You're Dead to Me - Marco Polo (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

Greg Jenner is joined in 13th-Century Venice by Professor Sharon Kinoshita and comedian Ria Lina to learn all about medieval traveller Marco Polo and his adventures in China.Born into a family of merchants, in 1271 a teenage Marco set out for the court of the Mongol emperor Qubilai Khan with his father and uncle. They would not return to Italy for nearly a quarter of a century. In the service of the emperor, the Polos saw all manner of extraordinary things – including the Mongols' amazing imperial postal service and diamond-hunting eagles in India.Imprisoned by the Genoese on his eventual return, Polo spent his time in prison writing his Description of the World with the Arthurian romance author Rustichello, a travelogue describing his exploits in the East and the wonders he had seen. This episode explores Polo’s extraordinary life, the decades he spent travelling in China and beyond, and the fascinating account he wrote on his return.This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Hannah Cusworth Written by: Hannah Cusworth, Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Ben Hollands Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

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Join me, Alex von Tunzelmann, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome to You're Dead To Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner, I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are packing our trunk and boarding a ship to 13th century China to learn all about medieval traveller Marco Polo. And to help us on our way, we have two very special travelling companions. In History Corner, she's Distinguished Professor of Literature at the University

of California Santa Cruz. Her research focuses on the intercultural relations of 12th and 13th century Asia and Europe, and in literature particularly. And luckily for us, she's the most recent translator of Marco Polo's book, as well as the author of Marco Polo and His World. It is Professor Sharon Kinoshita. Welcome Sharon. Thanks Greg, I'm delighted to be here. We're delighted to have you here.

And in Comedy Corner, she's a comedian, actor and writer. You might have seen her on loads of things on TV, including Live at the Apollo, QI, Pointless, Have Your News for You, maybe you've seen her stand-up tour, Reawakening, or heard her on Radio 4's News Quiz or The Now Show, and you will definitely remember her from our episode on Pirate Queen, Chung-Ee-Sow. It's Ria Lina, welcome back to the show, Ria. Thank you so much, it's great to be here. We're delighted to have you back.

Now Ria, you are, I think, officially the most educated, therefore most hyper-intelligent comedian we've ever had on, you have a PhD. I do have a PhD, but I don't know that that makes me the most. You're most educated perhaps but... Okay, all right. The only one that didn't have an ADHD enough to be able to finish three degrees. So is Marco Polo a familiar name?

Very familiar name to me because I used to play it all the time at school. Okay. Or in swimming. Talk us through the rules. The rule is that you put on a blindfold and then everyone else that you're playing with has to avoid being tagged by you, but you get clues and what you do is you say Marco and everyone has to say Polo when you say Marco so that you can get an idea of where they are.

So you're echolocating. Yes. Cartographically, is that how Marco Polo travelled the world Sharon? Echolocating. You know, I have to continue my research because I haven't been able to unearth the foundational document for the swimming pool game. So what do you know? This is the So What Do You Know where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject and you've probably heard of the name Marco Polo.

Much like Rhea, you may have known he was a medieval famous traveller. You may even have played the famous swimming pool game. Marco! Polo! Thank you Rhea. Now, sadly, this is a 20th century invention. Not something that Marco did, splashing around in the canals of Venice when he was a little boy.

If you've travelled to Venice, aren't you fancy? You will have flown to the Marco Polo airport. You may have stayed in the Marco Polo Hotel, he's been the subject of a Netflix series, if you're a die-hard Doctor Who fan and you've seen the original 1960s mini-series, you'll know that Marco Polo's in there too. He gets around this famous traveller. But what was the real historical story behind the big name? Did Marco Polo really go to China? And why is there a sheep named after him? Let's find out. Professor Sharon, can we start at the beginning? When was Marco Polo born?

And what was his family situation like? Was he wealthy? Is he born into privilege? Well, he was born in 1254, so mid 13th century, into a merchant family of Venice. But we don't know very much about his childhood. But to be fair, in the Middle Ages, even future kings leave little to no trace in the historical record. Right. So we know he was born in 1254 and that's it.

That's right. Helpful. I'll turn to you, Ria. What do you imagine his childhood was like in medieval Venice before little Bambino Marco was splashing around in the canals. Anna-Maria Pizzoli I have to say that really helps place things for me because I don't know how old Venice is, but it's at least as old as the 1200s. Because at some point they would have had to build all those canals. So it wasn't there in marshy times, which is an official time period, by the way. If you didn't know that. Matthew Feeney The marshy era.

