Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And today Hey, it's the Diseases and the Heavens. Because
Speaker 1: rob you recently said, Hey, would you be interested in
Speaker 1: doing an episode or two on the interactions between plague
Speaker 1: pandemics of the past and God and religious interpretations. And
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, yeah, that sounds really interesting. But Robert,
Speaker 1: I gotta admit, this is one of those topics where
Speaker 1: something sounds really interesting with then as soon as you
Speaker 1: start getting into it, you realize, oh, no, it's one
Speaker 1: of those word the more I read, the less I know. Um.
Speaker 1: That is definitely the case with the historical scholarship on
Speaker 1: religious responses to to the plague this it seems like
Speaker 1: this is a really complicated area of research. Yes, i'd
Speaker 1: say a complicated area of research and also a robust
Speaker 1: and thriving area of research. And I think that's something
Speaker 1: that I might surprise some listeners out there to know
Speaker 1: that like the Black Death and the study of the
Speaker 1: Black Death and our attempt to understand uh, you know,
Speaker 1: things like mortality rates and how it's spread, and and
Speaker 1: then how people responded to it, and it's and its
Speaker 1: effects short term and long term. You might think that
Speaker 1: this is this is a matter of the history books.
Speaker 1: This is something that has been settled for decades, if
Speaker 1: not centuries, and there's perhaps very little, like just some
Speaker 1: fine tuning of the research these days. But it's not
Speaker 1: the case. There's a lot of work that goes on
Speaker 1: in this area of study, and there's still exciting stuff
Speaker 1: coming out. I mean, you go back a couple of
Speaker 1: decades and it seems like a lot of what people
Speaker 1: were arguing about was whether or not plague was caused
Speaker 1: by plague. Yeah, and I remember this. Uh. I don't
Speaker 1: think I ever wrote anything specifically for how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com about the Black Death. Maybe I had to
Speaker 1: cover it like briefly in some sort of you know,
Speaker 1: like a top ten pandemics type of an article or something.
Speaker 1: But I remember at the time this being the case
Speaker 1: where there were these different different theories about what it
Speaker 1: might have been. Was it perhaps this particular ailment or disease,
Speaker 1: was it this one, or was it actually what we
Speaker 1: think of as bubonic plague? Yeah, and so at least
Speaker 1: I think that question is mostly settled. We can give
Speaker 1: a fairly firm answer on that one today. But I
Speaker 1: was just surprised how much about the plague pandemics is
Speaker 1: still up in the air or has been questioned or
Speaker 1: is still controversial. Uh, And and how often a fact
Speaker 1: you thought you knew about it might not actually be correct.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so I was also wondering, like, how did
Speaker 1: you get interested in this? What what made you want
Speaker 1: to talk about the Black Death and and the powers
Speaker 1: of God? Oh? Well, I think part of it was
Speaker 1: I was I picked up and burcos the Name of
Speaker 1: the Rose again when I was reading through through that,
Speaker 1: and I was reminded about how it's it's mentioned that
Speaker 1: brother William eventually dies in the plague or is lost
Speaker 1: in the plague, and like knowing that the egg is
Speaker 1: the thing that comes the Black Death specifically, uh, is
Speaker 1: the thing that comes after the events of the novel
Speaker 1: and um, And so sometimes that, you know, makes me
Speaker 1: think about the world that is described in that book
Speaker 1: and and how how it's going to fare against a
Speaker 1: threat like this. And then of course it goes without saying, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we're we're recording this, researching this during uh
Speaker 1: an ongoing global pandemic, and so I think it's it's
Speaker 1: something that has been on a lot of people's minds.
Speaker 1: A lot of people have turned their minds back to
Speaker 1: historical plagues. Um Now, of course, in fighting this pandemic
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen, we we have a number of tools not
Speaker 1: available to humanity during the late Middle Ages. We know
Speaker 1: what actually causes the illness we're facing, we're able to
Speaker 1: figure out how it works, and we have both treatments
Speaker 1: and most marvelous of all vaccines that we can use.
Speaker 1: And speaking of vaccines, go get vaccinated against COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: if you have the ability to do so, and if
Speaker 1: you're not sure, talk to a medical doctor and find
Speaker 1: out what you need to know from them. So obviously
Speaker 1: there were no vaccines in the time of the of
Speaker 1: the Black Death in the fourteenth century outbreak of of
Speaker 1: the plague. But also there really weren't any treatments. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you get plague today, we know today that it
Speaker 1: is a bacterial infection and if caught early, it can
Speaker 1: be treated pretty effectively with antibiotics. I mean back at
Speaker 1: the time of the Black Death there there there really
Speaker 1: were not effective interventions at all. Yeah, it's it's really
Speaker 1: kind of staggering to to think about it, to think
Speaker 1: about to imagine a time right before the Black Death,
Speaker 1: and just think about what a mismatch this was medieval
Speaker 1: societies versus a deadly contagious disease caused by UH an
Speaker 1: invisible bacterium. The disease, on one hand, you might say,
Speaker 1: you know, understands its human adversaries to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: you know, UH, and not that it has a will
Speaker 1: or an intelligence, but it gets in there and it
Speaker 1: does its thing. The humans on the other hand, I mean,
Speaker 1: they have the gift of reason, certainly, they have technology
Speaker 1: and society, but they lack a germ theory of disease.
Speaker 1: They don't really know how the enemy in this case,
Speaker 1: the Black Death, how it functions, or even truly what
Speaker 1: it is. So they're blind in many ways. And on
Speaker 1: top of that, they have leaned into a supernatural understanding
Speaker 1: of the world. They believe in gods and saints and
Speaker 1: demons and miracles, and they trust in religious organizations and
Speaker 1: religious authorities or in many cases powers that are ordained
Speaker 1: by religious authorities. Another way of looking at things in
Speaker 1: this scenario is that in some ways, you have humanity
Speaker 1: stranded between two unseen worlds, be at least partially invisible
Speaker 1: world of disease and then the invisible world of religion.
Speaker 1: Uh So, you know, it's like, this is the matchup.
