Doomed to Fail - Ep 125 - Book Hunting in The Renaissance: Poggio Bracciolini

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

Ciao ragazzi! Did you ever wonder HOW we got all the ancient texts after all these years? We didn't think too hard about it until this week when Taylor tells the story of Poggio Bracciolini, the 15th Century Italian Humanist who discovered many ancient texts hiding away in monasteries being copied over and over by monks. Poggio worked for 7 popes as a notary and scribe but would travel around Europe finding gems! Listen to learn more about his discoveries!  Sources:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zg6zhBsJf4Poggio Bracciolini: Travel and Treasure Hunting in the Age of HumanismThe Swerve | Stephen Greenblatt - https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393343403On the Nature of Thingshttps://classics.mit.edu/Carus/nature_things.html  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortenthall James Simpson, case number B-A-019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. And we are back on a lovely, lovely Wednesday, Taylor, how are you doing? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. I'm going to turn my camera on.

I know. I'm going to turn my camera on for one second to show you that something. We have a camera's off, but I don't introduce the show. Look at this glass that I found at a thrift store. Can you see it? That is so pretty. It's like a little tiny, beautiful red glass. I'm drinking red wine.

I'm very jealous. I wish I had some more than wine right now. Because I want to talk a little bit about the Renaissance and like popes and stuff. And I feel like this is the kind of thing you want to drink when you're doing that. I love that and stuff. Yeah, so fun. But welcome to Doom to Fail. You can turn off our camera now.

for the internet, we're doomed to fail over the podcast that brings you histories, most notorious disasters and epic failures twice a week. I am Taylor, joined by FARS, and today it's my turn to tell historical story. Love it.

Cool. Cool. Okay. So, I... Okay, this is going to be a little over the place because there's a lot to read on this subject. Yeah, the Catholic Church's history is pretty long. And it's not even that. We're not even talking about the church, really. But I feel like I've been putting stuff together from all the stuff that we've talked about. And sometimes I'm like, oh, like, that totally makes sense. Like, I feel like I actually learned something, you know? And I've been like reading about reading and reading about writing and books in a thing. And

all this is kind of like I'm like totally makes sense what you think about them things like handwriting like when did we agree and what all the letters should look like you know and how did ancient texts get to us I know I've said before like there are things in stones and I know that that's true in some cases like the woman that Dr. Emma Southen

the author I really like who writes about ancient Rome she has a book about women in ancient Rome and there's a story that I think I want to tell in the future where it's like about the life of this woman and you only know it because after she died her husband built this like monolith to her and carved her life story in it and we have bits of pieces of it we don't have the whole thing we have a little bit of it and that's how we know about her and things like never the Battle of Hastings that was in 1066 I think yes it was the big one where like the Norma or the Vikings were at the top of England and the Normans are at the bottom of England and like whatever we talked about that from a tapestry, which is wild. You know, like a really long tapestry, we like kind of figure out what happened. So like we're, a lot of it we have to piece together. And a lot of it is like what about all of like the long things that we have, you know, like the Iliad, you know, like how do we have that? It's like a book.

So I had on my list. of things to read. I have an ongoing note app thing of, like, potential ideas. And I had a, I don't know where it came from, but I wrote, read the book, The Swerve, which is what I'm going to be talking about today. I read a couple things for this. I read this book called The Swerve by, it's called the Swerve, colon, how the world became modern by Stephen Greenblatt.

So I read that. And then I also have, All my Will Durant books, I bought like his whole, he's a historian that obviously Dan Carlin really liked, so I pulled up the Renaissance, which was very exciting. And I bought and flipped through a book, an ancient text called On the Nature of Things by Lucretius. So those are the things that I read for this, because we're actually going to talk about kind of a winner today and not a loser. No, not a doomed to fail-up guy. Doom to win. We're going to talk about the Renaissance humanist scholar, Hodgeo Bracolini.

