Oh What A Time... - #119 Daft Deaths (Part 1)

Episode Date: June 15, 2025

This week we’re turning to history to find people unfortunate enough to have had a really daft death. We’ve got sixteenth-century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, Alexander Pushkin’s totally avoidable end and we’ll hear all about the sad but, in some respects, happy demise of Greek philosopher Chrysippus. Plus we’re chatting Stonehenge this week. Got a crackpot theory on what it is? Got a good fact? Ever been there for a rave? Well, we’re desperate to hear more: [e-mail] you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER?Up for grabs is:- two bonus episodes every month!- ad-free listening- episodes a week ahead of everyone else- And much moreSubscriptions are available via AnotherSlice and Wondery +. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.comYou can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom xSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Find your local date, register or donate at walkttoendals.ca. Hello and welcome to Oh What A Time. It's a history podcast and it contemplates the big questions such as this one. Look, Glastonbury Festival is on the horizon, myself and Tom are going and every time I drive to Glastonbury, I pause, I slow down the traffic, I look out my window and I see Stonehenge. And I just contemplate, what is it? Why? And also the rumours about it is that people would flock there, much like Glastonbury, from all over the country for some sort of festival, possibly pagan origins. It's a strange part of the country isn't it? I adore Stonehenge. I find it absolutely fascinating. It's 5,000 years old. So by the time Christ was born it had been there for 3,000 years. That is absolutely

mind-boggling to me. You cannot fault the builders on that one, can you, to be honest? Because they've done a job and it's lasted. It's like what people say about fridges that were made in the 1950s. They'll last. Like now. Now then, I think our boiler's broken. We moved into this house in sort of end of 2022 and the boiler was brought in 2018 and I reckon I've had to call plumbers out and boiler people out probably five times because of this boiler. It's actually too good. It's so sensitive and it's so flash

that if anything changes it just goes, oh God, no. And then it breaks down. We used to have a boiler in the old house that had been in that house since 1984. And it basically had about three components. So the thing was indestructible. That thing could have turned heating on on Mars. It just never broke down. And that's the thing with Stonehenge. It's very basic, but my god. God, it used to last. Like

rally bikes from about 1950. You'll be able to ride them for the next thousand years. Or, has Ellis actually fallen for it? You think Stonehenge is basic. Is it actually communicating with aliens? And it's actually the least basic thing on the planet, hell. It was built in the 60s. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. Our boiler, to quote the person who put it in, we have the same situation with yours, it's always going wrong. It speaks to the radiators. So it has these little things on our radiators and they apparently communicate and they can tell if heat is needed anywhere. And that is just not what is happening in reality. It's either

giving you the heat of a furnace in midsummer for no reason or it's forgetting that it can produce heat throughout winter. Boilers were fine and yet we decided to fiddle with boilers so that now they talk to each other. It's got a bigger computer in it than the first moon landing computers that NASA had. But it's better than the Apollo mission. And as a consequence, the fucking thing breaks down all the time

and it drives me mad. That's actually, I would say boilers are probably the one thing that technological innovation has made worse. Yeah, totally, totally. I don't really know how my boiler works, but it's doing its own thing. I've got an app on my phone, I can't figure out what it's doing. Sometimes I look at it, it's made up its own schedule. The only control I have over my boiler is that I can turn it off.

Yeah, yeah, it's doing its own thing. That's the only power I have over my boiler. I can end it. My mum and dad have had the same boiler since 1992 and it's absolutely fine. And it just does it. Obviously it's probably energy inefficient. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, fine. But it works and it works when they want it to work. This new one, oh God, it's got all the mod cons. What it can't do is work for more than a month without me having to ring an emergency plumber. Skull, you mentioned the topic show about Stonehenge and what it's there for. I've quickly googled on ChatGPT, which is a writer and something I should refuse to use.

I've written, give me five Stonehenge conspiracy theories, and it's done that. Do you know what? Say what you will about AI, it's quick, isn't it? I'm gonna read the five out, but I want you to each choose which feels most likely at the end of this, okay? Number one, I'll keep these quick. Aliens built Stonehenge,

apparently it's the most popular one, knocking around. Number two, Stonehenge is a stargate or portal to another dimension. That's number two. This has been popular. Well, that is true. Three. Ancient Atlanteans built Stonehenge is three.

The Freemasons or Illuminati have a connection to it. They think they may have a hand in preserving it for symbolic reasons. And the fifth one here is that Stonehenge is a hoax or a modern construction. So it's actually made for tourism or propaganda reasons. Have you ever met a Freemason? Yeah. The idea that they are in charge is so preposterous. At most they might be able to get you a permit in a controlled parking zone without having to fill in a form. Don't worry, I know a guy.