Speaker 1: How will these religious organizations and authorities respond to the
Speaker 1: Black Death? What chance do they have? And so in
Speaker 1: this episode, in the whatever episode or episodes follow it. Well,
Speaker 1: I thought we might get into that a little bit
Speaker 1: and talk about how imperfect societies respond to what is
Speaker 1: in many ways, you know, a perfect pathogen with a
Speaker 1: focus on on religion. But before we get into the
Speaker 1: religious stuff, we will have to talk about just like
Speaker 1: what was the Black Death? Uh as far as we
Speaker 1: understand it? Okay, Well, I guess we should start with
Speaker 1: that question. What do we think we know today about
Speaker 1: the nature of this disease? So first of all, let's
Speaker 1: just talk about like what do we mean we mean
Speaker 1: the Black Death versus like other plagues? Right, So, historians
Speaker 1: generally consider the Black Death to have lasted from around
Speaker 1: thirteen forty six uh ce obviously to thirteen fifty three
Speaker 1: throughout Afro Eurasia, more or less on the heels of
Speaker 1: the Great Famine of thirteen fifteen through thirteen seventeen. And
Speaker 1: this this will become important in a bit. But now
Speaker 1: one thing that's important to consider, and this is true
Speaker 1: of of multiple cases of plague pandemic in the world
Speaker 1: that we'll talk about in just a set can The
Speaker 1: black Death is a term is sometimes applied to this
Speaker 1: sort of initial outbreak that has been widely studied as
Speaker 1: having happened and say like uh, Europe in the Middle East,
Speaker 1: around the Mediterranean beginning around thirty six or forty seven,
Speaker 1: and then continuing for some years after that. But each
Speaker 1: of these pandemics is not contained to just a few years.
Speaker 1: There are these recurrent waves. So there will be an
Speaker 1: initial wave of infection and then it just and then
Speaker 1: it sort of goes away for a while within a
Speaker 1: certain region, but then there will be subsequent outbreaks throughout
Speaker 1: different regions over the following uh centuries really in the
Speaker 1: case of the one that begins in the fourteenth century
Speaker 1: and uh and one of the papers I was looking
Speaker 1: at was was calling these recurrent waves. Yeah, yeah, So
Speaker 1: it's important to realize that the Black Death of the
Speaker 1: fourteenth century, it's not thought to be the first great
Speaker 1: outbreak of playing in the Old world. The Plague of
Speaker 1: Justine In occurred between UH five forty one and five
Speaker 1: forty nine see. And it was also not the last
Speaker 1: pandemic of plague, as major outbreaks would occur throughout the
Speaker 1: fourteenth and seventeen centuries, including the Great Plague of London
Speaker 1: in sixteen sixty five and sixteen sixty six. But the
Speaker 1: fourteenth century outbreak is what is generally referred to when
Speaker 1: we talk about the Black Death, a pandemic that claimed
Speaker 1: the lives of between seventy five and two hundred million
Speaker 1: people and reshaped society for the survivors. I've seen drastically
Speaker 1: different estimates of what percentage of people within certain regions
Speaker 1: the Black Death killed. So I think this is not
Speaker 1: a settled question. It's something that has to be you know,
Speaker 1: it's not like there were just like there was a
Speaker 1: census of people and you can chart everyone who died.
Speaker 1: Has this is a number that has to be established
Speaker 1: through estimates. But like in on cases, you have good
Speaker 1: data to go on. You know, you can look at
Speaker 1: essentially death rolls from certain certain regions and certain time periods,
Speaker 1: and then some work has been done in me in
Speaker 1: in examining cemeteries and the like. Yeah, exactly, as a
Speaker 1: one figure I looked at for the Black Death said
Speaker 1: that the Black Death and its recurrent waves may have
Speaker 1: wiped up somewhere between one third to two thirds of
Speaker 1: the population of Europe. Anyway you shake it, a lot
Speaker 1: of people died. I mean, you know, in any variants
Speaker 1: in the numbers doesn't really take away from just how
Speaker 1: how brutal this was. Now, one source I was looking
Speaker 1: at and all of this was the The Anthropology of
Speaker 1: Plague by Sharon in de Witt, published in Pandemic Disease
Speaker 1: in the Medieval World, And this was from One of
Speaker 1: the things that DeWitt talks about is the idea that again,
Speaker 1: this this particular outbreak of plague, the Black Death, is
Speaker 1: following a period of rapid population growth and plenty due
Speaker 1: to warm climates and advancements in agriculture. When the warm
Speaker 1: period ended, however, there were ripples throughout Europe. There was
Speaker 1: less food. Uh, there was famine, There was a you know,
Speaker 1: there's an abundance of labor under a feudal system. So
Speaker 1: most people during this time experienced a decline in their
Speaker 1: standard of living. Non plague illness and malnutrition. Uh was
Speaker 1: was running rampant, and so there's this this strong argument
Speaker 1: to me, may the do it writes about it length
Speaker 1: that this put made them even more susceptible to this
Speaker 1: new disease or this new outbreak of a disease that
Speaker 1: had previously ravaged parts of the region. Yeah. And and
Speaker 1: this has been another major trend in writing over say
Speaker 1: the past hundred years about the about the Black Death
Speaker 1: of the fourteenth century and its recurrent waves. What what,
Speaker 1: how exactly does that get situated within the broader social, economic,
Speaker 1: and cultural context of the time which had occurred, What
Speaker 1: what led to it, what exacerbated it, and what changes
Speaker 1: did it bring about? Because it's widely believed that I
Speaker 1: guess we're not going to get super deep into these
Speaker 1: particular historical theories, but there have been a lot of
Speaker 1: theories about what rolled the Black Death may have played
Speaker 1: and say, revolutionizing the economic history of Europe, and uh,
Speaker 1: did it in some way trigger changes that might lead
Speaker 1: to things you associate with the Late Middle Ages or
Speaker 1: the Renaissance exactly? Yeah, And you know, I think it's
Speaker 1: it's also one of these things where you look at
Speaker 1: some of the older scholarship, or if you just look
Speaker 1: at sort of generalized um, you know, summaries of the
Speaker 1: Black Death, you know, and it's often pointed out, well,
Speaker 1: this affected everybody. It didn't matter what level of society
Speaker 1: you were you were at, and to to a to
Speaker 1: a large extent, that is true. I mean, people died
Speaker 1: at every every level of society. And there's this kind
Speaker 1: of idea that you know, the Black Death is it's
Speaker 1: it's you know, you get into these religious ideas of
Speaker 1: the judgment of humanity and it seems like it's just
Speaker 1: everybody is is suffering equally. But uh, does that hold
Speaker 1: up if we start looking at different populations, be at
Speaker 1: things like population density or dealing with you know, large
Speaker 1: portions of the population that are malnourished and so forth. Anyway,
Speaker 1: here's a is a quote from de Witt in that
Speaker 1: article I mentioned quote. The very high levels of Black
Speaker 1: death mortality and the results from hazard analysis, which indicate
Speaker 1: that this mortality was selective and targeted frail people of
Speaker 1: all ages, means that the epidemic might have exerted a
Speaker 1: strong selective force on the northern population, removing the frail
Speaker 1: list unhealthiest individuals on a very large scale. You have
Speaker 1: the post Black death population included individuals who were exposed
Speaker 1: to and survived the Black Death. This episode of selection
Speaker 1: might at least in part, explain the very rapid apparent
Speaker 1: changes in medieval plague epidemiology. These changes include the apparent
Speaker 1: decline and plague mortality as described in contemporaneous historical documents. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what's she getting at their um, So she's getting
Speaker 1: into this, you know this idea that Okay, so that
Speaker 1: the plague hits, it wipes out a lot of people,
Speaker 1: a lot of people that at at at all levels
Speaker 1: of society and all ages that may have been extra
Speaker 1: susceptible to the ravages of the disease. But then afterwards
Speaker 1: you perhaps have have a certain resistance in the survivors.
