00:00:00
This is exactly right. Hard seltzer instead of beer. Oh, they hit a bogo. Well, then you got them.
00:00:33
Listen to Soccer Moms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:00:38
I'm Anna Navarro, and on my new podcast, Bleep with Anna Navarro, I'm talking to the people closest to the biggest issues happening in your community and around the world.
00:00:47
Because I know deep down inside right now, we are all cursing and asking what the bleep is going on.
00:00:55
Every week, I'm breaking down the biggest issues happening in our communities and around the world.
00:01:00
I'm talking to people like Julie K. Brown, who broke the explosive story on Jeffrey Epstein in 2018.
00:01:06
The Justice Department, through we counted four presidential administrations, failed these victims.
00:01:13
Listen to Bleep with Adam Navarro on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:19
Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers, and guess what? We have some big news. What's the news, Nick?
00:01:22
Huge news. we created our own podcast called Hey Jonas how do we actually come up with the name Hey Jonas guys
00:01:29
I honestly don't remember we were talking about a fit for the podcast where people could call in and say Hey Jonas
00:01:34
and then I wrote down on my little notepad Hey Jonas and offered it up as a potential title
00:01:39
for the podcast but thanks for remembering that guys listen to Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app
00:01:44
Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts just listen we don't care where you hear it
00:01:52
My favorite murder Hello! And welcome. To My Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hardstar.
00:02:12
That's Karen Kilgareff. And here we are for you. It's one more week. Like, yes, it's us.
00:02:18
Yet again and again, it's us. Yep. As you know us, as you have come to accept and care and maybe even love us.
00:02:27
Perhaps love. Perhaps we can count on love. Is there love this Halloween season?
00:02:33
Oh, this is our Halloween episode. It comes out like right around the closest to Halloween.
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Mere days before, yes. Yeah. Do you have your mannequin where you're building your costume?
00:02:45
where I'm sewing with pins and my tomato-shaped pin cushion and all of that stuff.
00:02:52
How much do you love that? Oh, no. Did you just have a flashback? Why do I have such a visceral reaction
00:02:59
to the tomato pin cushion? The tomato pin cushion. And then did your mom or dad have a,
00:03:06
what are they called? A thimble? Thimble. I never, I like to hand sew, but that's just one thing I never, ever bothered with.
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Well, I feel like thimbles were from back in a time where like people sewed so often that they were like, I can't poke my finger again.
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Yeah. And by the time my mom was sewing this, it was like, just if something ripped, like it was not.
00:03:30
I miss that. She didn't spend her days doing it. I miss that. I used to, back when I had like time and energy, I would like sit and sew the like little holes in all my vintage dresses while I'd watch like the History Channel or whatever.
00:03:43
and I don't do that anymore. I'm just so like on another tear. Was it, you just want to tear,
00:03:50
you don't want to mend? Oh, exactly. Well, also, was it because you needed to, like you were actually wearing that dress
00:03:57
and so you were doing it because it was your outfit for the evening? That's a really great point.
00:04:01
I don't really wear vintage clothing as much anymore or anything other than pajamas,
00:04:05
to be totally frank, so. I do have a pair of sweats from quarantine that it took, it was only very recently
00:04:12
that I discovered there are about three big holes in the lower butt, upper thigh area.
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I was like, stop wearing these outside. Because then I would put them aside like,
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I'm going to mend them. Yeah. You know that's not happening. No, no. Can I just say how happy I am
00:04:28
that you took the blur background off of your Zoom? That was giving me such a headache.
00:04:33
So that you could see the details of this white wall. The white wall and the orange couch.
00:04:38
I need to see them in full focus, not in blur mode. Yeah, I get it. I appreciate it.
00:04:43
That makes sense. Yeah. I actually put that blur mode on and couldn't figure out how to get it back off until...
00:04:48
I thought so. Moments ago. And then I was like, oh, that's right. It was back in that.
00:04:52
I see. You know, it's very... I heard tell that Steven may have a story for us because he had kind of a fascinating afternoon.
00:05:01
Steven, do you want to just run us down like what the last, let's say, four hours of your life have been like?
00:05:08
Steven, what happened? I basically have been in LAX since 11 a.m. because my car got towed.
00:05:13
And then it was like an adventure to basically just figure out what happened to my car.
00:05:20
Where was it? Oh, yeah. I basically parked it over the weekend because I was like, lifts are expensive anyway.
00:05:25
I'll just have my car with me. Yes. Yeah. And then I basically spent the whole day
00:05:30
just kind of running around, you know. You're skipping the part that I want to talk about the most,
00:05:35
which is what did you come to find that you had pulled into a space that was not a space?
00:05:41
or like how do you get towed from a paid bus is what I'm asking. Basically, I didn't have my sticker because I paid for it,
00:05:52
but then I didn't get my sticker yet, basically. Oh. So then I had to go like prove to the police that like I am registered and then they had to like sign off for me to go into a lot And then I had to go to the lot
00:06:05
look for all my stuff in my car that's proof that I paid for my insurance. And then I had to lift to a AAA
00:06:10
and then I had to lift back to the police station. No. Back to the lot. And then I made it just in test.
00:06:17
Steven. So how much more did it end up costing you than if you had just taken a lift?
00:06:22
Probably like $400 more. That seems like a scam of like, they're going around trying to find like, whatever expired tags in a lot.
00:06:30
Also, I forgot the most important fact is that when they first like signed off for me to like go on the journey, because it's like an old government form.
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I basically took a lift to like a random neighborhood in Englewood, where the old one used to be.
00:06:45
No, so it didn't have the correct address on it? Yeah, there was no correct address. And the phone number was like disconnected.
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So then like I was in Inglewood, just like, well, you know, it's a nice day. Hanging out.
00:06:57
Seriously calling the lift back. Like, please don't forget me. Oh my God. Please come back.
00:07:02
Also, this is you having just flown back from the East Coast. So this isn't fresh.
00:07:08
You just got up in the morning, Stephen. That's a traveling, oh, that sucks so bad.
00:07:14
Yeah, I've been on a plane since I think my plane was at, yeah, 7 a.m. Oh, geez.
00:07:20
Well, welcome home. And thank you for still recording on time. Like you somehow still were here on time.
00:07:27
I wasn't. I wasn't. And I've been home all day. Stephen got that Zoom sent like right under the wire.
00:07:35
He did. That must have felt amazing. That felt like, yeah, like the Olympics, like,
00:07:39
like crossing the finish line, you know. Yeah. Oh, well, we're happy you're here and we're happy you're home.
00:07:47
Welcome home. Welcome home. I'm sorry about your horrible ordeal. Yeah, that's like when you lock yourself out of your house.
00:07:53
It's just like, why do I have to do all of this now? Why these unforeseen circumstances are happening at me now?
00:08:01
There's many people who maybe don't get it because LAX is the worst airport. It's insane.
00:08:07
It's a nightmare to be at anyway. So busy, so crazy. So the idea that you drove your car there
00:08:13
just for the simplicity of like, I'm just flying out for two days. it'll be sitting there waiting for me.
00:08:19
And then it not only isn't, but you're now in a government errand. Yeah. Horrifying.
00:08:25
I'm here. I'm alive. Hideous. Oh my God. Welcome back. Thank you. Good job, Stephen.
00:08:31
A for effort. We did it. Yeah. You lived for all of us. You just went through a bunch of stuff
00:08:36
so we don't have to. What do you got? Wait, what are you going to be for Halloween?
00:08:42
Did you already say? Nothing. I'm going to... So I moved to a new neighborhood and this neighborhood supposedly is like a trick-or-treat haven,
00:08:51
like the kind of place where people come in to the neighborhood to go trick-or-treating.
00:08:55
And the past like three years, Vince and I have sat on our weird not cul-de-sac,
00:09:01
but not not cul-de-sac house and tried to like give out candy and literally one adult walked by in three years and took candy, which was nice.
