Episode #100 - Patron Questions
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Hi Janina. Hi Emma. And hello Oliver. Hi Oliver. How are you two? What a pleasure. It is actually our 100th episode instead of our fake 100th episode. Hooray!

And so we're celebrating by having all three of us on at the same time, which is a treat for everybody. Yeah. And we asked people on Discord and on the Patreon what we should talk about on this episode. And most people said we should just get drunk and libelous. Yeah.

But it's four o'clock in the afternoon. So and some of us have childcare responsibilities. So that one didn't turn out to be particularly possible. But we have instead got some kind of fun history questions that we're all going to try our best to answer and maybe just libel some people who have been dead for a few hundred years. Yeah, we're just going to talk, you know, some history with some nonsense mixed in. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, legally, you can't libel the dead, so it's fine. Exactly. Once they're dead, you can say whatever you like about them and they can't come and get you. So we are going to do that. And that will be our celebration of finally, after all these years, 100 episodes of History is Sexy. And actually managing to have episodes out in time and on time for several months now, which I'm very proud of us for personally. Yeah, me too.

didn't think that we could do it but but we finally took us like five years we finally pulled ourselves together yeah we have a google calendar and everything now we're so grown up and mature finally all it needed was for most of us to turn 40 but

but we got there so we've got like a few yeah a few questions to talk about sexy history questions that and this is what you get if you join the patreon incidentally you get to have an input on stuff and you also get bonus episodes because we've done a bonus episode now so yeah and one day we may do another yeah

one day we may do another somebody wants one on Napoleon which I it's been like a year and a half and I'm still furious about I tried to watch it and if we do a bonus episode I guess I would have to actually finish watching it

I mean, you didn't get to the bit where the man shouts about his succulent breakfast. I did not. And I think that is a top tier moment of all time. I didn't get to the bit where he yells about boats. No. Yeah. Have you seen it, Oliver? I have not. No. It's quite something. I'll say that. It's quite something. I do like a Ridley Scott film, but I've not seen that one. It's not one of his better ones, I'd say.

Actually, that's not true. It's got two really good brief bits in it that last for about maybe 10 seconds each. And one is where a horse explodes and it looks really impressive. And then there is a bit at, what's the battle called? Is it Austerlitz? Austerlitz, yeah. Flurries on the frozen lake. Yeah. There's some cool bits in the Austerlitz, but it is otherwise, yeah, not good. Yeah.

But we'll save that for a bonus episode and I'll explain why. And we can talk about working with Venus's deeply weird choices. But instead today, the first thing we're going to talk about is what our weird historical hill that we will die on is or what our history hot take is, which was asked by Saksham.

And I have about 1,000 of these. Yeah. Oh, good. And when I was thinking about them, I was like, well, I mean, this is my life and career is just having like pointless things I'm furious about. So I feel like you two should go first. Well, I joined this quite late and have not prepared anything. So I'll let you two go first and then I'll formulate one while I listen to you talk. Yeah. All right, Janina. I'm going to, because my problem...

my problem currently, and I have to assume that this is not age because that would be depressing, but I've been quite burnt out this year and that means I can't remember anything when I'm trying to remember things. I only remember things when it's like three in the morning and it's not helpful. So what I have is a thinly veiled excuse to complain about the musical six and

which please do i really have not that much beef with like it's history for people who don't like history it's theater for people who don't like theater but it's a perfectly reasonable thing like it's a great night out to do with your pre-teen daughters you know it's only one act so you can take them to somewhere fancy for ice cream afterwards that's perfectly fine entertainment but um

It's not like... So my hill that I would die on is that Anne Boleyn was smart and politically savvy and interesting and it drives me nuts when people portray her as a silly little girl who got caught up in things. That's my hill. So she did not have a sixth finger. That was a myth. It is a myth, yeah. So what is your specific problem with sex? Because if you haven't seen Sex...

I have seen sex. I haven't. But no, we have other people are listening to this conversation that might not have. But the basic premise for people who haven't seen it is that the six wives of Henry VIII have a competition amongst themselves to decide who got the rawest deal through being married to Henry VIII. And they, yeah, so they each get a song. There are some group songs and they each get one song where they're like, this was my, this was the deal for me.

And Anne Boleyn's song is just like, oh, it was an accident. I just stumbled in here and I didn't mean anything. And I just was trying to be pretty and fun. And it made me want to claw off my face. LAUGHTER

I feel like this one's going to be a controversial one. Who did get the worst deal in the end? Did they decide? No, because this is the other thing that is frustrating because at the end, Catherine Parr is like, why are we making this all about him? We are interesting women in our own right. We shouldn't be ganging up against each other. We should just be like celebrating who we are, which when I saw it, which was at the Edinburgh Fringe before it was...

anywhere else. I thought, that's so interesting because then when they get that West End transfer, they can do a second act that's just about okay. So who were these women outside of Henry VIII? They don't do that. They just kept it as was, one act. This is how we end it, which also I think is a missed opportunity. Yes, I will say it is short. Great night out for your preteen daughters. Yeah, well, I mean, I went and saw it with a friend who is also my age, but...

