Speaker 1: Chuck here.
Speaker 2: I hope everyone's doing well on this lovely Saturday. I
Speaker 2: gotta say, if you've been sitting around for two weeks
Speaker 2: wondering what the other seven Wonders of the Ancient World are, well,
Speaker 2: that is some serious patients, my friends. So here it
Speaker 2: is Part two, continuing from two weeks ago, How the
Speaker 2: Seven Wonders of the Ancient World work. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 2: You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
Speaker 3: there's Charles w O'Bryant, and there's guest producer Noel again.
Speaker 3: And that makes this Stuff you Should Know Part two.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: Did you ever see hot Shots Part two? The sequel?
Speaker 2: No, you know, I didn't see a lot of those
Speaker 2: movies at all, except for the airplane movies and the
Speaker 2: naked gun movies.
Speaker 3: The hot Shots movies were worth seeing.
Speaker 2: Did not see those. Did not see any of the
Speaker 2: scary movies.
Speaker 3: Oh, the scary movies? You haven't seen those?
Speaker 1: Nope?
Speaker 3: All of them are good, Like every single one of
Speaker 3: those are good.
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I did record a movie crush yesterday with uh for the.
Speaker 2: Movie Scream though, Oh yeah, with who Nate Bargatzi uh
Speaker 2: huh comedian. Sure, so we It was interesting that I
Speaker 2: had to do Scream research in like that movie changed
Speaker 2: like horror movies were on their last legs.
Speaker 3: Yes, they were.
Speaker 2: Not to say that something else might not have come along,
Speaker 2: But it was Scream that like revitalized a genre.
Speaker 3: Yep, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was kind of a watershed movie.
Speaker 3: Did we talk about that in the horror movies that
Speaker 3: changed the the genre? I'm pretty sure we had to.
Speaker 1: Boy, if we didn't, we missed out.
Speaker 3: Well. If we didn't, we probably just said and obviously
Speaker 3: Scream we don't even need to mention that.
Speaker 2: Well, it launched the Scream franchise. It launched the scary
Speaker 2: movie franchise in a way m hm oh yeah, and
Speaker 2: relaunched a genre.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so scary movies we're seeing hot shots is worth.
Speaker 1: Seeing naked guns were seeing.
Speaker 3: Of course, although I would put either one of the
Speaker 3: hot shots up against the third naked gun any day
Speaker 3: of the week. That's that's that's my.
Speaker 1: Bookie over the third naked gun. Yeah, okay, that's fair.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then don't get me started on what was
Speaker 3: it like the god Son? But what the god Son?
Speaker 1: I don't know what that is.
Speaker 3: It was like a Godfather spoof that Leslie Nielsen was
Speaker 3: in with Dom de Luise. I haven't even seen five
Speaker 3: minutes of it.
Speaker 2: I don't even know what that is. And you stump me,
Speaker 2: Oh good, thank you. Well, that's a good start to
Speaker 2: this episode. Do you think you're welcome?
Speaker 3: Thank you? Uh so, Chuck, Yes, we're moving on. We've
Speaker 3: already talked about the Great Pyramids at Cufu, we talked
Speaker 3: about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Temple of
Speaker 3: Artemis at afisis right, all three of them top top notch.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And if you don't know what we're talking about now,
Speaker 2: and this is your first episode of stuff, you should know. Ever,
Speaker 2: this is the second of a two part episode.
Speaker 1: There you go on the.
Speaker 2: Seven Ancient Seven Wonders the Ancient World, and here's part.
Speaker 3: Two, right, and we're going to start with the statue
Speaker 3: of Zeus at Olympia.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: To say it like that, there's no other way to
Speaker 3: say it.
Speaker 2: That's how Well, who's the guy's name, the the boxing guy.
Speaker 3: That guy I don't know his name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he used to stand at the statue of Zeus
Speaker 2: and say that on an hourly basis.
Speaker 3: Yep, it's pretty pretty amazing stuff.
Speaker 2: So this one is one of my favorites, but not
Speaker 2: my favorite. I promise that my favorite was in here,
Speaker 2: but this is not quite it. Okay, although it's close,
Speaker 2: because you know, this is this is the main deal here,
Speaker 2: Olympia Zeus. This is now run of the mill god
Speaker 2: and some cast off city.
