Oh What A Time... - #89 Cancel Culture (Part 1)

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

This week we’re trawling through history to discover how people got cancelled in the past. We’ll have the ancient Egyptians striking people from the record, how Stalin photoshopped associates away and how ‘getting cancelled’ worked during the European renaissance.And when did New Year’s resolutions kick in? Did anyone ever think “this year of 1024 is going to be MY year!”? If you’ve got anything on this, OR MEAD to be fair, please do drop us an email: [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.

Wanderi Plus subscribers can listen to episodes of Oh What A Time early and ad free. Join Wanderi Plus in the Wanderi app or on Apple podcasts. Hello and welcome to Oh What A Time and welcome to this episode on Cancelled Culture. And this is a history podcast in which we contemplate the past and right now I'm halfway through dry Jan. When did the first person do that? Do you think anyone in the middle ages was staying off the mead for a month? Now that's a great question. I don't think so. I think you're crazy. They would put your head on a spike if you said I'm not drinking mead for a month. Now that is a very interesting

question because they've always been teetotallers and prohibitionists. The teetotal movement has existed for centuries, but dry jam? Ah, for sooth, for I, sire, shall have a month off because I had a heavy Christmas. That's more modern, isn't it? And I really want to work towards a six-pack, whatever the accent would be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not sure what that accent was. This is why you're the actor, this is why you get the sitcom roles, El.

Because, sire, one has decreed that it's actually body fat more than how many sit-ups and core exercises one does. I've overindulged in the carbohydrates. Yeah, and it's not just the beer, it's the fact that I always end up eating kebab, meat and chips at 2am and then I fry up the following morning because one is hungover. No communion wine for me this month at church. Communion mead. Yeah, exactly. That's a very good question, Chris, actually. That is a very good question. Well, I suppose in a more broad sense, how long have people been making sort of New Year's

resolutions? How long has that been knocking around? That sense of the beginning of a new year, the idea of, okay, it's 1024. 1023 was a bad year for me. I'm going to make this one really count. I'm going to throw myself into 1024. 1066 was by any metric, chaotic. Okay. Let's chill out for 1067. Okay. I drunk a lot during 1066, but with good reason. Yes. I was dealing with some stuff. We were all dealing with stuff. That's a very good question. I tell you as well, I tell you what some brewers need to give up on, is the idea of bringing mead back. Is it coming back? I was at a folk museum in Wales the other day and in the shop at St. Vagas they were

selling mead. I thought, oh come on. As a people we've decided that we don't like it and that lager and Guinness and Jack Danes and Coke is nicer. Isn't mead a bit honeyish? Yes, a honey wine. Is that what it is? There is a superb Ethiopian honeyed wine which is served with Ethiopian food. If you go to an Ethiopian restaurant, you can have it.

It's like a sweet dessert wine and it's one of the nicest things you'll ever drink. However, a couple of glasses will just blow your head off. It's like, it's so strong. Items of strong. Yeah, it's delicious. But then after two glasses, you go, oh, it's taking on drunker than I've ever been. I didn't think that was going to happen. With mead, it's like, it's always the thing everyone knows about the medieval era. Absolutely. They used should drink me, didn't they? Yeah. Yeah. Tankard.

I mean, that does sound quite good. It's worth saying very briefly at that point, which is before clean water in a true sense, I suppose alcohol in some level would have been part of your day, day in, day out. Let's say, well, look at the Victorian era when people used to drink very weak beer all the time because there wasn't clean water to drink. I imagine throughout history there's been an element of that. Alcohol has a quality of making things safer, doesn't it? If it's rude. If it's inherently poisonous, it can't get any worse.