And Anne also had a delightful night out. And I think the songs are fun. I think some of them are fun. But I think it's... Some parts of it are great. Like, Catherine Howard is great. I liked Anne of Cleves a lot. But Anne Boleyn is just... It annoyed you. It annoyed me. Fair enough. Fair enough. I mean, that's fine. This is what Hills and We Will Die On is. Yeah.

gonna make this but I have a feeling that that one's gonna be a controversial take because people love sex like I know people love sex but also like there's a reason it makes most of its money on cruise ships is all I'm saying yeah does it yeah it's a massive on cruise ships and it's exactly like you can understand why I went on the wrong cruise ship yeah we just got like Brazilians doing a strange dance including one to Eye of a Tiger where they were dressed as a lion which really pissed me off no

Just felt like that was such an easy swing to hit. And like, why would they just felt very simple not to fuck that one up. But yeah, it definitely feels like the sort of thing where the person who was ordering the costumes was not

Paying attention and then it was too late and they couldn't find a song about lions. Yeah. One of them we talked about last week was that the Romans had a rich and complicated religion that is completely separate from Greek mythology, which drives me to distraction. That people, like, that's my hill that I will, like, make a situation unfun about. Yeah.

And I will... That is such a great way to describe the hills you would die on. What I'm really going to spoil the party over. Yeah, like what I'm really going to be like, hold up one second, like, ha ha ha, but also. The other one is anything involving Caligula or a Roman emperor making an animal a...

A consul or a senator or anything like that. So the classic is Caligula made his horse a consul, which happens all the time. People always constantly say it. Didn't happen. The earliest source for it is Suetonius. He's 150 years later. And what he says is Caligula liked his horse so much that it was thought that he would even make him a senator. And then that's kind of spiraled out of control. And then in the Horrible Histories TV show, Caligula makes a worm a senator. Yeah.

And then in Gladiator 2, we have Caracalla, who's inexplicably got syphilis, making a monkey a console. And it all comes from this, like, the same idea. And it is the kind of thing that I'm extremely... I just have no sense of humor about at all because I...

We'll make people listen to the entire historiography of the idea. My new one, which started yesterday, is going to be that Carthage was not salted when it was destroyed by Scipio Aemilianus. So when the Romans destroyed Carthage in 146, the story is that they salted the earth in order to make it so that nothing would ever grow there before.

I read an article about it yesterday. It turns out this was invented in 1930.

enough in the Cambridge Ancient History which is supposed to be a scholarly reference tome. And they just put it in there? Well, it kind of, so it traces the article which is an article by R.T. Ridley basically traces the evolution of the idea and like the ancient sources they all say that they destroyed it and then burnt it down and then that in the kind of medieval era becomes they destroyed it and they ploughed the earth

the earth so that nothing would so you wouldn't be able to see anything in Carthage ever again and then by 1930 ploughed the earth has become salted the earth right and history is a real game of telephone yeah and it's basically everybody kind of adding their own little dramatic bit on but now anytime that comes up it's in my head so I will be pleased to just make sure that everybody stops enjoying the conversation and gets educated for a moment

They love that. That's why I'm invited to so many parties. Oliver, how about you? Okay, I've thought of a couple, but I'll pick one. Mine is in films, right? About battles now, so... Okay, yeah. I feel free to tune out, but it's fine. In films, when there's a battle and you have...

archers there's always like a sergeant or someone going knock draw loose and that never ever happened it doesn't make sense it never happened because I used to shoot longbow when I was a teenager and

and you don't hold those at full draw because it's exhausting and for those i i only shot a bow that was about 40 pounds draw which is heavy enough but the the long bows from the mary rose are about 180 pounds draw so if you think about that's kind of that's the equivalent of like lifting 180 bags of sugar yeah that's like well i don't men so you really just do have to just

and let it go. Exactly. You pull it back to your face and it's gone. Right. Yeah. So you don't evidence of these commands. They just, you shoot when you shoot, you have your target and mostly you don't shoot big volleys up into the air because when an arrow goes up into the air and starts falling down again, it's lost most of its momentum and it's just falling. Yeah.

Whereas if you shoot £180 straight across at somebody, that's going to hurt. Do you think that that has become like a Tiffany problem thing in films now, where if you showed people shooting accurately, everyone would be like, well, that's not what it's like. You've got to shoot masses of arrows really high in the sky and then they fall down. But if you just drop an arrow on someone, it...

It's not going to do much. It was just going to bounce right off them. I feel like this might be. That rain of arrows shot is always so cool. Yeah, it is. It is cool. It's cinematic. I think this might be like the thing that always bugs me is that now in archives, it is not generally considered to be appropriate to wear white gloves because you are much more likely to damage the paper.

If you can't feel it. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. And people rip the paper much more often if they're wearing thick cotton gloves. It's like helping knuckle boxing is safer than boxing with gloves. Exactly. But if you put somebody on the telly wearing, like touching any kind of old paper without white gloves, they will get so many complaints. They will get more complaints than anything because it is in the cultural imagination that you...

the oil on your skin is going to destroy that paper like instantaneously. It's just going to like melt away if you touch it with bare skin. Yeah. But it's actually less damaging, at least in the short term. There's this TV show called Happiness, which is really great. It's like Mark Duplass, Malinowski, Amanda Peete. But Mark Duplass plays a foley artist and he's working on a film and he spends ages out in like the forest around...

LA recording coyotes like real coyotes and he brings them in for the mix and the director is just like this sounds stupid can we use this wolf hat instead because it sounds more dramatic and cool but that's not what a coyote sounds like this is a coyote yeah yeah yeah TV man ruins things and another thing about archery on TV is if you get hit by an arrow chances are you're gonna be okay

You're not going to drop dead like you've been shot with a rifle. The arrow plugs up the wound pretty closely. So unless you get shot in the heart or something...

And most armor is basically arrow-proof. So I read some treaties or something where they describe a knight having almost like a hedgehog. He's just got arrows sticking out of him, and he's fine because it's not reach. Because he's got his plate mail, he's got his chain mail, he's got his padded gambeson. So there's like five layers of armor before you even get to his skin. So it's basically just...

