Doomed to Fail - Ep 42: Volcanoes Pt 2 - Time Capsule of Tragedy: Exploring Pompeii's Frozen History

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

Volcanoes part 2! – This is the story that you’ve all heard - in 79AD Mt. Vesuvius destroyed the Roman resort towns of Pompei & Herculaneum. Imagine not knowing what a volcano is really, then there are earthquakes, then there is pumice on fire flying through the air, THEN it’s pyroclastic flow day - and everything is buried. It’s a tragedy, but it’s also a miracle, because these towns are the only view we have into Roman life in full color. We can see their rooms, their frescos, how they ate, how they played… in a way that we can’t anywhere else in the world. Photos via the CC and #midjourney #AISources:Pompeii The Discovery with Dan Snow - Unveiling the Secrets of the Ancient CityThe Ancient Ghost Town Of Herculaneum | Other Pompeii | Odyssey2014 movie  - PompeiiThe Amphitheater at PompeiiBones Stained Green By Copper Jewelry - Archive - The 9th AgePompeii: A History of the City and the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius (History Shorts): Mason, Fergus, HistoryCaps: 9781091776487: Amazon.com: Books 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]  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 Hortthall 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. Sweet. And we're back. Taylor, can you just do the introductions? I'm going to keep doing the two-day thing. You don't have to. I mean, we do what we want to do. But hello, welcome to Doom to Fail, the podcast, where we talk about. historical or true crime relationship or thing that was doomed to fail that was never going to make

it. Experiences. Tragedies. Experiences. Things that happened. And today, we're going to go into a historical story. And I told you Fars that I am drinking some wine because, as expected, we're going back to ancient Rome.

And we're going to do volcanoes, part two. No way. Yay. Okay. I'm excited about the volcano stories. I know that we're not a volcano podcast, but we can kind of be a volcano podcast. It's part two of seven volcanoes. So this is the one.

This is the story of Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius. Yay. Okay. I'm excited about this. Have you been to Pompeii? Do you talk about this yet? No, I have a thing that I just refuse to do anything that's popular because I'm a Korean. I'm cool.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm too cool. Okay. So like, you should go. No, I'm not going to. I mean, you literally told me how boring it was. I didn't tell you how boring it was.

It actually seems flat and there's like nothing there is where you told me. I don't think I said that because I want to talk about how cool it is like nine times in this. So I just, I take umbrage with that accusation. One of us is a liar and I bet it's me. Okay. So I watched a couple YouTube videos. with Dan Snow, who's from history hit, who I'm watching a lot of his stuff. It's really great. I also, there's some kind of more academic things I read, one about the amphitheater, one about some bones we'll talk about later, and obviously like Wikipedia to get some dates right.

And I also watched the 2014 movie Pompeii. Have you seen that? Who was that a Ben Aff, is that a Jerry Brockhammer thing? No, it's Paul W.S. Anderson. We have more talk about it later. I'll talk about it more later. I'll talk about it more later, but I'll watch that. It's like, it's fun. It's not great, but it's fun. So this is a story that's like, you think this could never happen to us. And when you think about archaeology and looking at these ancient cities and things,

even like finding ruins of things that aren't as well preserved as Pompeii, the thing that I think of is like, could anyone ever excavate my house? Like, could that happen to me? You know, like, if today, during this hurricane the mountain next to me falls on my house will they find my house in 2 000 years and will only know about me you know things like that because you think it will never happen but the people of pompey never thought that's what happened to them you know like every town

that we excavate they didn't know i think the reason why they would why they like to excavate those things is because there was no real written history and so the only way to totally understand how people lived was that but i bet people will know in like a thousand years probably how you lived yeah i think i think yes i think you're probably right but i also think that i think that i think that our civilization is like at like a pinnacle peak part that probably isn't maybe i don't know it's a lot we have these books this is not my line we have these books that are like describing the world to kids in a way to tell them that that religion is fake and there is no magic but it's still cool you know and there's one of them where it's like

you're like oh this world is like perfect for us and it goes back and it's like every time and evolution whatever it was was like this world's perfect for me and then something weird happened and then you evolved into the next thing you know so it's kind of like i do wonder between the two of us and three thousand years or if there's aliens that showed up and we're all dead and buried whether they would dig my house up or your house first i did when we did have a big hole in the backyard because of a rainstorm and we had a tractor come and fill it in but I put a beach ball in it just to confuse future archaeologists that is very that is very on brand for you taylor thank you so they'll be like was there a beach here what it's happening when they find that

in the hole in my backyard in 10 000 years oh i love it um so yeah so there's also obviously a dan carlin story where he is obsessed with um this one king at one point xenophon sees the ruins of this city and he says what is that and the people around are like we don't know but it was Nineveh which is was a huge bustling city 200 years before and 200 years later it's in ruins and no one remembers that so like yeah kind of crazy so I'm going to raise you a quote from Pliny the younger I'll tell you more about him later but just going to tell you a little bit about what it was like the day in 79 AD when Mount Vesuvius erupted and destroyed the city of Pompeii.