Speaker 1: But then she also points out that, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: patterns of human plague deaths might reflect the disease dynamics
Speaker 1: of nearby animal host populations, which can influence exposure of
Speaker 1: humans to plague. And we'll get we'll get into more
Speaker 1: of like what that means later about about about the
Speaker 1: disease dynamics and animal hosts. But but you know, it
Speaker 1: also might mean that survivors were in better shape to
Speaker 1: survive the plague and or had better access to nutrition
Speaker 1: or standard of living in the years after the Black
Speaker 1: Death had had really ravaged the population. Because after the
Speaker 1: Black Death, there's this idea that you ultimately end up
Speaker 1: with potentially more sustainable population, potentially and improved gene pool
Speaker 1: with possible resistance to the plague. The feudal system was
Speaker 1: was weakened by all of this, potentially paving the way
Speaker 1: for further changes. Um This is a direction a lot
Speaker 1: of the scholarship goes in. Yet, what what does it
Speaker 1: due to the world that allows a certain amount of
Speaker 1: a rapid change to take place? Um or introduces new
Speaker 1: changes that could occur at the you know, the socioeconomic level, etcetera. UM.
Speaker 1: Of course, on the other hand, I think we have
Speaker 1: to be careful about getting into that, you know, that
Speaker 1: sort of uh, what doesn't kill you makes your stronger
Speaker 1: idea that like, you know, the plague was good. It
Speaker 1: just it strengthened everybody has and made a better world because, uh,
Speaker 1: in the words of Conan O'Brien, what doesn't kill you
Speaker 1: almost kills you. So it was still a period of
Speaker 1: great suffering and death. I meant to an extent that
Speaker 1: it's it's it's difficult to imagine. And of course that
Speaker 1: is going to have, um have an effect on the
Speaker 1: survivors that goes beyond just you know as any kind
Speaker 1: of like fitness that results any kind of resistance to
Speaker 1: to illness, or an improvement in your access to UM,
Speaker 1: you know, to to a higher standard of living. Right,
Speaker 1: So you shouldn't be lured into thinking like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: if after the plague the people who were of tended
Speaker 1: to have a hired resistance to disease and may have
Speaker 1: there may have been some economic benefits for them, that
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean like the plague was a good thing, right, right,
Speaker 1: And I mean, plus, there's a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of great data on just how events of this nature.
Speaker 1: I mean there's a lasting effect of say malnutrition on
Speaker 1: on one's descendants that sort of thing. So to be clear,
Speaker 1: plague bad, plague, plague very bad. I think I think
Speaker 1: that is one of the firm facts we can we
Speaker 1: can say consensus on that. Now, what was the plague? Well, uh,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned earlier, there were various alternative theories and hypotheses.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess they're still technically are alternative theories
Speaker 1: and hypotheses, but none of them have enough support to rival.
Speaker 1: They now commonly agreed upon understanding that the plague in
Speaker 1: question was bubonic plague caused by the plague bacterium your
Speaker 1: Cinea pestis. Yeah, so it seems like in the late
Speaker 1: twe aeth in early twenty first century, there was some
Speaker 1: of this academic debate about the infectious agent driving the
Speaker 1: black death. But yeah, I agree, it does seem like
Speaker 1: it is a pretty firm matter of consensus now that
Speaker 1: that the black death beginning in the fourteenth century was
Speaker 1: caused by your Cinea pestis, and that bacterium that that
Speaker 1: bacillus was is something that we've known about since the
Speaker 1: year eighteen ninety four, when it was discovered I think
Speaker 1: by two different researchers pretty much simultaneously. One was Kitasato
Speaker 1: Shibasaburo of Japan and the other was Alexander Yeerson of France.
Speaker 1: So I think from his name Yrson, you get your Cinea,
Speaker 1: the genus name of the bacterium that causes the plague. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so this was around the year eighteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: which was also the time of the eighteen ninety four
Speaker 1: Hong Kong outbreak of plague, which was a major part
Speaker 1: of the Third plague pandemic. You mentioned that there there
Speaker 1: have been three major plague pandemics in history that we
Speaker 1: know about, the Plague of Justinian beginning in the sixth century,
Speaker 1: then the Black Death began in the fourteenth century, and
Speaker 1: then this more recent one from the from the nineteenth
Speaker 1: and twentieth century, right, and they've been There's been been
Speaker 1: some other stuff sprinkled around in there as well, but
Speaker 1: those are the big ones. Now. You're cine epestis, As
Speaker 1: the CDC points out, it has a place in nature,
Speaker 1: even in the modern world, even in North America. Uh,
Speaker 1: your seny epestis is transmitted by fleas to a variety
Speaker 1: of rodents. Uh that certainly in these rodents certainly include
Speaker 1: the rat, but they also include squirrels, chipmunks, vols, and rabbits.