There was the legendary Welsh bard, Taliesin, who lived 550 CE, and he wrote a poem, a carnamie, the Song of Mead. Right. And it's just about going on the piss. But you know, it's quite hipster and trendy, isn't it? The campaign for Relay has been around for a while. There is that harking back to different eras, older eras of alcoholic beverages. Like I said, Relay IPA, you get all those different IPAs, older eras of alcoholic beverages. Like I said, relay IPA, you get all those different IPA, like Badger's Finger and all that. So it just,

it naturally follows, does it not, that eventually we will go back to Mead and whatever the predecessor was of Mead. And this is what the bars of Shoreditch, the young and the trendy, they're going to be drinking this stuff. The future is the past. And then in a hundred years time, because it won't be Shoreditch then, it'll be some other area, which will be the really trendy one. They'll all be drinking like Bacardi Breezers and all the crap they used to drink in the 90s. They'll all be downloading watermelon Bacardi Breezers into their sort of alcohol units because people will be part human, part android in a hundred years time.

Whole new generation thinking they're discovering blue WKD for the first time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Smyrn off ice. So Mead, El, is this a thing that's becoming hip and being sold in bars or is this thing that's specifically sold in this museum or this place you went to? People are trying to bring it back. I just saw it in the Simphangas and Butcherfoot Museum for sale. I thought, well, that's interesting. That's me. Then I thought, but realistically, who is buying that?

But then, I don't know, we're a nostalgic lot, aren't we? Yeah, what, for 900 years ago? Exactly. But it plays into ideas of tradition in the past and sort of like what life is... Do you know what? Do you know what? I'm not actually gonna make a foot ob on my wedding. I'm gonna put it all on a big tapestry. With a picture of my mother-in-law getting an arrow in the eye.

No reason I like her. It's a joke. It's a lighthearted joke. It's just what happened on the night. Do you know what? It was a big doom. All the groomsmen aren't getting new suits. They're all going to wear chain mail. Yeah. Yeah. There was, I stayed in, on the, we went to, we were together on New Year's Eve.

Uh, we were all staying down in Cornwall and on the way we broke up the journey in your ville and we stayed in quite a sort of normal hotel. Yeah. It was a completely normal, inexpensive hotel and they had a night like a sort of a suit of armour in the lobby. Wow. And it about, I don't know why, it was the only quirky detail the hotel had. Everything else was standard and normal as you would expect it, you know, biscuits and a kettle and all that kind of stuff. And I went out to get something for the kids at one in the morning,

forgot that there was a suit of armour in the lobby. And then I came back in, got the fright of my life. I thought some bloke had a fucking sword. Sir Traveloge. Sir Traveloge. Very comfortable castle. You could stay there for quite affordable prices. Sir Traveloge.

It's not like, it's actually, it's not the most plush castle, Sir Travelogy's castle, I don't think, but it is located in quite a convenient place. It's located in a good place and do you know what, it's got a functional drawbridge. Exactly, yeah. If you're on a long journey with your horse and car, Sir Travelogy's castle is the place to go. I was actually looking at a suit of armour recently, I was looking at, you must have seen the one in the Tower of London, Henry VIII's suit of armour. I'm pretty sure it's in the Tower of London. There's pictures of it. Is it quite wide around the middle? Is that right? Wide around the middle. But of course, it's got like, I guess is it like an armoured cod piece? Okay. Do you know the one I'm talking about?

Yeah. Yes. I'm going to Google a magit. It's so striking. Yeah. When that was modelled and he walks out with that and the huge armoured effectively knob. Do you have to comment on that? When you go and watch West Ham away, you're tempted to get an armoured codpiece because it feels like a sensible move. If it's West Ham, Chelsea, at Chelsea. When a drawn mill will win the cup. Exactly, yeah. It is a choice, I suppose, but then it's about, it's some

pitiful attempt at kind of trying to seem masculine and sort of virile and sort of stuff. Do you think he's asked for that? The large codpiece was a thing, it's early toxic masculinity. That's what it is. I tell you one thing though, in fairness to him, I would hate to get stabbed in the dick with a sword. Especially by someone who knew what they were doing. Do you think he's asked for it? Or do you think the armoury has gone, I know what he's going to love. Oh, I reckon he's asked for it. He's asked for it.