It's fine. But anyway, that's just arrows and archery and stuff. And it annoys me when, even in Lord of the Rings, like Legolas will shoot someone and they'll just go... It's just instant death. Yeah. Now I am even more annoyed about the beginning of Gladiator 2, but that's a bonus. Yeah. I mean, there's so many things to be annoyed about. My friend Ines just keeps, every time we mention it, he's just like, why would you attack a

town with a big wall by sea like why would you do that he's just he's very stressed about it and i'm fine with that yeah and opposed landings right yeah never ever ever happened before like i don't know the 1900s because you just go up the coast a bit get off yeah and then walk and walk up you don't have to not that hard climb off these saving pirate ryan boats into arrow fire and

Yeah. Doesn't look cool though. No. And a lot of people only care about what looks cool. Okay. The next thing in order to lighten the situation a bit so that we're not just like working ourselves into a fury about all the things the world gets wrong.

is the sexiest thing in history in order to be I suppose it could be a person but it can also just be a thing and we can interpret sexy in any in a wide variety of ways I think oof

I am going to make a case here for specifically Caracalla just because I feel like he's he got short shrift he got a short shrift and I feel like he needs to be rescued now and I think he would hate that because he clearly hated women like quite a lot but I I feel like I should rescue him and that

some reason I've taken that as my personal responsibility to remind everybody that he was a hot African man not a tiny syphilitic weirdo who wore like what appears to be some kind of lead makeup oh no like the white face paint sort of thing yeah a lot of white face paint and like eyeliner and he's got a tiny monkey which in fairness is adorable yeah

And he sort of becomes more and more childlike throughout the film. But he, in reality, was a big, burly African man with a hot beard and a kind of very furious face that I enjoy. And so I'm just going to make a case for Caracalla. He's certainly, in my mind, the sexiest emperor. I think that all of the other emperors pale in comparison, but...

So I'm just making the case for making the case for Caracalla. I just would like more people to Google what Caracalla looks like. Yeah. And look at and they can make up their own mind as to whether they think he's hot. Me and my friend Dan are in very strong agreement that he's the sexiest emperor and

He's pretty hot. He's got real lumberjack vibes, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Like he is. He's rugged. You know, he's going to take care of you. Yeah. In a hard way. And I have a, this is my unscientific, completely unprovable, will never write this down theory. But my theory is that he was probably gay because he very much enjoyed only hanging out with men. He had boys.

one wife who he just got rid of immediately and never had any mistresses or any like illegitimate children or no hint of even concubines or anything. And he spent all of his time on the front lines with army men. And so my like a fictional character,

unprovable head canon of caracalla is that he's a big hot gay bear i think that's beautiful and the big hot bear bit is true and someone can write fan fiction about the rest of it but i had a few contenders okay two of which i think we've talked about on some level before so the banquet of chestnuts sounds pretty hot lots of pretty

pretty naked ladies crawling around to pick up chestnuts which we talked about in our episode of the Borgias oh it's just the Popes yeah the Popes yeah yeah yeah I remember the Borgias yeah so that's we've talked about before and then obviously King Edward's coronation threesome missing his coronation to be having a threesome with a woman and her mother is like it's incestuous but

It was a long time ago. It is pretty cool. Being dragged out by Dunstan. Yeah. Yeah. That's what got called a fun sponge, if I remember correctly. Missing your own coronation because you were too busy getting laid is very good. It is very good. It's taking the right thing seriously, I would say. Absolutely. Priorities in order. Yeah.

Is that all I'm saying? Yeah. But then I also think important to discuss in sexiest historical things are Julie Dobigny's whole deal. I'm definitely pronouncing that French last name wrong. If you saw Chapel Rowan's VMAs performance, this is what she's referencing. I mean, it's a bit Joan of Arc-y too, but...

Julie Dobigny was an opera singer and a duelist. She fenced men into submission and there are rumours that she would then fuck their wives. She had a lover who was sent to a nunnery to be kept away from her so she broke into the nunnery, put a dead nun in her bed and set the room on fire so the two of them could escape. The idea was that

There was going to be a fire and then people would find a burnt body in the girl's room and assume that she had died. Okay. But it was uncovered. But she did burn down a convent to rescue her female lover, which is the best. To rescue her girlfriend. That's pretty sexy. See, that's being looked after. It's pretty sexy. I'll be honest with you, Caracalla would not do that. He would leave you to rot. But...

That's been taken care of. Yeah. I think that's pretty sexy. That's my sexiest history. Yeah. I mean, that's extremely good. I'm always keen on someone who's so hot that somebody has to be physically removed from the entire area in order to protect them. You've got to sequester them away and then it doesn't work because...

Their sex is so hot that they set a convent on fire and they'll have to be together. That's pretty impressive. Yeah. Okay, that's a good one. Oliver, do you have a sexiest history? Well, no, but I have a funny one, which is my favourite one, which is Alexander III of Scotland. I think you've talked about him before, maybe? Did he fall off the horse because he was riding for a shag? Yes, he was so horny for his new wife. He went on an ill-advised night ride in a storm and rode off a cliff.

This is one of my favourite historical accidents as well. It's up there with the white ship for just like silliest accidents to most catastrophic consequences. Oh yeah, that was like the whole Edward I. Yeah, Edward Longshanks came up and subjugated all of Scotland and we had to do a braveheart about it. Yeah. And Mel Gibson had to get involved for a while. Mel Gibson had to get involved.

