Doomed to Fail - Ep 252: Things Could Be Worse! - 536 CE

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

Let's talk about the 'worst year to be alive,' it's not this one - it's 536 CE! Of course, that's just a guess, but it's an educated guess because we know that there was a volcano that blotted out the sun - and THAT was the beginning of a mini-ice age that ushered in famine, mass migration, wars, and the plague!     Some Sources  Cooling and societal change during the Late Antique Little Ice Age (536 to around 660 CE) https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/items/072ba4aa-014e-4f87-8fc7-334ebf876f1f Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive' https://www.science.org/content/article/why-536-was-worst-year-be-alive 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] 

In a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortlandall James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow American, what your country can do for you. Boom. Hello. Hello. Taylor. How are you? Good. How are you? Good. I'm a little worn out. It's been a pretty tiring family fun-filled weekend. So, um, not the most relaxing, but, you know, that's life. We'll take it. That's good. That's good. I've done, just I've been cleaning the house for like a week and it's insane.

You know, I'm just like opening up every cabinet and like cleaning it and doing all these things because my library is never going to be finished. I mean, maybe someday. But like it's taking a long time because the guy hurt himself, which is. Oh, no. Hopefully he'll be better soon. I came over today, drop off scaffolding. Things should be okay. But all that being said, I just need to like, I can't keep having piles of books everywhere.

Like I need to do something about it, you know? So I'm going, I'm slowly like cleaning things. making it look a little bit better. So I don't lose my mind. Nice. Nice. That's productive. Your spring cleaning is the summer cleaning.

Exactly. Exactly. Nice. Yeah. Have you been keeping up to speed on All Things World Cup? I have not in a way that, like, I'm happy when people are happy. Yeah. I don't know.

I don't, I mean, I don't understand the rules of soccer. And my children play soccer and I don't get it. And so, and I haven't really- Are you a coach? No, I coach baseball where I understand the rules, except in field flies. I don't understand that. I understand everything else. And then soccer, I don't understand it.

The thing I specifically do not understand is being off-sides. And now that I learned via one of these hockey romance books that you can be off-sides in hockey too. And I was talking to one of the moms who coaches soccer and has her many years. And she told me she didn't know what off-sides meant either. I didn't actually know it was a thing, really, because I saw the Iran's games, and they both, there were two games they could have won, they scored, but they were off sides. And I was like, what does that mean?

And apparently it's like you, the offensive player can never be further a field than the defensive player, which kind of seems like odd. Like, how can that not be the goal? I know. Like, I don't know, like, in that situation, then if you were the goal, maybe I'm misinterpreting it. And if I am, please, like you to tell me how long. Someone explained to us, because I feel exactly the same what you do. I feel like you should want to do that.

You should be punished. Wouldn't you, like, here's an idea if I was the coach. Just tell your entire offensive team, including the goal, they just run to the other side of the field. Then they'd have to kick it all the way across the field past you to be able to score. Like, I don't... I think you. I'm glad that you also don't understand off-sides or think that it might be ridiculous. Or I just said, yeah, yeah, like, it's most likely that I don't understand, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the most likely thing here. But, no, I've been enjoying it. I don't watch soccer at all, and usually I don't even watch World Cup games. For some reason, it's, like, nice to have a good global thing that's, like, kind of, like, bring people together. I mean, it's 100% that. Like, I'm actually going to bring that up in a little bit later that it's like, we could just all play sports and just like have fun, you know?

