The Ancients - The Ice Age

Episode Date: December 28, 2025

Think of the Ice Age and tales of ferocious sabre-toothed tigers and giant megafauna likely spring to mind - but what do we know about prehistoric human culture 25,000 years ago and how people survived a perilous landscape of marauding Woolly Mammoths, bitterly cold temperatures and primitive Stone Age tools? Tristan Hughes is joined by Cody Cassidy to look at how early cultures adapted to the extremes of the Last Glacial Period. Looking at the rapidly changing landscape, the cause of the big freeze and prehistoric hunting methods - do you have what it takes to survive the Ice Age? MOREIce Age Britain: Finding the First Homo sapiensListen on AppleListen on SpotifyIce Age AmericaListen on AppleListen on SpotifyPresented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. Hello, I hope you're doing well and are enjoying the festive period, wishing you once again, wish you a very Merry Christmas as we get nearer also now to New Year and 2026, where we have got some very exciting episodes lined up for you. Cannot wait to share them, but you're going to have to wait a little longer because the ancients team are still enjoying their holidays. I've tried to rain them back in, but they're on strike. They're saying no. They're saying Tristan, we'd observe our holiday. Stop being so cruel. Stop making us listen to your voice all the time again and again and again, and I've had to give in. So, we are doing another episode from the archive today. This is one which we released

over two years ago now. It was incredibly popular at the time, and I can understand why. This was from our How to Survive series. Once in a while, we do do an episode in the format of How to Survive in Ancient Rome or Babylonia. This one, we went a bit bigger. We did How to survive the Ice Age, which is a pretty massive topic to try and cover. But within that, we then focused in on what do we know about early humans surviving in a very difficult geographical region of the Ice Age more than 20,000 years ago. In particular, we looked at this culture known as the, wait for it, the Pavlovian culture in central Europe, more than 20,000 years ago. They hunted mammoths and had a fascinating culture. And to talk through it all,

We have the author Cody Cassidy on the show. Cody, he dialed in from the United States. This was a really fun chat and it was, I had a very popular reception when we released it first time round, so popular in fact that we're re-releasing it today. I really hope you guys enjoy. It's cold. It's December.

Unless you're in Australia or New Zealand where it's really hot, you've got Christmas on the barbecue and all that kind of stuff. But if you're not in the Southern Hemisphere, it's cold. Bit ice-agey feels, why not do an episode? Why not re-release this episode at this time? I'm rambling on for too long now. Let's go. Cody, it is a pleasure to have you on the podcast today, buddy. Thank you so much for having me.

You've written this guide to surviving through these various terrifying events in history. It must have been quite a fun experience writing this, going from, well, the Ice Age that we're talking about today, all the way to more recent deadly events too. Yeah, you know, the idea started. I read a study that, funnily enough, suggested that you could outrun or a person could outrun the Tyrannosaurus rex, and they sort of delve deep into that science. And I found it kind of a fascinating way to learn about ancient history. And I sort of wanted to expand that onto other times and disasters and cultures, because I sort of felt like it gave you a grounded perspective, rather than a sort of 40,000-foot view that we often get from history. I sort of liked more

like turn left or turn right or the sort of gruesome details about these different events that sort of gave you a little bit of entertainment and also a lot you could pack a lot of information to these. Much more than a list of entertainment. As you say, it's gruesome, but it also incredibly entertaining too. And the right answer there that you started off of ancient history and then you went from there because that is the place to start. And with our talk today on the Ice Age, I mean, first of all, when you're looking at these topics,

you say you start the Tyrannosaurus rex, so down in dinosaur times. I mean, why did you decide the Ice Age is another one of these topics to cover? You know, I think in looking at the topics, I wanted to focus on a lot of events that I feel like I had heard about or people had heard about, but didn't know that well. And another factor I wanted was to, I like to talk about, I'm sort of a background as a science writer. And so I wanted there to be a science component to most of these as well. And I found that in sort of trying to understand exactly why the ice age even happened, why the planet cools and warms so dramatically over different time periods. And it was something as I thought about, I realized I understood very poorly. So I wanted to dive into that.