I was talking on something the other day about how people underestimate horniness as a motivation in human history. Like they just never think maybe they were just so horny they couldn't think. I think in general, when we look at human behavior historically and politically and like all over the shop, we assume less horniness and more competence than is usually present, I think.

This has come out of this. I've been thinking about this a lot because my friend of the pod, Hero H.R. Rowan, has developed an enormous crush on Ser Janus, who is kind of generally one of the bad guys of Roman history. He's a guy who, like...

became the Emperor Tiberius' best friend and then sort of got way too much power and everybody hated him for having way too much power. And then he had this monstrous fall because somebody told Tiberius that Sejanus was going to overthrow him. But he's considered to be one of the big monsters of Roman imperial history, largely because he was not elite. And there's this one story of...

Tiberius was leaving Rome for the last time so when he was in his mid 50s maybe he's on his way to Capri and they stop off in Spolonga where he had a grotto built into a cliff and there was a rockfall while they were in

there having dinner and everybody fled except for sejanus who stayed and was found by the army when they dug them out like crouching over tiberius and holding off the rockfall with his back and hero thinks this is the sexiest thing they have ever heard in their entire life

Is that Patrick Stewart? I Claudius? Is that Serenus? Yeah, that's who plays him in I Claudius. And everybody, whenever I tell anybody that a hero loves Serenus, they think it's because of that, but it's not. It's because of the Rockville. And they drew some glorious, like sexy fan art, which is on my Instagram of this incident where Serenus is like this big burly guy. And I just completely rethought Serenus as a result of this because I was like,

what if Sejanus was just really sexy? Yeah. What if he was? That explains so much of how much power he got and how everybody just let him do what he wanted and how he was able to have sex with everyone's wives and husbands. Like, the sex appeal of Sejanus has been downplayed for centuries and hero and as a result, me and now at the forefront of reclaiming sexy Sejanus. He was the Pedro Pascal of his time. Yeah, maybe he was

to Pedro Piscar of his time get Pedro Piscar to play him I'm gonna write like now I'm like maybe I should write a biography of Sejanus that's less like about his like military career whatever and all the politics and more like and more about how much he exists fantastic yeah

I would love that. Yeah. So that's my new stance, my current stance on Sejanus. And the fact that we should be thinking about how horniness drives people to do utterly bananas things. Like sometimes they're like the Prince of Wales and they ring up their girlfriend and say they want to be a tampon. Yeah.

And then they nearly bring down the monarchy as a result, that kind of thing. But unfortunately, don't. Unfortunately, they fail. But yeah, I think the historians just in general should think about horniness as a central part of human behavior and less about economic forces because who cares? That question was from Lioness Feather, by the way, which I forgot to say. But yeah, so that's basically my new career story.

goal currently with both Caracalla and Sejanus and I'm sure I can find some others. I'll just try to reinstate the horniness into Roman history. The hottest and horniest ancient Romans. Yeah, I feel like they've really been stripped out by the Renaissance. They were all a bit like, oh, but what if they were all rational human beings? Yeah, just they're all stoics who never got laid in their lives. Or had feelings. But I was reading...

Earlier this week, I was reading, there's a famous Seneca letter about him complaining about living next door to a baths. And then he's talking about one of the annoying noises that he can hear is a hair plucker advertising his services, which is stilled only by the sound of the screaming of a man having his armpits plucked. Yeah.

And then I found another reference in a different letter of Seneca, just surely by coincidence, where he goes, he slags off a man saying he'll shave his legs like a girl, but he won't even shave his armpits like a normal boy. And now I'm thrilled by the idea of like Roman men having to pluck their armpits in order to be thought of as sexy. Yeah.

That's lovely. Yeah. You want your hairy legs and the smooth armpits. Hairy legs, smooth armpits. Yeah. Plocked out individually. Fun times.

All right. The next question is from Connor Walsh. And he said, like, what's your favorite alternate history or historical what if? He suggests, like, what would happen if someone touted on the assassins of Julius Caesar and Julius Caesar continues, which is quite a fun historical what if. But what are yours? I feel like I'm just depressing right now because I'm always just like, what if the

The Supreme Court hadn't handed the 2000 US election to the Republicans. But then everything always just ends up going back further because then it's like, what if the Federalist Society was never formed? And then I just get very depressed about the state of the world. I don't have any fun what ifs. No? No. Nothing?

significantly older than that just my brain just gets stuck about it yeah I'm too stuck in the present on this question

I like really old ones. There's a really good book, I can't remember if I've mentioned it before, called Civilizations by Laurent Benet. It changes one thing in history or kind of two, really. Basically, it opens with... Is it Eric the Red that goes from Greenland to...

The Americas. No, Leif Erikson. Leif Erikson, thank you. So it has him basically making it over to the Americas and not stopping in the north where he does, but keeping going down the east coast of North America and then into South America. And as a result, what he does as he travels down with like, you know, he has his family, he has other people, is they spread, they bring metal together

They bring horses and they bring disease. And so as they're going down, they're basically killing off people as they go. And they can't really work out why, because they're bringing European diseases into the Americas. But they're also spreading metal and horses. And so it then skips to the 1400s when Columbus turns up. And what he turns up to is a world that has horses, has metal and is immune to his diseases. That's pretty good.