Yeah. And like, I imagine if like the regular people hung out, we'd be like, cool. It's good. Yeah. It's not like the end of the world. Yeah, it sucks. It sucks and is nice to see at the same time that you're like, why can I just get along? Also, like, why isn't anybody else thought of this in terms of like having?

like a global basketball get together and a global hockey get I guess it's because most countries don't have those things never mind that makes no sense no but it's like there's the Olympics you know which is like a global get together for various sports but I don't know I don't like but soccer is just so popular that like yeah it gets its own world's wide event in addition to being part of the Olympics which is fun I like it I like watching people from different cultures experience different cultures. It's cute to watch like Korean people eat Mexican food. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's been delightful. I've loved it. Nice. Wait, let me read. Yeah, let me introduce us because I actually gets me get it to be close to starting. Let's do it. Hello. Welcome to Doom to DeFail. You bring you historical disasters

and failures and I am Taylor joined by Fars. And actually before I start, I have some announcements. Are you ready? Can you hear me? I can. I'm excited that I've known the most. Okay. You caught me off, you cut me off guard. I know. I said that I said that brought me right into it, but then I forgot that I have some announcements. One, there was an earthquake in Venezuela and it's terrible. And I want to acknowledge that like we talk about things that happened a long time ago and sometimes recently, but like everything that is happening in Venezuela, like those buildings falling down. We have talked about that a bunch in like different, his time periods and different things. And it just looks absolutely devastating. I can't, like the pictures of, you know, just

apartment building blocks that are totally like just pancake to the ground. So I always want to say, I know we talk about these things a lot, but they're actually unbelievably horrible. And I'm sure there are people there, like still underground who are not going to make it. And that's actually a nightmare. I found a link that I clicked on to the UN Refugee Agency. And I donated on a link on the UNHCR website from Canada. I don't know how I got there, but whatever, but they said that the money is going to go

directly to Venezuela. So that's where I donated to, I don't know. I think because it looks awful, so I hope that people are, our founder, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, oh, a lot of things. So there's that. And then in good news, we didn't even talk about the fact that we did our 250th episode. I know, I know. I saw you posting about it. I read an email because I was like, oh, right.

It's so weird. Like, sometimes you get plugged into things by total accident. The fact that it's like the 250 birthday of America. It's our 250th episode. It's so weird that that kind of all, like, we didn't plan any of that. It just happened. And it's kind of like that would have been possible to plan too. You know? Like they just know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's so wild. I did buy a USA 250 shirt at Walmart for $6 and I put it in my political box that I have for my kids. I have this like box like a plastic container that has like, you know, my Obama t-shirts from, you know, 2008 and like some like voting guides and things and things like that. So. I don't want to, not in the mood to wear it, but I did want to put it in there so the kids have it when they... It's like a time capsule that we all watched on Nickelodeon when they buried it in like 1995. Remember that? Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. What happened at that? Time capsule. I have no idea. I feel like time capsules were so huge then. I know. We don't do them as much so we should. So, anyway, that's my time capsule for my kids.

But anyway, congratulations to you for 250 episodes. And to you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I thought that was cool. That's very exciting. Anyway. Oh, they're going to unearth it on April 30th, 2042.

Oh, God, I wonder if I'll be around. I think that's why my student loans are due to be paid off. So sad. So sad. I think I'm in the same boat you are. Me. I had a great time. It's fine.

So actually, okay, now to go back to the thing that I was segueing into, is this year has been long and a lot of bad things have happened. You'll remember specifically I cried all through February. But lately things have felt better. They're still bad, but they feel better. And I think the World Cup has been part of it because it's been delightful and fun to see that. Like the Knicks stuff was fun. You know, like I think sporting events have been like exciting.

So I felt a little bit better. And you and I have talked about how, you know, one of the thing that we're learning through this is like, you know, every era has bad things and you're not living in the worst of times, you know, and it's okay. to be like, you know, I want things to be better for women in America while still acknowledging that like things are bad for women much worse in other places. And I, you know, want this for this here and this here. And, you know, what I wrote was like, we're not going to Harrison Bergeron or happiness, which is like comments nominator. You know, like we still can want for better things. So anyway, this year is has been heads up and downs, but it has not been the worst year. But I want to tell you about the worst year to be alive.

set up the worst year in history like anywhere this is the it's coined as the worst year to be alive oh that's interesting um it's not this year how did you even pick i don't even understand how you pick so it's actually coined by a historian named michael mccormick and also just to note if you're listening to this your ancestors survived the worst year to be alive so congratulations because you made your bloodline survived and the year was 536 AD. Interesting. Which is the beginning of some really, really bad times. Very specifically in like the northern hemisphere,

it might not have been as bad in the southern hemisphere, but we don't have those records like we do for what we have in the northern hemisphere for a million different reasons. So what we know from the northern hemisphere is that 536 started a chain of events. that are going to make the next couple hundred years really bad for everyone. Sweet. So, yeah. Okay.