And then I also wanted to just understand how people with sticks and stones as weapons could bring down a mammoth, which seems impossible and impossibly dangerous. I mean, absolutely, and we're going to definitely get into that. But I really like what you highlighted there about these names from history, which we think we know a lot about, like a name like the Ice Age. But when you delve into it, I mean, what actually is the Ice Age? So that seems like a nice way to start it off, Cody. I mean, how far back can we go with the Ice Age? What do we mean by the Ice Age? So to begin with the ice age is a bit of a misnomer, at least if you're talking to a climate scientist, because technically they define an ice age as anytime ice permanently covers the northern hemisphere, which if you look at our northern hemisphere now, it does. So this, we actually are living in a ice age, and we have been for the last three million years. So when you're talking about sort of what popular culture defines as the ice age is actually sort of the last glacial maximum. And of course, the climate changes dramatically over millions of years. This was before this. I mean, if we go back to the Triassic and the dinosaur period, you could have swum in the Arctic Ocean as sort of fern-forested beaches. But I became interested in why three million years ago this sort of dramatic climate change occurred. And it turns out that that is, of course, our climate is dictated by carbon in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide. It sort of serves as our planet's insulation, uh, it's, uh,

captures heat. And so the more carbon is in the atmosphere, the warmer the climate is. And if we want to get into the weeds, it's kind of interesting. Oh, absolutely, mate. Yeah, let's go into the weeds. Absolutely. Let's delve right into it. Okay. So the vast majority of carbon dioxide on Earth is exist in rocks. Right. So the primary method in which it's released from rocks is, of course, volcanic activity. There have been enormous volcanic eruptions that have released vast amounts of carbon dioxide. And the atmosphere, and that's what prior to the industrial revolution, can heat up the earth. But the opposite of that is, of course, rock creation. That occurs much less spectacularly on a longer scale, but it nevertheless decreases the earth. So 200 million years ago at the end

of the Triassic, to give an example, a massive 500-year volcanic eruption, released about a million cubic miles of lava, and warmed up the planet about five degrees. This is actually about the same amount of carbon dioxide that humans have released, all of humans have released, then that one, 75% of species died. So we are in the process of something similar to that. And so if we go from 200 million years ago to that other day which you hinted at, which you highlighted earlier, which was 3 million years ago, which he seems to be like the beginning of the Ice Age, what is this massive event that seems to occur around there, which really almost triggers this great shift? Right. So three million years ago,

there's a massive tectonic collision. the collision between Northern Australia and the Indonesian plate, which is still ongoing. And this, of course, raises up a ton of fresh, what they call Maphic rock, a type of magma. And this new rock is loaded with minerals, calcium and magnesium. And when it hits it, particularly in the equator where there's lots of rain, this fresh Maffek rock erodes. It combines with dissolved carbon dioxide in the ocean, and it sort of sequesters this carbon dioxide, which was otherwise going back and forth between the ocean and the atmosphere

into vast beds of limestone rock primarily. So this, over a long period of time, what's happening is a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and in the water is being locked away in rocks. And this is sort of removing oceans, removing the Earth's blanket, so to speak, and Earth begins to cool. And this is sort of a pattern that we see going way to. back hundreds of million years, primarily when there are ice ages, the cause is a massive tectonic collision, but only in the tropics where there's lots of rain and lots of erosion

and lots of carbon dioxide is being sequestered. But it's so interesting, isn't it, how an event there in that part of the world, you know, and you can have parallels with, let's say, the asteroid strike or anything like that. An event that occurs in one part of the world, you say in the tropics, but it has consequences for the entirety of the world, for millions of years to follow. I mean, as a scientist, science is not by the background, but facts like that, just absolutely astonishment.

Yeah, it's hard for us to comprehend because this is happening on such a, the geologic time frame is so much longer than anything, any sort of timeframe that humans are familiar with. So it's difficult to comprehend how slow, but how impactful these processes are. What's also interesting about this is that, when you think of the Ice Age,