00:09:11
So this year, I think I'm just going to sit out front. I'll put some emergency cat ears on
00:09:15
and I'm just gonna pass out candy and have the best time doing it. I'm so excited.
00:09:20
Nice. Yeah. And low impact. Yes. And get to know the neighborhood kids. Yeah. And the not neighborhood.
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Then the random people who are coming into my neighborhood now to go trick or treating.
00:09:30
And it's true that the houses are like, like 12 foot skeleton aside, there's like a 12 foot, like, you know, mummy.
00:09:37
And there's like a 10, like people are going crazy in my neighborhood. Like skeletons hanging from trees
00:09:43
and like huge fake spiders. And there's all kinds of like themes people are going for like Night Before Christmas.
00:09:51
It's really rad. It's like, it feels surreal. Is it intimidating? Yeah, we put up like four little paper,
00:09:59
like signs, you know, like four little paper, like ghosts or whatever. Let's say Trump 2024 on them?
00:10:06
Why? Yeah, it's like, ooh, spooky. The spookiest of all. The scariest, most terrifying Halloween decoration.
00:10:15
What about you? No, I don't. I don't. No one comes into this neighborhood. But even so, I don't.
00:10:22
Yeah, I don't think I'll have any reason to dress up. If anything, I'll pull out my Megan Fox wig from last year.
00:10:29
Just haunt the. Throw that back on, right? Or just think of a new person with very long black hair and be them.
00:10:36
Perfect. Kim Kardashian, may I suggest? Kim. Oh, my God. I, okay, if I'm going to do anything, I will be, although in that one, she has her hair pulled back,
00:10:48
I'll be Kim Kardashian peeking out from behind the Ivy. Wouldn't that be a good costume? Like,
00:10:53
if you have half of your face is painted like Ivy. Yes. Or you just like glue Ivy to half your body
00:10:59
and you're just like, looking like machidious the whole time. That would be fun. Just take a
00:11:04
panel of ivy around you as you walk around. Okay. That's if I go, if I leave the house,
00:11:11
that's what I'll do. Now I definitely won't leave the house. All right, cool. What else?
00:11:15
You watching, reading, living, loving? Oh, I wanted to talk about this last week and I,
00:11:22
it slipped me mind there. So remember Sweet Bobby, the podcast that was so disturbing and
00:11:29
we talked about, and it was an international success. The host, Alexi Mostras, has a new
00:11:34
podcast out. It's called Hoaxed. I know I told you about this off mic, but just telling everybody
00:11:40
else, if you haven't listened to Hoaxed, past tense of hoax, it's from Tortoise Media. And
00:11:46
it's basically kind of like a little satanic panic thing, not little, actually very big,
00:11:51
that happened in England. And it was all around children claiming to have been abused by the I think their school and maybe their church in this tiny town in England and how it basically took off on the internet And it a very
00:12:08
fascinating look at what is happening these days with that kind of like using words like groomer
00:12:14
and getting people really upset and then getting them on a bandwagon and what that actually leads
00:12:21
to and the way it affects people's lives. It's fascinating and absolutely horrifying.
00:12:26
Okay. Hoaxed. It's so good. Hoaxed. I don't love those stories. Obviously, I hate those stories. They're so troubling and so
00:12:33
disturbing, but they are definitely fascinating. So I'll check that out. Yeah. And also this one, it's told very well, but there is a no spoiler, or this might be a
00:12:44
Spoiler alert. But there is a woman, a Canadian, who comes in as the very low-key hero in this story
00:12:52
that when she shows up, it is so goddamn satisfying. I think she's like, I think she's a writer, an author.
00:12:59
Now I can't remember. But she is just like the voice, all of a sudden the voice of reason comes
00:13:03
and is like, now we're going to do something about this. What year does this take place in?
00:13:07
Like the 2010s. It was very recently. I can't believe that still fucking happens.
00:13:13
That's wild. And the level of insanity and the level of danger to actual children
00:13:19
that this caused, like you have to listen to it because it's the kind of thing where like,
00:13:23
people need to know about that part of, it's basically just the very dark side of people.
00:13:30
Panicking. Yeah, panicking. Yeah, hearing buzzwords and saying, this is my crusade.
00:13:35
Yeah. Did you try the new, did we talk about this already? Did you try the new Game of Thrones?
00:13:40
No. Did you? House of Dragons? Yes. And? I like it. Okay. It's a cousin. Okay. Obviously.
00:13:49
Yeah. But just in terms of looking for something to watch that gives you all the same things.
00:13:55
Okay. It gives you all the same thing. Okay. I'll try it. Because I never finished Game of Thrones.
00:13:59
I don't think I'm ever going to, honestly. Well, another COVID wave might hit and then you'll need it.
00:14:06
And just save it for then. I will. I will. Perfect. Thank you. Sure. Oh, I was just, I just want to mention this one thing too.
00:14:13
And this is very inside baseball, but every year Variety, the industry magazine or whatever you would call it,
00:14:21
releases 10 actors to watch. And the woman who starred, remember when I talked about the movie Prey,
00:14:28
that was, and basically it was Predator, but it was the origin story. Right, right.
00:14:33
And so it was like a young native woman and her dog. And I went crazy about the dog.
00:14:38
Yeah. Which is so shitty because the reason it was so good is because of the young woman who played the lead.
00:14:45
Her name is Amber Midthunder, and she was named one of the 10 actors to watch in Variety,
00:14:51
which is a very, very big deal for people. And she so deserves it. And I just wanted to give a little tip of that since I was all about that dog.
00:15:01
Well, yeah, I remember that. You were praising the whole thing. Pray. Yeah. Praising.
00:15:07
Pray, praising. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Cool. All right. Business. Actual business. Let's go to business.
00:15:15
This week on the Exactly Right Network, Kara and Lisa are celebrating their 100th episode
00:15:21
of That's Messed Up, an SVU podcast, with an epic guest. It's Isabel Glees, who plays Stabler's wife on SVU.
00:15:30
That's a huge guest. Huge. Love it. Amazing. We're moments away from getting Christopher Maloney.
00:15:36
That's right. I mean. And 100 episodes. Way to go, you guys. It's such a great podcast.
00:15:41
I mean, it feels like only yesterday. Truly, truly. And then over on I Saw What You Did,
00:15:47
Millie and Danielle cover two absolute classic movies When Harry Met Sally and High Fidelity.
00:15:54
It's a perfect weekend double feature. Those are two of my absolute favorite like late night or holiday movies
00:16:00
just to like veg out and watch. That's like a perfect duo. Yeah. Yep. Also over, if you're looking for something to buy, you can go to the MFM store and get a
00:16:10
here's the thing mug. And it has on this mug in particular, it does say fuck everyone, but it's
00:16:17
vanishing ink. So it only is revealed when the mug is hot. Is that right? Yeah. I love it.
00:16:24
So you can, it can sit on your desk and you won't get in trouble if you don't pour anything into it.
00:16:29
Right. If you just put like water, yeah, then fuck everyone will come up when you put your
00:16:33
coffee in there, which fuck yeah. Right? Hell yeah. Yes. I'm Anna Navarro and on my new podcast,
00:16:42
Bleep with Anna Navarro, I'm talking to the people closest to the biggest issues happening
00:16:47
in your community and around the world. Because I know deep down inside right now, we are all
00:16:52
cursing and asking what the bleep is going on. Every week I'm breaking down the biggest issues
00:16:59
happening in our communities and around the world. I'm talking to people like Julie K. Brown,
00:17:04
who broke the explosive story on Jeffrey Epstein in 2018. The Justice Department, through we counted four presidential administrations,
00:17:12
failed these victims. Listen to Bleep with Adam Navarro on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:17:21
Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and iHeart Podcast presents Soccer Moms. So I'm Leanne.
00:17:26
Yeah. This is my best friend, Janet. Hey. And we have been joined at the hip since high school.
