dumb little thing, but I feel it's almost like my life's work now. Yeah, yeah. This is your bibliotech. This is your library of Alexandria. Exactly. A bunch of stuff that at some point, you know, some network will crumble,

will go out of business and then I will lose everything and I'll go. In conclusion, I'm dead. Well, as we say goodbye to Alistair, it's so nice to say hello, Jess Perkins. Hello! So good to have you here. You were feeling poorly when we recorded with Al, but a few days have by now. Yeah. And you were back in the saddle.

I'm better. You've had a rough trot. I've had a little bit of a rough trot. But that's all entirely my fault. It's bad karma for being a not good person. I thought you're going to say for having a beautiful holiday. But no, you're, because you were allowed a holiday. I'm allowed a holiday.

That's fine. But you're not allowed to be a bad person. I came back from holiday and we sort of we got back into the swing of working and stuff. And then one day we all got here to work ready to record. it and I was like, I have to go. I'm really sick. And then I got sick again after that. So that's calmer.

Is it our smell that's making you sick? Well, I was vomiting violently. So I think, yes. It definitely wasn't a reaction to new medication. Okay. It was definitely your stench. And the only person we could get to replace you was from Canada. Yeah.

The only person that could stand to be in a room with us wasn't in the room at all. Yeah. You were meant to be on with him. It was going to be all four of us. Yeah. Luckily, we can operate at three. Yeah. That's how versatile we are.

We cannot operate at two. Two is probably not enough, unless it's a Patreon bonus episode. Patreon is fine? And they can handle it. And I often find those episodes really fun when it's just me and you, Jess, or me and Dave or Dave and Jess, and I'm asleep. You love those ones. I love those ones, especially.

All right. Well, Jess, if you've forgotten in your absence, This is the part of the show where we thank some of our fantastic Patreon supporters. And if you want to be one of these supporters, you can go to patreon.com slash do you on pod, sign up on any level. And you're supporting this show. You're keeping it going. We really appreciate everyone who does that. Literally, there's no show without you.

And, I mean, that's also true for the listeners who can't afford to do that. I'm not trying to put the hard word on you. No, no. So in this little section, we spend 12. 20 to 40 minutes, sometimes longer, to thank our great Patreon supporters. And the first way we do that is for people on the Sydney-Shaunberg level or above, they get to give us a fact-quoted question. This section shows actually called fact-quot-a-question.

I think it has a jingle go somewhere like this. Fact-quote or question. He always remembers the ding. You have been soon. She always remembers the sing. It fell off a bit there. It was flat and then it just fell away. I fell off.

You thought, I can save this. I could save this. With some vibrato. That saves everything. All right. So for this one, if you're on the Sydney-Shaunberg level or above, you get to give us a fact quote or question or a bragger suggestion or really, whatever you like.

And then you also get to give yourself a title. The first one this week comes from Drew Forsberg, aka, oh, please, Mr. Hans is my father's name. Just call me Hans. Incredible. And Hans has a fact writing, contrary to convention. wisdom, U-G-L-Y has been successfully utilized as an alibi in an innumerable number of court cases the world over. How about that?

Do you know that? Really? Wow. Wow. That is fascinating. Thank you so much for bringing that. I really, I took that song as gospel. Yeah.

You ain't got no alibi. Yeah. You ugly. You ugly. You ugly. Yeah. Thank you so much for bringing that to our. attention. Murray Somerville comes in next, aka Triptitch Club Artist Liaison, with a question

writing, hey, legends. First off, massive thanks for all the laughs over the years. You lot of the best. Hey, Murray, quick thank you back to you for your great artwork on our Christmas card last year. Yep. And for the Who New It with Matt Stewart logo. And our Europe tour poster. Yeah. Oh, my God. That's Murray's fantastic work. Murray's a very talented artist. Thank you so much, Murray. And those are, Murray, and we've already got your permission for this, for those posters will be for sale at the live shows in Europe. Yes. It's a piece of art. You want to frame that. We're going to frame it and put on our office wall for sure. Absolutely. Just has already suggested getting white markers for the signing. Is that right? Yeah. Or silver, white. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out.