How does Pliny the elder know this? I will tell you in a little bit, but I'm setting the scene. Okay, sure. You could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men. Some were calling their parents, others, their children, or their wives, trying to recognize them by their voices. People bewailed their own fate or that of their relatives, and there were some who prayed for death in their terror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods, but still more imagined that there were. were no gods left, that the universe was plunged into internal darkness forevermore.

Okay. That's intense. Shit's getting destroyed. It's super intense. So we're going to talk about what Pompey was, the city and the area, what happened in 79 AD, and then how we found it. Okay. That's a super cool story, too.

So Pompeii is in Italy, obviously. People have been living in that area so far as we know since about negative 8,000. Again, I'm doing negative. negative 8,000. There were Etruscans, Samanites, the Punic Wars that Dan Carlin has a whole big thing on happened around there. But now we're like just taking over to the positive years, like 50s, 50, year 50-ish, and it is now in Roman territory. So the Roman Empire is, you know, building and growing all over Europe. And that is what Pompeii is kind of under. It's actually a fun story about Emperor Nero, who we talked about a very long time ago, but Emperor Nero had to

kind of in 59, in the year 59, there was a riot in Pompeii because to, from Pompey and the city of New Syria, which was nearby, there was like a gladiator thing and like a race or whatever, and they got in like a bunch of fights and a bunch of people died. And it was like a huge riot and chaos. So Nero was like, fine. You guys can't have gladiator. for 10 years. So we took away their right to have, like, gladiators in Pompeii. They probably didn't actually, like, wait all 10 years, but that's how they got punished and they got in trouble for having this big riot. And Emperor Nero did that, which is fun. All the gladiars, like, thank God. I know, for real. Can I just, like, be a regular slave now and that one's going to eat

in by a lion? Yeah. Um, so Pompey's on the coast. It's a beautiful as close to Naples. I've been to Naples. I had a terrible time in Naples. I had like the weirdest time. It was like half under construction and like it was just weird but i did get to go to pompey and i'm glad that i did and you kind of take the train down um like sorrento like the italian coast it's so pretty i think the day i went to pompey was like maybe the same day i went to capri like it's just gorgeous um there's another town near pompey called herculaneum which was also destroyed by mont vesuvius in 79 and talk a little bit about that cheap but pompey is like the famous one so it was also a vacation town so some rich romans people who lived like literally in Rome would have like a vacation villa in Pompeii so it's just like a nice place to be yeah weather by the beach so i was took some notes as i was watching the 2014 movie so paul w s anderson he's the director he did event horizon in the budget resident evils you know some stuff that we love this is not this is not his best film guys event horizon it's like you can you can watch that over and over and over it's like crack oh my god um

Yeah, it's so good. So the guy who played John Snow is the main character in Game of Thrones. Kid Harrington. Yeah. Also, I think it's fun, this is an aside, that the guy who invented vaccines was named John Snow. Really? It's fun. And then another fun one that always makes me laugh, which is dumb.

But the first, like, white person to go into Imperial Japan and kind of see what they were doing there on their island. or they're kind of isolated, was named Matthew Perry, which makes me laugh every single time I hear it. So much, interesting. Yeah. So in the movie, Kit Harrington plays a slave. This time in Rome, which you talked about before, there's tons of enslaved people.

It's not really about race. It's about, you know, just conquering. So he plays a celt, and the Romans come and they, you know, come to Britain, kill his family, take him on as a slave. He's a kid kind of wandering around, which I hate the idea of a child would be alone. and then someone like grabs him and he becomes a gladiator. Also in the film, Kiefer Sutherland isn't, isn't it? It's like a baddie.

And he is a senator. And another thing that I always find hilarious is that Roman senators, like in this time, 2000 years ago, just had like regular dude haircuts. You know? Like in real life? Yeah. They just like look. They had like their haircut was like kind of not like shaved, but like a close, just like

nicely cropped haircut. And just like it's like a regular dude haircut. But I feel like, I don't know, I just feel like it should be different, but it's not. It's very, like their heads look very modern when they're wearing toga's, but that was the style then. Well, the toga gives up, gives away the time. Yeah. So the reason that I like the movie and that I, you know, things about it, that it kind of gives you an idea of what it looked like then, look what it felt like when people were actually living there. And it feels very, very modern.