00:17:30
Absolutely. A redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips.
00:17:35
This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey.
00:17:41
With all the snacks and drinks. Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer? Oh, they had a BOGO.
00:17:47
Well, then you got them. Listen to Soccer Moms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:17:53
Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers. And guess what? We have some big news What the news Nick Huge news We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas How do we actually come up with the name Hey Jonas guys I honestly don remember We were talking about a fit for the podcast where people
00:18:06
could call in and say, Hey Jonas, and then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas,
00:18:11
and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas
00:18:16
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it.
00:18:25
All right. All right. Is it time to start this podcast? I think so. Okay. So this is a topic that I stumbled upon doing some late night scrolling because apparently
00:18:37
I am not allowed to be asleep between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. That's just not something I'm doing these days.
00:18:43
And so, of course, what happens in the middle of the night? What website do you go to?
00:18:48
Reddit. Close. Mine's from... Okay. My story's a late night scroll Reddit too. What's yours, Twitter?
00:18:56
No, All Things Interesting. Oh, yeah. That's much better. There's an article on All Things Interesting by a writer named Joseph Williams.
00:19:05
The title of it is The Truly Grim History Behind the Fairy Tale of Hansel and Gretel.
00:19:10
So, hi. Yes, please. Educate me, Joseph Williams. I know nothing about history. I know nothing about anything.
00:19:18
And then the idea that, like, this is based on something that actually happened, which is,
00:19:24
children abandoned by their parents in the forest. Then they find a witch's house.
00:19:29
They have to fight with a witch. Ooh, spooky. It's spooky. It's Halloween-y. At the end, a duck swims them across a lake to safety.
00:19:39
It's wonderful. I forgot about that part. The sources for this story are the book,
00:19:44
The Third Horseman, Climate Change and the Great Famine of the 14th Century by William Rosen.
00:19:49
The book, The Great Famine, Northern Europe in the Early 14th Century by William C. Jordan.
00:19:54
and the book From the Brink of Apocalypse by John Aberth and several articles from the website medievalists.com.
00:20:02
So all of this is from 700 years ago. In the early 1300s, which is the late medieval period in Europe.
00:20:10
So a series of events will lead to one of the most destructive, destabilizing crises in all of European history.
00:20:18
And yet it's kind of not that well known. Yeah. It's the Great Famine of 1315. Okay.
00:20:25
So essentially, and for context, and I should say this right now, for all the people that study history and Europe
00:20:33
and famines and Hansel and Credo, I'm just here telling my friend a story. Yeah.
00:20:39
I don't, I'm not trying to take your job. I don't purport to know anything off of this paper
00:20:45
that my researcher, Maren, didn't give me directly. I am learning and growing along with. So if you hear me say something incorrect, it's okay,
00:20:56
because no one's coming here to get CliffsNotes for their paper. This is a conversation. But
00:21:04
it's super fascinating because the idea that folklore is all about taking shit that happened
00:21:11
years ago and telling stories about it before there was a printing press, before there was
00:21:16
anything. And here come the tweets. There was a printing press in 1315. I was just thinking that,
00:21:20
was there a printing press? I have no idea. But basically that folklore was the way that people
00:21:26
who actually went through shit passed down stories of, guess what? This can happen. Things can get
00:21:32
this bad, that blank, which I think is fascinating. I mean, look at the Bible. That's what the Bible
00:21:36
is. That's what the Bible is. Folklore. So this great famine happened 30 years before the start
00:21:44
of the Black Death or the Bubonic Plague, which is the most fatal pandemic in human history.
00:21:50
And historians estimate that the Black Death killed between 30 and 60% of the European population
00:21:57
and between 75 and 200 million people worldwide. Jesus, so crazy. The Black Death is the blockbuster sequel
00:22:06
to this lesser known indie film that came before, but it set the stage for the Black Death.
00:22:13
Got it, okay. That was a really great way to describe it. Thank you. Oh, wait, hold on.
00:22:19
I just got an email. It says, Karen, that was wrong. And it hurt me. It hurt my feelings.
00:22:23
Now I'm enraged. This episode hasn't even come out yet. You're already getting corrected.
00:22:27
It's so weird. Wow. So let's talk about medieval European society. There's very rigid social classes
00:22:34
that revolve around land ownership, right? So wealthy property owners, they're a tiny slice of the population.
00:22:43
they're basically the medieval 1%. They own almost all the land across Europe. So whether they're royalty,
00:22:50
whether they're just land barons, whatever. And their estates are divvied up and leased to everyone else.
00:22:56
So there are vassals who, in exchange for that lease, provide protection to the landowner.
00:23:02
And then there are peasants who do all the agricultural labor on that land. And the peasants are responsible for growing
00:23:11
and harvesting the food that everybody eats. So in this era, most people, like 85% of people are part of the peasantry.
00:23:20
Even below peasants, there are serfs. And basically serfs are enslaved peasants who are legally tied to a specific landowner.
00:23:29
They have no rights and they basically have to work that land and give everything to the landowner
00:23:34
and they kind of have nothing. Yeah. They're part of the peasantry, but they're just the lowest on the rung.
00:23:39
Got it. or near the bottom, hopefully I learn about all the other people that are near the bottom.
00:23:46
It's a difficult, obviously, position to be in. Modern researchers have studied peasant skeletons
00:23:52
and found they are, quote, almost universally afflicted with severe osteoarthritis and bone deformation.
00:24:00
caused by spending, quote, dawn to dusk, bent at the waist in fields. So a lot of the things that happen in this story
00:24:10
remind me so much of Monty Python's Holy Grail. Like, you know, the part where the Lord goes by on the horse
00:24:16
and he's like, you there, man. And she's like, I'm a woman. And they're just like, they're just slopping around in the mud.
00:24:22
It's kind of like that. Okay. Basically, a peasant's job changes with the season.
00:24:28
So in the fall, they're preparing the land for planting. In the spring, they plant.
00:24:32
Through the summer, they're growing. Near the end of the summer, fall, they're reaping, right?
00:24:38
So the growing season is the most crucial part of the year because that's when crops like wheat, oats, and barley
00:24:45
are maturing in the ground. And eventually, they get harvested and turned into things like bread and ale,
00:24:52
which are staples, especially in peasants' diets. Thank you, Di. So, okay. So for peasants, their food reserves dwindle,
00:25:06
are dwindling throughout the year, right? So they like stock up for winter. And then what, by the time spring comes around,
00:25:12
they're running out of the food from the last year's harvest. It's not uncommon for peasants to starve to death
00:25:18
in the weeks before the next year's harvest. Oh my God. Yeah, it's rough. So basically when the end of summer rolls around,
00:25:26
the peasants go into the fields with their 18-inch sickles, you know, like the one death holds,
00:25:32
and they harvest the crops. One historian has said that medieval peasants regularly experienced a level of physical exertion
00:25:39
in harvesting crops that, quote, is comparable to what one might find in someone training for the Olympic Games.
00:25:46
Jesus. Yeah, because you think about it now, it's all done by machinery, right? Yeah.
00:25:52
No, it was incredibly hard work. and they need the sustenance more than anyone. And basically they have to get all that food
00:25:59
and then give it to the landowner essentially. So this is a very general, very generalized idea of how things were in 1315.
00:26:09
So no one could anticipate what was about to happen in Northern Europe in the summer of 1315.
00:26:16
Although self-proclaimed prophets of the time did write about seeing, quote, heavenly signs such as comets,
00:26:23
showers of scarlet light resembling blood, a lunar eclipse, all of which beckon disaster.
00:26:30
And they were right, because things are about to get very bad, very fast on the continent,
00:26:35
even by medieval standards. So what happens is, even though it's summertime, it starts to rain.