I'll go to office work. But yeah, love your work, Murray. Marry's got a question. Do any of you have a dressing room or catering writer when you tour? If not, what would be on your dream rider? Marry, thank you. So much for assuming we're at a level where anybody gives a shit or that we ever have dressing rooms. The times we've done London in the past. Oh, yeah. There's like a actual theatre.

And it's got a grand piano. That dressing room's bigger than my apartment. Yeah. And it has a baby grand in it. It's got a kitchen. It's got like, I think, three separate dressing areas, such toilets. It's awesome. Very nice.

We're not there this year. No. This year probably will have an even fancy one. Yeah, the grand. It's an even bigger, fancy venue. So I'm really hoping that that. And I'm wondering, no one's asked me yet about our rider. Well, if you need any thoughts or anything to inspire,

Murray is written, mine's pretty straightforward, a custom neon sign that says, you're killing it, mate. Yep, that's good. And a jar of vanilla jelly beans, because why settle for less, right? Vanilla jelly beans. I don't know they exist, but I like the sound of them. I'd have peanut butter M&Ms. They're my favourite too.

I love a soft drink, so, you know. whatever, whatever soft drink I'm going through a phase of at the time. At the moment, it's Sprite Zero. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. I'd ask for a sample of the local craft beers. Yep. And yeah, maybe can I have some of your peanut M&Ms?

No. Otherwise, all right, I'll get it. It's peanut butter M&Ms. I've heard that it's bad for your voice, but I would love a cheeseboard. Yeah, who'd go to cheeseboard. I've heard like, your dairy's not great for the vocal cords, but I'd love, love that. Or if we're going to extravagant enough to get our own. signs.

Thinking out away from food. Do you think, Jess, how do you feel about this? If we got in each city a dog that's the same breed and size of our dog. And that way we could maybe, you know, like feel like we're without,

so like I get a grudle that's about, you know, between 15 and 20 kilos, about this shade of colour. Yeah. I don't know if that's going to make you feel better or worse. I actually think, I think that's a really lovely idea in theory.

And then I think I just got to love more dogs. No, I'm going to get to this. venue and I'm going to meet this dog and be like, you're not fucking good. Yeah, that's right. All right, do you tricks, which you have none, but okay. I think you'll both fall in love with these dogs and it'll make every city leave even harder. Also, the, on the list is we get to keep the dog. Oh, yeah. So just piling up these dogs. By the end of our two are coming up, we'll have nine dogs. Or nine grudels and nine Frenchies

with us. Perfect. And nine craft beers. Nine sample of packs. It's a great question. I love that. Yeah, it's a great. it is. Sophie Tudor is up next saying, not telling you how to say it, Matt, you've got this. Yes, and I do know how to say. Dave always tries to correct me saying it's Shooter, but it's Tudor. I'm confident of that, although the way Dave's looking at me, I am down to my stuff again. You're right.

Back yourself. Sophie Tudor, aka Group Mum, also has a question. We'll see you soon, Sophie, or will we already be seeing you? No, we'll see you soon. This question is specifically for Matt. So if he's off today, please back. out of this slowly and save the point he's back. Well, I'm here, Sophie.

Matt, we all know your version of Stuart is the correct spelling and that Stuart with you is just wrong. But what do you think of my dad whose first name is S-T-E-U-A-R-T? S-T-E-U-A-R-T. It's like almost, it's so close. It's a mix between the right and the wrong way. Oh, all right? My brain filled in like the missing you.

My brain went W, yeah, so it's exactly the right. No, it's S-T-E single-U. Single-U. This is what they should call them. And I think, that's what I, if I ever run for government, that's going to be my single-issue policy. Yep. You should be renamed single-U.

What are this in French? W-V. W-V. Oh, that's what. For a W. Not a W-U, it's a double-V. Interesting. Not sure how I feel about that.