Pogio Bricorini I mean, I really should have lost one. Honestly, I'm going to say Pogio a lot. Pojo. I'm going to try best. So the thing that are the losers here, but what is the failure is all the shit that we lost. Like, we know a lot of ancient work is lost because it's mentioned in other things. You know, it's like, oh, you know, this dude wrote 95 plays.

They were all winners. And we have three of them. you know, which is like annoying and a bummer. So I'm going to talk a little bit about, a little bit about his life, his job, and then some of the stuff that he found and how he found it, because he's found a lot of ancient stuff during the Renaissance. Cool? Yeah.

What you were talking about it made me think of how there are so many stories we don't know even today because nobody, what I was saying, Taylor, really, was if we didn't have jobs, I would just be filing FOIA requests and going to like small little towns and finding like cool little thing because think about it like This is exactly what he did I love this, yes

Dude, we only know Okay, so one of the the birthplace of like true crime being Truman Capote's book in Cold Blood it's just by a half of the sense that Truman Cody went there and like had the time to sit there and interview that guy

and talk to the town's people and do all that like how cool would appear to do that you could do that for like a million stories a day Tell your friends so that we can have us be our job And Fars are going to file a million for your requests. Yeah, and we're one of those hacks, you know.

We had a little card on the side of it and I look like a recorder, a little suspenders. It'll be so cool. Is everybody impressed just write like podcaster on it on your little card? That's perfect. That seems really, really legit. Yes. So, okay, so Pogio lives during the Renaissance. And the Renaissance is, Renaissance means rebirth.

It's a rebirth of ancient things. So finding, like, ancient texts and essentially reading things that are pagan because they're about, like, Greek and Roman gods. And it's obviously a time where there's a lot of, like, pope stuff. During this time, there's going to be seven popes that Pogio works for. So there's a lot of that happening. We're in Italy in the 1400s. Pogio was actually born on February 11th, 1380.

He was born in a small town outside of Florence. Also just to mention that, you know, that I studied abroad in Florida. Lawrence, so I feel like I know a lot of it. So his parents weren't super well off, but his dad sent him to Florence to study. He studied Latin and became a notary, which was like just under a lawyer as like a job. And eventually he's going to work for several popes as a secretary. So what that means is he's going to be writing their correspondence, keeping their notes. He's going to be very close, close with them, kind of understanding what they need.

he's not a he's not a like he's not super religious really he's just like there a lot and he has no interest in like actually being a priest or you know looks anything like that he just is around because he likes reading

and he likes writing so one thing about pojo is he had beautiful handwriting and you can see an example of his handwriting on Wikipedia in a lot of the way that he decided and his contemporaries decided to start writing letters in like Latin letters is how we get our fonts today because they're like easy to read

and because you know how like if you try to read and I know this is like later but if you have like a like a letter by Thomas Jefferson in his cursive you're like I can't fucking read this for shit you know so like a lot of stuff was like in Latin and like cursive or like squished together there wasn't punctuation there wasn't like I read something else about like the reason that we have lowercase letters. I don't know if this is true or not. Someone let me know, but like is because you had to be able to write faster at some point. And there was no way to do that if you're just writing block letters. You know, so like stuff like that is like people really had people, someone had to figure it out, you know. So. Did your kids learn cursive? No, Florence, but her teacher said that she would teach them cursive, but I think she just learned how to write her name and cursive. My mom's really up, up in arms about it. She really is a cursive. lover but no it seems like a useless skill now right yeah i mean i just hope i mean like they have great handwriting my house is great handwriting but like i'm sure there's a shit ton of kids

who have terrible handwriting you know yeah and like if you're not practicing it and you i feel like you don't practice it after like third or fourth grade anyway you know tell them we we don't practice it when i if i if you told me to write my name right now my hand would be sore by the time i finish well i have a long name but still you don't know what i'm saying no i know i know i i I do a little bit of, like, writing, but not, no, not a ton. Not as officially I did, like, in high school, you know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I don't read a lot of handwriting.