It's not one continuous line of just always ice over certain parts of the world. Well, these interclasial periods you get to, you also get these warm periods also mentioned. Well, that also occur. Yeah. So we are in an ice age now, but we are in a sort of glacial minimum. And of course, 25,000 years ago, there was what they call the last glacial maximum, which is sort of in what popular culture we refer to as the ice age. And these are dictated by smaller amounts of changes of carbon in the atmosphere,

but carbon changes nonetheless and these caused by as earth rotates it sort of wobbles a bit like a like a spinning top and these wobbles occur on 40,000 years cycles so we sort of there are sort of slowly tilts toward the sun and slowly tilts away and this tilting isn't actually enough it's not as if we are dramatically closer to the sun and therefore receiving a lot more heat it's it's far less significant than that. But what it does do is change ocean currents in the in these ocean currents because carbon can be sequestered in the sort of carbon dioxide passes between the air and the ocean as these ocean currents change. It turns out when we sort of tilt away a lot more carbon is carbon dioxide is sequestered within the water within the oceans. And so this about 25,000 years ago,

the amount of carbon dioxide was about 65% of current or I should say pre-industrial human levels. So this caused dramatic cooling. It was about temperature was about 15 degrees on average cooler back then than it is now. And of course, massive glaciation. So let's go back there for 25,000 years to the glacial maximum that you mentioned earlier. And if we focus in on, let's say, the European step, which I know you've focused in on on your book, Eastern Europe today. Now, what did this area of the world look like 25,000 years ago? Yes, it's quite difficult to imagine. So glaciers or ice sheets, basically, we're covering all of northern Europe, Scandinavia. These are as high as skyscrapers, sometimes even higher almost as much as a mile.

And people are living sort of at the base of these almost, right where they stop on tundra. But the ice had a different effects to it because the massive ice sheets sort of blocked moisture from the Atlantic. So rainfall was very little. These were very dry areas. is. But the soil was really rich because of all the glacial deposits. So you had sort of an interesting dichotomy where in the highlands it was basically Arctic desert. But in the lowlands where there were river flowing, it was very lush. And so you had a lot of fauna. And the fauna was a kind of interesting fauna because it's animals that were familiar with, but they're sort of living in odd juxtaposition. You sort of had packs of lions chasing reindeer. Or you had, you know,

bears, wolves, and woolly rhinoceroses, but you also had cheetah and other animals that we would think of as living in hot African deserts or savannah. So it was a kind of familiar but unfamiliar landscape. And you also have some very well-known extinct fauna, or should I say mega fauna, living in that area of the world too, don't you? Yes, cave bears and woolly rhinoceroses and of course the big woolly mammoth, which I really became interested in and just because it was such an unbelievably powerful creature that humans somehow hunted. And who can blame you? Apart for maybe some of the

dinosaur species, I think of all extinct species in the world, I mean, the woolly mammoth is the one that gauges so much attention because we find them absolutely incredible and fascinating. And we will get back to them very soon. So we've got all of these fauna living alongside this rich area, this rich

landscape, if we're not thinking of the Highland Arctic deserts. But who were the people, the Homo sapiens, the communities that were coexisting in this part of the world? Well, call them the Gravititan culture. This is the culture that spanned across Europe at the time. Well, they varied, but they were in general quite tall, surprisingly, more like the men averaged almost six feet in height. And women were a bit smaller, average about five foot two. They were slender. They were mobile cultures that moved with herds, at least in Eastern Europe. Interestingly, they had high

cheekbones. So it would have been a sort of a runway look almost, a model, the tall, slender, high cheekbones sort of model in the runway almost. And then, of course, they were materially, they're sort of famous for having these carvings, the Venus figurines that are sort of voluptuous women, how they use them or what they represented as a matter sort of of speculation. It's hard to define why someone uses or looks at art, whether they were for religious purposes or not, is difficult to say, but certainly very sophisticated culture, sophisticated burials, carved tools, even textiles, and sort of wore these thick parka-like clothing out of small animals that they probably trapped, like Wolverine and Fox. I mean, that's fascinating. I love how you

know more, you also know about the clothing as well, because I'm guessing to try and piece together more about this culture, these people, it's looking at those archaeological remains that I guess can be sometimes really few and far between. But trying to piece together, what life must have been like for these people during this incredibly difficult time, you know, the glacial maximum some 25,000 years ago. Yeah, of course, the clothing doesn't survive this long. And so they sort of, you can look at the bones of the animals that they hunted, and you can find animals like Wolverine, which are small fox, which wouldn't have made much sense to catch for their meats. So presume that they would have used for clothing. And there's

also a couple of figurines that have hoods that look like they have hoods on them. So I sort of presume that this was like a parka-like clothing. And then of course there's bone needles too that signify perhaps sewing. Now, you mentioned a gravettian culture, but what about the Pavlovian culture? What is this in the regards to it? This is, yeah, a subset of the Gravititan that I became pretty interested in because they're sort of these odd mammoth hunting specialists that were living in the in eastern europe and in what is now poland and in some of their camps they have they're sort of 98% of the bones are our mammoth bones and they're sort of roving they move with mammoth herds it looks like and they specialized in hunting this awesome creature which i found