Anna-Maria Pizzoli Yeah, there's the Iron Age and the marshy times. But I can imagine that, okay, so Italy in the 1200s was a fascinating place. I know that, for example, there was a medical school in Salerno that taught both men and women. So I think that, I think it's more modern than we would think it would be in the 1200s and him being born to a merchant family right there, it was a big dock, wasn't it, Venice? And all the ships went from there to all over the world. So I think that he was really well-placed to be an explorer,

better than, say, a sheep farmer in the Alps. Well, that's fantastic, Ria. Yeah, the Marsh era indeed. Venice, in fact, was founded several centuries before by refugees who were fleeing those Germanic invasions. And, you know, they came across a bunch of marshy little islands and they figured the barbarians are not going to follow us here. But by the 13th century Venice was a really big important maritime republic making its fortune from traveling the seas and bringing luxury stuff back to Venice and funneling through Venice to the rest of the world. And you know Venice really got its start with the First crusade in 1099 and they developed a transport

business shipping people back and forth to the Holy Land, you know, along with all that merchandise, the silk, spices, the good things like that. So we call this the Silk Road, despite it being seas, the Silk Road is this trade network. Wow, this is the original Silk Road. Yeah, so that's Venice. Sharon, tell us about Polo's family relations. Do we know of his siblings, mother, father? We don't know too much about the family of his generation yet, although we know a relative a lot about his father Nicolo and his uncle Maffeo because they took off to the east and they actually traveled

to the court of the Mongols a decade before Marco went with them. So when Marco set out, the Polos were, you know, a merchant family, but they were certainly not part of that upper crust that furnished the dynasties of Doge's and so forth. So all we know about them really is what Marco and his co-author tell us in the prologue, the first 19 chapters of their book. Will Barron So Rhea, Marco grew up not really seeing his dad or his uncle because they were off gallivanting around Western Asia. And then suddenly one day they came back and they came back with a message for the pope

from the Mongol emperor. But daddy makes it up to little Marco by saying, I've come back, I've delivered my message to the pope and actually I quite fancy going back out again. Do you want to come? Well, he's old enough by then. But also imagine knowing that your dad is so close to home and then he goes, sorry, I have to just detour for a couple of months to see the pope. I'll be right back.

And that's just... Matthew Feeney So the polos now, or pack of polos, let's call them that. So, Mepheo, Nicolo and Marco, they head back out to Mongol China in 1271. Marco is a young, he's what, 17, 18? He's a young man. Sharon Mulholland That's right. Matthew Feeney And they travel to Acre, which is in the holy land of what we now call the Middle East. and they definitely go to China, Sharon, because when I was a student about 20 years ago or something like that, there was a big sort of like, oh, did he really go to China?

Did he make it up? Was he telling stories? But he definitely went to China, right? He definitely went to China. Okay, case closed. Yeah. On the other hand, I should say, Greg, that if you asked Marco, had he been to China, he might have looked at you with puzzlement for a split second, because I think for Marco

and his family, they were traveling not to China, but to the court of the great Khan. So they were traveling in the Mongol Empire. When the Polos first arrived there, the Mongols ruled what we would consider now northern China because they had conquered that from the previous dynasty ruling it. And it wasn't until the Polos had been at the court of the Great Khan for half a decade or so that Kublai completed his conquest of what we would now call southern China, which was the Empire of the Southern Song. So this had the effect of uniting the territories that hadn't been unified under single rule for a few centuries there, but which basically corresponds to

our modern nation state of China. So the Polos were actually on the scene for this big turning point in world history. Listeners, if you want to know more about the Mongols, we did one an episode on Chinggis Khan, the grandfather of Kubla Khan, Genghis Khan, I guess more famous name at Chinggis is what we call them. He's there, he's quite impressed by Kubla Khan and the capital Dardu or Khanbaliq. Do you want to guess how long the Polos stay in this part of the world? On this trip. Well, let's call it a trip, but it's quite a long trip. Do you want to guess how long the Polos stay in this part of the world? On this trip? Well, let's call it a trip, but it's quite a long trip.

Let's go 20 years. That's a really good guess. It's 24 years. Yes. So you've done very well. You're very good at this, Rhea. You've got incredible knowledge here. Whether it's...

No, no. Pulling it from I don't know where. Well, I mean, amazing. But yeah, they're there for 24 years. And Sharon, we get a sense then that Marco Polo, even though he arrives as a 17-year-old, he becomes a man in China, in Mongol controlled China. What does he tell us about his life in Mongol China? Well, he tells us basically zero. 24 years, Marco. Come on.