So stuff that they found in Pompey, there were at least. 31 bakeries. There were baths. There were bars. There were stores. We found a fast food restaurant that I'll tell you about in a little bit. At an outdoor market, there's like, you know, the streets are, you know, very well, like, made. There's these big stepping stones that you have to step across the street because there's like always chariots going by. There's, you know, kind of water rushing through. There's horse poop everywhere. So like, it's people were really actively living there and living their lives there. The things that you miss from excavations and from the ruins

are like the colors and the fabric and the wood and like the things that just like kind of filled in yes exactly the richness of it when you think about ancient Rome

you think about like for the most part I think about cold like white marble and like you know all those things but it wasn't white it was painted you know like even in like ancient Greece like the Cropolis was painted

like that paint just has to come off after 2,000 years but things were really bright, there were bright colors, you know, there were overhangs and curtains and clothes and, you know, just people, like, living their lives and they had all this stuff and this stuff isn't there anymore, but, like, we just have, like,

the outline of it. Yeah. You know? And what else? So, okay, so there's some cool things that are in Pompeii. There's, like, a big amphitheater that we'll talk about. And it's just like, it's just a shadow of the past.

but it's the best shadow that we have of what life was like in the Roman Empire. And I'll tell you a little bit. Oh, why? So Pompeii stood in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. And obviously at this time, they're like natural disasters are because of the gods. Like we piss someone off. We have to like do sacrifice a goat or like whatever. But they didn't know about volcanoes because how would they know about volcanoes?

They don't know. Right. You know, like you just have never heard of it before. How would you even think about a mountain exploiting? You just like didn't know. So I've actually been to Mao Vesuvius. I've been to Pompeii. Do you remember that joke from Zoolander?

Have you seen Zoolander? Oh, God. Yeah, like 80 times. So when Hansel's telling that story, and then he's like, Hansel, could you, have you been taking peyote for like six straight days? Could this be in your head? And he's like, it was. I've ever been to Mount Vesuvius.

Like, I think he laughs so hard. He's like, falling up on my Vosuvius, could this be in your head? Have you been smoking peyote for six straight days? Yes. So when I went there, it was so hilarious and, like, kind of awful because you kind of, like, walk around it. And when you get to the top, they made you pay, like, five more euros to see the middle. And I was like, fuck you. So I had to pay, like, five more euros, got to the top and you kind of look over the edge of the volcano.

And it's like, you know, like a flat, sandy period. Oh, you walk up the volcano? Yeah. It's not active, right? It is active. All volcanoes are active, but it's not, like, going to erupt tomorrow. Oh, okay. It's not, like, it's not totally dead.

Because when you look over the edge, like it is, I'm trying to like, in my memory, it's like a flat, sandy area that is smoky a little bit. Like, it's hot. So wait, when you look in, can you see the magma? No, you just see sand, but you can, like, tell that it's hot. Whoa. Yeah. And then also, do you know who else? Climbabino Ves Vesuvius is Mary Shelley.

Mary Shelley. The Shelley's did that on their tour of Europe, which is fun. So anyway, it's cool. I think we should go to Italy. It's very fun. So now it is in like year 60 AD, positive 60, the emperor Titus is in Rome, and things are getting a little bit weird. There's always been some like small earthquakes in the area and you just kind of like make a sacrifice and hope for the best. On February 5th, the year 62, there was a great earthquake.

It was probably a five or six on the Richter scale. And it was a feast day. People were preparing for a party and there was tons of damage in Pompeii. There were a lot of fires because oil lamps fell over and caught things on fire. There's a lot of things that just kind of crumbled to the ground. So they took this opportunity to update some things. So now we can see that some things were pre the Great Earthquake and updated after. They were rebuilt or they were fixed, stuff like that.

So they built public baths after this. They put like a veneer over some things. But the people who remember the Great Earthquake are rattled. You know, like they remember and they're scared because it was scary. You don't even know. you don't know what that was you don't know what the fuck just happened and so in um the year 65 emperor nero and pompea his wife visited um visited pompey we know that they were there um this is probably around the time that nero performed in naples remember how he like sang everywhere

yes and won every competition yeah you had to be like oh my god he's so he's so good at thinking and playing the violin or whatever um so um so nearer has been there but now it's 79 so at 79 at and Mount Vesuvius begins to erupt. So originally, we thought from like the stuff that we know is that it was in August, but now they think it was actually the 24th to 25th of October. We'll never know like exactly for sure. But when they started excavating more things, they found things like they could tell the fruit being sold were fall fruits

and that they were selling like dried summer fruits. So like it was making that transition into fall. People were wearing more clothing than you would in August. So they like think that it was October. But I guess we'll never know. If I had a population of anywhere from like 11 to 20,000 people, it's hard to tell exactly how many people live there. Some people have had vacation homes there too. So there could have been some empty houses.