Speaker 1: This situation is is relatively stable, it's thought, with the
Speaker 1: bacteria circulating at low rates and without excessive mortality again
Speaker 1: in these rodent populations. Yeah, so as with the number
Speaker 1: of zoonotic diseases, humans are not not the natural host
Speaker 1: of this bacterium. You're sinning epestis, your cine Epestis lives
Speaker 1: in this natural cycle, I think it's sometimes called the
Speaker 1: Sylvan cycle, traveling between the bodies of fleas and small
Speaker 1: mammals generally rodents like rats, like you say, And then
Speaker 1: the bacteria multiply within the gut of the flea, and
Speaker 1: then when the flea bites a rat host to suck
Speaker 1: its blood, it sort of spits up some of the
Speaker 1: infectious bacteria in its gut into the rat and can
Speaker 1: infect a new rat host. But of course sometimes infectious
Speaker 1: microbes can jump from their natural host species to another,
Speaker 1: like humans, and and this is where you get zoonotic
Speaker 1: diseases like plague. I was actually reading an article in
Speaker 1: Scientific American. I think it wasn't originally in SIME. It
Speaker 1: was a reprint from Quanta, but it was by an
Speaker 1: author named Carrie Arnold from that was covering a study
Speaker 1: published in Nature Communications in about the evolution of this
Speaker 1: bacterium of your Cineopestis, which causes the plague uh. And
Speaker 1: the paper was by Zimbler at All called early emergence
Speaker 1: of your cine Epestis as a severe respiratory pathogen. And
Speaker 1: so the authors were looking into the question of where
Speaker 1: did your Cinea Pestis come from and how did it
Speaker 1: become so virulent? And so they write in their abstract
Speaker 1: as follows. We showed that the acquisition of a single
Speaker 1: gene encoding the protease p l A. I think I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if that's pronounced play or plot, but it's
Speaker 1: p l A. P l A was sufficient for the
Speaker 1: most ancestral, deeply rooted strains of why Pestis to cause
Speaker 1: neumonic plague. And we'll get more into the different varieties
Speaker 1: in a moment, indicating that why Pestus was primed to
Speaker 1: infect the lungs at a very early stage in its evolution.
Speaker 1: As why Pestists further evolved, modern strains acquired a single
Speaker 1: amino acid modification within p l A that optimizes protease activity.
Speaker 1: While this modification is unnecessary to cause neumonic plague, the
Speaker 1: substitution is instead needed to efficiently induce the invasive infection
Speaker 1: associated with the bubonic plague. These findings indicate that why
Speaker 1: Pestis was capable of causing new monic plague before it
Speaker 1: evolved to optimally cause invasive infections in mammals soneumonic plague.
Speaker 1: The version in the lungs is is, as we'll explain
Speaker 1: it a bit, the most deadly form of your cineopestis infection.
Speaker 1: But but it has probably existed longer than the bubonic
Speaker 1: form of infection. But once the bacteria evolved the ability
Speaker 1: to cause the bubonic plague, the main version of the
Speaker 1: disease associated with the black death, the disease function of
Speaker 1: this bacterium was in a sense probably optimized for maximum
Speaker 1: infectious potential. And then this this article by Carry Arnold
Speaker 1: quotes a microbiologist from Northern Arizona University at Flagstaff named
Speaker 1: Paul Kim who mentions that with your cine apestis quote,
Speaker 1: a single bacterium can cause disease in mice. It's hard
Speaker 1: to get much more virulent than that. Uh, and so
Speaker 1: that that's an incredibly infectious agent. That's if you're trying
Speaker 1: to set up like a thunder dome of bacteria, it
Speaker 1: seems like you're sine epestis could be a sort of
Speaker 1: infecting champion. If a single bacterium can can cause this disease. Well, yeah, so,
Speaker 1: as like we said that the idea is in in
Speaker 1: the natural model, it's just um, your cine epestis and
Speaker 1: these rotents but then these complications occur, so for starters,
Speaker 1: sometimes for different reasons, the death rate in the desired
Speaker 1: rodent hosts population goes up and the fleas have to
Speaker 1: go somewhere else. UM. And other times you have you know,
Speaker 1: people coming into close contact with these animals, with these fleas,
Speaker 1: and we see these these these spreading events occur, and
Speaker 1: the flea still has to feed, so it might move
Speaker 1: on to other animals, including domestic animals and ultimately human
Speaker 1: beings as well. Now humans can acquire it from handle
Speaker 1: handling the bodies and pelts of infected animals. UM. Dogs
Speaker 1: are apparently less likely to become ill, but can still
Speaker 1: bring the fleas into close proximity with human beings. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: cats typically become very ill with it, and they can
Speaker 1: also directly infect humans through their cough if they if
Speaker 1: they have the plague. Did you see anything? I feel
Speaker 1: like I saw a headline somewhere recently about about an
Speaker 1: outbreak of plague among mountain lions in North America. Do
Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about? I did not see
Speaker 1: that article, but I mean, based on this information about cats,
Speaker 1: it sounds like it could be very destructive. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just checked that I was remembering this right. This
Speaker 1: was from a couple of articles from April of last
Speaker 1: year in that found that in Yellowstone and Yellowstone National
Speaker 1: Park in the United States, Uh, there has been an
Speaker 1: outbreak of plague that has been killing cougars in the park. Strangely,
Speaker 1: this does kind of connect to, uh, some stuff I've
Speaker 1: read about. So it's pretty rare for people to get
Speaker 1: to get plague in the United States today, but it
Speaker 1: does happen, and sometimes some of the cases I've read
Speaker 1: about it happening were from contact people had with animals
Speaker 1: in parks in like wildlife refugees. Yeah. Yeah, close proximity
Speaker 1: to these animals definitely is is one of the driving
Speaker 1: driving forces in those those spreads. Now we should we
Speaker 1: should stress that with these these modern outbreaks generally they
Speaker 1: don't do not spread as fast, uh, and then ultimately
Speaker 1: we're better able to treat these infections today. But yes,
Speaker 1: to be clear, the way plague tends to spread to
Speaker 1: human beings and includes flea bites, contact with contaminated fluids
Speaker 1: and tissues, and infectious droplets, and this sort of goes
Speaker 1: along with that. There are three main different versions of
Speaker 1: the disease. So they're all caused by the same bacterium.