Speaker 3: No, it was the sight of the first Olympics, so
Speaker 3: it was a pretty important city.
Speaker 1: Very important it was.
Speaker 3: It was nowhere near Mount Olympus though, curiously, but it
Speaker 3: was pretty pretty important, right, Yes, this one, to me
Speaker 3: is the most ho hum of them all. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm not quite sure why, but I am just kind
Speaker 3: of like whatever about it?
Speaker 1: All right? Well the temple. Let's talk about the temple
Speaker 1: at first.
Speaker 3: Okay, And also I should warn you that this article
Speaker 3: has the proportions wildly incorrect.
Speaker 1: Oh the how tall it was?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: All right? What is it? For real?
Speaker 3: This thing? This article says it was two hundred and
Speaker 3: ten feet tall. That's a twenty story building. Yeah, the
Speaker 3: temple was not as tall as a twenty story building.
Speaker 3: It was sixty eight feet tall.
Speaker 1: How did they get it that wrong?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I just don't know, it's staggering. It's
Speaker 3: as staggering as this temple would have been had it
Speaker 3: been two hundred feet tall.
Speaker 2: And it doesn't even say it was somewhere between sixty
Speaker 2: eight and two hundred and ten feet, right, it's weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's annoying.
Speaker 3: Everything else is right about it though. Okay, so it
Speaker 3: was sixty eight feet tall. Still pretty impressive, sure.
Speaker 1: For the time.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, but I would have to say if somebody,
Speaker 3: if you were driving through Dunwoodie he saw a sixty
Speaker 3: eight foot tall temple, yeah, you would probably still be impressed,
Speaker 3: even though somebody just built it. So I think it's
Speaker 3: still impressive even today.
Speaker 2: Yes, so the temple's frail impressive, But inside we're talking
Speaker 2: about the statue mainly the Greek artists. Phidias was commissioned,
Speaker 2: and I imagine these artists were paid pretty handsomely for
Speaker 2: these jobs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because you know, there's only a few of them
Speaker 3: who are capable of doing this at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there are only a few people in
Speaker 2: the world could do this now, right on something of
Speaker 2: this scale. So they said, hey, Zeus is the man.
Speaker 2: We want a statue of Zeus. And he said yeah,
Speaker 2: I can knock that out. It's four fifty BC. Shouldn't
Speaker 2: take me too long. Eight years later he was finished.
Speaker 3: Right, and he used some really weird materials. Like so
Speaker 3: the temple itself, it was like a standard temple, sixty
Speaker 3: eight feet tall, like all of them were a bunch
Speaker 3: of columns, that kind of thing. But the statue inside
Speaker 3: is apparently what was the big draw. And one of
Speaker 3: the reasons why it was something to see was because
Speaker 3: Phidias used ivory and gold rather than marble, which is
Speaker 3: it was pretty much what you used to make a
Speaker 3: statue back at that time. And they think one of
Speaker 3: the reasons why he used or not ebony, but ivory
Speaker 3: and gold was right. But the reason why they thought
Speaker 3: that was because he was building a statue to Zeus, right,
Speaker 3: so it needed to be special. This is like the
Speaker 3: king of the gods.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and ivory was definitely something that people would travel
Speaker 2: to see a statue made of ivory of Zeus. So basically,
Speaker 2: Zus is sitting down in this statue, and he's sitting
Speaker 2: just straight up. He's not like like you know how
Speaker 2: the Lincoln and his memorials kind of chilling in his seat.
Speaker 1: Zeus is not chilling. He's sitting up ready for action.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's like, what'd you say? What'd you say?
Speaker 2: Kind of The statue itself was about fifty feet high,
Speaker 2: which is super impressive. Like when you see a rendering
Speaker 2: of what someone look like standing at the base of
Speaker 2: this thing, it's really pretty striking.
Speaker 3: And one of the things they said about it was
Speaker 3: that if he stood up, he would have his head
Speaker 3: would have burst through the roof of the of the temple. Yeah,
Speaker 3: which was probably pretty cool to see too.
Speaker 1: He was sitting down at fifty feet right, totally would have.