Anyway, Sophie continues, it's definitely not unique, but it is far more interesting slash frustrating than having a standard spelling. You might need to spell some of these out. Otherwise, you'll just sound like a crazy person. Yeah. Can't wait to see you slash have seen you on tour, happy block, or blow or Christmas, depending on how long this takes to get read. Well, I'll accept happy all of those. Yeah, I think you're right. I think that would be very frustrating to have that as a name.

Yeah. You'd have to, you'd probably eventually just be like, yeah, whatever. Or literally employ the use of single you. Like when you're spelling it over the phone or whatever. A single you? Oh my God, you're right. Because they do, they always ask me one or two T's if it's over the phone and I'm spelling my name or whether EW or you.

Right. You imagine he'd say it and they'd still write the W like you did, your brain auto-corrected. Yeah. But, yeah, I like it more than the other one because it's, slightly more correct. It's getting there. You know, the French have still bastardised the classic spelling, but, you know, you've taken a little back for the good guys.

From the French. The Scots. And yeah, Sophie, that was the final one there. So thank you so much to Sophie Murray and Drew for your fantastic tax quotes and questions. We appreciate you and we love you. The next thing we like to do is come up with a bit of a game. Jess normally does, which might be harder for years. You didn't hear that report, but we read out nine more patron names, and you normally

give us something to do it. It's a library. There was a lot, the library, I think at Al said it had a lot of different sort of sections. Yeah, okay, I like that. So maybe. Oh, yeah, the one was, we missed this from the bookshop, epic. Epic. Oh, that's good.

So it was like drama, comedy, epic. Yeah, I like that. Let's give them like a section of the library. Yeah, niche category. Yeah, I love it. or niche. Or like what people are looking for. People's coming up to them at the front desk of the library.

So I'm looking for a book on this. Yeah, great. All right, fantastic. Dave, how about for the first time you read out the place and I'll read out the name. Hey, let's do it. I'd like to thank from Athens in Georgia. It's Zanda Avery Wilson. Holy shit.

Zand Avery Wilson is looking for a book on, on house plants, specifically pet-friendly ones. Oh. Do pets sometimes eat the plants? Yeah, and they can be poisonous. Oh, so they're friendly for, I thought it was, I was thinking of the side of the plant. But it was. For the pet.

For the pet's health. I'm like, yeah, you don't want any sort of plants that the dogs are just going to eat. If dogs are going to ruin. Yeah. Yeah. That's so funny. I think that really does say a lot about you and me. I've just bought some plants.

for the spring. Got a couple of tomatoes, got a strawberry. Gorgeous. Got some corn. Oh. And some parsley. Interesting. Good combos there.

Yeah, we'd love to come over when you harvest. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Come over for the harvest day. We were looking for a sacrifice, so that works out well. I would like to take now from Leeds. It's Teigen Foley. Tegan Foley is looking for a book about,

how to maintain a 1965 Chevy. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's pretty niche. But the great library of Alexandria, if it did exist, has that book ready. Wow, that's a spoiler for me. We say book, but really it's a scroll. Scroll. Scroll.

When my mum worked in a library, they would have like car manuals for common cars, you know, Unis and Skyline, your Mitsubishi Lance or whatever. But one day someone came in and said, do you have one for a very specific Ferrari? Whoa. And my mum was a bit like, no, we don't have that. And honestly, if you can afford a Ferrari, you should probably pay a professional to look at it rather than just do your own work. Or buy the book. That's not a bad point.

As a middle-aged man, Jess, when you said maintainer, I'm like, it's one or two things. And a classic car was one of them. Are you calling me a middle-aged man? No, no, that's what mine. You said a maintainer. I thought the same thing that you, a middle-aged man thought. Well, I didn't mean like that. I may not actually be a middle-aged man, but I'm thinking like one.

That's not what I meant, but yeah. That's how I took it and I'm offended. I think you think she meant car when she said Chevy? I thought you just maintained a Chevy. Something I dream of. Anyway, I'd like to thank now from Coffs Harbor in New South Wales. I don't get it. It's Tarant Payne.