Speaker 1: They're all your cine epestis. But depending on how you
Speaker 1: get infected, you can have different manifestations of disease within
Speaker 1: your body. And the most most common version is the
Speaker 1: one you probably read about in school. It's the bubonic plague,
Speaker 1: the one that begins with probably some kind of bite
Speaker 1: from a from a parasite like a flea in the skin,
Speaker 1: and then can eventually infect the lymph nodes. It causes
Speaker 1: swelling of the lymph nodes. You get these these bulbs
Speaker 1: known as bo bos, and this also comes with like
Speaker 1: very severe flu like symptoms. But then there are these
Speaker 1: other less common versions of the plague disease that have
Speaker 1: their own characteristics, such as septicemic plague which derived which
Speaker 1: comes from an infection of the blood, and neumonic plague,
Speaker 1: which is an infection of the lungs. And that one is, uh,
Speaker 1: from everything I read, pneumonic plague is the worst one
Speaker 1: of all. Yeah, I mean they are varying um infection stats.
Speaker 1: I was looking at on the three and you know,
Speaker 1: it kind of depends. I think I know who you're
Speaker 1: looking at. But but certainly, yes, certainly the pneumonic plague
Speaker 1: is is pretty bad. But I guess one question this
Speaker 1: gets us to is the question of what are the
Speaker 1: mechanisms of transmission? How was the plague actually spread in
Speaker 1: especially in these giant outbreaks and pandemics from long ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the way it's spreading, you're gonna have different speeds involved, right, So, um,
Speaker 1: the speed at which it tends to spread when it's
Speaker 1: based on flea transference is going to be different than
Speaker 1: the way it seems to spread if it's based on
Speaker 1: droplets in the air of people coughing and close proximity
Speaker 1: to one another. So you read you read some of these, uh,
Speaker 1: these various ideas about what was happening with the with
Speaker 1: the Black Death, how was plague spreading? And one idea
Speaker 1: that you you see is that well, perhaps it was
Speaker 1: spreading rapidly because it was primarily due to these droplets
Speaker 1: and it was a largely pneumatic plague that was really
Speaker 1: wiping people out. Um. And if if that were true,
Speaker 1: it would it would kind of be ironic, I guess,
Speaker 1: because what do we think of when we think of plague. Uh,
Speaker 1: we often think of plague doctors, right, we think of
Speaker 1: those uh, those outfits with the the you know, the
Speaker 1: big robe and the long bird like beak and the
Speaker 1: big hat and the staff. Um uh. And then when
Speaker 1: the staff of the idea being that it's you know,
Speaker 1: to garments, but also perhaps to distance yourself from someone else. However,
Speaker 1: always worth remembering that the plague doctor outfits and mask
Speaker 1: I do not believe we're introduced until later in the
Speaker 1: seventeenth century, and wouldn't so even if this was a
Speaker 1: design that was out there, you know this, and there's
Speaker 1: some disagreeance on how much it was actually used, but
Speaker 1: it certainly would not have been used during the Black
Speaker 1: Death itself. It would have been subsequent plagues. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be some of the recurrent waves from that
Speaker 1: ongoing pin to make that begin in the fourteenth century, right,
Speaker 1: And and then of course the other question would be
Speaker 1: what would it have worked you know, um, well, ultimately
Speaker 1: the design of those later plague doctor masks, it was
Speaker 1: more about purifying bad air and keeping bad air from
Speaker 1: touching your skin. So uh, you know, you could make
Speaker 1: a case for it might have helped in some ways,
Speaker 1: but not for the reasons president in the design. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one thing that's kind of difficult to understand. I've been
Speaker 1: reading about the for example, in one paper looking at
Speaker 1: um recent scholarship comparing the responses of religious communities of Christians, Muslims,
Speaker 1: and Jews around the Mediterranean at the time. Uh, and
Speaker 1: what what For example, the question of like, what they
Speaker 1: thought about the idea of contagion, you know, was it
Speaker 1: was contagion within the epidemiological vocabulary of people at the time.
Speaker 1: And it seems like too, even though they didn't have
Speaker 1: a germ theory of disease, like they didn't understand fully
Speaker 1: that diseases were being caused by tiny, you know, life
Speaker 1: forms that were replicating within their bodies. There were some
Speaker 1: people who had some form of an idea of contagion. Uh,
Speaker 1: though the the transmission mechanism itself might have been obscure
Speaker 1: to them. There were people who thought like, well, you
Speaker 1: can observe that plague tends to proliferate within a building,
Speaker 1: so people within a house, then everybody else in the
Speaker 1: house starts to get plague. And then if you go
Speaker 1: to a place where there's a lot of plague, you're
Speaker 1: more likely to get plague. And so that might have
Speaker 1: been explained in terms of something like miasthma theory, where
Speaker 1: you might think, well, they're just bad vapors around there,
Speaker 1: and if they get into you, maybe if you breathe
Speaker 1: them or they get on your skin, those will harm you.
Speaker 1: But I think there was also an idea that maybe
Speaker 1: sometimes sick people have some kind of particles coming off
Speaker 1: of them, and you want to prevent those particles from
Speaker 1: touching you, And so this might have inspired some of
Speaker 1: these full body coverings. You see what the plague doctor
Speaker 1: outfits that, you know, you would have big coverings that
Speaker 1: might have been covered in some kind of waxy substance
Speaker 1: or something to try to really keep stuff out, and
Speaker 1: then you tuck it all in, like you tuck your
Speaker 1: shirt in, and you tuck your gloves in and everything
Speaker 1: to kind of just prevent stuff from getting on you.