Speaker 3: Right, he would have just been like Sue smash. So
Speaker 3: he's holding in one hand a statue Nike, So it's
Speaker 3: a statue holding a statue, and Nike is a wing
Speaker 3: goddess a victory, right, so it's kind of like his
Speaker 3: version of tinker Bell hanging out in his hand. And
Speaker 3: on the other hand he's holding a scepter, which is
Speaker 3: pretty appropriate for the King of the gods. And again
Speaker 3: he's seated on this throne. And yeah, if you look
Speaker 3: at artists rendering of them, we should say here, most
Speaker 3: of this stuff, by the time these lists were written
Speaker 3: were already aged and then they crumbled over time, so
Speaker 3: we actually don't know exactly what they looked like. Some
Speaker 3: people saw him firsthand, but a lot of this information
Speaker 3: comes from second hand sources or even further down the
Speaker 3: chain than that, so we're not exactly certain of what
Speaker 3: they looked like. But for most of these, because they
Speaker 3: were so widely regarded as seven Wonders of the ancient world,
Speaker 3: that you have to see that enough people wrote about
Speaker 3: him talked about him that if you really spent some time,
Speaker 3: you could put these sources together and come with probably
Speaker 3: an accurate description of what it looked like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: The remarkable thing about this one is, apparently, was the
Speaker 2: expression on Zeus's face. Not only is he sitting straight
Speaker 2: up ready for action, he just had this look on
Speaker 2: his face.
Speaker 1: It was kind of intimidating.
Speaker 3: I guess you could say, you've disappointed me and your mother.
Speaker 1: That's what it.
Speaker 2: Said, and the legend has it, and I don't buy
Speaker 2: this at all, But Phidias said that once I'm finished
Speaker 2: with this saying, he asked for Zeus's blessing on the sculpture,
Speaker 2: and a bolt of lightning struck the temple at that
Speaker 2: very moment.
Speaker 1: I don't believe it.
Speaker 3: No, No, as a matter of fact, if you do
Speaker 3: believe that, right in so we can tell you that
Speaker 3: you're wrong. So there were a couple of issues with
Speaker 3: this statue. Number one, it was built a couple hundred
Speaker 3: years a few hundred years before Christianity began and then
Speaker 3: started to spread in the area. Once that happened, the
Speaker 3: worshipers of Zeus who still remained, said we need to
Speaker 3: get this out of here. These Christians, they don't play around.
Speaker 3: They're going to get rid of this thing, right, And
Speaker 3: they moved the statue to Constantinople and it stayed there
Speaker 3: safe for a while, actually apparently housed in a palace.
Speaker 3: But one of the things about the statue was it
Speaker 3: was made of gold and ivory, but those things were
Speaker 3: overlaid on top of a wooden sculpture. Yeah, which is
Speaker 3: kind of like it's pretty slack phidious. Maybe you should
Speaker 3: have stuck with the marble. Maybe, But the palace in
Speaker 3: Constantinople caught fire.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's a problem because marble doesn't burn, doesn't.
Speaker 3: No, it doesn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it would have survived, but he cheaked out,
Speaker 2: let's be.
Speaker 3: Honest, Yeah, he phoned this one in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they were right to have moved that thing,
Speaker 2: because the Christians did come in and take care of business,
Speaker 2: shut down that temple in three ninety one a d.
Speaker 2: But by that time the statue was gone at least.
Speaker 2: But yeah, burned it fire. So earthquakes and fires are
Speaker 2: taking out all of the wonders.
Speaker 3: Earthquakes, fires and Christians. Yeah, the great level is pretty
Speaker 3: much so back in I think in nineteen fifty, this
Speaker 3: guy and again like this stuff just sat in the
Speaker 3: realm of legend for a long time. Although I think
Speaker 3: the I think the ruins of the temple itself are
Speaker 3: still around, aren't they that?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: I think they might be. I like, over the last
Speaker 3: two days, I've seen so many pictures of ancient temple
Speaker 3: ruins that I'm like, which, wait, which one is that? Yeah,
Speaker 3: bush right, I think this one may still be around
Speaker 3: in Olympia, the ruins of the temple, like you can
Speaker 3: still make out a couple of steps leading up to
Speaker 3: that kind of thing, and there's like the posts of
Speaker 3: a couple of pillars or whatever. But they found in
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty the workshop that Phidias used beside the temple,
Speaker 3: and apparently we're able to recreate using the molds that
Speaker 3: they found probably what the statue looked like, which is
Speaker 3: pretty impressive, just working from old molds.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Not only that, but.