Right. You know what I mean? The eruption lasted two days. And we know about it from plenty of the younger, who I quoted earlier. And he lived in Naples and he could see everything from the Bay of Naples. So you could see the smoke. You could see what was happening. but he didn't he wasn't affected by it like he didn't get hurt so he watched it happen and he wrote

down his um his account 25 years later and so that we know from what he said so like also 25 years five years after it happened so it could potentially not be exact or whatever but he was the nephew of plenty of the elder so their elder and younger who's eventually adopted by him like his dad died when he was really young and plenty of the elder was very famous he was like a famous statesman. He was like a lawyer. He wrote the first encyclopedia, just like a real Roman scholar, Pliny the Elder. He was also an admiral in the Roman Navy. So he was like a really like big guy. Physically as well. He was a big guy. So in 79, Pliny of the Elder was 55. And so his nephew, the younger, is back in Naples. And Pliny the Elder gets a letter from his friend, Rictina and Pompeii. She had a villa at the bottom of the mountain. And he got the letter in like time to go try to get her. And he got the letter in like time to go try to get her. which is she was probably like feeling rumbling and being like I got to get the fuck on a dodge. Yeah. Like thinking about the earthquakes, like no concept of a volcano, but potentially an earthquake, you know?

Right. So he goes to get her. And he tries to keep people calm. He like goes to sleep and like takes a nap and is like everything's fine, you guys. Like we're going to get out of here. No big deal. Like trying to remain calm. Eventually the air starts to get smoky.

And like he probably had asthma. He was like really big and he dies of a heart. attack. So he doesn't, he never leaves Pompey. He, he, he, he, he stayed there. But I think his friends get out. Wait, who? Elder? The elder. Okay. Okay. So plenty of the younger. One of his other things was like, I'm going to tell this story so that you know that my uncle was like trying to be a hero when he died. Right. You know, um, so. A sip of wine. Probably has a wine. Hopefully people got drunk when this was happened because what else the fuck you're going to do? What else? Yeah. Also is there?

Day one, pumice starts raining down from the top of the mountain, like burning rocks just coming into the city, like raining over the city. I mean, if you could fucking imagine that happening like in any city right now and we understand what pumice is, you know, just like what the fuck is going on? The gods are so mad at us. People start to leave. A lot of people were able to leave and they took a lot of their expensive things. So some of the bodies they found later, like people had like all their jewels with them because they were trying to run away with like their stuff. there I learned about this I think in college I learned the story there's a story where there was like a basement area like a cellar where they found a bunch of bodies later and they probably suffocated in there they probably were like let's go underground which I think would make sense you would think that would be okay but then when the city was covered like they suffocated but in that in that place and they found a woman who was pregnant so they found like her bones with her baby's bones on top of each other but her bones were green because she was wearing a bunch of copper jewelry. that ended up tarnishing, which is, like, super interesting that she was, like, in there,

holding her pregnant belly and, like, suffocating to death, crazy. In the movie that Pompeii, like, this day is chaos, which totally makes sense. There's fire falling from the sky. Like, you don't know what the fuck is going on. And I imagine that, like, the richer people could leave, which happens now and all the time. You know, like, in 2020, I could leave a big city. You could take a boat and just leave. Like, before the big eruption started, you could start to leave.

You could get, you could take your horse. and try to get far enough away like that was still potentially possible on day one because it sounds like one of those things like i mean look like okay so it doesn't matter if like the big one hits la if you live in belair or compton like you're fucking dead right so like this feels more like one of those situations where it's like it's going to hit you and then your your opportunity to mitigate the impact is pretty limited but you have an entire day you don't know what's coming but it's still happening only like the first day is just as it's just raiding rocks of fire so we deal just that's why i'm saying i was like it sounds like you're

right you're not wrong that it sounds fucking terrible and yeah and on your way out you can get hit in the head of the flying fire rock and die like so i'm sure people died during that too but people did leave which is good that said they were able to get out before the really really bad thing happened because a really, really bad thing happened on day two. So day two is pyroclastic flow day, which you've learned about before. That's the day when that hot ass ash comes as fast as fucking possible and covers you and kills you. Your brain boils. You die pretty immediately.

Things catch on fire, but like they're encased so fast, you know? So like there's things where I know we'll talk about the bodies in a second, but like there's doors that are like wooden doors that we have plastered. molds of because the ash just like came around it so fast the doors burned but it left the imprint inside the ash wow so it's fast and hot it's coming just so so fucking fast that's the thing that i remember because my dad told me about vesuvius when i was a kid before like he's like my son's going to be a scientist um and he barely missed the mark but he told me about vesuvius and i looked it up and his main thing was like yeah like preserved everything because it was so hot so fast like you just said it reminded me a lot of like atomic bombs and how like it like there's a

memory that it leaves behind because of its ferocity that's very unusual yeah that's what made me think of but i'm sure you're gonna talk about that no that's very that's very deep if i get it yes yes he's sure to try to make me a poet because that's obviously where my calling was i think this is where you're headed um so yeah by the end of day two the eruption was over and it would have been quiet and smoky and like weird because there's a whole like first floor of the whole city is under this ash so imagine if like the first floor of an entire city is just hot ash now um there are some rescue efforts that emperor titus tries to do he sends people but there's nothing they can do like they know that everybody under the ash is dead like there's no one that's they can save. Looters and robbers go in and they're able to see like, oh, I see the second story of this building.