fascinating i mean absolutely of all the creatures living there of all of the fauna in these rich nutrient rich areas of the ice age they choose what is arguably the most difficult prey animal at all. I mean, it is absolutely fascinating, and that is from the archaeological remains. Is it from bones found in these camps, as you highlighted? Yeah, they just look at the camps around these. These were temporary camps, so they were probably, you know, they had to move with the herds as the herds moved. But in some of them, yes, they'll just be massive, a massive, massive bones and nearly all of them, in some cases, virtually all of them are mammoths. So it looks like they were just, like, as I said, mammoth hunting specialists. And do we have any idea why hunting a mammoth was so appealing to these people? I mean, was there something in the meat of the mammoth that was really appealing? Well, their size, I mean, if you can catch one, it would have certainly made an absolute bonanza the amount of meat and not just the meat, but their bones for tools.

And there weren't trees or very many trees at this lawsuit. So they must have had to use probably their bones for even their fires. You certainly would have had to cook the meat. And without much wood, they could have used their bones to cook their food. And small animals, of course, wouldn't have provided nearly as much as that. So it was certainly a great risk, but the reward was also great as well. So let's go on to hunting one of them. these mammoths. What sorts of weapons, therefore, of sticks and stones? What weapons are we talking

about? There's a few misconceptions. At least in public culture, we think they sort of push them off cliffs or trapped them in that way. And that doesn't appear to be the case, actually, at all. They found some of these ancient hunting sites, and they used primarily spears, but not spears that we would commonly think of. They're not throwing spears at mammoths. Mammoth skin was as thick as an elephants that, as you can imagine, would have been highly ineffective. It would have been turned a dangerous activity into absolute suicide. So what they used are these, what they call atlattles or spear throwers. And these are simple tools, basically just a stick. Actually, they've sort of become popular, a version of them has become popular around dog parks lately, is if you've seen those

tennis ball throwers, which if you pick up a tennis ball and can throw it and it can add a huge amount of distance to your throw, and it's adding other piece of leverage to your throwing arm, so it's sort of like having a second elbow. And just by doing that, you can take what would be sort of a mammoth tickler, a throne spear, and hurl it speeds above a 60 miles an hour. And you don't make quite the same spears as you would, a sort of handheld spear. It's a little bit longer. It looks more like a dart, but in the hands of an experienced thrower can be quite the lethal weapon. And do we have any evidence from archaeology regards to the effectiveness of a weapon like that? You've got your atlattle, you've got your spear, you've got them combined together,

and you're about to throw it at a mammoth. Do we have any idea how much it would potentially do any damage to a mammoth? There isn't a lot of archaeological evidence, but I found one really fascinating discovery in a Pavolian site in Poland where they found a obsidian spearhead stuck into the bone of a mammoth, which just to make it past the skin can signify how deep this thing and how fast it would have had to have been going to impact that deeply into the mammoth. And certainly it wouldn't have been an individual sport. It would have been the whole groups of people throwing lots of atlottles at a mammoth. One wouldn't have done it at all. So definitely lots of people. And in this particular site, it was kind of a cul-de-sac. So it looks like

they probably drove one mammoth into a dead end and then hurled their darts at it. You mentioned a good point there, Cody, of course, to the fact of the prehistoric hunter-gatherer communities, how everyone will have a role, how it's so necessary for people to learn to hunt from a young age, and then how, of course, if they're out hunting, they'll be hunting in large groups. So not to imagine one person of an assail, but them to be in a massive group. In regards, therefore, to hunting mammoths, and you mentioned that cul-de-sac, do we have any ideas, how they would go about hunting a mammoth? As you also highlighted, this is an animal that's in herds. Do we have any idea how therefore they would be able to maybe isolate one of these

massive beasts? Yeah, it looks like their camps are up on hills often, and they'd be up above where the mammoths would come into these river valleys. And so they could watch them coming. And then they would probably identify certainly female mammoths, not necessarily surprisingly small mammoths. The bones don't look like they were hunting sick or even old mammoths primarily. But certainly female mammoths. Male mammals, bull mammoths are, can be dangerous, particularly when they're in a period called must, quite similar to elephants.