I guess it's also a big thing, too, you know? Like, I don't have the opportunity to do that. So, during this time, Pogio ends up going to Rome and working for the Pope, and he will work for seven popes. So while he's there, he has a lot of exposure to text. and books in the Vatican and around Rome. There are some libraries, but in the ancient world,

in ancient Rome, there were so many libraries. It really was like very similar to what we have now where you would like go and read. You know, the scrolls, they'd be scrolls and they'd be in, you know,

organized in some way. This is actually when one of the librarians in ancient Rome invents alphabetical order. I fucking love. Thank you for that. because we need that So while Pojillo is in Rome

He wears robes Like he's clergy but he's not really clergy He just hangs out He has a mistress And they have 14 children Which is a lot Later When he's quite old

I think like in his 60s He marries an 18 year old And they have five more children And the fate of his first 14 kids Is unknown Which is... I mean I would assume A lot of them just died back then

right? They'd just get taken like eagles or falling off trees. Mm-hmm. Someone in the Vatican told him that he shouldn't have kids and dress like a priest. And he said, I have children, which is becoming a layman. And I have a mistress, which is an old custom of the clergy. So a little of a elbow to those guys. You know.

Yeah, they're all little. They're all little. They've been popes and he works for. So in 1403, he became a scribe for Pope Boniface. the 9th. Then Pope Innocent the 7th. Then there's I think we had talked about this at some

point because there's an anti-Pope, John the 23rd, because he's like as when people thought there were two popes for some reason. Like women was in France, one was in Rome or something. There's that. There's Pope Gregory the 12th. And then there's a weird time between like 1415 and 1417

where there's no pope because of the fighting, the Western schism. I feel like I've said that before. At the time when they were, other people said they were the Pope. Then there's a Pope, I'm trying to read these Roman numerals, I don't know. There's Pope Martin the 5th, Eugene the 4th, and then Nicholas the 5th. So those are the ones that he works for. And he will eventually retire from working for the Pope.

But he works for A-Pope from about 14-03 to 1455. So he spends a really long time there. Are you seeing PO-G-O-G-I-O? Yes. Pojo. P-O-G-G-I-O. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. I also did not know what that was until because I was listened to the book and I wrote it down totally differently. But that's what it is. Good question. So during the time when there were no popes and he was just kind of hanging out, being a literary guy, he decides to become a book hunter, which is dope and kind of exactly what you were saying with your four-year requests.

because he's hunting for these ancient texts because they existed but they were hidden in monasteries because so first off I have a tiny tangent did you hear about how MTV News deleted all of this news articles from like 2000 and before

no so this was in in a little sip of wine. It was in other news, somehow assembled upon this. And, like, people were really upset because they were like, that's music history, it's history, and it was deleted from MTV.com, who knows it's on there now, I would never go there, but, you know, but then the Internet Archive does have it.

So Internet Archive has a lot of things, but I do think, and I think I've said this before, the idea that things that we're writing on the Internet are going to be around for all future history, I think that's not true, you know? I mean, how do the archives exist? Well, I don't know, but I feel like something could happen and it could get deleted, you know? I just don't think it's as for, it's forever and like, don't say something dumb, you're going to get fired. But it's not forever as in like, we should take it for granted. It's going to be around forever, you know?

That's a really interesting question. Like, how much storage spaces the world use every day? Yeah. And it's so bad for the environment and like ways that you don't care. can think about otherwise you'll have an existential crisis maybe we should be getting rid of this stuff you know so um nothing is forever but in the ancient world um what do you think people wrote on you know papyrus papyrus you know papyruses skin no papyrus is like a reed that's like flattened um but there is skin later for sure um so in the ancient world text we're on papyrus

and they were in scrolls, hence the term scrolling to read through a scroll. But as people read them and handled them, they would fall apart, which would happen. So a scribe would, in some cases, like an enslaved person would read something out loud and like 20 scribes would write what they were saying. And that way you could like make books a little bit faster. Or someone would just be like copying it. Like if you had a book that I wanted to borrow, I would say, As far as, can I borrow your book?