And as a result, they fuck him up completely and a series of events take place that end up with a kind of semi-exiled Inca prince invading Spain. That's fantastic. It's brilliant. And I love it. And it's such a fun book. And it feels like...

and it has these wonderful bits where all of these like Inca guys are travelling around Western Europe being disgusted by it and then they keep calling sheep short short-necked llamas which is hilarious laughs

But it is just like one small twist of making the Americas immune to European diseases, basically, and then giving them horses so that they are resistant to the violent imperialism of Christopher Columbus. And just completely, yeah, and it unfolds from there. And I think that that's a very fun, like...

what if yeah they had just stabbed him to death immediately yeah and he died miserably in a cave which he does and then they're like oh okay there's people like over the sea and they've got this boat that we've got so I reckon we could do something fun with that and yeah so that's a fun one that's very fun I like that a lot yeah

I also do also think that there's a like a Roman one for me a fun one would be what if Augustus made a different decision like he's 19 he comes up he goes oh I can't really be fucked I'm just gonna like move to Greece and read books or whatever like after Julius Caesar has been assassinated and he's like no I don't really want all of the political inheritance I mean it's fundamentally what if Augustus was a completely different person but

I mean, but that's, you know, that's all what ifs. What ifs are always... Yeah, but I think that it would be... Yeah, like what does happen? Then it's basically just up to Antony and Cassius and Brutus who are much more tied to the political status quo than Augustus was. And he was ready to smash it up. But the rest of them were much more willing to...

or much more desperate to kind of hold together their existing political structures where and then augustus came in with a sledgehammer and smashed them all to pieces but

How long would that have gone on for if Augustus hadn't come with his sledgehammer? Yeah. Good. Yeah. Do you have one, Oliver? I have a couple. What if the princes in the tower had survived to adulthood and been able to fight off the Tudors? Yeah. In the 8th. Maybe it kind of ties into another one. What if Elizabeth I had married and had an heir? Yeah.

Then Scotland and England might not have become in a union. Yes. So they might still be separate. Oh, I have an older one related to England. What if it had been one of the other old English kingdoms that united into England instead of Wessex? Instead of Alfred the Great, it had been one of the other kings? Because if I remember my Rex Factor correctly...

It was kind of unique in how low it valued the roles of women and the roles of queens. Like queens had a lot more political power in the other kingdoms. So if one of them had been the one to consolidate England, that might have changed a lot of stuff. I think there were several queens of Mercia.

Yeah. Who ruled in their own right. So you might have had significantly less fighting over whether a girl can be a king. A boy without a winkle is allowed to be a king. No anarchy for a start. No anarchy. And significantly less flapping about with Henry VIII desperate to have a boy. Yeah. Embarrassing nonsense. Yeah.

Every time I do a Tudor-y thing, like I watch Wolf Hall obviously because it's fucking brilliant. But every time he's like well sad that he doesn't have a boy, just like get over it. Come on. Grow up.

At no point does this sound serious to me, I'm sorry. But yeah, might have been a very different world if Alfred hadn't done it. Yeah. Or... No, go ahead. What if Cromwell had, instead of having his son as his heir, had actually had an elected heir? If he hadn't just tried to make himself a fucking king again. Yeah, what if we just kept a republic? Yeah, would England have been able to remain a republic and then...

what would happen after that I'd think that would be interesting if he had actually employed a competent heir instead of his rubbish son bless him but I think that the fact that he insisted on going for the like hereditary male line thing suggests that he was not 100% committed like and Britain was not 100% committed to the idea of republic like they were still how else are we going to do this we're not going to do fucking free elections are we yeah

Like, it still has to be an inherited title. It just was, like, a bit ahead of its time, in a way. We hadn't quite invented modern democracy yet. No, and they didn't have any functional way of thinking about how they could have a head of state that wasn't an inherited position, and then as soon as it's a inherited position, it's effectively a king. And the son of a strong king is 100% of the time a nonsense person. LAUGHTER

Like, it's hard to think of a son who inherits a throne and is as good as his dad in any... I don't know. Somebody can... There must be some. Somewhere in the world, there must be someone who inherits a throne and is, like, from a strong... And I'm not going to say Conrad was great, but, like, a strong father and he's a strong son. But they're always a bit weedy and, like, die at 12 or something. Because their lives have been too easy because their dad's the king. Yeah.

Yeah. And their dad's a strong king. He probably never made that make any decisions. Yeah. Which again, it's not means that they're secretly a weak king because part of your job is to make sure that there's someone competent who can take over for you. And yet they never do. Never do. Marcus Aurelius looking at you. Just because I've beefed with Marcus Aurelius for no good reason.

But I'm also going to say that I reckon if someone had touted on Julius Caesar and that had been exposed, like he was already dictator for life. He had already imprisoned the tribunes. I think that he might have become, it might have been a turning point for him in becoming significantly less of a kind of generous and forgiving leader that he had

been up until that point because part of the reason that Brutus is around is that he has forgiven him and then and he is clearly moving towards becoming a bit more tyrannical and he's about to go off to Parthia to do another war where if anyone if anyone was going to be at least a bit more successful than the rest of them he would have a good go but I think that he probably would have

been remembered as less of a good guy than he is i think that he would have become a significantly harsher leader as a result of finding out about it and the betrayal of his friends particularly and if he had then been successful in parthia then i think you would be looking at

some kind of world-class tyranny potentially that's my theory yeah so probably they were right you've got to kill the tyrants before they have a chance to take any real power well I am 100% pro the assassination of Julius Caesar laughing

I think that what they did was correct and it was the best way to get rid of him and that he needed to be got rid of because he respected nothing and no one and had killed the Republic but some people disagree some nerds some nerds are like oh yeah we built that bloody wall at Elysia therefore he's the greatest man ever fine he built a wall doing a genocide good for him

We on this podcast say fuck Julius Caesar. We do, yes. That's the official position of his system. This is a pro-assassin podcast. This is a pro-Cassius podcast. Sometimes it's just necessary to stab them. If you haven't built a system that prevents people like this from running roughshod over everyone else, then occasionally you are going to have to do an assassination. It's just...