So things are really bad besides the fact that, like, there's an air conditioning, which is like my biggest thing for staying alive is I need to have an air conditioner. So besides that. You live in a desert, Taylor. You wouldn't feel this way if you lived in Seattle. No. No. Do you remember when you got married near Seattle and there was not an air conditioning in my

room? And I went to the front desk because in my room was. broken. And they were like, none of the rooms of AC. And I was like, none of the rooms of AC. And I was like, I'm sorry, what? I was like, what? So no, climate control indoors. Until that happened, things were terrible. But this was specifically this. So what happened in 536 that changed at least like the world in the northern half of the world. And it was a big climate change event. And can you guess what it is? Guess what happened that changed the climate? It's specifically. cooled it down by several degrees.

It had to be a volcano. Yes. It was a volcano. So we know a lot about volcanoes. I feel like you know that because I told you before. Specifically, in episode 46 of our show, which was about the amount of the Tambora eruption, which is the year or not a summer, right? So that was in 1815, and that's the one where we get like the ash from Tambora eruption, which is the year or not a summer.

Boro, which is in Indonesia, which is in the Ring of Fire, which is to the west of, like, Hawaii, like around their whole Pacific Rim is called the Ring of Fire. And there's a lot of, like, volcanic islands and then also a lot of, like, underwater volcanoes. My main source on that is the Octanauts movie, The Ring of Fire, which is really, really good, if you like children's cartoons about animals. I learned a lot about the Ring of Fire. I do. I do like that. It's so cute. They're a cute little intrepid group of, you know, animals that help other animals and they're in the ring of fire.

And I actually was like, I didn't know that that existed. So Indonesia is in the ring of fire. And that's where Mount Tambora erupted in 1815. And then the ash essentially got up into the stratosphere, into the trade winds. And then it was everywhere. And then, you know, the temperature in Europe and across North America, it declined that summer. And, you know, it declined that summer. And, you know, Europe was so gloomy that like Mary Shelley-Roe Frankenstein. Like that's the, that's the thing that happened during that time. So we know from relatively recent history how big a change it can have on the climate when volcanic ash gets into the air. You know, so that's how we kind of figured out that it was this thing. But in 536, you don't really know that that's happening because you're not anywhere near the volcano.

Yeah, you're not anywhere near the volcano. You'd be never even seen a volcano. You know, like you don't even know what a volcano is. And why would you? You know, like if you're living in, you know, living in Europe, you don't have a volcano. So one of my favorite things, this is just an aside, is people in ancient times, like, you know, medieval times not understanding or knowing the science behind, like, weather events and things like this and like what the stories that they tell sort of make them make sense. And I love, just as an example, when there's an eclipse during a battle, it is the most delightful thing you can possibly think of. And it's happened several times in recorded history, about a thousand years before 536, so five on the other side.

During a battle between the Lidians and the Medes and Turkey, there was an eclipse and everyone stopped fighting and signed a peace treaty. Because what would you think was happening? God, it has to be God. Right? How fun would that be to be like, this is it. Like, the gods are coming to kill us. And it happened during Alexander the Great's rule. It happened to the Zulus and happened to George Washington, where there was an eclipse in the middle of a battle.

That's so fun. I will agree. When I saw the eclipse that happened, what was that in 24 or 23? I don't remember. I can't remember either, but I went outside. It was so weird. It was like it went dark. But the weird part was, like all the birds stopped sinking.