I'm going to give it to my enslaved person. They're going to copy. I'll give back to you in like a month. You know? And that would be their job. As you do. So. Wait, so the slaves should read?

Yes. That's a good question. In some cases, yes. And they were actually like very well taken care. Not very well. You know what I mean? But like it was a better job than being like another kind of enslaved person because you, it was a really important skill to have.

Yeah. So that was your. enslaved job, quote, job, that you were treated a little bit better, which is probably still terrible. But a little bit better. So there's things that we've heard about, like, the library at Alexandria and how it, like, burned down and we lost all those texts. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Like, it didn't burn down all in one day. I was just reading about it, like, very briefly. But Julius Caesar was, like, in the harbor, and he, like, burned some boats and that burned part of it. And then more of it started to, like, kind of

volunteers to prepare and as the Roman, you know, Republic fell and the Roman Empire fell, and then we went into like the, you know, barric ages. I know that we don't say that anymore, but you know what I mean. And it just kind of like disappeared. But it did at one point, you know, exists and have, you know, hundreds of thousands of scrolls and stuff that we, you know, we'll never, we never know anything about. Um, so during the Renaissance, stuff was happening. So people are like coming out of the European dark ages, coming out of like these like plague-filled times and they're trying to like people are trying to revive things, you know, where there's new painting. And I also read something a long time ago that like maybe painting got

really advanced during this time because people, they invented glasses, you know, people could like see things for the first time better, you know, all sorts of stuff. Like things were improving in, in one way. But people were also like around Italy finding ancient shit like everywhere like you could find a so crazy a head you know like a bra like a marble head and there was sometimes just like crush them up and use them in building material because there were so many of them and they're just like around and like there's a story that also probably isn't true but like that there was a farmer outside of Florence who found a statue and he had Michelangelo come over and he's like what is this and Michelangelo was like oh that's a leoquin and you can see the

leoquin in i think it's in florence still which is like an ancient story of a man and his children and there's a snake or something but it's very beautiful and you can see it but he found it like a statue no it's a statue good question sorry it's a big marble statue

okay that seems to get to be true but here we are it's like a big beautiful statue um so people are just like finding stuff so they're like kind of discovering it and being like oh like who are the people that did this but like a lot of the writing, you know, was missing.

And one thing that's kind of cool is the only place where there are ancient scrolls that were found that are potentially decipherable was from Herculaneum. Do you remember Herculaneum? That was the, it was a hippodrome. No. Herculatum is the town next to Montesius. Yes. The other one.

So not Pompeii, but the other one was Herculaneum. And in Herculaneum, they found a villa. It's called the villa of the papyri. It had over 800 scrolls in it. And they found it because I think we talked about this. We talked a little bit about Pompeii. But when they first got there to do the archaeological digs, it was kind of a smash and grab, you know,

like they didn't really know what they were doing. And then in Herculaneum, they found this thing that looked like a log. They're like, oh, it's like a burnt log. And then they picked it up and dropped it. And like, scrolls fell out. And so it wasn't a log. it was like a case to like hold scrolls and the scrolls weren't like nicely they weren't like you couldn't open them and read them they were burned but they were like preserved differently so the

first i don't know a hundred they're like let's try to open them and they like dissolved into ash you know didn't work but then later um they started to invent some machine like for in the 1800s to like look at it better and now they can look at it um some of them that they're still going through them now they can do it with like um you know computers and cameras and image x-rays or yeah yeah but so they're finding things that's really one that's really all we have is like the idea of what a home library might have looked like we have that library for percolonium which is cool yeah so um but also shows that like you don't know what's significant in the moment you know it's all like I guess just like trying something and then

at some point maybe it'll be important or maybe not I don't know but This is I know what they were scavenging for. We only know it's important now because a thousand years passed. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And then also, like, I don't know, if you might have seen it, I mean, like, oh, this is, I don't care about this, you know. And just, like, let it go. And you're like, shit, that was something pretty cool and could have told us something about, like, how much of history has been destroyed, most of it, you know? Yeah, of course.