He's too busy having fun. You talked about a book. What have we got? Well, I mean, we know his book today generally as Marco Polo's Travels. And when you see that Travels on the title, you know, what are you expecting? You're expecting to hear about somebody's travels. But actually, the first versions of Marco's book were called not the Travels but the Description of the World. So, of course, that title puts emphasis not on Marco the Traveler but the world that he came to know.

So the book consists of 233 chapters, some of them really short, some of them longer, but only 19 of those 233 chapters are devoted to a kind of overview of all three of them going to Asia and back. The rest of the chapters are really about the places, sometimes in formulaic and kind of tedious fashion of just there's this place and then three days journey later there's this place and then five days journey later there's this place and then five days after that there's this place. You know sometimes modern readers who pick up the book are a little bit surprised and maybe just a tad disappointed. You know I'm beginning to wonder whether his dad made him go to his room and just write down what happened today and it's like today we

went to place A and tomorrow we're going to place B. Did it! Sharon, Marco Polo tells us some really interesting things about life in the Mongol court, but also kind of wider administrative aspects. And two of the things I think that are particularly interesting would be the postal system. Yeah, I have to say I did not expect to be this excited about the wider administrative organization. Welcome to the nerd show over here. And you gave me a notebook and pen. I did not expect to be this excited about the wider administrative organization. Welcome to the nerd show over here.

And you gave me a notebook and pen. I'm writing this down. I did. We knew you were coming in. We thought we'd go fully nerd. Sharon, the postal system and paper money are two things that Polo is particularly intrigued by. These aren't brand new inventions, but these are things the Mongol dynasty are renowned

for. So can you talk us through them? Right. Okay, the postal system. Yeah. And so your American listeners would recognize this as a medieval model for the Pony Express. But actually, yeah, the Mongol system was called the Yam, and it had many precedents in the ancient and medieval worlds, China, Persia, and elsewhere. But of course, the Mongol Empire was vaster than any of those, so the distances we're talking about were much greater. Horses, or sometimes just runners, depending on the terrain, would be posted at stations every, we don't know, maybe three miles or so. By relaying like this, they could cover, let's say, 10 days journey for normal travelers in a day and a night, Marco tells us.

Tell us about paper money, because Marco Polo is particularly fascinated, because paper money is not in use in Europe, is it, at this time? Oh no, I mean, so the idea that you had money that was good you know over the vast stretch of empire is just mind-blowing but also mind-blowing is the idea that anyone would look at a piece of paper and think that you could buy anything with it, that you know it had any worth at all. Amazing. Let's move on to something even shinier than paper money which is jewels.

Ooh. Shiny, is jewels. Ooh. Shiny, shiny jewels. Marco Polo listed three techniques for unearthing natural diamonds. In India, interestingly enough, can you guess what these techniques might have been? I'll give you a clue, Rhea. One of them involves eagles. What? The big flappy birds.

Sorry, three techniques for getting jewels. For finding diamonds. Yeah, in India. One of them is take it off of someone else who's already got some. That's definitely a technique, sure. The second one is dig for them where they're made in the earth. That's a very sensible technique, yeah. And then the third one is train your eagle to pick them out of magpie nests.

I like that. That's a very smart... I think those are my three highly informed decisions. Ask me how many diamonds I have. How many diamonds you have? None. None of those worked for me. Sorry.

Sorry to hear that. Sharon, is Rhea about to be a very, very wealthy person with her diamond industry? I think she was pretty close. So Marco Polo tells us... Yes! was pretty close. So Marco Polo tells us about the way diamonds were collected in the province of Motopali on the east coast of India. So the diamonds were located in the mountains, so you let the rain wash them to the surface. Then in the dry season, you can go in and collect them in the gorges and the caverns. So on

the one hand you can just pick them up, but on the other hand in the caverns there are poisonous snakes there that are function as a deterrent. But more interestingly they took pieces of meat into the cavern and they threw them in so the diamonds would stick to the meat. Then eagles come and grab the meat. So you can either chase the eagles off and grab the diamond studded meat or if the eagles had already eaten the meat, just wait for the diamonds to come out the other end. Honestly, at this point, it is easier to just go and take them off of somebody else. I'm not endorsing that. I'm not endorsing that as a method. I'm just saying it just strikes

me as easier. Yeah, arguably that's not mining, that's theft. But sure, sure. Well, we didn't pick up, we didn't say mining, did we? We didn't say how we are mining. Maybe I didn't. You didn't say mining. Okay, fair enough. In fact, technically none of those are mining. Sharon, I think at the top of the show we mentioned Marco Polo sheep, which sounds delightful.