And like all the crickets and bugs started making sounds like, oh, this is wild. I don't like that. I don't like that. But I get the idea. And I bring that up because like, A, it's fun to think like, you know, what are things that you might think something is? if you don't know what it is. And then B, that's kind of what the weather was like

after this volcanic eruption. So people recorded things like the Byzantine historian Procopius. Sure. He said, quote, for the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon during the whole year. So it would have felt like that eerie eclipse like glow, you know, the whole year.

And it happens in Rome. We have records from there. We have records from China where it's cold and the crops are failing. Records from Ireland where they couldn't bake bread. It lasted for 18 months, if not more. So 18 months of the sun not fully being out in a huge part of the world. We also have some cool scientific evidence that like, yeah, 536, like whatever. Like I don't have my calendar.

I don't know exactly. It was exactly that year when this happened. But like it's around this time. And part of the reason we know that is from things like tree rings. So they can tell, you know, what year on the tree was a bad year. You know, like when it was like the weather was specifically cold or it wasn't getting any the right amount of nutrients or whatever. So they can tell, go through the rings, a couple bad years.

And then you also can find those things in an ice core. So they have, I feel like we talked about this before. It's very X-Files. But you like, you know, drill into the ice, pull out 100 years of ice. And then you can see the different pieces of the ice. It's different layers and what happened during that time. I think you'd be hard pressed not to be able to relate anything back to X-Files in some way, shape, or form. I was watching it was so good.

There it is. The one last night I was watching, there's an invisible elephant that, like, attacks a town. And then you're like, what is happening? You're like, it could only be caused by an invisible elephant. Fantastic. So, anyway, so that's cool. We think that the volcano might have been in Iceland. because from the ice

core that you pulled out and people were looking at the pieces, there are bits of Icelandic glass in Sweden from like 536. Does that make sense? So they're like... Yeah, yeah, it does.

If the volcano erupted in Iceland, remember the one that happened like in recent history where you couldn't fly to Europe for like a week? Yeah. Yeah. So like that, like if that happened, but like worse, obviously because it like affected global temperatures, then glass from Iceland could be all the way in the other parts of Europe because of that ash and wind that was covering us up.

Yeah, that makes sense. You know, that's what they think that could be there. So this is going to start, 536 is going to be the start of the next decade being the coldest it's been in 2000 years. So all the work that humans have done to get their crops going yearly and all these things is going to be fucked with because it's going to be as colder than it's been in 2000 years. so no one remembers what you do before that anyway, you know? And so this becomes a mini ice age, and they can also tell from those ice rings that mini ice age probably ended about 100 years later

because around 640, there's more lead in the ice rings because they were mining more silver. I mean, you mine silver, for whatever reason, there's more lead in the atmosphere, and they were mining more silver because they were more economically prosper. So it took about 100 years for the economy to fix itself after this.

Wow. You know? So that's a lot. I mean, real quick, I would say it's not an economy. It's a sort of viableist culture, right? Like, there's not. No, but no. It's 536.

There's like the Roman Empire has already collapsed. There's plenty of, you know, stuff. Okay. Okay. There is a merchant class. It's not just ararian. No. Okay.

No. And there's a lot going on. I was going to affect then migration because you're going to have to go someplace where you can, you know, trade better or have food or those things. So, but before I get to that, it also affects art and culture. So there's one thing that I thought was really cool that I wish I knew had time to learn a lot more about is. So obviously, you know the word Ragnarok from? Yeah, I don't know which movie it is. From Thor, Ragnarok.

Thor, there are. Yep, you're right, you're right. So in Norse mythology, Ragnarok is an apocalypse that is foretold in different stories. And in the tale, all of the gods perish. And there were some other ones that I didn't know, but the ones obviously that you know are Odin, Thor and Loki. Like those gods die. The world burns and then rises again. It's like just a collective story in North mythology.