It's fun. So one thing that I think Just to kind of throw this in here You know how we talked about how if we went back into time We couldn't reinvent the telephone Taylor we couldn't reinvent like Shoalaces No you know what I think we I think we couldn't invent the printing press

You think? Yeah Or at least like stamps like letters We could we could do that You know Like for like one page And then we'd give up because you're like, what are we doing? There's like line flowing in the streets.

It would set a spark and get people excited about it. Like, I think we could do it. I think that that is where we could be like, hey, guys, you don't have to copy these over and over again by hand. Like, we have a really good idea. Look at these stamps. I mean, you're right. Anything that we probably wouldn't quit, that one feels pretty easy to do one time just to do it. Yeah, I think we could do it.

So, but obviously, like, once that is invented, it's going to increase the, the way that books are made, and that's going to obviously change the world. But before that, it's all this, it's a lot of copying. So they're copying them in monasteries because monks have to read. And they're not like reading the Bible, really. I think it's kind of like a thing that like a little bit of like penance because it sucks because they have to like read these ancient texts. And yeah, like, because there's a little bit about like self-bludgment. and like being a monk and being like really really Catholic and Christian in these times like there's you know a lot of rolling around and rambles and like you know whipping yourself and all those things and so these monks would go and sit in a room called a scriptorium for um all day so from dusk till dawn dawn to dusk whatever and they would not be able to like read and comprehend and discuss they just had to copy so it was like a one-long line at a time. You literally had a piece of paper that would go over it and you copy one line at a time. And

there were in the book, the swerve, they were saying there's like some ones that were found where in the margins someone wrote like, God, I've been doing this all day. I need a drink. You know, because it sucks. That's funny. Though, I bet they actually did absorb a lot of it because when I was in school, the only way I would ever absorb information was I would handwrite everything. because I would take notes in the moment because I needed to take notes really fast typing and then when I want to study it I have to read the notes to distill it down

and then be like this is the part of that I need to memorize and then I write it down nice I did a lot of writing in notebooks in college well I was poor I didn't have a laptop so you know but yes

so they were also writing on vellum this is the skin part I think you said that before. So vellum is the calf skin. The best of it comes from stillborn calves, which is gross. So it's called uterine vellum, which is like from a cow that's like not been born. And they might get vellum and it would like still be hairy, you know?

So they have to like clean it. This reminds me of like how insane certain discoveries are, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Like the first person that ate honey was like, why did you? you think to open this screaming whose thought was it that

it needs to be a stillborn calf? What? I know. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to make a book out of this dead guy. So weird. Yeah. So sometimes it'd be hairy and they'd have to do more. And if you messed up, you had to take a piece of rock essentially and kind of like shave off where you're messed up and then put

like clay over it and then right over it. So just like a huge pain in the ass. Yeah, sounds like a nightmare. Sounds very. And sometimes they would scrape off other stuff. So they would just keep writing and writing, but they ran out of vellum. They would just go back

or race and do it again. So there is stuff that has been lost because of that as well. So that's what's happening in these in these monasteries across Europe. So they are popping a lot of ancient texts, not really reading them. Maybe they are.

I don't know. And that's where they might be. So back to Podgio. He is a humanist, which is an intellectual movement. Again, the Renaissance, like studying antiquity, studying ancient Greece and Rome. And then focusing on the humanities. So that's where that comes from. The humanities are like literature, history, ethics, rhetoric, rather than just like,

studying theology. You know, it's like studying others as all. So they, you know, wanted to read original text and original languages to do like literary criticism for the first time and they want need to do that. They needed to find some of these texts and these plays and these poems that they like knew existed but like didn't know where, where they were. They believed in education and studying classical texts, which is again like a big, a like shift from like thinking about how like community is just sinful and you're going to go to