What's that about? Well, you know, Marco surprisingly often waxes lyrical about a region's animal life. And in the Pamir Mountains, the highest place in the world, he finds very large wild sheep with huge horns from which, as he tells us, shepherds made big bowls that they eat from. So today these sheep are drawing the attention both of big game hunters on the one hand and environmentalists on the other, and we know them as Marco Polo sheep. Ah that's fantastic. I thought they had a hole in the middle.

Yes. He talks about luxury goods that were very valuable back in Europe and in the wider world that were from the animal kingdom. Ria, if I say to you Ambergris and musk, do you know what those two things are? Well, vomit. It is. Well, vomit. I didn't know there was a song, but yes. There is now.

Ambergris doesn't smell. It's funny that we use it for perfumes. Yeah, we do. Because it doesn't smell nice, but it is this horrendous yellowy kind of gelatinous, maybe? Well, I don't know if that's quite the right term that can wash up. But if you find any on a beach, like that sells for good money. It's quids in, isn't it? Yeah, it's tens of thousands of pounds. Yes, it's whale phlegm. And so ambergris was very luxurious, used in perfumes, as you say. Musk was extracted

from the anal glands of certain types of deer, I believe Sharon, is that correct? Yeah, deer and oxen, I guess. And it's no accident that Marco Polo really pays attention to these because the Polo seem to have traded in musk. And after they returned to Venice, a good part of their increased fortune, we think, came from their trafficking in musk. So an animal secretion, again, valued in the making of perfume. And his final mission at the end of these 24 years is to escort a bride quite a long

way, Sharon. Is this a sort of fairy tale occasion? Is this a big royal wedding? Is it Harry and Meghan, Mark II? So Kublai's great nephew, who is the Ilkhan, the sub-con of Persia, sent a request to uncle saying, my chief wife has died. I would like another bride from her same tribe. Can you send me one? So Kublai assembled a huge escort wedding party.

And we can just imagine the Polos jumping forward to ask to be included in this Imperial party because this was a chance for them to sail back in the direction of Venice anyway after so many years with the Great Khan. And they get back to Venice in 1295, the Polos get off the boat and everyone's like where have you been? Well I hope they got a warm welcome at home. But in fact, you know, Marco stepped very quickly into the Venice's political conflicts, etc. all around the Mediterranean. So we're not really sure what happened when he got

home. But within four years, he was in jail in Genoa. So they're the great rivals of the Venetians. And so, yeah, he found himself in the year 1298, cooped up with other prisoners. And this is when and how the book got first written down. Okay, so he's in a Genoese prison. He has survived 24 years in the court of the terrifyingly, you know, famously fearsome Kubla Khan. He has survived 24 years in the court of the terrifyingly, you know, famously fearsome Kubla Khan. He has survived thousands of miles of voyages. He survived everything you can. He gets back home and four years later he's in jail. It's not ideal. It's quite bad luck.

I mean, I'm hearing white privilege. That's what I'm hearing. That's what's saved. He's probably due jail for 24 years over there, but they just went... He was just coasting around going, hello, hello, hello. And he comes back, everyone's white, he's like, wait a minute. So unlucky for him. Lucky for us though, because Sharon, we get the book because his cellmate is a renowned writer. His cellmate? With a lovely name, Rusticello.

Oh, Rusticello. Yeah, from Pisa, because Pisa was another one of Genoa's trade rivals. And we know of Rustichello because he wrote in Arthurian Romance. And so the two teamed up. Actually in the book, when you have I or we, it's often Rustichello talking, not Marco. Are they co-authors? We would call them co-authors, and I guess we would be tempted to call Rusticello a kind of ghostwriter but unlike modern ghostwriters he doesn't disappear into the background he's like front and center. I'm saying you know I

Rusticello of Pisa got Marco to tell me these stories and I'm writing them down. Fair enough. Any excuse to insert yourself, right? Yeah, well why not? You know, you've gone to the hard work of all that scribbling in the cell. You know, there's probably not very good lighting. It wasn't just the scribbling, he got him to tell the stories. That's the truth, that's the other thing, isn't it? He extracted these stories from him. Okay, and the book, as you said earlier Sharon, is not called Travels of Marco Polo, it is

called Description of the World, composed in 1298. But who's it for, this book? Is he just dotting down his memories because he doesn't want them to get lost? Or has he got an audience? Is there someone he intends it for? Is this his way of getting out of prison? Well, Roustikello's prologue starts out by addressing emperors and kings, dukes and marquise, counts, knights, townsfolk, all of you who wish to know the

diverse regions of the world. So, you know, this is like an act of social imagining that corresponds to no actual audience that you could have had in the Middle Ages, and it's pretty unique. It really strongly echoes the beginning of Rustichello's one romance where, you know, he's trying to get the biggest readership possible. Okay. When you start with kings, you're definitely aiming high, but then by the end he's like, townspeople, anyone, whoever is nearby, sheep. Hey you.