I was saying that a Chevy is a nickname for an erection. Got it. So, Taryn Payne. Tarynne, let's give you a full moment. I'm sorry, I spoke of you. And Dave has a heavy Chevy. I spoke over you, Taryn with the word of action. So I want you to have your time in the sun.

You are from Kossaba. Your name's Taryn Payne. You're fantastic. And you're looking for a... Now I've lost it. I had it. Oh, a book on first aid for dogs. Oh, and is that from the plant's point of view?

It's from the plant's point of view. Once the plant has poisoned the dog, how can it help the dogs? Yes, okay. Oh, that's great. Are you thinking about your dog right now? Yeah, miss him. Who else we got, Dave? I'd like to think from location unknown.

Oh. Probably deep within the fortress of the malls. Oh, okay. So they do look like they have a UK email. It's Noah Pompfrey. Forgot our system. Yeah. Noel Pomfrey, looking for a book on Dutch cooking.

Oh. Yeah. Dutch ovens, that sort of stuff. Dutch ovens. Fantastic. Poppour dees. Pankakes, etc. Yeah, Dutch tilt.

Yep. Which is like the camera angle you might use to capture you eating some Dutch cooking. Going Dutch, that's when you order one piece of Dutch food. When, you know what going Dutch means? It's like if you have a beer in between shouts, I think. I haven't a Dutchie because you're drinking faster than the shout. That's never a clever idea, I don't think. Who else we are, Dave?

I'd like to thank from London. Oh, London Town. Please and thank you. Catherine McGinn. Catherine is looking for a book on ancient Egypt. Whoa. Yeah. Which are they called Egypt.

They just called it Egypt. Nah, nah, nah, nah. No, honestly, that's how old Egypt is. By the time the library came around, they already had an ancient Egypt. That's how old it is. That's crazy. That's crazy. That's crazy.

Hey, I'd like to thank for another person from Leeds, Leeds, Leeds, Leeds, Leeds, it's Joe Tabiner. Joe Tabiner is looking for a book on coaster design. Whoa. Doyleys. Yeah. Non-doilified. Yeah, resin. Cork.

Cork, a classic, yes. Acrylic. Yep. Silicon. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. The options. Joe, you've got a lot of fun reading to do.

Volume 1. Yeah. I'd like to thank from Ipswich in Great Britain. It's Jasmine Emma. Jasmine is looking for a book from the For Dummies series. Yes. And it's Excel for Dummies. Oh, yeah.

That's tricky. That is hard. That is hard. I saw an ad for when Excel was launched recently. It was pretty fun. There's guys in an elevator going up to a meeting. And there's one guy, he's got his big laptop out. He's going, I've almost got this grid to show it out at our meeting.

And another guy's going, you'll never make it look meeting ready. It's not possible. We don't have time. He's like, and I touch these buttons, man, you're crazy. That's bail. Let's say you're sick. Tap, tap, tap. They're going up the layers, the levels.

I call them layers in a building. Yeah. It's like a sponge. He does it in time. He formats. This one tiny little grid. It's so, that's real fun to see how far we've come. Grid-wise.

How exciting. What a thrilling ad. That was. It was high octane. Now looking back at my grid of names here from Wallington in Great Britain. It's Paul Blaney. Paul Blaney. Paul Blaney. Planey is looking for a book on... Where's Wallington?

No. He knows. He lives there. It's looking for a self-help book. Yeah. To find where... how to connect with a troublesome teenage son. Oh, yep. The book is called He's Gonna Be Okay, which is a book my mother-in-law had when my husband was a teen.

Doesn't need it anymore though. And he is okay. The book works. So the book was true. So don't you worry, Paul. The book's going to be really helpful for you as well. On your, Paul. And finally, from us this week, we'll have to think from Nottingham.

Nottingham. This feels appropriate. Their name is Not Now, Jordan. Not now, Jordan. Not now. John's looking for a book on patience. You know? Yeah.

Comes from within. Again, it's like a self-help. Sally, there's a three-week wait. Not now. Thank you so much. Not now, Jordan. Paul, Jasmine, Joe, Catherine, Noah, Taryn, Tegan and Zander. The last thing we need to do is welcome a few people in the Triptitch Club.