They'll attack anything. They'll attack birds, even trees sometimes. so they probably wouldn't have been allowed themselves to be herded whereas a female mammoth might be because you need to of course trap it so that it can no longer run away so they would probably identify a large female mammoth try to hurt it away get it away from the herd drive it away from the herd into their their sort of designated kill zone which was in this polar site is sort of they're not cliffs it's just it's just a sort of on three sides there are sort of rock walls to prevent it from from escaping. So then once they had it in there, we can, and then as far as how

they attacked it, we can sort of take a lot of lessons from elephant hunters because their activities, their sort of means would have been the same, although their tools would have been quite different, which is that the rear of an elephant and probably of a mammoth is basically impenetrable, unfortunately, for the hunters. So you would have had to face it and to face the massive tusks and throw your spear at a very, angry very heavy animal because as soon as you throw in your spear that animal that massive beast is going to be absolutely pissed off with you and it's going to be charging right down at you it's really difficult just to imagine i mean hunting in that world in that environment you know

the glacial maxim that we highlighted is so cold and you you need this meat for your survival and if you miss your shot or you miss throw your ass lateral and you've got a mammoth coming down towards you with tusks bearing down at you you're as good as gone it's It's a fascinating, well, horrific lifestyle to kind of envisage. Yeah, I don't. I mean, we can see how they did it, but even when you know how they did it, it's sort of astonishing that they did. I mean, to do the research for this, I sort of read some accounts of African elephant hunters, and they describe the charge of an elephant as the scariest event of hunting any animal in Africa,

including lions. It's simply terrifying and dangerous, even now with modern guns and high-powered elephant guns. so you can only imagine what it would have been like. And it's sort of funny that before they started finding these dartheads and spearheads in the bones of mammoth, there were a lot of archaeologists who sort of wondered if these bones that they found in these mammoth and these human camps were simply scavenged, even though they found massive amounts of these bones, they sort of still couldn't believe that they could hunt these creatures.

You needed this sort of smoking gun that is clearly hunted creatures with these dartheads. in their vertebra and stuff before they could believe that this actually occurred. And it is actually an extreme. And it's an extraordinary example from the Ice Age that you've focused on in your book that we've focused on in today's episode, isn't it? Because it's the combining of this very difficult time in the Ice Age, so 25,000 years ago, alongside trying to live this lifestyle against one of the biggest land animals in the region. It's almost like you are combining two incredibly difficult scenarios, merging them together,

putting these people into that environment and saying, right, go for it, try and survive. It must have been a fascinating study to research when looking at life in the Ice Age. Yeah, you wouldn't believe it except for it happened, clearly. You know, just you wouldn't believe they survived. You wouldn't believe that not only these cultures that survive, on a range of large animals, but then this subculture of the Pavlovian that survived on specifically mammoths, these mammoth hunting specialists, you sort of, like these archaeologists that first found these cultures, it's you only believe what they actually

did as a sort of last resort when all else has been proven otherwise. It's otherwise just sort of impossible to imagine how they did it. Has it been interesting when you were doing this research comparing, let's say the Pavlovian culture compared to other Graviton cultures in, let's say, surviving in that part of the world or maybe in Western Europe and looking for maybe similarities, but also differences in their hunting in their lifestyles? Yeah, the Gravititan, this was across Europe culture, so the ones living on the seashore hunted more sea life and others hunted more reindeer. It is kind of remarkable how static these cultures were, though, over such long periods

of time. I mean, the Gravititan, this is from basically 33,000 years. ago to 21,000 years ago, this is more than 10,000 years of a culture that used similar types of art. I mean, if we can think about our cultures, it's sort of thinking about 10,000 years and the differences that occur over this stretch of time. It's staggering. I mean, that spans before writing. So it's sort of a remarkable stasis these cultures existed in art and lifestyles for massive amounts of periods of time and large distances as well. Now, before we completely wrap up, are there any key messages that you'd like listeners to take away about surviving in the Ice Age?