00:26:41
And it rains and rains and doesn't let up. And some say volcanic activity in Southeast Asia
00:26:46
and New Zealand are the cause of this climate change. But either way, a torrential downpour falls from Ireland to Poland
00:26:55
and from Scandinavia down to the Alps. So it's just all of Northern Europe is raining constantly.
00:27:03
Some chroniclers of the time report an incredible 155 consecutive days of rain. So it's like four months of rain.
00:27:12
Thanks to these chronicles that are written usually by monks, we have firsthand accounts of this whole thing
00:27:19
and how it happened. So this unprecedented rain caused flooding, of course, destroying entire herds of livestock.
00:27:27
The homes back then had no foundations. They were just built onto the ground. So the flood would come and literally everything would be washed away.
00:27:35
Buildings, bridges, flood walls, everything. There was a whole community in England where, quote, 269 houses, 10 buildings, and two shops disappeared into the sea.
00:27:48
Holy shit. But in one German region, quote, more than 450 villages, people, cattle, and even houses were washed away.
00:27:57
Oh, my God. Societies were just completely taken out. Just gone. And of course, food reserves, they were already running incredibly low because it was the end of the season.
00:28:09
And now anywhere fields have been washed out or pushed underwater entirely, they can't grow crops there, obviously.
00:28:15
But also in the areas that aren't flooded, where crops could be planted, the ground is so wet that everything just ends up rotten.
00:28:23
And the rain is still coming. Writings from this era are filled with allusions to the apocalypse, and understandably so, because the future looks terrifyingly uncertain.
00:28:33
So the crop yields that year are as much as 60% below the normal amount. So basically half the food supply for Northern Europe is gone.
00:28:43
Wow. Over half. Yeah. And of course, the market responds accordingly. The cost of basic grains skyrockets.
00:28:50
Wheat jumps from five shillings per quarter to 40 shillings per quarter. And so do beans, peas, oats, barley, malt, all staples of the medieval diet.
00:28:59
And basically, 40 shillings is the amount the average laborer earns in a year in $1,300.
00:29:08
So while these prices would be exorbitant for a tradesman, and they usually made about 100 shillings a year,
00:29:15
they're simply unlivable and like unworkable for the peasant class, which is the majority of people.
00:29:21
A historian named William Rosen says that even in the best of times, medieval Europeans were, quote,
00:29:26
always one bad harvest away from starvation. In fact, the average person in the Middle Ages
00:29:32
experienced up to four famines in their lifetime alone. It wasn't crazy to experience that.
00:29:39
But because of the constant downpour and because it affected all of Northern Europe,
00:29:45
there was no relief to be found anywhere. The local trade routes that could be bringing in supplies from somewhere else,
00:29:52
like the Mediterranean are disrupted because the wars keep going They still fighting all the wars in Northern Europe A bunch of them those stay And there a ton of infighting that the famine creates
00:30:05
So essentially, nothing can get traded. No business is getting done in a normal way.
00:30:11
So that's all bad, but it's about to get worse because the rainy summer turns into a rainy fall,
00:30:16
which then becomes an unusually cold winter. So any livestock that survived the floods
00:30:23
are now underfed and weak, and their now fragile immune systems can't handle the plummeting temperatures,
00:30:29
so they start dying. The record books from estates give us an idea of the scope of it.
00:30:36
At one manor in England, the record books, quote, only six of 48 animals survived,
00:30:43
while in the other, the number of cows went from 45 to two. Fuck. So peasants are watching
00:30:50
as their horses, oxen, and pigs die off in alarming numbers. So now they're enduring a long, harsh winter,
00:30:57
knowing they'll be facing the new farming year with a totally depleted livestock.
00:31:02
So aside from the animals that they might eat or sell for money or whatever, they also have lost all the working animals.
00:31:11
So now they would have to do what an oxen would do or their horses. And even if they did want to,
00:31:18
so they had two remaining cows and they're like, we'll find we'll just keep the meat for ourselves. They can't do that because there hasn't been
00:31:26
enough sunshine to dry out the salt pans near the North and Baltic seas, which means there's
00:31:31
no salt available to preserve the leftover meat. Whoa. So insane. So the peasants who have been
00:31:39
hungry since springtime are screwed, basically. The serfs, like serfs are supposed to be growing
00:31:46
produce and food for their landlords. So they barely can get enough to give the landlord,
00:31:53
which is like their required amount. So there's none left over for them. And soon every single member of society, rich, poor, even kings have diminished access to food
00:32:05
because as awful and unprecedented as 1315 is, it all happens again in 1316 and then in 1317.
00:32:14
Across Europe, rainy summers, cold winters, and devastating harvests continue all the way into the 1320s.
00:32:22
Holy shit. I don't know why the fact that this is probably caused by a volcano somewhere in a totally different part of the world
00:32:29
is so tingly creepy to me. I've heard that fact before about other famines or whatever like that,
00:32:38
or like mini ice ages or whatever. It is so creepy. And so- It's so creepy. It just gives me the chills.
00:32:47
One thing I was reading about it, there was this really interesting thing where it's like,
00:32:51
basically just this cloud layer moved in because of those volcanoes. But no one back then knew why anything was happening.
00:32:58
It was all like God and the devil and all this shit. So yeah, and it's like, things get bad.
00:33:03
And then it's just like, okay, well, this is the apocalypse. As these years go by,
00:33:08
the people who don't die of famine become physically and visibly very weak. Historians describe 13, 15 famine victims
00:33:16
as being dramatically aged and shrinking not only in weight, but in height. And because of the malnourishment,
00:33:24
they develop black papery skin and many lose all their hair. People are left to eat rotten crops,
00:33:31
leaves, grass, rats, dogs, frogs, animal droppings, and in some cases, the diseased livestock.
00:33:38
at the height of their desperation. Some people even eat their own seed grain, which is basically, that means there's going to be no crop the next year.
00:33:49
Right. Because that's the only thing you have left. You never eat the seed grain and people are like,
00:33:53
fuck it. There might not be a next year. Okay. So because it's the Middle Ages and Europe isn't
00:33:59
connected in terms of news and communication, most people don't realize how widespread this
00:34:04
famine and these crop failures are. So they start trying to walk to other communities to find food
00:34:12
and basically to get help. But because it's a continent-wide famine, chroniclers describe
00:34:18
emaciated people who travel for days on foot only to die when they reach new towns. It's so fucking
00:34:26
dark, but it's like you think, well, I finally, I just have to leave my house. I'm going to try to
00:34:31
get over there where I knew other people aren't going through the same thing. And you walk up
00:34:36
starving. Everybody else is starving. Like it's a horror movie. So bleak. So their bodies are
00:34:44
unceremoniously tossed into mass graves and the streets become quote clogged with corpses.
00:34:51
It's said that the stench of death in the air is so strong it could make you sick just being outside.
00:34:56
So now the famine-induced sickness is everywhere. Malnutrition leads to pneumonia, tuberculosis, other respiratory illnesses,
00:35:05
and it wreaks havoc on people's immune systems, which some historians think is part of the setup for the Black Plague.
00:35:14
Yeah, I could see that. Everything was compromised, and then basically when that hit, nobody could fight it.
00:35:19
Wow. Most victims of famine actually die from disease. A historian named John Aberth writes that, quote,
00:35:26
only in rare cases was there absolutely nothing to eat. But even when starving souls fill their bellies,
00:35:33
bad food can cause diarrhea and other intestinal disorders, and deficiencies can trigger a host of other potentially fatal complaints,
00:35:41
from scurvy to dementia. And one of the worst disease that you could get at this time,
00:35:48
ergotism. I don't really know how to pronounce it correctly, but ergot, which is the mold, right?
00:35:54
It the mold that would get into the grain It was also called St Anthony fire because that the saint you pray to when the symptom of just your whole body feeling like it was on fire kicked in
00:36:07
which is so fucking dark. Fuck! Isn't that the grain that maybe caused the Salem witch trials?