We've got five inductees this week. Dave's really good to explain to what the triptage club is. It is our theatre of the mind. You've got to imagine yourself there. It is our clubhouse, our hall of phone. where people have been supporting the show on the shout-out level or above for three consecutive years. They've already had a shout-out, but now to enshrine them forever, we welcome them in, they're run on down, everyone's high-fiving them, we're going wild, and then they go inside,

their name gets put up on a wall, and they're in for life. That's new. Food, drink, beverages, accommodation, it's all covered. Food, drink and beverages, all three. And even pet food, bring your pets, why not? That's right. And, uh, just your behind the bar, what's your, um, What's your great library of Alexandria cocktail this week? We have got a drink called Iraq, which is a distilled spirit in the Anase family, so it would have a real good liquorish kind of. Love it.

A bit of Galliano-ish. Yeah, but different. But different. And then I've got like a falafel and... Oh, I love falafel. Yeah. Dave, you booked a band? You're never going to believe it.

What? I have booked... You've got the Bengals? No. Finding Alexandria or whatever that... What's that band called? Something Alexandria? Oh, they're asking Alexandria?

Asking Alexandria. Unfortunately, they said they're busy, but I've had to go with the librarians. Oh. Power Pop band from Berkeley, California, formed in 1999. According to Wikipedia.org, this is why I booked them. The group was famous mostly for their raucest live act. That's going to really get people going on. His performance is truly horrifying and its cheesiness, and yet it's unnervingly mesmerizing.

That sounds great. I love the sound of that. I'm keen. I'll definitely be hanging around as I always do the after party. So five inductees this week. I'm going to read out your name. If you hear your name, head on in through the velvet rope and hear Dave really hyping you up. You ready to go, Dave?

I am so ready. Jess also hipes Dave up because he doesn't always do great work and he needs a bit of help. He's fantastic. Shut up. I can hear you. Oh, sorry. First up, welcome from Calandra West in Queensland Australia. It's Emily.

Ten out of Emily. Yes. Ten out of Emily. That's better. That's better. There it is. From Mechanicsburg in Pennsylvania. Brennan Dickerson, welcome in.

Ten and out of Brennan. Yes. Woo-bo-boo. From Worcester in Great Britain. Please and thank you and welcome to Kevin Sanders. Ten out of Kevin. Woo-hoo. You.

Jesse, you're still maintaining. I'm having a great time. Okay, from Upper Chichester in Pennsylvania. Please and thank you, Nina and Brian Burkhardt. Tina out of Nina! And Brian, thanks for trying. Come on in, before you, I was crying. Now I'm feeling good.

It's incredible. Finally from Sydney, Australia. Welcome in and thank you and please. Bradley Williams. 10 out of Bradley. Bradley, Bradley. I love you. These people waited three years for that and it was worth the way.

It was absolutely worth it. Yeah, I mean, they're all 10 out of tens. Yeah. Thank you so much to 10 out of Bradley, 10 out of Nina and Brian, 10 out of Kevin, 10 out of Brennan, and 10 out of Emily. I believe Emily's surname based on an email is maybe begins with a G. Ooh. Pretty cool. If that helps you know who you are.

Because there might be heaps of Emmleys in Caloundra West. Probably. Could be on the shout-out level for three years. Yeah. Now, just anything we need to tell me before we go? That we love them. And you consider us the topic and find us on social media at Do Go On Pod. Please follow us.

Please. Please. I'm begging of you. Please. It's so embarrassing I have to keep asking. Yeah. Just do it. Dave, boo this home.

Please. Please. Please. Stop asking. It's embarrassing. We'll be back next week with another fantastic block. slash blowworthy episode. But until then, I'll say thank you so much for listening and goodbye.

Later. Bye! Don't forget to sign up to our tour mailing list so we know where in the world you are and we can come and tell you when we're coming there. Wherever we go, we always hear six months later, oh, you should come to Manchester. We were just in Manchester. But this way you'll never, we'll never miss out. And don't forget to sign up, go to our Instagram, click our link tree.

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