And people think that that story is like a collective memory of what happened in 530. And I was like, that's interesting. I wonder what evidence they have. And then I have this quote that I totally buy. So from the poem Wulspah, sorry, whatever, from a poem, the Ursula Dronke translation. So he translated this poem. I won't read it in whatever in Old Norse. I'll read in English.

But from a poem from Ragnarok, it says, quote, it states, it states itself on the lifeblood of faded men. Paints read the power. homes with crimson gore black becomes the sun's beams in the summers that follow weather's all treacherous do you still seek to know in what so the part in there where they're like black becomes the sun's beam beams in all the summers like that sounds like exactly what we're talking about when volcanic ash covers the sun yeah isn't that cool that's pretty cool and i think that's super cool it's like it's also um some of the king arthur myths and battles happen during the time as well. So it could have affected that too because of the like disease and famine that come next. So the next thing that can happen is migration. In Asia, the Turks and the Avars are coming west into the Eastern Roman Empire, which is the Byzantine Empire. They're starting to come into like more into Europe. In like India and other parts of Asia, the Sassanian and Gupta empires collapse and the Islamic empire starts to grow.

And they're not going to get into the details of this. One of the reasons that it starts to grow is because crops in part of the Mediterranean actually are better for camels because of this weather change. And so there are more camels. They're able to move further.

I guess that does make sense. I was under the impression that Islam wasn't a thing until 13 or 1400 years ago. So I don't know if an Islamic empire more so than a Middle Eastern empire. I mean, I'm telling you it was Islamic Empire, but that's, isn't that right?

Isn't 226 minus 1,400, like, 536-ish? Oh, you know what, the math? See, this is why, this is why my parents put me in those Kuman classes because my math was so bad. I had to take remedial math. And this is also when I went to college and they had to put me in this one class with like kids who started fires. It was like the remedial class for basic arithmetic.

But then, yes, and then we're both right. Yes. So also in like more northern Europe, more Slavic people start to move around. And all of this was happening. And it wouldn't necessarily have happened without people having to migrate because of crop failures. Right. Which is, you know, the direct result of this. So a lot of the way that Europe and the Middle East was shaped is because of this event,

because people were able to move differently and had to move differently, which is cool. So the next thing, I think this is like the last thing that happened, which is like kind of connected to all of that, is because of that. And, you know, to your question earlier, like, there are trade ships that are going all around the Mediterranean, like up, obviously like up, like to the UK and all of his places. And in the Eastern Roman Empire, again, the Byzantine Empire, the Western Roman Empire fell in 476. the business empire will fall in 1453. And again, it's not like one day you wake up and it fell, like years and whatever, not exact dates.

But that's when that happens. But because a lot of people are dying of starvation and they're moving to cities and they're moving to places to get more food and figure out how to like live a life, they're going to start dying of starvation in these cities and in these places. And they're going to try to get food from other places and there's going to be all of this trade and all of these people who are maybe immunocompromised. And guess what that means? Guess what happens? Disease. Disease. This one is a plague. I wrote, yes, a plague because you have travel and you have rats and on the rats. You have fleas and then you have the plague. So to talk about

the plague, you have to talk about two other things. This is all over the place, but I think it's like an interesting little bucket of info. So you'll remember, also Farras, from episode 12 of June to fail when I talked about the Nika riots and Emperor Justinian. So that was another tieback talking about the World Cup because while I was thinking, like you were saying, why can I let's get along and play sports. I remembered the Nika riots from 532 where it was basically a sports riot. And a lot of people died because their sports team. Yeah, it was in this really weird sounding stadium.

What was it called again? Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. A hippodrome is like, it was. was, there's many hippodromes. It's a stadium that is like a big oval so that you can run chariot races around it. Right. But yeah, it was literally like the Reds versus the Greens sporting event and a ton of people died. So maybe we can't all just get along and play sports.