hell and like that's all people are thinking about like during like the plague times and during the dark ages and like all that stuff's happening but they're like let's actually talk about something a little bit more pleasant and you know read these stories and read these myths and read these things um most of them were you know scholars and educators and scribes and people who could speak and write in Latin and Greek besides their own like whatever language they were speaking. So what they needed to do was like find more ancient stuff. And they were finding it in the monasteries because that's where they were doing it. So Poggio spent some time in England. He goes to Germany. He never bothers to like learn those languages. He just kind of like goes

there and goes to these monasteries. And he needs to like kind of walk in and gain their trust and like get to know the librarian. Because it's probably like a really old, really upset monk who like has this like library and you have to be like hey can I come in here and like poke around but it was also like yeah for real that's actually they may have done that like they you know they're in these places

like you can't talk so you have to like you literally can't cannot talk it's not like a library now or like please whisper it's like you cannot talk so they did like do you like signs to try to like figure out what they were what they were saying so he would gain the trust and get in there and they'd be like do you have anything special

do you have anything old blah blah blah and sometimes he would find stuff. So if you knew what to look for, like what it would look like and all the things. So like he knows there is a Cicero, like the ancient writer. They had found before Cicero's forensic erations, which is like about, I think, humans.

And he found all of them in 1415. He finds Vitruvius's De Arcatura, which is about architecture, which greatly influences the, the architecture of the Renaissance. It's also, you know, the Ventrubian man that Leonardo drew? Yeah.

It is from this work that Apogio found that he got the idea to do that because the idea in that was like the human body can fit perfectly into a square and a circle and he was able to prove it. So it was like analyzing all this stuff

that they just like were finding. He didn't know what he's looking for because why would you know he couldn't know what he's looking. He kind of does. So there's stuff that he's like heard rumors of. Give me the oldest shit you have. Yes.

Yes. No, that's one would do it. And it's also like, you know, he's like, okay, so I know Cicero is a famous writer of Antiquity because I have some of this stuff and people talk about him all the time. So I know there must be more, you know? Yeah. So you have these names of people that you're like, okay, well, I know these 15 people who I know are ancient scholars. and of those 15, maybe they'll find something that two of them made, you know. And it's not the original at all.

It's like a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy, you know, but they can still, like, find it. The thing that he found that is in the swerve, the book that I read, so the swerve is about something that happens that just moves things a little bit, but makes a huge difference. He found Lucretius'es on the nature of things, which is a poem. Home is, I think, objective, because it is a book, and I bought it, and it's 200 pages. and I'm probably not going to read it, but I think I could open it and find fun things in it. It's a little bit of an atheist book

because he talks about how everything exists in the world. And I mean, this is written in like between 99 BC and 55 BC, so in, you know, before, you know, in BC times. And he's talking about how everything is made up of a small, small particle called an atom that is so small that it cannot be um cannot be divided and if everything is an atom which is everything then like life is you know meaningless in a way that like you can pursue pleasure rather than making your life miserable um does that make sense nobody thought this is weird that this guy and you what an atom was well yeah he wasn't the first one there were people who there was another guy who kind of came up with it but the idea it's like this and epicureus so epicure in philosophy, which is like, there is no afterlife. Our souls are just like around our bodies. There's not like a bunch of souls

hanging out there waiting for things. And also like, why would there be gods and why would they care about us? That's dumb. You know, like, why would they do that? That makes absolutely no sense. And it says that's preposterous to think that they would just like invent us to like be annoying and like be mad at us

the whole time. So it's a lot you know what I mean? Well, I get it now because I realize that these were all books that were lost. So nobody actually saw them in the moment so they couldn't kill you for saying this well I mean they were talking about that then I mean they're lost like to antiquity not like to the time that lucretius lived but there were like different schools of thought you know and so I mean it also like then like comes up against like monotheism and all of that starts to like you know get in the way and then you know

are things happen and then it gets lost but like it's a really um it's an interesting idea like if you just kind of literally flipping through it right now, but there's stuff that's like, you know, like we're all part of something that's connected. Like the world is around. We're in the middle of something. It's other things that are happening. A lot of it is like,

don't worry about death because it's going to happen. So like, calm down. That's kind of fun. Oh, I just opened a page and it says, but centaur has never existed. Yep. scattering, green, everywhere. I love that.