The idea that Freem Freemasons and charge a stonehenge is so outlandish. I'm going to go with that one please. You're going with that? Okay, so you're going Freemasons. Just because I find it so funny. Skull, what are you going with? Atlanteans building stonehenge. I mean, are some sort of sea people being involved? I can see that. I can see that. Where did the stones? The stones not come.

Didn't they transport the stones by via river? This is what they claim. This is what they claim from from Pembrokeshire. So, yeah, from where I'm from. And if they'd done that, tracking those poor sods from Pembrokeshire at the time, we're told just how fucking far it is to Wiltshire. Have you got much on at the moment? Not really, just sort of, you know, just eking out a living as a sort of subsistence farmer,

sort of not great, the weather's terrible. Have you got a lot of time on your hands? Yeah, I mean like years. Fancy moving a big rock to Wiltshire? Oh, Jack. How big? I don't need to specify how big exactly do I? So way bigger than your house?

So I'm going to go with modern hoax or modern construction. I'll give you the reason. It's when you go to Stonehenge, and this is an interesting giveaway, they won't let you go up and tap it. Because if you did tap it, you'd hear it was polystyrene. That's the thing. They never, it's roped off. You can't go near it. You're not allowed to do a tap because they know all the truth will come

out. Do you know what? I've driven past Stonehenge lots of times, but I've never been up close. So you can't go up to Stonehenge that's roped off? No, not anymore. You can go within 20 metres of it. Bitting distance. It is absolutely extraordinary to me, considering it's one of the world's great UNESCO heritage sites and that it's 5,000 years old,

until the 90s, basically ravers could take pills and dance around those fucking stones. It's remarkable. It never fails to boggle my mind that some bloke in a van on ecstasy is like, yeah, June the 21st, that's what I'll be. And no one thought that was a bad idea. So let's chuck this out.

Anyone listening, do you have a conspiracy theory to do with Stonehenge that we haven't listed there that you think is worth airing on a podcast? Do send it in. And actually, should to broaden it in general, is it any historical conspiracy theory that you think might have some… This could quite radically change our listenership and fan base, Tom. I've just read a book on conspiracy theories, we are dipping our toes into uncharted waters. Much like the Atlanteans. What I would like from listeners is,

what's your favourite Stonehenge fact that maybe not everyone knows? Have you ever been to a rave at Stonehenge? Great. And what happened? There's footage of them, like some are sourced to sort of 1991 I think. They're just all dancing around the stones. And they stopped it, they stopped it then because someone eventually saw sense. Would people who listen to this podcast have raved around Stonehenge?

Oh God, that would make me empty. Please, tell me everything. Right, so, get in contact with that. But before we get into the history, shall we do a little bit of correspondence? Oh yes, please. Right, our email today is from Martin Lit, who has sent us an email that's simply titled Oh What a lovely war. Afternoon, chaps, I really enjoyed weird wars.

And you asked if anyone had a positive experience out of a war. So we did an episode recently about strange wars from history, if you haven't listened to it, it's well worth listening back. And we asked about the idea that anyone actually enjoyed being part of a war if something good had come from it. Well, Martin Litt had a family member who experienced just that. I had a German great-uncle called Dieter who was a carpenter and

his job was to create fake, this is so weird, this is so weird, to create fake airfields for the RAF to discover through leaked intelligence and for them to bomb to pieces. So his whole war was constructing hangars and fake airplanes, then sitting down and drinking tea for two days while we bombed them to pieces and then going 30 miles down the road and doing the same thing all over again. Oh, wow. Martin Litt.

That's a pretty good one. My wife's granddad, who I met, told me that during the war, he was in the Royal Navy, and he just basically went on a cruise. He went on about three different boats, and none of them saw any action. He didn't hear a single gunshot or nothing, and his wife, my wife's grandma, described it as a second World War cruise. That's the dream. The air guitar competitions every night.

The buffet. Yeah. Jane McDonald. Come sing a Jane McDonald. Singing away. This is the side of the war you never hear about, isn't it? Sing along the can can. The problem is you'd get home, you'd have to lie.

Yeah, you would. How was it? Pretty bad actually, I don't want to talk about it. He refuses to talk about his war because he just enjoyed it too much. It was a big lad's holiday. It wouldn't be fitting for him to talk about just how much he loved World War II. It's not appropriate. What would be the giveaway if he's spilling the lie to his family

having returned home? Huge town, massive smile on his face. 15 friendship bracelets. He looks 10 years younger. Being straight on the phone when Jane McDonald comes round for a tour of local provincial nightclubs. A badge that says karaoke star. Yeah, absolutely.