We can't get along at all, you know? So maybe I'm wrong. That sounds right. But the Nika riots happened in 532. So Justinian is kind of a tyrannical leader. He's trying to, you know, grow his part of the Roman Empire back up through Italy back into all of Europe. So there's that. Then the bubonic plague, which is the plague that's going to happen and going to be called the Justinian plague. So a bubonic plague is Yersinia pestis, which is also the black death. So if that helps you understand what it is before.

It is gross. This is the one where you get the flu and then all your nodes swell on some of them pop and you get like big postules. And then I was like, what is a lymph node? Do you know what a lymph node? no I know they're little balls inside of you and they hurt sometimes that's exactly what they are they're like little bean-shaped things I feel like I know where mine are like you were just pointing to your neck on my neck whenever sore throat you know you're

like oh my lymph nodes are swollen that's the only time I ever think of it but you actually have hundreds of them throughout your body and what they do is they protect the lymphatic system which protects your body and it fights off disease so when your lymph nodes are swollen it's because they're working overtime to fight off disease makes sense so if you have the plague, your lymph nose are all going to swallow to the point again that they could burst. It's a really bad way to die. I think it's about 10 days. So the plague

is going to come to Constantinople, where Desinian is emperor in 541. So it's been like five years since the volcano eruption, five years of crop failures, and they are getting wheat from Egypt, and that wheat probably has rats in it, and that's probably where it started and where it came

from, is the rats from that thing. So people started to get sick. Thousands of people die in Constantinople daily. Anywhere from like 5 to 10,000 people die. 40% of the city dies. And in the end, a quarter of the people in the area are going to die from this. So it's like really,

really bad. And you know that like burials aren't happening. Obviously, you know, it's just like there's probably a lot of people like bleeding people. And if they couldn't figure it out, like, you know, a thousand years later in the Black Plague or whenever that was like, they have no idea what to do.

Yeah. You know. So Justinian isn't handling it well because he's like, but I still have all these wars and I really want to do some stuff in my city. Like he wants to build the IAS Sophia. He wants to like build all these beautiful buildings. He wants to do all these things. And for that, he needs money. He needs tax money.

But you know who doesn't pay taxes? Dead people. Oh. Yeah, probably. But also mostly, there's also probably lots of things. But dead people. So, Procopius, who you'll remember is our historian and talked about the sun before. he also was here during the Dacinian plague.

And he just has like a little bit of a bit on how shitty Emperor Justinian was. And he says, quote, when Pestilin swept through the whole known world and notably the Roman Empire, wiping out most of the farming community and of necessary leaving a trail of desolation in its wake, Justinian showed no mercy toward the ruined freeholders. Even then, he did not refrain from demanding the annual tax, not only the amount of which he assessed each individual, but also the amount for which his dissonation. see neighbors reliable. That's sad. Yeah. That's a way to get deposed.

Yeah. Everyone's dead and you'd pay their taxes. Could not be worse. So we obviously didn't get the money, but that ties into more migrations and more wars, and it changed what Europe could have been if Justinian had gotten all that money and been able to grow his empire back west. He had to stop his plans of expansion and the plague because of Justinian's, you know, expansion and because of the trade and because of the famine, it all over Europe.

It gets all the way to like France, where the Gauls are. It gets all the way to Jordan and the Arabian Peninsula. And it's just everywhere. And it's going to be around as a like version of the plague for 200 years, like this version of the Black Death, what we'll call it later. And it's estimated that like 14 to 100 million people died of it. Do you know what percentage that is? I think it's like a quarter of the people. But also like before, like after the first like rush of it and like ebbs and flows for a while, because like 200 years, it wasn't 200 years of 5,000 people dying every day.

You know, it like gets better and then it gets worse and then like goes back and forth. But it like started specifically during this time. Yeah, it's awful, which was also awful when it took a third of Europe. the 1400s. It's just so, I just, I have, I don't think I, I've smelled like, like, like, there's like a dead mouse, you know, and I put it in the garbage can and then like a couple of days later you open the garbage can and it smells terrible. You know, like, that's as close as I thought I'm really just smelling a dead body.