00:36:14
Yes. Or the mold, I mean, in the grain? Yep, that's the theory. So essentially, you eat grain
00:36:22
that has a toxic fungus in it. Right. And that essentially, you start with mild symptoms, nausea, diarrhea, but that goes on for weeks.
00:36:31
And eventually it turns into intense, painful convulsions that cause people's fingers or wrists to clench and stiffen so much that the bones have to be broken in order to straighten them back out.
00:36:44
Holy shit. Which, you know, just leave it. Just leave it then. Uh-huh. Other symptoms of erogatism includes having trouble speaking,
00:36:54
feeling like bugs are crawling all over your skin, loss of hearing and vision. And in some cases, people's limbs swell up
00:37:01
and that is when that fire sensation kicks in. Oh my God. And eventually they develop gangrene in their feet and hands
00:37:09
so that your limbs are falling off, essentially. Fuck. It can also cause extreme hallucinations like, quote,
00:37:16
shining bright colors, changes in space, and visions of dangerous attacking animals.
00:37:22
The fun fact is that the alkaloids in the toxic fungi that cause arrogatism, that's what was used when they first made LSD.
00:37:31
Oh, no. Yes. So it's essentially people eating bad grain and then losing it, like just completely ruined by it.
00:37:39
Yeah. And people still getting together, you know, like if you're not completely
00:37:44
in bed and out. People getting together. There's a Hieronymus Bosch painting, a bunch of people in a room with ergotism. And like one guy has a pig face.
00:37:55
Oh my God. And there's a woman and you can't tell if she's actually there. She looks like kind of like an
00:38:00
angel and she's just standing next to another person. There's a guy who's just staring at his
00:38:04
foot that's laying on the ground. Oh my God. It's so fucking dark. Yeah. So, so dark. Okay. Of course, the people back then believed it was demonic possession or
00:38:14
witchcraft that was causing this. And they believed the best cure was prayer. But other
00:38:20
medical treatments for various famine-related diseases include potions and herbs, bloodletting
00:38:27
and leaching, or in extreme cases, having your limbs amputated. But despite any of these medical
00:38:32
interventions, the death toll keeps rising. People were just dying of arrogatism and basically of
00:38:39
famine. At the height of this famine, an Antwerp-based chronicler describes carts coming around
00:38:45
four times a day to collect corpses. So in his book, The Third Horseman, historian William Rosen
00:38:52
writes that, quote, perhaps because among all disasters, famines are by far the slowest moving.
00:38:59
They are particularly able to undermine more elevated human feelings. We know what hunger
00:39:05
does to the human body, even before it reaches the level of starvation. It doesn't just make
00:39:09
people physically weaker, but it has huge effects on their mental health. And there's no doubt that
00:39:15
hunger chips away at people's capacity for joy. It's said during the Great Famine, quote,
00:39:21
all dancing, playing, singing, and revelry ceased, which is horrifying. Seriously. Horrifying.
00:39:29
According to some chroniclers, violence and cruelty surge across Northern Europe.
00:39:34
As Rosen says, quote, honesty and generosity don't disappear in famines, but they become harder to find when people go without food.
00:39:42
The same people who show enormous courage in the face of earthquakes and fires find their bravery exhausted by months with too little to eat.
00:39:52
Hopelessness replaces hope and hopeless people commit acts that they would otherwise find unbelievable, even unthinkable.
00:40:00
Well, yeah, because it's like a form of torture, just months and months of too little to eat and never being completely satiated.
00:40:08
You're going to go crazy. Yes. And you just can't, like, you can't get relief. And if you have children, they're crying.
00:40:16
Right. You know, like, there's just kind of no, it's, I guess, hopeless is just the perfect word for it.
00:40:22
And dark. A Swiss chronicler of the time writes about a boat of refugees floating down the Danube.
00:40:28
And according to this account, the boat's captain throws over every single passenger during the trip saying, quote,
00:40:37
it was better that they should perish in the flood than heighten the misery of Hungary.
00:40:41
So people are starting to take action as if like, well, this is what's best for everybody.
00:40:48
Very easy to rationalize horrifying acts because of something that extreme going on.
00:40:55
A Parisian chronicler describes a baker who's caught stuffing animal droppings into the bread they're baking just to bulk it up.
00:41:02
So people are very desperate. Chroniclers also talk about roving bands of thieves that, quote, infested the countryside, stealing people's valuables, cattle, horses, and household possessions.
00:41:14
But they also target grain and corn growers specifically. Historians think that targeting those farmers means that they'll make a killing selling the
00:41:23
food back to hungry people at gouged prices. Rape and murder rates also increase during the famine,
00:41:28
but criminals don't always get away with their wrongdoings. And jurors are particularly strict
00:41:33
in this era. If a criminal is found guilty of his or her crime, their sentence might involve
00:41:39
being put in the stocks, prison, or sentenced to death. And it's said that during the Great Famine,
00:41:45
people would snatch the bodies of newly executed criminals from the gallows and eat them.
00:41:51
No. Which brings us to the cannibalism portion of the story Oh dear Cannibalism is talked about a lot in the Chronicles from all over Northern Europe during the Great Famine hitting a peak in 1317
00:42:06
So we don't know how real these accounts are. Some historians think that they were used by medieval writers
00:42:12
as a narrative device to capture the desperation of people during the famine. But we also know that if there was no food,
00:42:22
You know, like in many of these like survival stories that we've heard, different things we've talked about,
00:42:26
what the hell else are you supposed to do? Desperate times and all that. Yeah. So here's some examples of what chroniclers document.
00:42:35
I might start using the phrase chroniclers all the time now because... Yeah, it's so vague, but specific.
00:42:43
It's vague, it's old fashioned. It makes it sound like I went to college. So in the same vein as the executed inmates
00:42:49
being taken from the gallows, There are reports of prisoners eating the dead bodies of their cellmates.
00:42:56
There's mention of townspeople digging up the newly dead in local cemeteries and eating their organs, specifically their brains.
00:43:04
There's also stories of parents eating their own children and of children eating their parents.
00:43:12
But more often what happened was children were abandoned. In some cases, because both parents die from illness or starvation
00:43:19
and the kids are just left to fend for themselves. But in other cases, it's intentional.
00:43:25
And it often involves walking the children into a nearby forest and leaving them there,
00:43:31
which brings us to the story of Hansel and Gretel. Oh, now that we're sufficiently trod upon
00:43:38
and fucking depressed. Because when you first read your All Things Interesting article
00:43:44
of the true story behind Hansel and Gretel, you go, no, there's no way that that's ever really happened.
00:43:50
But then when you actually have a researcher that educates you about the history
00:43:54
of how things could lead to being that bad, then you're like, oh, it could be that bad.
00:44:00
What's amazing is the story of Hansel and Gretel, the Brothers Grimm named it that,
00:44:05
but that folklore, that trope existed in Germany, Russia, Romania, Portugal, Italy, Poland, and England.
00:44:14
And the Brothers Grimm collected all that folklore in the 1800s. So it was hundreds of years after.
00:44:21
So just for a quick refresher, if you don't know, in the Brothers Grimm version,
00:44:26
Hansel and Gretel's parents abandoned them deep in the woods during a great famine.
00:44:31
While trying to find their way home, the children happen upon a house with a roof made of cake
00:44:35
and windows made of sugar. They start nibbling at the house and a witch comes out,
00:44:41
beckons them inside. She feeds them a big dinner and then during the night, captures Hansel,
00:44:46
puts him in a cage and forces Gretel to assist her as she starts to fatten him up for slaughter.
00:44:53
And then on the day she plans to cook Hansel, Gretel manages to push the witch into the boiling
00:44:58
that meant for her brother. The witch dies, the kids escape with her pearls and precious stones.
00:45:04
So guaranteeing their future. And on their way out of the woods, they come upon a lake where a duck swims them across
00:45:11
one by one to the other side to safety and they end up reuniting with their father
00:45:15
who's very happy to see them. Everything gets blamed on his evil wife who is now dead.