Speaker 1: And even if they didn't have a germ theory of disease,
Speaker 1: that in itself might have been quite useful in um
Speaker 1: in keeping out various vectories of infection that we can
Speaker 1: talk about in a second. Yeah, but then again it
Speaker 1: can you can also use this of the same logic
Speaker 1: to then to make judgments like, well, plague is here,
Speaker 1: I don't want plague. We should all go over here
Speaker 1: and then we'll be safe. Yeah. Yeah. So so ultimately
Speaker 1: without really knowing your enemy in this case, really knowing
Speaker 1: what it is you're up against and sort of the
Speaker 1: rules that it adheres to, you know, there's also there's
Speaker 1: still a lot of guesswork involved, and sometimes you're kind
Speaker 1: of accidentally or maybe not quite accidentally, I mean, making
Speaker 1: some leaps based on logic, getting to some level of
Speaker 1: understanding about what you're dealing with and how disease works,
Speaker 1: but in another case is missing it. Yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: And it's still like it still seems like there is
Speaker 1: actually still a good bit of scientific controversy over what
Speaker 1: are the primary routes of transmission for plague at various
Speaker 1: times in places um the sources I've been looking at.
Speaker 1: So it seems like the more classical understanding was that
Speaker 1: people were mostly infected with plague by proximity to what
Speaker 1: are called commenced old rodents. Uh. Commencel comes from I
Speaker 1: think the term term four sharing a table together, sharing
Speaker 1: meals together. That commence al rodents would be like rats
Speaker 1: living in or near your house, and that those rats
Speaker 1: would get in a plague infected fleas on them and
Speaker 1: then from the rats, the fleas would jump to humans
Speaker 1: and bite them, and those bites would develop into bubonic plague.
Speaker 1: And then, of course sometimes bubonic plague can turn into
Speaker 1: pneumonic plague, so you can have so this is a
Speaker 1: little confusing, but you can have primary pneumonic plague where
Speaker 1: the infection route is inhaled droplets that infect the lungs.
Speaker 1: So if somebody like coughs neumonic plague and then you
Speaker 1: inhale it, that you can get primary pneumonic plague, or
Speaker 1: you can have secondary pneumonic plague where you're first infected
Speaker 1: with the common form of the disease, the bubonic plague,
Speaker 1: and then that progresses in the body and develops into
Speaker 1: the lung infection into pneumonic plague, and then you can
Speaker 1: spread it to others through droplets, through coughing or whatever,
Speaker 1: and of course the people who got it that way
Speaker 1: would have primary pneumonic plague. And again pneumonic plague is
Speaker 1: uh extremely deadly and in fact, to introduce a study
Speaker 1: I was going to mention next. So there was a
Speaker 1: study published in p N A. S by Katherine ar
Speaker 1: Deane at All called human ectoparasites and the spread of
Speaker 1: plague in Europe during the second pandemic, and the authors
Speaker 1: they're writing about the different forms of plague, they write
Speaker 1: that quote, secondary neumonic plague develops in an estimated twenty
Speaker 1: cent of bubonic cases. Uh, and this creates potential for
Speaker 1: primary pneumonic spread, even if it is not the dominant
Speaker 1: transmission route. So they're not saying that the plague was
Speaker 1: primarily spread via droplets coughed by people who had pneumonic plague,
Speaker 1: but that can be one way that the plague spreads.
Speaker 1: So maybe like twenty of the people who get bubonic
Speaker 1: plague eventually end up with pneumonic plague and then when
Speaker 1: they're coughing, it's going all over the place. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about this study itself by by
Speaker 1: Dean at All from because this offered some evidence, some
Speaker 1: evidence based on epidemiological modeling to try to solve the
Speaker 1: question of what was the primary route of transmission for
Speaker 1: plague in various places and times. So there's this consensus
Speaker 1: that yes, the Black Death was caused by your cinea
Speaker 1: pestis primarily manifesting in the bubonic plague form, and this
Speaker 1: is backed up by multiple lines of evidence including DNA
Speaker 1: analysis of remains from places like plague cemeteries. But there
Speaker 1: are still these remaining questions about which route of transmission
Speaker 1: was the most responsible for the horrible outbreaks we see
Speaker 1: chronicled in Europe, Africa and Asia. Now just once again,
Speaker 1: some of the previously known major ways that a person
Speaker 1: could become infected with with plague would be first of all,
Speaker 1: being bitten directly by a flee from a disease carrying rat,
Speaker 1: and then the second would be inhaling droplets from a
Speaker 1: person infected with the pneumonic version of the disease. But
Speaker 1: there are some reasons for doubting either of these methods
Speaker 1: was the primary route of transmission for most plague infection
Speaker 1: in the second pandemic. And I think some of these
Speaker 1: doubts come in the form of a lack of direct
Speaker 1: evidence for examples, as the authors here say that, you know,
Speaker 1: if you were to have a lot of plague coming
Speaker 1: directly from rats to humans, you would probably expect to
Speaker 1: see physical remains indicating huge rat die offs, what they
Speaker 1: called rat falls, and they say that that we don't
Speaker 1: actually have that. And then the other thing is circumstantial
Speaker 1: analysis like the spread of plague was often very rapid
Speaker 1: in a way that the authors argue can be difficult
Speaker 1: to explain given given either one of the preceding vectors,
Speaker 1: so say, from directly from rats to humans or droplets
Speaker 1: from the pneumonic plague. And one problem with spread via
Speaker 1: the pneumonic plague is actually that with pneumonic plague tend
Speaker 1: to get very sick and die extremely fast, and this
Speaker 1: sexually limits its transmission disease. A disease that kills its
Speaker 1: host very very quickly can actually be less likely to
Speaker 1: spread because it's so deadly, right, And this is something
Speaker 1: that's been driven home about it and the current pandemic
Speaker 1: with with COVID nineteen is that it it's it doesn't
Speaker 1: kill people off immediately, it allows for this kind of
Speaker 1: spread and can and then that's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: we're in the place we are now. But in this paper,
Speaker 1: the authors here explore a third alternative which they didn't invent.
Speaker 1: This is something that has been hypothesized and debated in
Speaker 1: in previous research, but they're exploring and trying to model
Speaker 1: this third alternative, which is human to human transmission through
Speaker 1: the intercession of human ectoparasites. These would be things like
Speaker 1: fleas and lice, but not jumping off of an infected
Speaker 1: rat and biting a human and then infecting them. Instead
Speaker 1: had specific human ectoparasites like human fleas or pulex irritants
Speaker 1: or human body lice or known as peddiculous humanis humanis,
Speaker 1: And so the idea here would be that there might
Speaker 1: be some initial infection case that would come from a
Speaker 1: wild animal reservoir, but then once it is in humans,
Speaker 1: human ectoparasites like the fleas and lice living on human
Speaker 1: bodies would bite the infected human and then carry the
Speaker 1: infection and then go bite another human and infect them.