How it works. And the column said, as Gretchen Wiener is right, we should totally just stab Caesar. We should totally just stab Caesar. Brutus is just as good as Caesar. Brutus is just as pretty as Caesar. We should totally just stab Caesar. It's a surprisingly good analysis of why we should stab Caesar in Mean Girls. We stand with Gretchen Wiener's.

We stand with Gretchen Wiener, we stand with Cassius and Brutus, and down with tyrants. Here's another good alternate history while I have you. Yeah, go for it. There's a really good book called Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bisson. Have you ever read it? No, I know Terry Bisson. He wrote They're Made Out of Meat. One of my favourites. Basically, the whole premise of the book is that the John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry succeeds.

and kicks off a slave revolt in the southern United States that succeeds and the African-Americans emancipate themselves.

and declare a republic as a civil war. They win. The new Africa, as they call it, becomes socialist, which kicks off the Paris Commune, which wins and the French Third Republic. And it all spirals out from there and it ends with black astronauts landing on Mars. Nice, a black astronauts landing on Mars. Okay. It's a good book. Okay. The Mars landing happens in 1959.

So, yeah, I mean, that's impressive. Yeah, it's a good book. So that one turning point had John Brown succeeded, then what could have happened?

you know a better world where the slaves freed themselves instead of were freed kind of as a sort of fuck you by abraham lincoln to the south and yeah it's interesting i recommend it i do enjoy an alternate history novel me too where like one point can like unfold a whole yeah a whole better future terry pratchett calls it the trousers of time i don't know if you have you have you read any discworld books

I have. I read loads of them when I was a teenager. He calls it the trousers of time. You go down one leg or the other and it all depends on what happens. I like it when there's an alternate history that isn't dystopian. I feel like it's the dystopian ones that get all the press, all of the work, the Nazis of World War II. In Fire on the Mountain, one of the...

protagonist she finds a book and the book is called john brown's body and it describes a world in which he failed and there was a civil war between the white factions and basically our world and it's described as a dystopia okay so it has the dystopia inside of it this is really reminding me of something and i can't place what it is i'm gonna remember it at some point jamie's been playing this nonsense game or he didn't play very much of it i think maybe connor had recommended to him

where it's set in this fantasy world. Is it metaphor? Yes, and there's a novelist who is writing all these stories about this fictional fantasy universe that's our world, and it talks about how it's a world where everyone is united and agrees and everything is good and chill, which is very, very funny to perceive. It is, and the novelist is Thomas More. Oh, the novelist is Thomas More? It's like...

Which is really funny because Connor's been playing it while we have had, and I've been watching, um, Wolf Hall and I rewatched Wolf Hall from the beginning. So obviously in Wolf Hall, Thomas Moore is like a mega angry, like dogmatic, who refuses to compromise. That's how Conwell sees him. And then Connor's been playing this and he is a, he's a sexy anime. Thomas Moore and he's got like the pretty little face. Just like,

living in a library. And he lives in a library and he's writing his utopia and his utopia is describing the real world. It's really funny. So funny.

We now have one last question, which is from Patricia, who I'm like 99.9% sure is not my mum because she's on Discord and I don't think my mum knows what Discord is. And she wants to know who our problematic faves are. Yeah, I still have just a real soft spot for Napoleon III. He is problematic. He is problematic. He was a dictator, but I just have a lot of sympathy for what he was trying to do.

This is beautiful. Thank you, Napoleon III. I mean, fair. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, at least if you're going to be a dictator, get something out of it, I guess. But... Yeah. It's still pretty dictator-y. Very dictator-y, sure. But then my problematic fave is Caligula, so...

Yeah. You don't even get Paris out of that. No. I'm just very fond of him. And I can't really defend it. I used to be, he's been my fave since I was like an undergraduate, probably even before that. And I used to, I used to be funded fairly strongly on the Caligula is maligned. He wasn't that bad side, but now I've very kind of come round to that. Actually, he was pretty awful. Probably can't just torture people for fun. Yeah.

Like, probably was a bad guy, but what if he was also just a damaged little guy? Yeah. What if his childhood was real hard? And so he's very problematic, but also I love him. You can fix him? I don't think I can fix him. I think he was probably quite mentally ill. I think maybe some antipsychotics could have helped. At the very least, some sleeping pills. But...

I don't know if I could fix him, but I do feel like I could give him a hug. And I just find him fascinating in a lot of ways because of where he stands in Roman history as kind of the first emperor to really experience the world exclusively through the imperial lens, the monarchical lens. And because his childhood is awful and terrifying and he has to grow up with Tiberius, he's

And because he's basically just the first one to act like an emperor and be like, oh, so I can do whatever I like. And everyone's like, no, no, you can't. There's rules, actually. And he's like, no, I do whatever I like and there's nothing you can do to stop me. And then it turns out that the only way that they can stop him is to stab him, which introduces a whole world of stabbing emperors as a problem problem.

technique and so I find him very fascinating and I will always consume any media about him and buy all the books and watch all the films and be kind of still a bit furious on his behalf because I think he's more complicated than that but he is also a problematic fave yeah sure perfect yeah who's your problematic fave Oliver Lenin

Keeping it light there. Keeping it light.