I know this building was a rich person's house and they do try to like dig in and steal things. So some of the stuff is like kind of destroyed by looters, which again, people don't change. The fucking happens. No. You know. So some of that happens. Eventually there's like another small eruption in like 500 that kind of covers everything that's left.

So and then the second stories that are, that were above. of the ash, you know, they get destroyed by like that and like the weather. Herculeanium, the other town that was destroyed, that one got more ash. So actually, it does have two stories worth of ash. So there's a lot more we can see there. But it's also harder to excavate because of that. Right. And then people like forgot.

They forgot it was there. It was like a rumor and like a legend. You know, like if you were alive when it was a town you went to, maybe you told your kids but two generations later no one remembered and it was just like an area that by the beach it changed the coastline it was empty you know and um Rome fell other things happened so they just forgot that that it was there and um it's like when you go to Rome there's if you're like in the subway in Rome in like underground the there's like parts of it where you they have like, you know, glass and you can see Roman ruins because it was like ancient Rome

and then like Renaissance Rome and then like now Rome and it just keeps building on top of each other. So they're just like, if you can't like build anything new and Rome, you're going to find fucking something awesome. You know? Yeah. Yeah. It just like happens to you there. But Rome didn't get destroyed. It just continued. So that's why we don't know a lot of what life was like in actual ancient Rome, the city because it was, it's always been a city, you know? Right. So you just like adapt and continue to do things. So, um in now let's get so that happened that day happened a lot of people died it was probably fucking horror show who who knows when they died mercifully they died really fast if they got like

did basically everybody die is that what the just is they think about like they really don't know they read something that was like 16 000 people died but i know some people had like left but no one like was there the next day you know either you left or you died there was no like survivors. So in 1592, so like 1500 years later, an architect named Domenico Fontana was digging for an aqueduct and he found some ancient walls and paintings. So he was like digging his well and he was like, this is weird and like found like a cavern in Herculaneum that was like a room. And there's rooms underground though. They didn't know we're there because they had been like encapsulated in the ash.

Yeah. In the Dan Snow documentary, I watched, he has to go in there and they're just like an underground amphitheater. It's like bananas. You can see where people used to sit and walk and all these things because it was just like covered by things. Think of how many of those probably. So when I was in, when I was in Lisbon, I was walking somewhere.

I don't know where I was. But Lisbon is also like a super, super old city kind of like, well, Portugal in general is an old country. And it was weird. like you're in the middle of the city and you look over and the whole thing is packed full of buildings everywhere and there's just gape like in the middle of the city in the middle of the street and you you meander down there and they're like yeah we were about to knock this building down to build another building there and then when we took it down to its foundations and went a layer deep or we realized that underneath that was an amphitheater there's this

millennia's old amphitheater like what the fuck it's just you're walking dude i don't know what's underneath you there could be like the home of like the former president i don't know i'm making shut up like probably like there's probably stuff everywhere and i have a couple i have a couple stories that reminds me of one i told the kids i was like we have to go to paris paris is built on top of bones like we've got to go into like the what's it called the paris where like there's yeah catacombs exactly um there was also king richard the third of England was found in a parking lot in like Leicestershire like they were like building a parking lot they found a dead king because that would like they just like didn't do a thing and then

another one remember that you know Darren Koo you that city in Turkey where it's like all underground oh yeah yeah that farmer who like found it so fucking cool it's like a city an underground city that could hold 20,000 people that a farmer just like accidentally found so I bet there's probably a lot of those out there still there's so many um i think they found like the leoquin which was like a really famous like roman statue in a farm as well like there's just things that are like buried in there it's so cool um but dominico fontana didn't really tell anyone that he had found this so he just like kind of let it go um in the 1690s some people started to see the word pompeas carved onto things so they were like that's weird they just kept kind of like seeing things carved

of things as they kind of went lower, but they didn't really, like, do anything more than that. Herculeanium was officially rediscovered in 1738 by workers digging for the foundations of a summer palace for the King of Naples, Charles of Bourbon, who was French, and they started to kind of dig it up. In 1763, the officially identified Pompeii. The first thing that they found was the amphitheater. They just, like, tripped over a rock, started to dig, and they were like, oh, it's a lot. a step oh it's another step oh it's another step then they found a fucking huge amphitheater just like you were saying crazy that was like the first thing that they found um so it's 1760s and who's in charge of italy the french and who's in charge of france napoleon napoleon so napoleon like all rulers wants to be

an emperor you know he's like i want to be an emperor i identify with roman emperor it's like fuck you. I'm sure you do. So do I. Whatever. Short main complex. I identify with rich people. Make me rich. But his sister, Caroline Bonaparte, was the queen of Naples,

which is hilarious. And she was put in charge of excavations. So Caroline Bonaparte had people go and dig up the outside of Pompeii. So they dug up the outer wall so they could see what they were working with, which is pretty

cool. Okay. The outer wall of the amphitheater? of the entire city. Oh. So they, they, like, found the outer wall and started digging all the way around.