00:45:21
Right. And they live happily ever after. I forgot all about those little details around it.
00:45:27
Yeah. That's right. Also, the Brothers Grimm, they put together some horrifying,
00:45:31
like folklore back then, the original stories were pretty, before they got cleaned up and Disney-fied later on,
00:45:38
they were pretty dark. But the idea that this one, the initial story was about parents
00:45:44
just like intentionally leaving their children in the forest and like, good luck and see you later.
00:45:49
It was just a result of what was happening to people. It was a horrifying reflection
00:45:54
of what actually happened to people in the Great Famine of 1315. So basically in conclusion,
00:46:00
although it's not as well known as other massive like societal things that impacted people,
00:46:07
the Great Famine of 1315 deeply impacted medieval European society in a very short amount of time.
00:46:14
Entire communities, especially in Ireland, the Netherlands, and Germany are abandoned
00:46:19
and hungry, destitute people begin to roam the continent in search of a safe place to call home.
00:46:25
Even religious institutions struggle, which seems impossible given the power of the church
00:46:29
at this time. Monasteries, other churches start selling off relics to wealthy buyers just so that they can stay afloat.
00:46:36
And even the landlords end up selling tracts of their land at slashed prices, which actually kind of like flips that.
00:46:45
The equality starts coming out of this. Because the entire medieval social order
00:46:51
crumbles underneath the weight of this. Peasants become increasingly angry at the oppressive social structure
00:46:58
where the richest in society are free to exploit the poorest. So they start to organize and revolt.
00:47:04
A mass death and exhaustion have created a labor shortage. So physical labor suddenly gains new and undeniable value.
00:47:11
and that'll only get more extreme when the Black Death hits in 1346 and things become so desperate
00:47:18
that one chronicler writes, quote, there was such a shortage of servants, craftsmen and workmen
00:47:24
and of agricultural workers and laborers that churchmen, knights and other worthies
00:47:30
had been forced to thresh their own corn, plow the land and perform every other unskilled task
00:47:38
if they are to make their own bread. I bet they didn't think they were... It was very unskilled once they had to do it
00:47:45
and realized how fucking hard it was. Historians believe that the Great Famine ended
00:47:50
when food supplies returned to normal by 1322, which was seven years after that first rainy summer in 1315.
00:47:58
And that... is the story of the great famine of 1315 and the kind of true story of Hansel and Gretel.
00:48:05
Holy shit. That is chilling. Chilling. We've been through pandemics before and they've been really bad.
00:48:16
That is fascinating that the number of people who died in the Black Death could be associated with the fact
00:48:22
that the immune systems of just a generation before them took a hit from the famine.
00:48:29
That's fascinating. cause and effect and everything. My God. That's a theory. That's a theory.
00:48:34
But it makes total sense. So I'm going to say it's definite truth. No, it's a legend.
00:48:40
Wow. Amazing. Good job. Thank you. You know the famous author Roald Dahl. He thought up Willy Wonka and the BFG.
00:48:49
But did you know he was a spy? Neither did I. You can hear all about his wildlife story
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in the podcast, The Secret World of Roald Dahl. All episodes are out now. Was this before he wrote his stories?
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It must have been. What? Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you, the guy was a spy.
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00:50:18
When you hear what my topic's going to be between your topic and my topic, this is obviously a very special Halloween episode.
00:50:26
So I was scrolling late one night as well. And I went to my favorite place to go,
00:50:33
which is Reddit. And there's always like a really good questions. And this one was like,
00:50:39
what's something you wouldn't believe is true if there hadn't been evidence of it?
00:50:45
Did you know that there used to be an abundance of mummies. And people would do all kinds of things with mummies because of the
00:50:54
abundance of ancient mummies. You're nodding yes. Well, only this is basically a direct result of me
00:51:04
watching so much like Agatha Christie, you know, Death on the Nile, Miss Marple, where I do know
00:51:10
that at least in Britain in like the 1800s, there was like an Egyptian trend. People loved Egypt.
00:51:19
They were all about Egypt and the discovery of tombs. But I didn't know, okay, this is what my story is about
00:51:25
is some of the crazy fucking things and fascination with mummies and how the trade in mummy remains
00:51:31
has seen them used in surprising, questionable and shocking ways. I've always thought it was hilarious
00:51:38
that the mummies are included in like the- Halloween. Hall of Fame monsters because mummies just stand there wrapped up.
00:51:48
Like I know that they've actually made a lot with the mummy movie trilogy, but they're not that scary.
00:51:54
It's a dead person wrapped up. Yeah, but if they came to life and they were like that,
00:51:58
that would be pretty terrifying. Well, they're slow. They are. They just stick their arms out and come at you.
00:52:04
It's just a skeleton in toilet paper, like wrapped in an ace bandage, essentially.
00:52:09
But that is one of my favorite Halloween costumes for like a little kid. Oh, yeah.
00:52:13
A little mummy is the greatest. A little baby mummy. Well, it never crossed my mind
00:52:19
that like mummies were something that were of abundance because I think of them as something
00:52:23
like ancient and rare nowadays. And they are. And it's partly because of the way people treated them before.
00:52:30
So the sources used in today's episodes are a Science Alert article by Marcus Harmas,
00:52:35
originally published on The Conversation, a Medical News Today article by Dr. Maria Kohut,
00:52:41
a Smithsonian Magazine article by Rose Ebeleth, and an article from the 16th Century Journal
00:52:47
by Carl Dannenfelt, and a bunch of other sources that you can see in the show notes.
00:52:52
Let's start in late medieval Europe, Karen, where we just already were. We were just were, yeah.
00:52:57
We just were there. All sorts of unusual remedies are used in the name of medicine.
00:53:02
If we look at the 12th century, Europeans in North Africa during their crusades learned about a type of medicine they hadn't seen before.
00:53:10
It comes from mummified remains that look like they've been covered in a resin-like embalming substance
00:53:14
the Europeans believe to be something called bitimune, which is basically solid crude oil
00:53:22
consisting of mineral pitch derived from coal tar or plants. And so bitimune is well known for its medicinal properties,
00:53:30
but the ancient Egyptians don't initially use it as an embalming agent. What Europeans think is bitimmune
00:53:36
is an embalming resin that takes on the black, waxy appearance of bitimmune as it ages.
00:53:42
This substance is called mumia, which is a derivative of a Persian word meaning wax.
00:53:48
So that's where mummy comes from is mumia. Oh. Yeah. Europeans begin raiding Egyptian,
00:53:54
thinking that this is what they need they begin raiding Egyptian tombs to bring the intact remains themselves directly back to Europe which God what a fucking fun time that must have been
00:54:06
Like, if you were a tomb raider back then? Tomb raiders. It's just so interesting things that are happening now.
00:54:13
There's like that whole trend in archaeology of like giving countries back their antiquities
00:54:19
that were completely like basically pillaged or stolen back in a time like that,
00:54:23
where it was just like, if you had the military muscle, you just got to go and steal people's ancient dead.
00:54:30
That's insane. Totally. So physicians and apothecaries extract the mumia and grind it into a powder.
00:54:38
And then they combine it with other substances like honey or oil to create tinctures, elixirs,
00:54:43
and other things to treat a range of internal and external ailments, including headaches, swelling,
00:54:50
abscesses, fractures, wounds, coughs, pretty much everything. They're like, this stuff we've scraped from ancient mummies and put into
00:54:59
a substance can cure you, which sounds a little like cannibalism, doesn't it? Yes. And also, it also sounds like it would make you very sick if you took enough of it.
00:55:11
Like, where's the proof that this is something that you should be even ingesting to begin with?
00:55:14
It's very much like when there used to be cocaine and Coca-Cola. And you're just like,
00:55:20
And that wasn't that long ago. So we've been doing this to ourselves for quite some time, it seems.