I think that's fair. Yeah, he's very problematic, but I think he had... He had some ideas. The right kind of sincerity. But I think Lenin, although quite brutal... Did do some purges. Did do some purges, but... He did do all of that up against the wall stuff, which was non-ideal, I would say. I think, actually, having done the Yugoslavia ones, I'm also going to add Tito to the list. Yeah, Tito's pretty good.

Because I think that he had that prison, which was, again, non-ideal, which, as we said, like prison islands where you torture people like this, that's what makes you problematic. A lot of people will bring up the massacres, but seeing as they were all affirmed Nazis who were running away and had literally just done the Holocaust, I'm afraid I can't feel too bad about it. Yeah, I'm not going to condemn any form of Nazi hunting. No. I don't.

I don't think. And so I do think that the kind of good he did for people's lives makes him a problematic fave. One of my, like, favourite little stories about Lenin, here we go, is that there was a modern art, like, school in, I think, Moscow. I'm not sure. Yeah. And Lenin went to visit and had a look around and they said, well, what do you think? And he said, well...

I am an old man. That's very polite. And he was only like, he died like 50. So he's not like super old, but yeah. I like that. I like the, you know, this is how I feel whenever the kids are talking about the TikToks or whatever. I'm like an old woman. Yeah.

I don't have to understand why you're all wearing complicated trousers and saying these words that sound ludicrous to me. Because if I'm over 40, I'm effectively dead. It's fine. I'm not a young person anymore and I don't have to understand it. So you do whatever you like and I will be over here being like 1999 was the greatest year for culture of all time.

It's just sheer coincidence that that's the year I was turned 16. It was the greatest year of culture for culture of all time. I had Kripskaya to that as well. I think she was pretty cool and she did lots of stuff for like education and getting women into government and stuff. I think that's pretty good stuff. So Kripskaya, Mrs. Lennon, I think she's pretty good. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm glad we know her actual name and not just Mrs. Lennon. Yeah. There we go. Yeah. Okay. I think that that's a good list of problematic faves. They're all pretty problematic. We're also going to, since this is our Christmas episode, talk about Christmas or winter solstice traditions that we like. Oh, yes.

I mean, I think that the tree is weird when you think about it. If you think about bringing the tree inside and then covering it in like weird tinsel and baubles and putting a star on top. Like if you try to like logic your way through that, it sounds bizarre. Yeah.

And if you were to explain it to an alien, I think they'd be like, you were right. You cut the tree down and then you bring it inside. And then in some kind of... French philosophers would have a field day with it. Now we have the simulcrum of the tree that you get out of the attic every year. And then you cover it with tinsel and baubles. And then that has expanded so that half the people I know just put... I've got a jellyfish and a penis and a...

santa in a spaceship on mine that's very good yeah and like and then you decorate it and then it's just in your house for like a month that's actually a very good historical what if is what if there had been an a proper air before queen victoria we wouldn't have white wedding dresses we wouldn't have christmas trees a lot of stuff we wouldn't have

Yeah, I mean, there's obviously bigger implications about, you know, political situations in Europe, but also... Well, if she wasn't the grandmother of everyone. Christmas tree is the most important thing. A stone tradition, that Christmas trees from Tallinn in the 1400s. There was a merchant's guild that would put up a tree, they would dance around it and then they would set fire to it. So there you go. Well, there you go. I'm glad we got rid of the setting fire to it a bit, I suppose. Yeah.

But I suppose now they have that. Where is it that they have the big wicker goat that someone tries to set fire to every year? Oh, yeah, I was reading about that earlier, the Gavla goat in... Sweden. Sweden, yeah. This is, I mean, I did think about talking about it, but it's not that historical. It's only the last 50 years or so. But the fact that every year there's a tradition of putting a big goat and then there's an unofficial tradition of illegally burning it down, I think is fantastic. Yeah.

And they desperately try and stop them from doing it. Yeah. I think my favourite one was the guy who was like a tourist and he said, oh, I just thought that's what people did. Yeah. And it's like, no, he was arrested and they were like, oh, I thought I was just, you know, participating in this tradition. Yeah.

I mean, the only thing that I know about the goat is that people burn it down. And so, yeah, I can see how you would think, oh, yeah, it's the goat that they burn. It's like the Wicker Man. Yeah. But it's not. They're not meant to burn it down. No. They're being naughty boys and girls. And non-binary people. And non-binary people. Yeah. But it's been burned in some quite interesting ways. Like it's been shot with a flaming arrow. Classic. Yeah.

All sorts of things. Well, that's good. I like that. That's very good. I love the goat. I love the goat. What was the one that you were saying about melting? Oh, yeah. It's Austrian. I think it's Eastern European and Austrian because a lot of Eastern European and Austrian sort of mix together. Yeah. The proper term is molybdomancy, which comes from molybdos, which is the Greek for lead. Yep. And mancy, which is like divination or something like that.

Basically, you get these little trinkets that look like those Pandora charms you put on a bracelet. And you put them in a metal spoon with a wooden handle and hold it over a candle and it melts into like molten metal. And then you pour it into some cold water and it immediately sets.

And the shape of the resulting blob is like it tells you what the new year is going to be like for you. Okay. How do you tell? Like is it like the blob is there and then you just see what you want to see? Yeah, like looking at tea leaves or something. Yeah, it's just like tea leaves. But people like it. I can go across the road and buy some of these little...

I don't think they're made of lead anymore, but... I hope not. I hope not. I feel like you probably shouldn't be melting lead in your teacups and then leaving it around, but...