So they, like, wanted to kind of start mapping out exactly what Pompey was. So she did that. Eventually, Italy took it back

and started to do, or like, whatever that means. I don't know. Sorry, Italian historians. But, you know, it's Italy, again.

And they started excavating, there's some breaks, but they found some incredible home, some huge villas where they can see courtyards in different rooms

and where people like went to the bathroom and slept and cooked and things like that. And the thing that is so fucking cool is that they're all painted and mosaiced. And that's what you don't see anywhere else because it was saved. It was like in a time capsule underneath all this ash. The paints are bright red and bright yellow. And the mosaics are brightly colored. So you can tell that like it wasn't just like marble. You know, it's like a really bright city.

Obviously there's like the paintings of like people having sex and things that people get super super, super excited about because it was like a Roman time. It was debauchery. It's super fun. They find a gladiator barracks. That's actually two stories and has intact gladiator helmets. So we know exactly what they wore and exactly what their life was like from that. They find bakeries and restaurants with bread still in the ovens. They can like really dig in and like find all this stuff. And it is in color for the first time, which is Super Bowl. the frescas are oddly preserved. Like, it does look...

And they're nowhere else. There's no... Oh, you know, there's probably more buried somewhere, but, like, you don't see that in Rome in other cities because of time. Well, it's weird because you would assume that the heat and the ash would destroy the paint, but I guess not.

It didn't. It just, like, kept it in a lot of cases, so it's really, really beautiful. You can really see what people wore. You can see, like, there's children. There's people just, like, living their lives. A lot of, like, daily life. scenes that are painted. Oh, they excavated like the whole thing. Like, I mean, the whole city is

there now. I think there's a little bit left, but yeah, most of it. Well, they're still finding stuff, which I'll tell you about one second. But they kept finding holes of like pockets of air. And in the pockets of air, there were skeletons. So they kept fighting skeletons in his pockets of air. And in 1863, a man named Giuseppe Fiorelli took charge. of excavations and he decided that those to put plaster in those holes and see what was in there and he found that they were like a perfect cast of the bodies and that's what you've seen from Pompeii the people's bodies because the ash cooled around them so quickly their bodies decomposed in that space so they're if you went into that space their bones are in the

ground the shape of it is the shape of the person it's like a sarcophagus so look that's what it looks like Yeah. So it's just like, it's like actually like exactly the way their bodies were you can see the fear of their faces. You know, you can see children. You can see dogs. They had it because Roman, and Romans had dogs like on leashes. They had like pets. So you would like see them too. One of the pictures I saw was a guy with teeth. Well, you know, it's not his actual teeth, but it's like the preservation of the teeth. Oh, okay. Okay. You know what I mean? It's like if someone like, if you make a mold of something, like you would put something in plaster or, you know, whatever. So it's exactly like a. It's exactly like a. mold of the humans, and that's what they're finding. So you can really see, like, people were running for their lives, you know? They were scared. They're, like, holding each other. And there's places where they find, like, a bunch of people together and you're like, do they know each other? Like, we'll never know. Was it a family? Was it, you know, people who were running together and found each other and tried to find safety somewhere, like, whatever,

but people like huddled together because, like, they're going to die. They still do that today. They're still finding, finding these pockets with bodies. They use resin now instead of plaster because it's more durable and they can keep the bones. But there's just, still doing that, and that was in 1863. So then, fast forward to the 1930s, and Mussolini is now in charge of Italy, and he really wants to go back in and start doing that, like, we're ancient Romans, let's do a lot more excavating. So he goes, they go back in, kind of brings it up again. He finds a jinny, not he, but like they find a gymnasium that has these awesome mosaics of people like working out. That's people swimming, people like doing like stretches and just like, you don't

was like a gym where people worked out just like such a normal city yeah you know um so um during world war two the excavation stopped because there's other shit to do um in 1943 pompey was bombed by the british americans and canadians um they said like oh it was an accident we didn't mean to like fuck you of course you did whatever um so some of it was destroyed by world war two bombs but luckily not everything um but there's a house called like the house of the fallen where you can see a shell from a bomb from a World War II bomb because we did that then um so that brings us to now um at the beginning the excavation was like very haphazard because it was 300 years ago so they were just like push things over and like try to dig with like whatever um now it's a lot more

meticulous obviously um and like we said about the bright colors and it's like that like now Pompeii is actually exposed to the elements, now it's starting to get destroyed. That's the downside. The earth. Yeah. So we can see it, but now it's out there. So now that it's out here, like, you know, just like regular elements, rain and wind and things are starting to fade. You can also like really go there.