And he said, make my codpiece fucking massive. And the guy's gone, yeah. He's like, big up, big up. Keep going. Keep up, keep going. Keep welding, keep welding. I think it's fair to say in various levels, Henry VIII had a few issues, didn't he? He had stuff going on as a bloke. That's an interesting way of putting it.

If you look at the way he treated others. The man had issues. Yeah, I think that's fair to say. And I think it's therefore fair to assume that he would be the sort of person that would want a massive god piece. I've just come up with a topic. We should do sort of quirky kings. Oh, that's great. We should get Daryl, our historian, to choose three monarchs at random.

Yes. And we can do three monarchs with interesting stories. Quirky monarchs. There you go. We'll mix it up. Doesn't have to be kings. Can be queens as well. No, no, absolutely not. Equal Opportunity Podcast. That's what I say. That is a great suggestion.

Today's episode, shall we say, is, I think this is a really interesting one. This is what I think was your suggestion, El, wasn't it? This is what you suggested. It's also one of my great fears being, because we are discussing cancel culture and being canceled. And I think it's very, very unlikely. There's the book by John Ronson,

so you've been publicly shamed. Yeah. And it's one of those things that with social media and a very, very small public profile, the idea of somehow getting it wrong or being, I don't know, it's sort of, it's quite scary, isn't it? But it's not a new phenomenon, as we will discover.

Well, occasionally on this podcast, and we'll all admit, we'll say something, and then we'll say into the microphone to our brilliant editor, Jodie, Jodie, if you wouldn't mind just nipping that out, that would be great. Yeah. But note to Jodie, Tom does actually think that. Does actually believe that. Those are his opinions. He just accepts that they are sort of marginalised opinions now and for good reason. And then you separately send him a message on WhatsApp saying, could you now collect all of those edited points into one long episode that I can use?

If this ever goes to court, it's useful for me. I'll put it in the dossier and in about a year's time when I'm feeling ready, I'm going to absolutely destroy it. But that is today's subject. So later in the show, I will be talking about basically the destruction of the memory of someone, the cancelling essentially of someone's memory, by which I don't mean in a sort of men in black way, zap the eyes, I've forgotten everything. I mean after they've passed, completely destroying what they stood for and in some cases just removing the idea they existed from the face of the earth. It's pretty crazy stuff actually.

What are you guys going to be talking about? I will be discussing the erasing of a pharaoh in ancient Egypt. And I'm going all the way back to our old friend Joseph Stalin to see how he was removing people from history in the Soviet Union. Note to Jodie when he said old friend Stalin, do remove that in the edit as we say. That is exactly the sort of thing we're talking about. But before that, how about a little bit of correspondence? Does that sound good? Oh, yes, please.

We've received so many emails about the name, by the way, the collective term for our listeners that I think we're going to have to get into it properly next week because there was just too many for us to go through this week. And I do keep sending them in. They're brilliant. They're really, really making me laugh. So next week we will go through those. Today though, we have a... This is one of the best emails we've received. This is a brilliant, brilliant email. So much so that I WhatsApp'd you two earlier saying I think we need a jingle when you have a particularly brilliant email. It's a Hall of Famer! It's a Hall of Famer! What an emailer! It's a Hall of Famer!

It really is! This is a proper Hall of Famer email. And it's double pronged. Andrew Jones has emailed and he's absolutely nailed it. So thank you, Andrew. We will get a proper jingle for future emails like this. Well, utilising my soul voice. Absolutely. Please do it. It's a whole female!

What an emailer! Have you got GarageBand? Yeah. Would you mind making a jingle? Genuinely doing that. OK. OK. It doesn't have to be through next week. Yeah, I'm a musician.