Speaker 1: So the primary responsibility would would look more like a
Speaker 1: human to human direct spread versus something that is that
Speaker 1: is mediated by by a rat reservoir. So we're basically
Speaker 1: talking about an all new loop that develops like not
Speaker 1: not the the rat and rat parasite loop, but a
Speaker 1: human and human parasite loop. Right. And I want to
Speaker 1: be very clear that this this one study here does
Speaker 1: not mean like the question is settled and it was
Speaker 1: definitely the human ectoparasites. I think there's still a lot
Speaker 1: of open questions and plenty of room for debate about
Speaker 1: what were the main transmission vectors in these different places
Speaker 1: in times during the Second Plague pandemic. But UH, the
Speaker 1: authors here at least found is one line of evidence
Speaker 1: in favor of the human ectoparasites hypothesis. UH that this
Speaker 1: evidence was they ran simulations of epidemics based on the
Speaker 1: three different transmission vectors and what could be known about
Speaker 1: them about like how fast you would expect them to
Speaker 1: spread and what the mortality would be and all that.
Speaker 1: So they created these mathematical models for spread by primarily
Speaker 1: pneumonic droplets people getting pneumonic plague and then coughing and
Speaker 1: infecting other people, and then flea bites directly from rats
Speaker 1: and then spread via human ectoparasites. And they compared these
Speaker 1: models together um based on existing data about mortality rates
Speaker 1: from nine known locations of plague outbreak in Europe during
Speaker 1: the Second pandemic, and according to their model, the human
Speaker 1: ectoparasites spread fit the day DA better than the other
Speaker 1: methods of spread did. So they think this is one
Speaker 1: good line of evidence that the primary way plague was
Speaker 1: spread at this time was via these human ectoparasites. It
Speaker 1: was human to human but primarily from little things getting
Speaker 1: on you that bite you and then jump to another
Speaker 1: person and and bite them. And even if few people
Speaker 1: so again, we we don't know that this is correct,
Speaker 1: but it's an interesting idea, and it makes me think
Speaker 1: about how even though few if any people would have
Speaker 1: understood the vectors of the disease in this way at
Speaker 1: the time, Uh, it doesn't make me think about how
Speaker 1: if you read plague treatises and people writing about the
Speaker 1: plague at the time, I recall a lot of things
Speaker 1: mentioning clothes like infected clothes and bedclothes of the deceased,
Speaker 1: and and the idea of you know, touching the things
Speaker 1: they wore and all that being being dangerous, and that
Speaker 1: that makes me wonder if I'm remembering that right, I mean,
Speaker 1: that doesn't make me wonder if there is, in a
Speaker 1: way something people are picking up about places where you
Speaker 1: might expect to find the ectoparasites of infected people. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. I mean, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: if these were people suffering from extreme flu like symptoms,
Speaker 1: it also made might might make sense to steer clear
Speaker 1: if their their their garments and their their sheets and
Speaker 1: so forth for other reasons, because of potential fluids and whatnot.
Speaker 1: Now I saw some some coverage of this particular study.
Speaker 1: I think one of them had a headline that was
Speaker 1: essentially something like rats are off the hook for the
Speaker 1: Black Death. Uh, come on, do you think do you
Speaker 1: think that's fair? I mean, I guess I get halfway
Speaker 1: fair if you're trying to be cute. I mean, of course,
Speaker 1: given the understanding that it's not just like one study
Speaker 1: and then you're done with the subject, like you know,
Speaker 1: you're you're building a base of knowledge, and you'd see
Speaker 1: how this would compare to other lines of evidence for
Speaker 1: and against the idea. But even then I think it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be fully rats are off the hook because I
Speaker 1: if I'm understanding this idea correctly, I think it would
Speaker 1: still be the idea that there is, of course a
Speaker 1: natural rodent reservoir, and this is where you're sending Epestis
Speaker 1: lives in its standard cycle, it's cycle in the wild,
Speaker 1: and so at some point the jump would have had
Speaker 1: to happen. You would just say that rats are not
Speaker 1: primarily the thing carrying it to each person who gets infected. Right,
Speaker 1: thank thank So, it seems like we know, second plague
Speaker 1: pandemic almost definitely was your cine epestis, you know, hitting
Speaker 1: people primarily in the bubonic disease form. But there are
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting, still as yet unsettled questions out
Speaker 1: there about it, how exactly it worked, and research goes on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you know, there's so many different factors when
Speaker 1: you start looking at you know, what causes uh, um,
Speaker 1: plague episodics and and outbreaks. Uh. You know, you have
Speaker 1: so many different factors to take into account, like like
Speaker 1: higher high rates of death among reservoir rodent species, climate
Speaker 1: related factors, you know, cooler summers following wet winners. That
Speaker 1: seems to be a factor as well that I've seen highlighted. Um.
Speaker 1: And then you can also throw in things like high
Speaker 1: density human populations, uh, you know, multiple rodent types living
Speaker 1: within that population and so forth. Um. But one of
Speaker 1: the big questions that often comes up is Okay, well
Speaker 1: where did it actually come from? Which you know, in
Speaker 1: some in some ways that's a loaded question because, like
Speaker 1: I said, you can you can in North America, you
Speaker 1: can essentially like wander out into the wilderness and there
Speaker 1: will be plague somewhere out there. Their rodent reservoirs um
Speaker 1: all over the place for it. But in terms of
Speaker 1: like this particular outbreak of the you know, the Black Death, Uh,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot written on it. I was reading
Speaker 1: was the Black Death in India and China by George D. Sussman. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was published in the Bulletin of History of Medicine
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven, and in the author first explore some
Speaker 1: of the early understandings about the geographic origins of the
Speaker 1: affliction and then moves on into other areas. So there
Speaker 1: was apparently an under standing in the fourteenth century, evident
Speaker 1: in the writings of fourteen century Italian lawyer Gabrielle de
Speaker 1: Musis that the Black Death had struck throughout the known world,
Speaker 1: that it was an international crisis, perhaps of biblical proportions
Speaker 1: as play, and it was hitting places so far away
Speaker 1: that they were almost mythical, that even those places were
Speaker 1: struggling with plague. And then he goes on to mention,
Speaker 1: so a lot of the scholarship that we have comes
Speaker 1: from the Christian in the Islamic worlds Uh. He goes
Speaker 1: on to mention fourteenth century poet Uh even al Lardi,
Speaker 1: who was situated I believe in Aleppo, which is in
Speaker 1: modern day Syria, and he spoke with merchants who had
Speaker 1: traveled and observed the plague elsewhere, and he himself would
Speaker 1: die of the plague in thirteen forty nine. But he
Speaker 1: wrote that the pandemic had begun in northern Asia, in
Speaker 1: what he called the land of darkness. Quote China was
Speaker 1: not preserved from it, nor could the strongest fortress hinder it.