Let's say, if we were thrown into Eastern Europe at this time, into the Pavlovian culture, any tips or any important words? Well, all I can say is that you're going to have to hunt these mammoth if you're going to want to eat clearly. And I would say, Clafton atlattle, which is not too difficult, fortunately, just a simple stick. with a bone at the end to latch your dart on to, get that obsidian sharpened and attached to the end of your dart, and then you're going to have to make sure to not go alone. You're going to have to be a team player and go with lots of other people, not just that help you throw the dart, but that the mammoth might chase instead of you. It sort of lowers your odds of being trampled. And then, unfortunately, when you trap the mammoth, don't trap more than one.

and when you trap it, you're going to have to wait until it faces you to throw your dart. Otherwise, it will simply be useless. So throw your dart, and hopefully it doesn't, when it angers and charges, which it will, hopefully it doesn't charge after you. Well, Cody, this has been great. Of course, this is just one chapter of your How to Survive book. We focused in on the Ice Age, but you cover several other massive events from ancient history, too, don't you? Yeah, I spanned quite a lot of not just human history, but even if,

a few before that. As I said, I'd like to focus on this sort of spectacular disasters that exemplify a period in history and that there's something sort of deeper to say about them, either scientifically or historically that I think, so we not just learn about how to escape these different disasters and what happened at that moment, but sort of the events leading up to them and sort of what the results of what changed in human culture after them. Could we really survive the asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs? Well, this one, I have to admit, the experts I spoke with needed quite a bit of cajoling to even suggest that there was a chance. I mean, our ancestors, which this was 65, 66 million years ago, they survived, and they were quite a bit different looking than us, of course.

They sort of resembled a shrew-like creature. In fact, no mammal larger than basically a raccoon survived the impact of this asteroid. So the chances of you surviving are limited, but I would suggest if you were, on the eastern hemisphere, the asteroid, which was about six miles wide and traveling at about 10 miles per second, impacted the, what is now Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. And the force with which it impacted is almost unimaginable. It was sort of probably about 100 million times the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated. So if you were in Texas, it would have killed you. If you were in, even as far as New York, it would have deafened you. And it would have, if there had been

in a glass, it would have shattered it basically across the entire Western Hemisphere. And then of Of course, there were tsunamis that were one of the 1,000 feet high and across the Gulf Coast and even 600 feet high in Europe. And then after that, it got worse. There's sort of all of this material that it ejected from the impact site. If you can imagine, it actually, at this pressure, sort of rock behaves a bit like a fluid. So it's sort of very similar, actually, to sort of a cannonball or hitting a pool in this sort of sploosh of earth that lifted up was about 25 trillion tons of rock and earth

sort of at speeds that some of which exited our orbit, but most of which fell back down to Earth. And as it did, it sort of incinerated in the atmosphere and sort of fell as fiery chunks and sort of basically ignited forest fires throughout the world, which is the only dinosaurs that did survive were probably the ground nesting birds, because even birds that there was almost no forest left after the global firestorm. And then even beyond that, the most difficult part to survive would have been there's quite a bit of oil in the Yucatan. And so this was vaporized and then spread about the stratosphere as a kind of black paint, which took almost 10 years to come down because this was above the rain clouds. And this black paint dropped

sunlight by 90 percent. Global temperatures fell by an average of 50 degrees. So if you can imagine the ice age, they fell about 15. This was 50. And basically stopped all evaporation. So there was almost no rainfall. And so the only area in which I think it would have been possible for someone like us to survive would have been somewhere in maybe Indonesia inside a deep, deep cave where it was near the equator, it was still a livable temperature. Well, there we go. Slight tangent on the end, but thank you for answering my question all about that. As mentioned, we focus more on the ice age today. Cody, this has been great. Last but certainly not at least, the book you have written, which covers all of these How to Survive Scenari.

Mario's is called. It's called How to Survive History. How to Survive History. And of course, you've got a popular TikTok account too, I believe. Oh yeah. The last few months I've been sort of trying to make videos, little explainers, a little quick one-minute explainers for different disasters that I cover in the book all the way up to the Titanic and other, I talk about Pompeii, surprisingly survivable. I had to survive ancient Egypt and darkest year of the dark ages. So I try to make little one-minute explainers on, in case anybody's curious, how you could have survived events like that. Absolutely right. Pompay, if they got out early enough, they could easily get clear the volcano. But that is another story entirely.

Cody, it just goes to me to say, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Thank you for having me. Well, there you go. There was Cody Cassidy for that fun chat about how to survive in the Ice Age, especially if you were part of the Pavlovian culture. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Thank you for listening. Please follow the show on Spotify,

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That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode. I don't know.