Speaker 2: These were on coins, right, Oh, yeah, that's right, that's
Speaker 2: the other one. Yeah, they were on Greek coins. So
Speaker 2: this isn't one where you really had to guess so
Speaker 2: much what it looked like because on those coins there
Speaker 2: there's a lot of detail about what it looked like.
Speaker 2: And because coins, you know, they were originated there, just
Speaker 2: where they ended up eventually would give a little indication
Speaker 2: on how far people had traveled come see this saying
Speaker 2: when they carry those coins.
Speaker 3: Back, Yeah, it made me wonder, like were those coins
Speaker 3: currency or were they like souvenirs, like if you go
Speaker 3: to Dollywood or Kennedy Space Center or something like that
Speaker 3: and get a coin made.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't think about that.
Speaker 3: I wonder because I mean, this was an age where
Speaker 3: there were tourists and they were already selling the replicas
Speaker 3: of the Temple of Artemis as tourist mementos. I wonder
Speaker 3: if these coins were that team. Yeah, pretty pretty neat
Speaker 3: to think about ancient tourists.
Speaker 1: Should we take a break, Yeah.
Speaker 2: All right, I'm gonna contemplate that, and we'll be back
Speaker 2: right after this.
Speaker 3: Okay, chuck, here's my second favorite.
Speaker 1: Let's hear it.
Speaker 3: This is in your favorite Huh Are you sure you
Speaker 3: have a favorite?
Speaker 1: I do. We're not there yet.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, well this is my second favorite, the
Speaker 3: mausoleum at Halikar Nassas.
Speaker 2: Okay, you don't like this one?
Speaker 3: That was?
Speaker 1: All right? Masoleums, I don't know. You see one, you
Speaker 1: see them all?
Speaker 3: Well, this is the original one. Like the word mausoleum
Speaker 3: came from this structure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that only goes so far with me. Oh, I
Speaker 1: love that, the original thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I thought I thought you were like an etymology
Speaker 3: kind of guy. Oh I can be, but just not
Speaker 3: with mausoleum.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know.
Speaker 2: There's something about mausoleums that bugged.
Speaker 3: Me because there's dead people interred inside.
Speaker 2: There's just a lot of a lot of hubbub for
Speaker 2: a dead body.
Speaker 3: Oh I see, I see. Yeah that makes sense.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't want to knock it though.
Speaker 3: Well, okay, we'll just stop right here.
Speaker 2: Then, if you're King Masulis, you deserve to to have
Speaker 2: this named after you.
Speaker 3: I would say that, especially if you're married to your
Speaker 3: sister and she's madly in love with you, and you've
Speaker 3: just died.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a little weird.
Speaker 2: He was the Persian king of Karia, and he was
Speaker 2: indeed married to his sister Artemisia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she.
Speaker 2: Really really was in love with her brother.
Speaker 1: Yeah and husband.
Speaker 3: And he was from what I understand, he seemed like
Speaker 3: a pretty successful ruler. They had the mausoleum under construction
Speaker 3: while he was still alive, and he died while before
Speaker 3: it was finished, obviously, but his sister Artemisia, sister wife,
Speaker 3: Artemisia was so broken up by it. She said, all right, stop,
Speaker 3: stop what you're doing. This is not good enough. This
Speaker 3: has to be the most amazing memorial anyone's ever made
Speaker 3: to their husband. Brother. I've got to get in touch
Speaker 3: with all of the greatest sculptors of the realm. And
Speaker 3: she did. She got in touch with at least five
Speaker 3: of the greatest sculptors alive at the time, and they
Speaker 3: were headed by a guy named Pitheus, who not only
Speaker 3: was one of the sculptors, he was the overseeing architect
Speaker 3: of the entire project.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so like he architected the whole thing. And then
Speaker 2: she got a one sculptor per Si to embellish the
Speaker 2: outside scope us Brexis, Reaxis, Leo, charis ole A, and Timothia.