It's, you know, seems super fun. So Lucretius himself, you know, lived to be, like, in his 40s. So, but you can see that, like, that, you know, it was an important thing and a really important thing that, that Pogio found. He found it in Fulda, which is in Germany in a monastery there. So that's super exciting. And it was a big deal. Like a lot of it was, like, really, really important to the Renaissance in itself. So that's what we know about, about Pogio.

recolini the stuff that he found it sounds like a really cool like adventurous life and i'm sure like i'm sure being in vatican during that time was like a wild ride too because i've seen just watched that pope show with like Jeffrey rush no someone i know he retired about it's um you know it's a wild it's a wild uh a wild place to be um but he retired from for the pope in 1453 he went back to florence and he died at october 30th 1459 he was in his 70s um when he died which was very old for that time and people were like pleased because he was kind of getting annoying but um i think it's because he was like a very learned guy and it was a very wild time and i want to i don't know i feel like i took so many renaissance art classes but um i'm just kind of connecting the dots of like

history here with you taylor is this not like a dream what if i were to tell you hey listen you can be paid to fly around the world to come up with like to find cool pieces of art and books and how cool would that be oh my god i felt like i was an adventurer when i was in the national gallery last week i was like i love it like all these paintings i was like i know this painting i was just like it was so fun i'd love to do that this is not related at all but reminded me of the omen and the one part of a movie to Omen, like the newer one that I just absolutely loved was when that ambassador just quits

being an ambassador and he flies to like Italy to find out like where this kid was born and then they lead him to a church and the church he digs up like the mother which was like bones of a coyote or something. It was a jackal. Yeah and I was like dude

how did you get like two months off work to go do this? For fucking real. We need to just like Da Vinci code shit. And And we need to be sponsored to be able to do that. Because also, another thing that I kind of mentioned is, like, the only way that you could, like, write books for most of history was if you were sponsored by someone, you know. It wasn't, like, a publishing company that you had to be sponsored, you know. So, yeah, we need a benefactor so that we can travel around buying a cool shit and then tell you about it.

Yeah, I'll wear my little hat and go to, like, to be. Kansas and find out what the worst murder in history was there and interview the sheriff, the coroner, and then Taylor will go to Florence and dig up the corpse of a jackal. I will lose my mind when I dig up a jackal, so that will be fun. And I will dress like the woman in the mummy. Like Rachel Weiss and the mummy, that will be my look. did she have billowy pants or was she always wearing that like white dress

like a white shirt and billowy pants okay yeah later on she had the white dress yeah right so good well um well listen benefactors if you want to benefact us we will

we'll take it we're available for benefactoring whatever that was fun that was fun It made my little mind run amuck thinking of all the cool things to do. Little archaeology digs and stuff like that. Yeah.

Yeah, that'd be really fun. What is the latest news from your brother? My sister-in-law is in surgery, but they said that the doctor came and talked to him and said that she will be okay. The guy who hit them was drunk, of course. Um, yeah. Jeez. What a nightmare. In the middle of the day.

Oh, your fucking minds. Um, yeah, so I'll keep you posted on that, but thank you for asking. Yeah. Yeah, they're in Washington's ticket, so I can't like do anything, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Also, like, now is probably just like a, there's enough sensory overload. Mm-hmm.

Um, cool. Is there anything else you want to read out? Do we have any more listener, listener mail? There is. I know that you saw this, and I want to talk about it. So we got an email in our Facebook group from someone who listened to our Phil Hartman episode, which, and she wrote a great episode on Phil Hartman. She gave us some other information in the late 60s. He was a rowdy. He was a surfer, a sailor, a scuba diver, a snorkeler.

He flew his own plane. He had motorcycles, sports cars, and Boston wheelers, which is a type of boat. So just nice stuff about Phil Hartman and how. his wife was unfortunately, you know, really paranoid and all the things. She also mentions that she listened to the podcast, fly on the wall. And they debunked the thing that I had said about Chris Farley, like kind of being really self-conscious and hating his body. So that's good.