You'd have to spin a lie. So he genuinely enjoyed it. He just said it was just a jolly. He didn't say he didn't hear a single gunshot. Just went all around the world on a variety of different cruisers. Didn't see a thing. Yeah, my uncle had a similar experience actually. This is the untold story of World War Two.

The people who had an absolutely brilliant time. I would give a slight counter-argument to that. If I was on a cruise ship, I think I'd – as much as I enjoy it – I'd struggle to fully relax if I had a sneaking suspicion there could be a U-boat at any point. Oh yeah. So that is going to affect your experience of the cruise. Yeah, of course, but you'd take that over fighting with the desert rats in North Africa, don't you?

Yeah, that's true, absolutely. I found a news article about raving at Stonehenge. This is from 2002. So it's from the summer of 2002 during the World Cup. Thousands of people gathered peacefully at Stonehenge today to see in the summer solstice. Some danced naked, oh for God's sake, put some bloody shorts on you beast. And others waved St George flags ahead of the England game, although any appeals to spiritual bodies for help went unheeded. So I'm trying to work out what game that would have been. Though the World Heritage Sighting Wiltshire, this is from the Guardian by the way, though

the World Heritage Sighting Wiltshire is is from the Guardian by the way, though the World Heritage Site in Wiltshire is open to the public during the day all year round, it's only the third time in more than a decade it's been open for solstice celebrations. Clashes between crowds and the police in the past, culminating in the Battle of the Beanfield in 1985. That's a really interesting story. If we covered that on the podcast before.

No, no. That's a really interesting story about the Beanfield. Give me the headline. It's a load of hippies end up fighting with the police. On summer solstice, led to a four mile exclusion zone being imposed around the stones during the solstice. But police and English Heritage said today there'd only been 11 arrests made mainly for drunkenness and drug offences.

Oh, I got to predict that. Among the estimated 22,000 revelers. 22,000 people. People started to gather at the monument site last night and were later allowed to congregate near the stones themselves, which doesn't happen very often. English Heritage allowed the celebrations on condition that people did not bring in glass bottles or fireworks and did not climb on the stones. Police said some people had flouted the rules, including a number who climbed on top of the

stones and a few were ejected from the site. So what was the game that people were watching? They went to watch the football, did you say? Well no, but it was during the World Cup. Tom's imagining them with a big projection hanging. That's what I'd imagine. Someone's hanging a big bed sheet over Stonehenge and a projector. And then after that, using Stonehenge as a goal because it's a perfect shape for a kickabout.

Well I'm looking at the picture that the Guardian used on the 21st of June 2002, which was a Friday, a bloke with his bum out and a topless woman. I mean it's a tale as old as time. Superintendent Jenny Wickham who ran the police operation said, It's fair to say the majority of people have been very well behaved and there's been a good atmosphere. There have been the odd bits and pieces, most of them drink or drug related, but I think we've learnt our lesson about how to do things over the years. The Director of English Heritage Stonehenge Clues Everard said There's been a really wonderful atmosphere and everyone seems to be having a good time.

It's good to see so many people of all different ages, classes, types and creeds enjoying themselves. I love this. A handful brought St George flags with them, standing on the stones to cheer on England. They would have stuck out like such a sore thumb because I remember being in Penzance during a pagan festival. I was doing stand-up there. I didn't realise the pagan festival was on. That pagan festival! Oh no! But it was during the 2010 World Cup and there was this really weird mix of like lads in England shirts who'd been on the side of Black all day and people were there for the Pagan festival and it was a really weird mix of the two sides of Cornwall because they didn't really meet very happily in the middle. Yeah. So how's this?

So, and the assembled kingdoms group banged out a rhythm in their torch lit parade akin to Brazilian samba. How's this for a sentence? John Rothwell, a traditional British witch. Love it. Pop that in your LinkedIn. Melisande Veritas, a Texan witch. So the atmosphere had been good.

Mr Rothwell, who remember a traditional British witch, a computer technician from Telford, because witches need to have a job, said it's such a cool place to be. People have been doing this since year dot even though we've no written records of why everyone needs a reason to gather together a place of reverence. Good on them. Dean Fiebrey, 27, a chemist from Staines, said, There's a very bizarre mix of people here, witches and druids, with naïves drinking out of silver goblets.

But it's a spiritual place. But you know, if it is, if people believe it is a spiritual place and that's the reason for its construction, it makes sense that people should be allowed to gather there. That's, you know, that's like, it had a reason. And so it feels weird that's not being fulfilled. It's almost still strange it's become this commercial thing, really. This is a very English sentence.