00:55:24
Science isn't new, but it's gosh darn better than it was not that long ago. Very much so.
00:55:31
It's better than like theories and people trying to divine, divining things. Right.
00:55:38
For some context, modern academics, including Dr. Louise Noble, Dr. Richard Soogh, and Karl
00:55:44
Denenfeld have all written extensively on how by the Middle Ages, corpse medicine isn't a new thing.
00:55:51
Corpse medicine. In ancient times, Romans drink the blood of dead gladiators to treat things like
00:55:57
epilepsy. So Karen, you'd be drinking Roman blood, gladiator blood. Gotta go to Italy. I mean, there's Reeves in number 59 to go to Italy.
00:56:07
Yeah, get your hands on that blood. In India and what was Mesopotamia, people believe the body
00:56:12
parts and organs of the dead are powerful healing agents when ingested. And so in medieval Europe,
00:56:19
everyone is using momia regardless of their class or social status, despite the fact that it tastes
00:56:24
awful if you ingest it and probably is questionably helpful. The public is led to believe that the
00:56:30
substance only comes from Egyptian royalty, which adds to the expense and exoticism surrounding it,
00:56:36
which isn't true. People start referring to the intact mummified remains themselves as momia
00:56:42
instead of just the wax, which is how we get the word mummy, as I said. The idea that mummia has medicinal properties
00:56:50
soon expands to the belief that consuming any part of a mummy has health benefits.
00:56:56
Physicians start to grind up the skulls, bones, and dried flesh and add to their preparations
00:57:01
for the next 500 years. Oh my God. So it is popular. The treatment strongly relies
00:57:08
on the homeopathic principle known as the laws of similar. So crushed skull powder is prescribed for migraines, for example,
00:57:16
while mumia is applied topically for skin complaints. At the same time, people buy into the idea that ingesting the mumia
00:57:24
provides them with spiritual energy, healing, knowledge, and wisdom. Because, you know, that ancient Egyptian knowledge and wisdom,
00:57:32
you think you're going to like impart that into yourself by like ingesting it into your gut somehow.
00:57:37
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would love to know if there, I'm sure there's books to read about this,
00:57:43
but like if there were people who are like, here's what I'm talking about. Like, suddenly I knew things or suddenly I could see.
00:57:51
There's gotta be those people saying that, right? I mean, yeah. But there are probably the people
00:57:55
that were like manufacturing mumia for the masses. So what's really ironic about this whole thing
00:58:03
is that in this era, in the medieval period, Europeans in general are repulsed by cannibalism itself.
00:58:09
Like it's something that happens during a famine, not normally, right? So they consider it a primitive and barbaric practice
00:58:16
only occurring in non-Western, quote, uncivilized cultures. But essentially they're ingesting mumia as a medicinal cure
00:58:24
and it's essentially cannibalism. Yes, it is. It's absolutely cannibalism. Those were people.
00:58:30
But it's used for pharmacological purposes. So somehow it's okay. Right. I mean, yeah.
00:58:37
Wow. We can all justify pretty much anything as human beings. True. However, some people are skeptical, including doctors themselves.
00:58:45
Royal physician Guy de la Fonte questions the efficacy and ethics of Mumia. In 1564, he travels to Europe and sees firsthand what's happening at the source.
00:58:56
Due to the demand in Europe, these royal mummies are in short supply. At the same time, the Egyptian government puts a stop to remains from tombs being exported,
00:59:06
but not before. There's this English merchant named John Sanderson. He smuggles 600 pounds of mummy body parts back to Europe.
00:59:14
Oh my God. So what happens, because they put a stop to tombs being raided and to mummies being used,
00:59:24
Egyptian exporters resort to forging mummies using the unclaimed remains of dead peasants,
00:59:30
slaves, and executed criminals as substitutes. So they fill the bodies with this bit immune
00:59:36
before bandaging them and laying in the sun to dry out, mimicking mummies. That's dark.
00:59:44
That's dark and gross. The traffickers in Europe don't even know about this, but the demand grows for this type of corpse medicine, even if it leads to grave robbing.
00:59:53
Wow The prescription and use of mumia continues well into the 18th century as a popular cure But as more and more doctors grow uncomfortable with the ethics of using it it eventually falls out of favor thankfully
01:00:06
I mean, it's... You're eating people. You just literally are. Yeah. And like with no scientific proof that it's doing anything.
01:00:20
No, it's more like a trend. It's a trend. It's just kind of popular. Bone powder in medicine is trendy, and so you're using it.
01:00:27
Ooh. Ooh. Well, okay, so this kind of falls out of favor, but mummified remains continue to be in demand throughout Europe at this time
01:00:35
for a different purpose. At this point, Renaissance artists use powdered human and feline mummified remains
01:00:44
to extract a rich, warm brown pigment. The color becomes known as mummy brown. Whoa.
01:00:53
So they actually grind up the bones of ancient fucking mummies that like nowadays we are like,
01:00:59
we would love to find, right? We're always looking for mummies and like have them on display at museums.
01:01:04
Back then they were like, crush, crush, crush, paint your fucking, you know, scenic view or whatever.
01:01:11
Also, I'm sorry, isn't brown one of the most commonly occurring colors in fucking nature?
01:01:17
Like, oh, you had to get that specific shade? It is like a very specific precious shade that they do get from it, where it's hugely popular with artists.
01:01:28
It's said that a little bit of mummified remains goes a long way with one supplier claiming one mummy is enough to supply his client for 20 years.
01:01:37
Oh, shit. It's kind of like a little translucent. And so it's used as a watercolor for shading and creating shadow effects, especially skin colored tones.
01:01:46
So it does something specific that people think that they need to use mummies for.
01:01:54
But I mean, it feels to me like mummy brown, it suggests the idea of like dirt, which is also on the ground at your house, is my point.
01:02:04
Pick it up and paint with it. Or if you want sand, go get sand and then do some stuff with sand.
01:02:09
But like that, I don't know. Well, it's like that green, remember that green paint you did an episode on where it was just poison?
01:02:16
It's like there's something special about it. And I think that like, if you could be like this painting used mummies,
01:02:21
it's probably worth more. It has some kind of mysticism going on with it too, you know?
01:02:26
Completely. Or it's like, if Leonardo da Vinci is using it, then you probably are like, I need it.
01:02:36
Right, right. Yeah. He was the original influencer. Okay. So eventually many artists stop using mummy brown
01:02:43
because they find it inferior to other brown pigments. Not because they find it unethical,
01:02:49
but because it's like not as good. But 19th century English artist Edward Byrne Jones
01:02:54
is so horrified when he discovers the truth behind what he's been using. He immediately buries his last tube of paint in the garden
01:03:01
in an attempt to afford the diluted remains the respect they deserve. So this was like, this was like sold.
01:03:07
This wasn't just like something that artists would make on their own. It was like manufactured.
01:03:11
Yeah. Wow. Despite mummy brown being widely used, it's not well known exactly which famous artworks
01:03:17
from this period contain the color. I would fucking love to know. And like, you go to an estate sale,
01:03:23
is there a way you can find out? Wouldn't that be great? It would be unbelievable.
01:03:26
Yeah. I mean, would you hang in your house a painting that had used mummy brown or would you get rid of it immediately?
01:03:34
I mean, it is an ethical dilemma. Yeah. Where just like, I would need to see the painting.
01:03:39
Probably not though, because, you know, Aside from the ethical part, which is simply disgusting.
01:03:46
It's just like, it truly is made of humans. Yeah. Like, it just is. But then on top of that, if you have any kind of like worry,
01:03:55
if it's all about spirituality or whatever, if you have any worry about like hauntings or bad vibes or bad spirits.
01:04:02
Such bad vibes. It's a true consideration. Yeah, you can stay at your house all you want.
01:04:06
But if you have a fucking painting with mummy brown in it, you're getting nowhere.