OK, great. So there will be a jingle coming from Elle. And this email is the sort of email that deserves it. This email is from Andrew Jones. So this email is headed, this is such a good email. It's brilliant. Where does chocolate milk come from? Okay. So we discussed in the last episode, milk in its various forms throughout history and different aspects on that subject. One of the things we talked about was when milk was removed from primary school, I think it was Merthyr Tydfil. Certain schools in Merthyr Tydfil found a loophole, which meant they still served milk but made it strawberry milk.

Basically, they realized they could get around Thatcher taking milk away from primary schools by serving strawberry milk and there was nothing she could do about it. Now, Andrew Jones emailed on that very subject. He says, hi, he-men of history, histronics. Your recent episode of milk reminded me of a 2017 survey by the US Dairy Association which asked a thousand Americans about their milk drinking habits and got some shocking results. Okay, these are brilliant. 7%, are you ready for these? 7% of US adults think that chocolate milk comes from brown cows. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Amazing. Now there's a few points on this, let's step through them. Thoughts on that? 7%. 7% of US adults think that chocolate milk comes from brown cows. That is so high.

That is so high. Bloody idiots. Absolutely idiots. Yeah, yeah. Total idiots. I mean, out of curiosity just for a laugh, where does it come from? Out of curiosity just for a laugh, tell me. Just, you know, just for, obviously I know, but just for a laugh. Just so I can really, especially laugh at this guy. Just so I can make fun of ignorance more. If someone could just confirm where it actually comes from. But that would be great. I'll tell you what, if it's 500 AD and that were true, I'm going lips to tea.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm leaving the village. Full lips to tea. Lovely stuff. If the brown cow did pump out chocolate milk, it would be the most expensive and most revered animal on the entire planet. Yeah, big time.

Everyone would have one. We would not have domesticated the dog, we'd have domesticated the cow. Everyone would have a cow in their front room that they'd be very close to. Oh my god, yeah, they'd be such valued family pets. Wow. Well, the stats don't end there. A further 48% couldn't explain where chocolate milk comes from, which means that 55% of American adults can't explain chocolate milk. That's a great stat, isn't it? 55% can't explain chocolate milk. Which leads to two interesting

questions, says Andrew. What milk do those 70% think comes from white cows with black spots? Good question. Yeah. And how do they explain strawberry milk? Another good question. Another very good question. All the best, Andy. He now says, and this is a second tidbit he's chucked in, PS, on the first use of the name

Steve, which is another thing we discussed last week. Since Stephen uses a PH spelling, according to Grok, it likely occurred during the 17th century when diminutive or nicknames started to become more common and the prevalence of different spellings of Stephen came from. So he's saying the first Steve, which is what we discussed last week, probably occurred in the 17th century. Although he's used something called Grok, which is AI on Twitter to find that out. But that's a suggestion that the first Steve was a 17th century. 17th century?

Yeah, which is much earlier than I thought. So the earliest Steve is from the 1600s. And we discussed this on a podcast, which is how we make our living. Yes. What a life. So he's used AI to find that out there. Do you think when the inventor of AI first came up with it, he thought it would be used to find out when the first Steve was in history?

Is that the potential of AI? I think they thought it would be for like studying X-rays and sort of mammograms and things like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, I think we went to Steve first, on, I understand about the NHS. Let's sort Steve's out and then we can move on to broken bones and cancer. Okay? Okay.

The important stuff first and then we'll move on. So there you go, Andrew Jones. A fantastic email with the 2017 survey, which suggests that 7%, which as you say, Chris, is quite high, of US adults think that chocolate milk comes from brown cows. Great email, Andrew, thank you very much. Brilliant email, good stuff. Any more on that? Any more on anything else? Do you know a Steve that could possibly predate that? Is AI wrong? Do get in touch and here's how. All right, you horrible lot. Here's how you can stay in touch with the show. You can email us at hello at oh what a time dot com and you can follow us on Instagram

and Twitter at oh what a time pod. Now clear off. So coming up later in the show, I'll be talking about Joseph Stalin and all the people he photoshopped from history. I'll be talking about Pharaoh being cancelled in ancient Egypt. And right now, on Old Time, the history pod, I'm going to be talking to you about a very specific type of cancellation, which is the destruction of the way in which someone is remembered. Now, just to take you back a bit,