Rainfall quickly dispersed the crowds, with many leaving to try and find a television to watch the football. It's time to piss down everyone though, fuck it. Oh, I love that. Police said those camped in the fields were supposedly by 1pm, but they expected some stragglers among those moving on to next week's Glastonbury Festival, which is nearby. I've just been thinking about the stones of Stonehenge.

I wondered how deep they were buried. Do you know the answer to this? This is astonishing to me. Most of the large upright stones are buried between 1.2 and 1.8 metres each. That's four to six feet deep for stability. And they're four metres above ground. Have you seen the Easter Island heads? Yes, I've seen that. Yeah.

They've got bodies. They're incredibly far down. Yeah, amazing. That's amazing. Yeah. Wow. Good builders. Good builders. Shame they're not around now.

So thank you, Martin, for that email. Very much appreciated. If anyone else has anything they want you Martin for that email, very much appreciated. If anyone else has anything they want to send to the show, here's how. Alright you horrible lot, here's how you can stay in touch with the show. You can email us at hello at earlwatertime. com and you can follow us on instagram and twitter at oh what a time pod now clear off well on this week's show we're discussing daft deaths and later I'll be talking about Alexander Pushkin and his love of the jewel which as you can imagine ended badly.

I'm gonna be talking about the truly unfortunate death of a Greek philosopher. And I'm gonna be starting this week's episode by talking about when you need to go. You really really should go. Yes. That's the model of this story. So you're one of the most important scientists of your age, okay? Yeah. You're a noted astronomer, you've got a reputation, you're right up there with Galileo Kepler Copernicus. You're a Champions League astronomer. Loving this. Yeah. The guy from Games Master, what was his name? The guy, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Patrick Moore. Patrick Moore, yeah.

Not Dominic Diamond, who was not an Australian. But like many brilliant people, I'm sure the three of us have met people like this in our time, the super, super clever, really brilliant people often don't have a huge amount of common sense. Yes, I think that's fair, to be honest. Yeah. I say that as someone who I think fits under that umbrella. Yeah, yeah, I would say Tom Craig is probably the best example I've ever met in my life. An undoubtedly clever bloke, a complete mess.

Thank God he's married, he's being looked after now, and it's fine. A genius who can only handle one set of keys being passed around his family. And will die in front of a number of people, having put his foot in a bucket and falling down a well or something like that. I'm anticipating that day coming. So I'm talking about Tycho Brahe, who was a 16th century Danish astronomer. So in December 1566, Brahe didn't have an enormous amount of common sense. So he rose to fame because he developed a lot of new instruments to assess the stars.

So in December 1566, he got into a heated debate with his cousin, Mandrake Parsberg, about which of them was the better mathematician. Imagine that for a second. Such a tough thing to get into an argument about. This is how heated it got. Things got so bad they challenged each other to a duel to be fought with swords on the

29th of the month. Surely a maths test is the way to sort that out. Yeah. A duel is not offering anything to that, it's not answering that question. Well that's the thing. I mean, Brahe, I mean, he had world-class prowess when it came to calculus and algebra, not a great swordsman, he lost part of his nose and he had a massive scar across his forehead because of the battle. So he's done really badly in this duel that he's had with his cousin, I mean someone who

was a blood relative. Anyway, so he gets medical treatment at the University in Rostock where he was studying Brahe, he had to wear a thesis for the rest of his life. So it was probably made of brass they think, although it was claimed at the time to be gold. So he stuck it onto his face, onto his nose, using a mixture of paste and glue and all this happened around his 20th birthday. So you know what it's like, you're a 20 year old mathematician arguing with your cousin, you're full of testosterone and you get your pie your nose sliced off with a sword in a duel. It's, I mean it's just classic 20 year old man hijinks isn't it?

Now more than 30 years later, so by now he's famous throughout Europe for his scientific endeavours, Brahe was invited to a dinner at the home of the Count of Rosenberg, one of the most prominent Czech nobles of the time. This was held in Prague on the 13th of October 1601, so Brachy by now was 54 years of age. Now the dinner, dinner went well. No one's talking about his weird nose prosthetic. They're asking him questions about maths, no one's questioning how good his maths is. It's going really well. Now the food was ample. What's two times eight? What's eight times getting them all right?