Yeah, please read my book. Okay. And so he calls it the description of the world because he's seen the world. It's quite a grand title. He's kind of showing off a bit. Well, I question who picked the title at this point. I feel like Rusticello really had a lot of sway in the making of this book. He's like, first of all, we're going to write it in French. Second of all, I'm in this book. I didn't go on the trip for 24 years, but I'm in the book.

Third of all, it's going to be read by everybody. So I don't know that Marco Polo had much say in what it was going to be called. Okay. He is released from prison, eventually. Presumably they're like, all right, the war's over, off you go. What does he do with his time? Does he settle down? Does he marry? Does he start a different career? He marries and actually he marries well above his station. So we start to see, you know, the profit that he's getting probably from the musk trade. He marries very well. He has

a couple of daughters who also marry very well above the polos' original social status. And then we really don't know much more than that. We have a couple of contracts, mainly having to do with Musk, and then he dies in 1324, age 70, a ripe old age for those days. What was the name of his wife? Donata Badoer. Lovely. So he died in 1324, age 70, and his travel book outlived him because, of course, you have translated it and it's well known and as Ria said, people were shouting his name in swimming pools throughout the 20th century. So can you tell us about the book,

this fantastic, extraordinary document? How did it outlive him and how did it spread through Europe? Well, this was a bestseller in the Middle Ages if you judge by the number of manuscripts that survived, but most of them survived because the book was fairly rapidly translated into Latin by a Dominican friar. And it's that Latin copy that then gets re-anslated into a bunch of languages back into Italian dialects, but also further on into Northern European languages. The nuance window! This is the part of the show where Ria and I sit quietly and study our navigation charts,

while Professor Sharon has two minutes to tell us something we need to know about Marco Polo. My stopwatch is ready, so Professor Sharon, please take it away. Okay, thanks, Greg. What I'd like to emphasize, I think, is how surprising Marco Polo's book is on so many levels. So we've already touched on the point that it was written not as a travel narrative and that despite being authored by two Italians, it was composed in not in Italian but in French. But in his own time, Marco Polo was a real myth buster. One spectacular example is when he tells his readers that, now hang on, unicorns are not at all as they are described in contemporary bestiaries and encyclopedias, but along with that single horn protruding from their forehead, they, as he says, have hair like buffaloes and feet like elephants. What he's describing, of course, is a

rhinoceros, which, as he emphasizes, decidedly does not let itself be captured by a virgin. At least as wondrous, I think, is the way Marco identifies the many sites across South, Southeast, and East Asia that are sources of the spices, especially pepper, but also cloves, nutmeg, galangal, and other exotic commodities that European merchants like himself would previously have accessed only at Mediterranean ports such as Acre or Alexandria. What might read to us like that tedious repetition would have held the fascination of secret intel, I think, for his compatriots. Now for modern readers, it's often astonishing to see Marco recount customs like polygamy, cremation, even

anthropology with equanimity, even though they would have been unspeakably shocking to Latin Christians back home. His book lacks any divisions of the world and its peoples into capital E East or capital W West, and he makes no mention of the old world continents, Asia, Africa, and Europe, that are the staple of Latin European cartography of the time. His quote unquote idolaters lumps together peoples we of Marco Polo's book, but I think we need to recognize that this was a voice in the Middle Ages that can strike us as surprisingly modern.

And that's why I think Marco Polo is just such a wonderful subject for rediscovery. Thank you. Amazing. Thank you, Sharon. Thank you so much. I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests. In History Corner, we have the spectacular Professor Sharon Kinoshita from UC Santa Cruz. Thank you, Sharon. Thanks, Greg. I had a great time. It was wonderful having you on. That was wonderful.

Yeah, it was absolutely fascinating. And in Comedy Corner we have the sensational Rhea Leena. Thank you Rhea. No, thank you for having me. It's been a delight. I've learned all about eagle poo and diamonds and all sorts. Eagle guano. Join me next time as we navigate more historical wonders.

But for now I'm off to go and train a bunch of eagles, then chuck some juicy steaks into my local jewelers I'm gonna be rich! Bye! I'm Helena Bonham Carter and for BBC Radio 4 I'm back with a brand new series of history's secret heroes. And he tells her that she will be sent to France as a secret agent, she will work undercover and if she is caught, she's going to be shot. Join me for more stories of unsung heroes, acts of resistance, deception and courage

from World War II. Subscribe to History's Secret Heroes on BBC Sounds. History's Secret Heroes on BBC Sounds. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelmann, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.