an interesting aspect of the European Renaissance, okay, as a sort of contextual thing, was that it brought a lot of ancient ideas back into use. So for example, scientific principles in approaches to medicine, things like that, were basically taken from ancient history. A lot of these things resurfaced. But it also brought back some pretty dark stuff. Now heads up, this is going to be at times quite a dark section. How are you feeling about that? Are you okay with that? Do you want me to do one of my sort of soul voice jingles? If you wouldn't mind, yeah. Dark section are coming up the battle. What's in that cup? It's blood. When you take that character to stage, what are you imagining he's wearing? What's the look of this singer?

Sequins, sequins surely. Oh, a sequins, a big time. The kind of thing that'll make sort of James Brown look underdressed. Big brass band, do you think, behind you? Oh yes. And how are you treating the people that you work with? What's the... Very badly, and I'll probably have a phallically-shaped guitar. It has to happen.

So as I say, scientific principles came back, but also these darker ideas, most notably, I'm afraid to say, dear listeners, in methods of punishment. Okay. I think we can agree, it's never a great thing if they're dipping back into history to find new ways to punish people. No, absolutely not. If you were being held hostage and your captors were like, listen, we're going to talk to you to find stuff out. What, has Chris Skull actually been paid for a water time? I don't know, I can't tell you. Well, we're going to find out.

We're dipping into the history books for these punishments. You're like, yeah, I'm shitting myself now. A modern punishment technique would be, right, you're not allowed on your phone for 25 minutes. Yeah, exactly. So there's some pretty horrible stuff coming up with that in mind. One of the styles of punishment was the notorious damnatio memoria, as the Romans described it, or katascafe, which is how the ancient Greeks described it. Now, in short, this meant the condemnation of memory, destroying the memory of someone. The Greek practice, okay, involved raising the person's home to the ground. So if they were considered to be someone who society should be ashamed of, their house would be destroyed and in

its place a bronze inscription would be placed recording treason, exile, other forms of physical destruction basically. The Romans did the same, but they took it one step further. They also destroyed or maimed statues of this person, icons, portraits, relics. So basically, if someone was a disgrace, if someone was cancelled, they would destroy anything which really reflected your look, your achievements. They would completely flatten it to the ground. I didn't know that. Yeah. And in some cases, they went to even more extreme lengths. Now, it's time to get

a little bit gross. Are we ready for this? Yeah. Okay. It's said that in the case of the condemnation of Emperor Caligula, who famously, not a great guy, was that his assassins literally destroyed his physical form by eating his flesh after they'd killed him. So, this was an act of destroying the form of the person. So, they killed him and then they ate him. Oh my gosh. We've talked about jobs through history on this show a lot. How are you feeling about that one? It's the assassin whose job you're told before you go, before you kill him, just to let you know, after you killed him, you have to eat him.

I can just imagine saying, but is that really necessary? Yeah. Listen, listen, you're the boss, mate. You're paying me. You're the boss. He is dead. He's not going to know I've eaten him. I'm just putting it out there. Do you, do I really? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Just, just, just making sure. Would you be tempted when you returned just to say you'd eaten him when you clearly had him? Oh yeah. And like in a cartoon, you'd have, you'd have a napkin and you'd be, you'd be

dabbing your mouth. You'd be like, that was absolutely delicious. Yum yum yum. Anyway. Do you think you get the choice of what you eat? Do you think they go, all right, go on then, you're up first, there's your knife and fork, tuck in? Yeah, I think, well, maybe you could bagsy something if you were quick, like shotgun the ears or something. I don't know how it works.

No, you'd go thighs, wouldn't you? Nice you nice bits of meat from, from a big high. Weirdly want to say bum. Yeah. I was going to say bum and then I thought it was too weird, but I thought that too. In a weird way that doesn't feel too weird, but also it's also maybe one of the weirdest places. Not anus, but certainly bum cheek. I'm not, I'm a celebrity.