Speaker 1: The plague afflicted the Indians in India. It weighed upon
Speaker 1: the send it sees with its hand, and ensnarled even
Speaker 1: the land of the Ozbeks. How many backs did it break?
Speaker 1: In what is Transoxiana, That, by the way, is an
Speaker 1: ancient name for lower Central Asia. And then he continues,
Speaker 1: the plague increased and spread further. But of course, as
Speaker 1: we'll discuss here, you know, this was a time during
Speaker 1: which there was no germ theory of disease. This bit
Speaker 1: from alardi Uh comes close to capturing the feel of
Speaker 1: an actual pandemic. But there's obviously something lacking here, and
Speaker 1: it would be lacking for some time in human attempts
Speaker 1: to understand the Black Death's origins. Now, Suspen points to
Speaker 1: German medical historian JFC Hecker, and he writes in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty two of it extending out of China, but he
Speaker 1: links this to a number of alleged events in this
Speaker 1: part of the world around thirteen thirty three, things like
Speaker 1: earthquakes and locusts um a falling meteor, and he then
Speaker 1: goes on to discuss it in very much the sort
Speaker 1: of context of miasthma theory. He describes it as a quote,
Speaker 1: a progressive infection of zones both above and below the
Speaker 1: Earth's surface that sweeps east to west. So again, not
Speaker 1: an understanding of something that will travel from person to
Speaker 1: person or via rodents or any any you know, anything
Speaker 1: like we know now, but rather a kind of bad
Speaker 1: air fall out sweeping across Eurasia. And in the absence
Speaker 1: of other types of explanations, you could see how that
Speaker 1: would make a lot of sense. I mean, it could
Speaker 1: pretty neatly match the observed history of the progression of
Speaker 1: the disease. Yeah. Now, Susmen eventually concludes that the Black
Speaker 1: Death might not have visited China or India during the
Speaker 1: fourteenth century, And then again, I mean, we can't say
Speaker 1: with degree of certainty. He just says that it seems
Speaker 1: like this might have been not in the case, though
Speaker 1: it would hit China and India in later centuries. UH.
Speaker 1: There's a great deal of European focused material on plague
Speaker 1: as well as a tradition of saying that it emerged
Speaker 1: in China, and it seems like the third plague pandemic
Speaker 1: of the eighteen hundreds may have begun there. But it's
Speaker 1: it's hard to trace the second plague pandemic, the Black
Speaker 1: Death with accuracy. UH. European and Middle Eastern UH epidemics
Speaker 1: can be traced to Crimea in thirteen forty six, but
Speaker 1: before that, UH, it's it's hard to say. Accounts vary
Speaker 1: from in or near China to the Mongolian step to
Speaker 1: Central Asia. I've seen Kurdistan and Iraq brought in brought
Speaker 1: up in an older paper I think from ninety seven
Speaker 1: by Norris um. So at any rate, it remains disputed,
Speaker 1: though you'll find science headlines, especially from around twenty say
Speaker 1: things like the origins of the Black Death traced back
Speaker 1: to China. Gene sequencing has revealed, but in this they're
Speaker 1: tracing it back two thousand years to the region, which
Speaker 1: is accurate would position it as the cause of the
Speaker 1: Justinian plague more specifically, and when they what they ultimately
Speaker 1: say in that study is in or near China, which
Speaker 1: covers a wide area of Asia. But again you'll often
Speaker 1: find write ups of plague where they'll say, oh, it
Speaker 1: originated in China, or originated in Mongolia, or it originated
Speaker 1: in Central Asia. Um. And, like we said, that's one
Speaker 1: of the things about diving into into research of the
Speaker 1: Black Death is you go into it thinking that there
Speaker 1: are certain like like really just just just hardcore knowns.
Speaker 1: Some there's some solid pillars in this house of research,
Speaker 1: and and some are, but some are not nearly as
Speaker 1: solid as you think. You know, Rob, the whole reason
Speaker 1: you brought this up with so we could talk about
Speaker 1: religious responses to the second plague pandemic. We haven't even
Speaker 1: gotten there yet, and I think we might have to
Speaker 1: call episode one right here and come back and dive
Speaker 1: into those religious responses in the next episode. I believe so.
Speaker 1: But we're off to a good start. I think we've
Speaker 1: we've we've we've highlighted what the adversary is, and the
Speaker 1: next we'll see what the religious authorities did and tried
Speaker 1: to do to deal with it or or allowed or permitted, etcetera. UM,
Speaker 1: so it should be. It should be a fun discussion,
Speaker 1: all right. In the meantime, if you would like to
Speaker 1: write in about this episode or any other episode, do
Speaker 1: so get in touch with us. Yeah yeah. Or you
Speaker 1: a microbiologist who works with your cine a pestus, do
Speaker 1: you do you want to tell us all about it
Speaker 1: right on in? Yeah, we would. We would be delighted
Speaker 1: to hear from you. Uh. If you want to listen
Speaker 1: to other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you'll
Speaker 1: find them in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind Podcast
Speaker 1: feed with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, listener Man
Speaker 1: on Monday, and Artifacts on Wednesday, and on Friday's we
Speaker 1: do a little Weird how Cinema. That's our time just
Speaker 1: to talk about a particular weird movie, and then we
Speaker 1: run a rerun over the weekend. Huge thanks as always
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other to suggest a topic
Speaker 1: for the future, just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 1: us at contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listening to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.