I cannot imagine what it would feel like in a place where just like piles of dead bodies outside, you know. You put your dead mice in the garbage can. Where do you put them? Well, I don't have mice. Fingers crossed. Knock on what I hope I don't. But whenever I see a dead roach, I have a roach grabber.

I got this like grabers. It can't be near roaches. So I have a grabber and I go and grab it. And then I open the side door and I take it out to my neighbor's edges. And I throw it to his edges because I don't want it anywhere near me. That's how I handled my problems, Taylor. That totally reminds me. I had a boss who told me that he had a mouse in his pool filter in his pool.

And he took like the skimming net and got it out. And he just like flung it and hit his. neighbor. And his neighbor was like, what the fuck? Like from across the fence. They're probably decomposed on the neighbor too because if it was sitting in water, it's probably just due at that point. Yeah, the point is, imagine that time is a thousand bajillion.

Right, right. That was the point. How terrible that would be. So that was it. That was the beginning of, you know, like the dark, quote, dark ages and times when things look really bad along the northern hemisphere specifically. and the volcano and the resulting climate change, you know,

really opened up space for a lot of like cultural turmoil and interesting things to happen that maybe that wouldn't have happened without it. And then I want to just end with this morning. We were watching The Simpsons and a quote from Homer that made me laugh is he said, if God wanted people to be outside, he wouldn't have an advantage of global warming.

That made me laugh because it's not just a little warming. It's all kinds of other things that could just like abruptly change your temperature and change literally everything. You what I was thinking about earlier this week was, do you put way back when we were kids and they kept telling us about the hole in the ozone there? Yeah, that's gone. They fixed it. Yeah, it was like it was aerosol spray or something, right? And they just like stopped doing aerosol spray. That's like a thing that I always see on social media as an example of like global cooperation.

You know, when we do want to do something, we can do it. Yeah. Well, one time we could. I would also put a little bullet point in the worst year to be alive because, again, I think there's so many of those years. You cannot say for certain which is the worst year. No. And like I said, like this, I think also just like so much depends on like your basic needs being met, you know, like food and shelter and all those things. I was thinking for for men between 18 and 40.

it is any year in a country where compulsory military service is required and you're at war. That would probably be one of the worst years ever for that person. I don't think, and I thought about doing this, like talking about the draft as an episode, because my dad was drafted, but for Vietnam, but he couldn't go because he had a knee injury from playing football in high school. And, but he remembers, like, in his frat, they would have, everybody would have their number and then, like, announce the numbers and some of the guys would go, you know? and I feel like that generation,

like that boomer generation, their dads, which we've talked about before with my dad and like with World War II stuff is all of their dads went to World War II, especially from the United States. You know, my dad was telling me in that polio episode, like every, you would say like,

oh, every dad would be at like the park and they'd be like, oh, you know, what did you do in the service? Like everyone did. Like there was no, like everyone was in World War II. And then all their sons are in Vietnam getting drafted, you know? And like, I feel like this is obvious,

obvious, but they all need to go to therapy and stuff. Like, that's a big thing that was not addressed for anyone. Didn't we do an episode on conscientious objectors? We've talked about conscious, conscientious objectors in like different ways. We just never did an episode. Yeah, we talked about drafts

in different ways too, because like Vincent Van Gogh paid to get out of being drafted because of like the compulsory stuff that he had to do. And so that's always been like some countries have always had some kind of compulsory service. And then some people have, some countries have the draft and I don't know. And then it's also the thing, well, basically this is what I was going to say in the episode when I researched it for four seconds.

But like all of that plus of human history has been like you're expected to fight whenever we ask you to. Yeah. You know, it's like, and we've like joked about it before like get your bucket, put it on your head. Like time to go fight someone and you have to go do it. And then you have to hope you come home. And your crops aren't dead. But then you get home. Which I know that I'm a coward for saying this, but I'm really thankful that I'm at that age where bones are rickety.

so that nobody wants me. No, no, I don't, I, no, I don't want anyone to go. It's terrible. So, yeah. Sweet. Well, it's fun. Yeah. The worst year to be alive.