To be honest, I probably, I'd probably just turn the job down and go work in a vineyard. I'd probably go, do you know what? I'm not going to be an assassin anymore. Do they get a private chef as well? Yeah. I think I'm going to be a scribe. Yeah. You're flipping a coin to find out if you get the pair of name or the foot.

That is not where you want to be. You've made bad life decisions if you ever find yourself in that situation. Yeah. But like if you were part of a sort of, like a troop of assassins and it's a two person job and you're like, all right, well listen, I'll actually kill him, which is the gruesome bit. But then I get to eat the bum. Yeah, yeah, sure. Wow. He wasn't the only emperor who suffered something like this. Maximus Thrax, who reigned from 235 until his fall in 238 AD, was killed and then eaten by dogs instead.

So the assassins killed him and then the dog did the rest. However, no problem with that at all. However, even though these ancient stories were so gruesome, they still somehow seem to inspire medieval and early modern Europeans in their forms of cancel culture. And that's what I want to really talk to you about today because it's kind of fascinating a trend that it set off. For example, the Venetian conspirator, a man called Tiepolo, who led a revolt against the head of the city-state in 1310, was eventually caught in exile. This is Venice, okay? But his house in Venice was then razed to the ground, as the ancients did, and in its place a column of

infamy was erected which told passers-by of the man's crime, which read, of Bahamonte, which was his first name, had this ground, and now through him you know the wickedness of treason. It was placed by the commune so others would know, and by showing these words to everyone, everyone will always know. So the idea is that they would flatten your house and then they would leave a pillar, a constant reminder of what an awful person you were. So let's say you really screwed up, Al. What would happen? They'd come to your house in South London, they would destroy it and in its place a pillar would be erected listing your crimes and listing what an awful person you'd been, meaning that for the rest

of time, essentially, people would be able to walk past and be reminded of how terrible a person you were. Not great for the family, is it? Did you grow up there? No. terrible a person you were. Not great for the family, is it? Did you grow up there? No? Next door. I was next door.

Wow. A column of infamy. Bahamonte wasn't willing to let this rest, it's worth saying. He wasn't killed at that point and he sent a henchman into Venice to destroy the column which the henchman achieved. He broke it into three pieces but the henchman was caught in the act. Would you care to guess what the henchman's punishment was? What do you think is fair punishment for destroying a column? Will Barron 60 quid fine.

Will Barron Yep, 60 quid fine. Any guesses, Chris? Chris I'm tempted to say some sort of whipping. Will Barron He had one hand chopped off and both his eyes put out. There you go. That's destroying a column. If I lived then, I would never do anything wrong. Jeez. Yeah. What's interesting is if we fast forward a few hundred years, we continue to see these columns erected throughout Italy. They became incredibly popular. In 1628, a column of infamy was installed on the site of the home of Julius Caesar of Achero, who was a wealthy merchant, who seems to have been something of a conspirator himself. After his capture,

he was executed by beheading, his sons were exiled, his palace was razed and a column was then erected in the place where his palace was and it remains there today. You can still go and see this column of infamy in the Piazza Vecchero, although it's now slightly obscured by a fountain. These columns still exist in Italy. Hundreds of years later, still speaking ill of the people who once lived there. But that wasn't even the most brutal punishment of this kind. Now, are you ready for the very worst part? I think it might need another little jingle, El, because this is going to get really horrific now.

Oh, God. Mmm, yeah, gory, gory, gory. Mmm, yeah, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory,

gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory, gory,ilermo Piazza, who was a health commissioner, who were executed after trial for allegedly spreading plague around the city. They were described as infectors, that's how I describe. It was said that they basically had placed this deadly ointment on walls and furniture around the city, made people ill. However, in Piazza's case, it's now been proven he hadn't done that at all. It was just ink that had gone onto his fingers through his work. So both completely innocent men. So here we go.