I'm glad that, like, he was happy because he's so delightful. I'm sad that he's, you know, what I mean? So that was really nice. And then also, so this person who wrote in, their name was Jessica. And then I went to their Facebook profile. I was like, oh, who's this? And their Facebook profile is, like, just pictures of Phil Hartman. They're like a Phil Hartman diehard fan.

So I'm very, very honored that she enjoyed her episode. That is so cool. What was her name? Jessica. Thank you, Jessica. Thank you, Jessica. And then I also have Juan's mother, Lily, listens to every episode, and she really enjoyed your one about the South American serial killers.

She said it was really fun. So thank you, Lily. yeah thank you lily there's plenty there's plenty more trust me she said forrest but did a great job oh so that's nice um did i i can't remember now did i do phil hartman or did you did you did yeah yeah jesska if you have like if you're that's one thing that's kind of cool is like if anybody's like a super fan of something can you tell us because the more i learn about stuff the more i'm like oh there's always something interesting if you did deepen up into a topic.

So that's, that was, we just need the time. And then also, I guess one more thing is I, I, uh, was going to do Fort Sumter in the beginning of the Civil War and I read the Demon of Unrest, um, by, uh, what's his face? Eric Larson. And I, um, that was a suggestion from, um, Angela, another listener. And I'd like to hear from people who have read a lot of Eric, Eric, uh, Eric Larson books. Which ones are your favorite? Because some of them are like, obviously, like, the devil in the white city is so good.

You don't know what to do. But then, like, the one Isaac Storm, I, like, couldn't even start it. It wasn't very good. So I'm just curious to what people think. I couldn't get into it. Yeah, what was Isaac Storm about? It's about, like, the, there was, like, a big hurricane in, like, New Orleans area in, like, the, I think late 1800 or something. And a bunch of people died.

So there's that one. Wenderstruck, I think that one was, I want to talk about that one eventually. That was a good story. And The Garden of Beast is the one about the American ambassador to Berlin during Hitler at the beginning of Nazism. That one was okay. And then the Lucitania one I liked, the last crossing Lusitania. I think I read all of them. Splendid in the Vile.

That was good. That was Churchill and a lot of like the bombings in London, how people were like just lived their lives. you know, which is like interesting and inspiring. So I don't know. I'm like, the demon of unrest was good. I can't figure out exactly how I want to talk about it yet. But I did listen. I listened to it and the person who read it did change their voice when they were doing Lincoln.

And Lincoln supposedly has this like kind of high voice, which was kind of delightful to listen to. Oh, and I'm so sorry everyone who is all the way back here. But then I was thinking that you're wrong. about going back in time of not telling Lincoln you have to tell him because he was going to go on vacation

he had never been anywhere he'd only been to like Illinois and a little bit of Missouri as a lawyer he took the train to DC he went through Baltimore had to like pretend to be someone else

sneaking to D.C. which he like regretted doing because people were already trying to kill him and he was going to like go to California I mean people write and tell us

for him it would have been but we don't know what the world would look like now what if Hitler What if Hitler wins World War II if he doesn't, if nobody kills Lincoln? We don't do that happening. We'd have a good, nice statue of him in La Jolla. Actually, yeah, probably.

This is Lincoln wearing flip flops in La Jolla. He had a great fucking time. Aren't you happy for him? He deserved it. Here's Lincoln in his board shorts. So, I don't know. Well, write to us if he would or would not tell him. Yeah, please let us know.

And why? I'd love to hear details. Sweet. Cool. Well, thank you. Awesome. Well, thanks for sharing that. And, yeah, again, Doonafelpot at gmail.com.

Write to us and find us on all the socials. Thank you for sharing, Taylor. Anything to sign us off with? That's it. Thanks, friends. Please help people put posts on Apple Podcasts and all of that to help more people know about us. That'd be awesome.

Awesome. Thanks, everyone. Bye, Taylor. Thank you.