All right. Guys, please write to us of Dunedefelpottagewil.com tells what you think the worst year to be alive is because there's a, yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of opinions there. Yeah. Also, depending on who you are as a person, what demographics you fall in, you're also going to have a different perspective of. Literally exactly. Like you can't say it for anything. Like, you know, you're, weird to be alive is obviously different than like anyone else's.

But we're talking like globally, the beginning. And you can market with an event that started a whole bunch of shit and a whole bunch of death specifically, you know, because of that one about it. Well, that's fun. Love it. Yeah. Do we have any listener mail?

I do. I have a note from our friend Nadine. and her son listened to my episode on the Halifax Explosion, and I said Starboard side, and he thinks it should be pronounced Starboard, and I think he's right. He is right. Yeah, so I just thank you to an Indian son.

He's totally right. You should have told me if you're so confident. I have a weird thing where I try not to correct people, because it comes across rude when I do it, so I try not to do it. You did just try to correct me about the Islamic Republic and then even though we agreed it, that it was the same thing after we did the math.

But you got to like gauge whether it's an inconsequential correction or consequential correction. And in the Islamic one, the Islamic one was consequential because the audience learned about my struggles with mathematics. So you're welcome audience. I also took like remedial math in college because I was like, I don't need math.

They're not definitely not doing it. So I took it my senior year. And the thing I remember the most is there was a guy who would come in every morning and he would eat a cinnamon raisin bagel with peanut butter on it. And I was just like, you need a glass of water and like, stop it. It's weird. So weird. Yeah.

Well, those teachers who told us we'd never have a calculator handy whenever we need it. But I also like, no one cares. You can stop listening everyone right now. But I like used to love doing long division like by hand, you know, just because it was like fun to do that. Florence did a thing this year which is like plotted points where you like do long division problems and you get different answers. Then you plot the points in a graph and it like draws a picture. And I was like, I loved to doing that. You are taking me back to my poor teachers and family trying to teach me multiplication.

Like it was just like this like it was a black hole in my brain. And it didn't matter how easy they made it. Like it was just not soaking in. I've seen, I mean, obviously I'm like chronically online, but I saw another thing that was like, you're so creative. Thanks. I used to cry to my math homework. And I'm like, yeah, that checks out too. Exactly. Exactly. Sweetwell, thank you for sharing Taylor. Anything else to lead off with? Yeah, look at what I made. You 3D printed a clock. A 3D printed a clock. And it's going to have another side and then it sticks out of the wall like this way. Like out. That's incredible.

I know. I had to learn how. to do two different colors on one thing. And then I had to learn how to buy a clock piece and make it work, which I did. And I kind of understand clocks now because the clock turny thing has three different sizes of turny thing. So one size turns the hour, one size turns the minute. You mean we're here? Yes.

But it's not like a little pole that comes out. You know what I mean? Anyway, pretty printed a clock. This might be a good setup. Taylor and I talk about this forever. go where one of us at some point should do an episode about the concept of time because the more you start like looking into it, the more you're like, it goes into this weird abstraction, like, really, really fast. That's really hard to comprehend. But now you're getting closer to being

qualified to do an episode on time. Perfect. I feel like we should do some legal drugs and then do that episode. Exactly. It'll be like three hours long. It'll be like crying. It'll be real fun. be a multiplied surrey. Yeah, so thank you far as if anyone has any thoughts on terrible years to live slash things we should discuss that are disastrous. Doomedepilpot at gmail.com. Doomed to fill a pod on all of the socials. And thank you.

Give us a review. Good one. Or bad one. Review it. No, stop asking. Fine, fine. Good. Good.

Good. Cool thanks. Thanks, Taylor. We'll cut it off there. Thank you.