This is their punishment. They were paraded through the streets of Milan on a cart. It's embarrassing, but embarrassment obviously is not the worst of it. They were then gripped by hot pincers throughout the journey. Both of them had their right hands cut off. They were then tied to a wheel and all of their bones were broken. They were then left exposed to the elements for six hours. So just lying there with all their bones broken out on the streets of Milan, exposed to the

elements six hours before their throats were finally cut and their ashes were chucked into a canal. And this was considered justified due to the confessions made to the Spanish Inquisition under torture. But actually these two men had done nothing. They were innocent of charges. Of course they'd done nothing. You can't spread plague by rubbing ointment over some city walls. Of course, absolutely. And they hadn't even attempted to with some false idea that they were doing that. Nevertheless, having confessed their fate was sealed, Moorish House,

which once again comes back to the same old theme, Moorish House was razed to the ground, the rest of the property was sold and once again a column of infamy was installed there to say that no one should ever be allowed to build on this site again. So not only is there this column, literally the idea is that you'd never be able to build a house or any structure on this place again because this person was so rotten. That's what people said. It wasn't for a full 150 years until their innocence was established, at which point the column was demolished, which is 1788, but up until then it bore the warning, keep off good citizens, lest this accursed ground

pollute you too with its infamy. Crikey Moses. So there you go. A little fact, if you go to Milan these days, you can still walk down the Via Gianghiocomomora, which is a street named for the ill-fated hair tremor. Jesus. So that house is still there. Finally, in this kind of parade of horrific columns,

there was one other use of the Colonna in Famae, and that was as a ritual of humiliation for insolvent debtors. This type of column can be found in Bari, still today, on the Italian Adriatic coast. It was installed in 1546, originally near the old port, now near the Merchant's square. The idea was that

the debtor would be brought to the column. This column was out in public. So it's not a thing of death, but it's a form of punishment and exposed, which meant they were tied to the post so that everyone in the community could see that they were someone who failed to pay back their debts. And you would be left there to be laughed at, to be joked at until the time was for you to be released again. Which does seem quite mild. Yeah, it's funny, but what context does the change use? I'm like, yeah, fine. Time to take the post. Not bothered. I'm going to be a bit embarrassed rather than having every

bone in my body broken. Yeah, I'm all right. Ah, yeah, fine. So what's fascinating is that these columns remain across Italy and it was such a thing that repeatedly people's memories of the idea of what they stood for was destroyed. And more than that, a lasting legacy was left to tell future generations of how appalling you were, which is just amazing, isn't it really? I wonder what language they're written in. Yes. And if you can still make it out and understand it. Yes, you can. You can. They're written in Italian. Yes, you can read them and they are still there

to be read. Well, some of them are obscured, some are behind things now, and things have been built up around them, but a lot of the columns still exist and you can still go and visit them if you want to. But a lot of them actually are based on lies and it's quite unfair. To be fair, on the people they've been written about, it's not a fair appraisal. But that's proper cancel culture, isn't it? Not only are we cancelling you now, we're going to make sure that every generation for the next few hundred years also knows that you were wrong or that we thought you were. Will Barron Jesus Christ, every bone.

Oh dear. Will Barron Yeah. Every bone, this is actually, that was one of the things that triggered the French Revolution famously. There was someone who was executed by, what do they call it, on the wheel, where they use a huge wheel to basically break every bone, or as many bones as they can in your body. It was seen as such a medieval gruesome torture that this is what made people want to rise up against this kind of feudal society. How interesting.

It was actually right at the start of Citizens by Simon Sharma. Another plug for that. There you go. It's gruesome. That's not one I would want to gather in the town square to watch. No. I'd probably watch the highlights of this. Can we do a 60 second highlight package of this? Alan Shearer giving his views on the angle in which they'd be tied to the wheel. I mean, they're not going to break the femur that way. Well, that's the end of part one. Part two will be with you tomorrow.

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