This might just be a knee-jerk lead reaction, but... Could be. I think some places use wax now, which makes a lot more sense to me, but there you go. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's called Blygeeson here. I mean, I never heard of it before my wife told me about it, but we've done it a few times. It's quite fun. Yeah, and you've thought, ah, my future. Yeah, my future is a blob. It's amorphous and unknown. That is true. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Yeah.

Yeah. Who knew? Yeah. I quite like the lemon pig. Yeah. Oh, the lemon pig. I forgot about the lemon pig. At New Year's here, there's pigs everywhere because it's very lucky. Okay, yeah. If you are lucky, if you, I mean, this goes way back, but if you're lucky enough to have a pig, you're doing all right. I suppose if you've got a pig, then you're doing pretty well. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, if I had a pig, I'd feel pretty good about it. Yeah. I'd have, you know, bacon and a pig. What a delight. Well, you want both at the same time, but... Not both at the same time, but eventually delicious bacon. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I don't really thought of pigs as lucky, but I suppose they're all right. Yeah. I mean, the lottery here is, you know how in the UK it's like cross fingers hand? Mm-hmm. Here it's a pig. Mm-hmm.

Just a little pig? Just a pig. Like a cartoon pig? A cartoon pig, yeah. Oh, good. Oh, good. The cartoon pigs were ruined for me by Aristophanes, who, as an undergraduate, introduced me to the notion that ancient Greeks would use pigs as kind of like stand-ins in jokes for female genitalia. Oh, man. Oh, God.

And so, which was obviously a source of enormous hilarity the first time I found this out and absolutely destroyed a seminar who from... In fact, the seminar was all first year women and the only man in the room was the PhD student that was teaching us. And he was explaining this joke and was like, do you know why he's talking about pig snouts here? We were like, no.

And he then had to explain it to us while everybody like blushed more and more furiously and then just collapsed into absolute. Like that was the end of the seminar. Basically, nobody could continue after that. Yeah, he really should have been prepared for that. He should have been prepared for that. And I think that it was a strong learning curve. God bless him. He is now a head of department, so he survived it.

But any other fun news?

New Year images to share or New Year images, New Year. I was reading about a festival and a solstice, a winter solstice festival. And I think it's celebrated in a few different countries, maybe in South America. The legend goes that hundreds and hundreds of years ago, there was a severe drought. And so the people did a pole dance to please the gods and bring on the rain. So now there is a regular festival of people just doing dances high up on the air on like a giant pole.

immense pole and like swinging off it and that's pretty cool that does sound pretty fun that sounds like a fun thing to see yeah it's pretty good another thing is the Catalan nativity you know they have these like nativity scenes where you have the dolls standing around and in Catalonia specifically there is always a man

or a woman in Catalan costume squatting and doing a poo. Great. Called the Caganer. Well, good. Is there a reason for that? I have no idea. Just think it's funny. I just remember seeing some in the shops when I was in Catalan. I think there's a Catalan tradition as well about like filling up a log and then beating it until it poos the treats out. Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm glad that my Christmases involve significantly less poo than that. To be honest. Yeah. It brings new meaning to your log, though. It does. Sometimes the Pua, the Kagane, is like, you know how in that place, what's it called? Is it Lewis? Lewis.

Where they have the bonfire and they have the effigies. Sometimes the caganer is like someone who's been in the news or a famous person. They have special brewing statues for them. Good grief. So that's nice. That's lovely. That's lovely. This would upset me if it happened in my house. No, I would not like this at all. All right. And then...

I think that honestly that's probably a good place to end it now I'm just kind of vaguely horrified before you go I'll send you a picture thanks a Christmas card well you have sent me a picture let's see yep that's delightful

This is Catalan tradition, apparently. I mean, I suppose we have all of those horrible, like, Blackpool... That's what it reminds me of, like, Blackpool kind of postcard stuff of, like, ladies with their tits out. Just, like, ha-ha bodies. But...

Honestly, there's a reason that we stay away from poo. It's because it will give you cholera. See, I'm super fun at parties. Invite me to your parties. I will look at your hilarious statues and talk about cholera. Well, congratulations on 100 episodes. I'm very proud of us. Me too.

Yes. We will get through 100 more much more quickly than we got through the last ones.

and maybe even some more bonus episodes as well. And we are going to take a week off for Christmas so that we all have some rest and melt our lead in a cup. And now I think about it, look at the weird tree that I cut down for a forest and decorated with Santa in a UFO in my house. I just have to read this out before we go.

A popular Catalan saying for use before a meal is menia be cagafot e no tinguis pa' la mod, which means eat well, shit heartily, and don't be afraid of death. All right. Fair enough. So that's wisdom to live by there. That actually is wisdom to live by. I think that if you're doing those things all well, then you're doing okay. Yeah. Yeah. And

I suppose appropriately, our next question is going to be about the Marquis de Sade when we come back and chat from Christian Leonard. Flawless segue. Marquis de Sade, what's the deal with that guy? So we're going to find out. And that is what I call a flawless segue. Can you believe we don't win podcast awards for this kind of thing?

Yes, so if you want to ask us a question, where do they go? Historyin60.com for everything. You can fill out a wee...

to ask us a question you can support us on Patreon there you can buy merch there etc history6e.com for all of your history6e.needs yes and come and join us on Patreon it's good fun yeah until 2025 then my friends yeah have a great Christmas or Hanukkah or

or whatever you celebrate at this time. Happy holidays to everybody. If you celebrate nothing at this time, enjoy the world slowing down around you. And at the very least, have a nice rest. Have a lovely rest. And happy new year. Happy new year, everybody. Bye! Bye, guys.