Like I remember, I touched a wall. I touched a fresco. I was like, and I was like walking on mosaics, you know, you could like really walk in it. I think they maybe have pulled that back a little bit because that was 20 years ago. I read a story a while ago, I don't know where I read it, but like some person was like they took a rock home from Pompeii and then they were like cursed forever, you know, so like don't steal shit from Pompey,

but I'm sure there's like a gift shop. But they're still finding stuff. So in 2020, they found a fast food place. So it's a restaurant, like they found like a building with a restaurant. And it has this like low counter. And in the counter there are holes with pots in them. And in front of each pot is a painting of like a chicken or a fish. or a lamb so you could like go there and be like all have the chicken and they would like put it in like a bowl and you could take it with you that's pretty cool but it's super cool or you could like sit in there and like eat and drink so there's like restaurants people like really living um and in 2021 they found a chariot and a mummified freed slave so they found like some more things so they're still finding things um and it's so cool because i mean hopefully it it lasts you know longer but the fact that we have this time capsule um about

this ancient Roman city because of this awful tragedy, we can see what they ate and drank and did for fun. We can see who was there. We can learn so much about the entire Roman Empire. So I also wanted to announce that I'm quitting my job and moving to Pompey to work there. Congratulations. Wow. The big reveal. That's a big reveal. I'm very excited. I have not been offered a job, but I think I'm going to show up with like a paintbrush and like some hope and be like, hey, guys, what can I do for you? I really want to just live here and figure out what happened. because it's so fucking cool until it explodes again because four million people live in the area now so looking at pictures of pompey i would say that the interesting part about it like mentally is that

it looks like any like old city because they dug it all up but the part you have to keep remembering it's like it's like 2 000 years old like it shouldn't look the way it looks which is like the interesting part because it you know it looks like Lisbon looks like a part of Lisbon or anywhere else it's been around for a very very long time but you got to remember that like it shouldn't look this good basically yeah exactly it shouldn't look that good and it looks great and then you also have to like use your imagination for that second layer like imagine the second story imagine fabric imagine wood imagine animals imagine people like bring it to life a little bit which i think that's why i like to the movie because it kind of brings it a little bit to life even though it's silly um but it looks silly i looked at the screen

wraps of it it looks it looks really it's on hulu you can watch it yeah not not great yeah um but it's cool i think you should go all right well that can be next on the agenda cool wow yeah these frescoes are really really cool isn't it's so are right there's so yeah no kidding yeah when you picture it when you picture it when you picture in pompey like it's just like a lot of like just dead gray darkness and then it's actually really really beautiful and that's like the inside of someone's house so like you if you were like a rich person in pompey like the inside of your house would be covered with like bright red like trim and frescoes of people like having fun you know of like you and your family's accomplishments and

shit so if you had to choose how are you going giant earthquake or giant volcano i feel like this is like the longest pause ever the volcano would be very quick but it'd be very scary but the and the earthquake i don't i hate i hate the idea of being stuck in a fallen building you remember i got a probably collapse in miami like a couple the last year or whatever like people they didn't find any survivors that people could have technically been there for like a week yeah and they just died that is awful so maybe it's a volcano that's quicker yeah okay this is a two-part question so volcano or ill-constructed marine vessel to the bottom of the ocean to see the titanic oh my god volcano i don't know why i feel safer where there's air even though i know the air is about to kill me

the fact that there is no air in that thing i think that's i don't like that what do you think I think if you were to just drug me, blindfold me, tie me down, and then put me in the Titanic submersible, I'd probably pick that because when it happens, you don't even know what happened. Well, you can't be drugged and tie down. You have to be like, be like, what's happening? I don't know. Are we going up?

I don't know. If I'm paying not much money, I think I can just choose. I choose how it happens. Dying a volcano for free. It's your point. Actually, yeah. From an economic financial perspective, that would be the most reason, I mean, that Ramsey character, he would definitely recommend that whatever his name is. Yeah. Yeah. So crazy day, crazy thing that have been there. It's super cool for us that we get to see that history. It's fucking fascinating. It's like, you know, everything else we know from like bits of, bits of pottery. And this is like a whole thing. We can really like see stories and stuff. So it's cool. There's one I didn't say. I forgot to mention this. There's like a house that they know was. was owned by a woman who lived alone named Julia and she would rent out parts of her house. So she was like the first Airbnb.