Hang on, hang on, two times eight is the same as eight times two. Give me a few minutes. Six, fifteen, sixteen. So the wine was flowing in abundance and Brahe, he became completely swept up in the experience. His glass, never empty. His plate, never empty. So much so, this is ridiculous, he kept putting off going to the toilet because he was having too good a time. So his friend and fellow scientist Johannes Kepler, who was also at the dinner, he thought he was probably too embarrassed because by getting up and asking to be excused during the meal,

you know, he's talking to a count, is that a breach of protocol? So he just sat there jiggling, just trying to ignore his bladder. He sounds like my four-year-old, Al. I think he's ever enjoying things, any kind of gathering, and I can see from the way he's moving he needs the loo. And I'm like, you want to go to them? No? Fine. No? I'm fine. And then suddenly it just happened.

But very unlikely that bra he was wearing pull-ups. Yeah. So he gets home and at last he's able to relieve himself, right, but he could only do so in fits and starts and it was excruciatingly painful. So that over the next days, over the next 10 days or so, his pain's got worse and worse and worse before on the 24th of October, 601, still in agony, he died.

What? Now, the doctor suggested that he was, they thought the time he must have been suffering from a stone, like a bladder stone or a kidney stone, then people thought, oh, he must have had, you know, maybe prostate cancer. But no, they don't think it was that. He was strained into urinate comfortably, if at all. So brah, he tried to take a compound laced with mercury, which was an organic mercurial. Oh dear. Then commonly used as a diuretic, but to no avail.

So then his body was overcome by uremic poisoning, and he became delirious, lost his grasp on reality. See, basically, he was killed because his bladder had burst, because he hadn't gone to the toilet when he really needed a piss. Oh my goodness, man. Oh my gosh! Wow! He was having too good a chat he really needed a piss. Oh my goodness mate. Oh my gosh. Wow. He was having too good a chat about maths with a count. For him to go to the toilet and have a slash. It is

absolutely bonkers. What happens then? So it just his bladder explodes inside him and he completely poisons himself from the inside out. Yeah, so that's the most probable explanation. There are other people think he might have been deliberately poisoned. People think that because of the amount of mercury found in samples of his mustache hair. But over the years, lots of aspects of the story have been changed or have been embellished.

So in one version of the tale, Brahe's bladder burst from not going for a slash during a coach trip with the Emperor of Tuscany. That was that Channel 4 show, wasn't it? Coach trip with the Emperor of Tuscany. That was their Channel 4 show wasn't it? Coach trip with the Emperor of Tuscany. One of the weird celebrity bookings for coach trip. Yeah a guy speaks no English, it's completely moot throughout. As the writer of a medical textbook on diseases of the bladder noted, he forfeited his life for his false delicacy. So in a later edition it was the Emperor of Germany,

in another it was all down to the King of Denmark, who was the guest at the dinner, and whose rules forbade anyone leaving during the meal or rising from their seats before the King himself. But whatever the facts, Brahe's death was, I mean, it was basically as eccentric as you could get, and it served as a warning about the consequences of holding on for centuries. Wow. Like people like, if you need to go mate, you need to go remember. Remember Brahe the scientist from Denmark. Yeah.

People really, people really remember this. What's the most you've ever needed to go to the toilet? Two occasions. Let me guess, theatre? No, sort of. I was late to do stand-up at the Leicester Comedy Festival and I was driving from Cardiff and it was the gig was on a Friday night and I needed a piss by Newport but because it was Friday night the traffic was terrible and I just had to hold on and it was horrendous. By the time I got to the venue when I did

eventually have a slash I can honestly, sorry for being so graphic, it had changed the shape of my penis. Into what? Just a question mark. A liar. A reverse funnel. It was absolutely horrible. What about you, Scott? I went to see, years and years ago, I went to see Stuart Lee and I had a

couple of points. It was the Leicester Square Theatre and I turned up and I was right in the middle of the theatre and I'd had a couple of points beforehand and I sat down, the show started and I was like, I need the toilet. I was like, I'm an hour, I'm an hour away. By the end of it, I felt my blood fizzing. I was like, it feels like the urine is re-entering my bloodstream. It is awful. It was horrendous. I was like, it was so bad. I said, I don't want to exist.

I just wish I didn't exist. Can I just hit a button and just not exist? Make this go away. What about you Tom? I have a time in my head and it turns out it was the beginning of norovirus and I'm not willing to tell the story. Oh god I remember that. I remember that. Extremely negative as stories go. So there you go if you need to go for god's sake go.

So that is the end of part one of Darth Deaths, but if you want part two right now, you can get that. Plus you can get two bonus episodes every month and loads of bonus archive episodes too, plus early listening and ad free and support the show. What a deal. Go to owhatatime.com. You can sign up via 1d plus or another slice and we'll see you tomorrow if you don't want to do that until then bye So Follow Oh What A Time on the Wondry app, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

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