01:04:11
It's not good. No. Mummy brown is available from paint suppliers right up into the 20th century,
01:04:17
but the demand drops off. In 1964, the managing director of Roberson of London states they're no longer able to produce mummy brown
01:04:25
because there's nothing left to make it from. So up until 1964, it was being used.
01:04:31
64, crazy. He says, quote, we might have a few odd limbs lying around somewhere,
01:04:36
but not enough to make any more paint. We sold our last complete mummy some years ago
01:04:40
for three pounds. perhaps we shouldn't have. We certainly can't get any more. Wow.
01:04:46
So by the 18th and 19th centuries, fewer people are using mummia as a medicinal remedy,
01:04:52
but we know that painting with mummified remains is still common. However, the exotic appeal of mummies isn't diminishing.
01:05:01
Egyptomania takes Western Europe by storm, as you were saying, following European colonization of North Africa.
01:05:08
Using science as a justification, there's a new way Europeans, especially those in Victorian era England,
01:05:15
satisfy their curiosity about all things Egyptian. So Napoleon's first expedition to Egypt in 1798
01:05:23
opens the floodgates for wealthy Europeans to buy artifacts and as well as intact mummies from traders on the street
01:05:29
and then take them home as collector's items. Other people take to purchasing mummies
01:05:35
from dealers with contacts in Egypt and regardless of how the mummies are acquired,
01:05:39
They're used for the express macabre purpose of, are you ready for this? Unwrapping parties.
01:05:50
This is gross. I mean, like, it's a status symbol. So people are it right It just your way of showing how rich you are It a party It a dead body Where they have a fully intact mummy in a case
01:06:06
in its tomb, in its shroud, in everything that it had been mummified in. They buy it completely intact.
01:06:14
They invite all their friends over. They get some fucking champagne and caviar. No, this is gross.
01:06:20
And they have unwrapping parties. It's gross. It's bad vibes. Yeah. Man. These gatherings are held in all types of places
01:06:28
from private homes to theaters and hospitals where they sell out. Some are held in educational institutions
01:06:34
to give it this veneer of respectability and scientific curiosity, which, okay, I can kind of understand that.
01:06:40
Yeah. It is considered unethical or ghoulish because this is the era of public surgeries and autopsies,
01:06:46
all in the name of demystifying medicine and science for the general public. One of the earliest known mummy unwrapping events
01:06:54
is held in 1834 at the Royal College of Surgeons by renowned surgeon Thomas Pettigrew,
01:07:00
who goes on to become the founding treasurer of the British Archaeological Society.
01:07:06
And Pettigrew is fascinated with antiquities and is known as a showman when it comes to his mummy unwrappings
01:07:12
with some of his events drawing up to 3,000 people. Oh my God. I mean, it'd be kind of fun, right?
01:07:19
If it was like respectable. In a way you'd want to see it. And I can see how if it started there in like a hospital,
01:07:29
then basically rich people were like, will you come and do it at my house? Yeah.
01:07:33
Well, that's what ended up happening is private parties. There are raucous alcohol-fueled events
01:07:38
where these captivated guests applaud and cheer. It's like a sporting event while the mummy is unwrapped like layer by layer.
01:07:46
And nobody there is thinking about there could be like an ancient disease. somewhere. This is a human body that died. Or a curse. An ancient curse. Or a curse.
01:08:01
Things don't always go according to plan, of course. In one unwrapping, the bandages haven't
01:08:05
fused with the body. In another occasion, a mummy's head is revealed to be full of sand.
01:08:11
Another public reveal of a reported princess turns out to be the mummified remains of a man.
01:08:17
It's common by the end of many of these parties for the mummies to be damaged beyond repair,
01:08:22
and the remains desecrated and all in the name of entertainment. So like, God, can you imagine like nowadays
01:08:28
we're like chomping at the bit to find these historic remains. And back then they were just like,
01:08:34
hello, my baby is smashed, like whatever. So terrible. It's actually perfectly themed for this episode.
01:08:41
It's insanely ghoulish. Yeah. It's just like gross and yeah, just desecrating a body, a dead body.
01:08:50
Yes. Oh. So next time you, yeah, when you see mummies out on the lawn at Halloween, don't like just think about this.
01:08:57
Mummy unwrapping parties become these huge events. Demand for mummified bodies skyrockets.
01:09:04
And so soon there's a mummy shortage, which is like how we got to where we are today.
01:09:09
Egyptian traders resort to providing forgeries using bodies of executed criminals and those who died in poverty or from diseases.
01:09:18
The exporters accelerate the mummification process by burying the corpses in sand
01:09:22
or filling them with bitimmune and placing them in the sun to dry out. But thankfully, unwrapping parties
01:09:27
decline in popularity by the turn of the century. The appeal of the big reveal has lost its shock value
01:09:33
and people are beginning to realize they need to respect and preserve archaeological remains of ancient cultures.
01:09:39
Yeah. As the unwrapping craze dwindles, sadly, any remains that are left across Britain
01:09:45
that don't go to museums are either sold off to paint manufacturers to make mummy brown,
01:09:50
because that's still happening, or are said to be ground into powder and used as fertilizer.
01:09:56
While unwrapping parties, painting with mummy brown, and using mummia as a medicinal aid
01:10:01
are thankfully a thing of the past, our fascination with mummies continues into modern times,
01:10:06
although now we're a little more respectful. These days, museums across the world
01:10:10
work to adhere to strict ethical guidelines. They want to ensure mummified remains
01:10:15
are not exploited and objectified, but instead afforded the respect they deserve
01:10:20
and where possible repatriated to the countries of origin. And those are some gruesome tales
01:10:27
of what we used to do to mummies. I'm genuinely shocked and grossed out. Can you imagine me at three in the morning reading that
01:10:35
and being like, what the fuck? I think I, at that moment, texted it to Hannah and was like, can we do this please as a story?
01:10:41
How great would this be? It's so good. It's really perfect for like the trace back for the Halloween tradition.
01:10:47
That's like, oh my God, what? I didn't know. It's next level colonizing mentality.
01:10:56
Yes. Just like, this is fine. It's not us. Yeah. Totally. That's a very good, that's a very good description of it.
01:11:04
Wow. Well, I hope you guys. Thank you. Thank you. You too. I hope everyone enjoyed this really macabre fucking episode right around Halloween.
01:11:14
Very dark. Lots to think about. Lots to worry about. Yeah. Lots to talk about at the Halloween party now.
01:11:20
That's right. Do you know what Mommy Brown is? Did you know about the famine of 1315?
01:11:27
Here you go. Some historians and scholars would argue it could have started in 1314.
01:11:33
Okay. But we went with 1315 just for simplicity's sake. Good to know. Good to know.
01:11:38
Yeah. Wow. This is a high five Halloween episode. I think we've really nailed it.
01:11:44
Great job. I think so too. Thank you. You too. We did it. Way to go. Steven, we're glad you're back.
01:11:49
We're glad you have your car back. Yes, safe and safe. Let's get all your paperwork updated.
01:11:54
Yeah. Put that tag. Everyone put your tags on your cars now. Learn from stuff. Stephen's mistake, right?
01:12:01
That's right. Yes. Don't go where Stephen was forced to. Yeah. And also stay sexy.
01:12:07
And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Ah. This has been an Exactly Right production.
01:12:21
Our senior producer is Hannah Kyle Crichton. Our producer is Alejandra Keck. This episode was engineered and mixed by Stephen Ray Morris.
01:12:28
Our researchers are Maren McClashen and Gemma Harris. Email your hometowns and fucking hoorays to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com.
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Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at My Favorite Murder and Twitter at My Fave Murder.
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10-10 shots fired in City Hall building. How could this have happened in City Hall? Somebody tell me that.
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A shocking public murder. This was one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
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I screamed, get down, get down. Those are shots. A tragedy that's now forgotten and a mystery that may or may not have been political, that may have been about sex.
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