Yeah, exactly, a little Airbnb in Pompeii. It would have been really fucking nice until it wasn't. Do we know how they know she rented out that house? Yes, on the side of her house is carved an advertisement that says rooms for rent. It's incredible. Is that cool? I know. It's so cool.

I might go to Pompeii. You might have convinced me. I think we should go together. yeah i definitely want to go that sounds great um sweet well taylor thank you for sharing your story i will say that i just pulled up the recent article about hilary and it says take this seriously okay everybody seems to be uh taking it seriously so please getting a little darker out my window um yeah it's happening well if you ever if you and you the kids and one need a place to fleet too you got a place here so thank you um i will keep you posted yeah good luck tomorrow

unless i'm stuck there with you i know for real you're going to be living at the airport for the next a couple days so don't know yeah i'm used to that um well thank you cool um i have one announcement um i found out that my friend died today um so i just want to tell a little story um my friend boy from high school his name was nathan but they called him boy um which was cute he was so cute he was so 90s cute had the biggest freaking crush on him and his his house was like the fun house and his sister neva she i was talking with her today a little bit how how sad i am and um but you could just like do what the fucking wanted other house and it was like so fun you would always just like have big parties and their parents didn't care and i remember one party

i was like super young i was like 15 or 16 and i was like trying to sleep it off because i like drank a ton and i was crying because i thought all my friends were prettier than me I remember I was laying in like I don't know what the fuck I was like in like a mattress and like the floor and I can I can like picture the hot tears I like remember the hot tears and boy came in the room and he was like are you okay and I was like oh my friends are prettier than me and he was like no and it was nothing nefarious like nothing happened but he he like gave me a really big hug and I remember feeling the hot tears and feeling this like curly curly hair like all over my face because he was wearing this like huge blonde wig because he was like balls and he was like he's like he's like going to but he's wearing this huge blonde curly wig and like comforting me but I was like super confused because I was like drunk and sad and it was just like this hair and he was just he was just a very very nice guy and he left behind a wife and a young daughter so really sad but nothing but good memories of hanging out with him so I just wanted to share that you pass away today um he passed away like this week oh you but you found out yeah you talk about wow that sucks

isn't it weird like it's like you get we're at that age now we're like this starts picking up speed it's kind of wild yeah sorry you hear that taylor thank you i also wanted to make a plea to the lincoln and facebook community that like if someone dies please don't put them on my list of people that i have to add to my podcast like on lincoln because i've definitely invited several dead people to like our podcast because otherwise they're just going to be the top of my list forever, you know? Wait, you, why are you adding dead people to our podcast? What? Because on LinkedIn, I get, so we have a page on LinkedIn for our podcast. You can follow it, everyone. But I'm inviting people, but I can only invite 250 people a month. So every month at the beginning of the month, I invite

250 people of like my friends on LinkedIn or whatever. But at the top of the list is in like, I don't know what order it's in. By the very top of the list, if you don't invite someone, they're going to stay at the top of the list. So I had, like, Jim at the top of my list for, like, two months. And then I was like, I don't want to keep seeing Jim's face every month when I'm trying to invite people. Like, it just makes me sad. So I just invited him.

So it's off the list. Oh, you know what I mean? I see what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it's real sad. But there'll be more of that as we get older.

God, I just reminded me of, um, shit who was that i don't know it's like high school friends that like some somebody that passed and their um their facebook just stayed kind of stagnant forever and but it wasn't marked as a memorial site and so the reminders keep coming up about their birthday yeah because if it's if i don't know how it works but if you don't like tell facebook that person's dead they'll just like pretend i mean it just does a normal facebook thing right and so you got to tell them and then they stops pushing you to remind anyways i know it was just my friend stephanie's birthday she passed away last year and i got them think invite i think people posted like happy birthday i don't know that they

knew because he wouldn't doesn't say on her thing that she that she's passed so i mean i wrote like i miss you but i mean yeah that's crazy yeah yeah wow okay well bummer former situation um but apparently you know we have a linkedin group so join that evil we're on every social at doom to fail pod all the socials about the blow up yes thank you everyone for your support please send us emails um send us instagram messages we definitely read them we really appreciate it um and chat for email so you won't ever miss an episode and tell your friends um oh thank you to my friend christine who told a really fun story about an earthquake um on instagram i reposted it but she was telling the story.

The volcano episode reminded her of when she was in that 1994 earthquake in California. Yeah, North Ridge. And she's so cute. She was like, she was a kid and she had like built a fort and she was like in her fort. And she was like, my fort's crashing down around me. It's so cute. So she's like, I'm super traumatized by everything. But it was sweet.

Thank you for sharing. That was very cute. Cool. Sweet. Well, thanks, everyone. Thanks, sailor. Have a great rest of your day. Bye y'all.