Speaker 1: That one's easy.
Speaker 2: That one is easy, and this one has often been
Speaker 2: called because she had all these different people working on it.
Speaker 2: And not only that, but I think for years afterward
Speaker 2: it became a place where artists could exhibit and showcase
Speaker 2: their work. So in the end this thing ended up
Speaker 2: being I think, not as coherent is what you would
Speaker 2: think something might be when you just hire one person
Speaker 2: to work on it.
Speaker 3: For this episode and the last one, I went to
Speaker 3: the site on museum. Have you ever heard of it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think so.
Speaker 3: They were very helpful in researching this. And one of
Speaker 3: the things the way they put it was that so
Speaker 3: during construction, Artemisia died before it was completed, and the
Speaker 3: five sculptors who were running the show looked at each
Speaker 3: other and they were like, let's keep going. We could
Speaker 3: stop here and leave it unfinished. But it became don't
Speaker 3: do that though, well no, no, not true. Ones. It
Speaker 3: became a temple, a monument, not just to Mazillius and
Speaker 3: Artemesia who were entombed inside, but it became a monument
Speaker 3: to art as.
Speaker 1: Well, that we can do whatever we want now, guys.
Speaker 3: Right, And they did so, they went ahead and they
Speaker 3: completed it, and it was a pretty impressive structure.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The structure yourself, was about one hundred and forty feet tall.
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I believe though that's a relief.
Speaker 2: The base was about one hundred feet twenty four steps tall.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then on either side of the steps, flanking
Speaker 3: the steps were crouched lions, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: It's always cool.
Speaker 3: Around the outside of the second the second tier where
Speaker 3: you would walk into on all four corners there were
Speaker 3: soldiers bounded on horseback, sculptures of them protecting the place.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, what else?
Speaker 2: Pliny the Elder said, this thing is four hundred and
Speaker 2: forty feet and the perimeter the thing is four hundred
Speaker 2: and forty feet So it was large, thirty six columns.
Speaker 2: It was a big structure, very impressive. I didn't get
Speaker 2: from the pictures that I saw of renderings. It didn't
Speaker 2: look too busy to me.
Speaker 3: No, I'm not sure. The only place I saw that
Speaker 3: kind of shade being thrown at it was in this
Speaker 3: house stuff Works article.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I know that there were different people
Speaker 2: working on it, but it didn't look like I expected
Speaker 2: when I saw it to look.
Speaker 1: Like a big mess, and it did not look like
Speaker 1: a big mets.
Speaker 3: No, it looked pretty neat and tidy. Right, Yeah, So
Speaker 3: one of the things that I love about this thing
Speaker 3: so again, Ardemisia and Masilius are entombed inside this thing.
Speaker 3: But it's also like just a place you would go,
Speaker 3: you know, take a date or something on a Sunday
Speaker 3: afternoon in the city of hell canisis Helicarnassis, Right, One
Speaker 3: of the cool things about this is that this structure
Speaker 3: stood for hundreds and hundreds of years after the city
Speaker 3: of Helicarnassis fell to ruin around it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is so cool.
Speaker 3: Just the imagining this abandoned, ruined town and in the
Speaker 3: middle of it is this one hundred and forty foot
Speaker 3: tall mausoleum, the world's first mausoleum, with all these ornate
Speaker 3: sculptures around it. This is almost completely out of context
Speaker 3: with its surroundings now that the town is falling to ruin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is pretty cool for sure.
Speaker 2: But like all these other ones, earthquakes would eventually take
Speaker 2: care of business in the fourteen hundreds and shake this
Speaker 2: thing down and again, like a lot of these other stories,
Speaker 2: in fourteen ninety four, they used the Knights of Saint
Speaker 2: John of Malta said hey, let's take all this scrap
Speaker 2: and use it for our own castle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a city as Helicarnassis fell to ruin. Another city
Speaker 3: nearby grew up called Bodrum, and the ruins at Helericarnassus.
Speaker 3: You would go to Bodrum today to view the ruins
Speaker 3: of Helicarnassis. The mausoleum, i should say, but the big
Speaker 3: draw apparently is the Knights of Saint John's castle, and
Speaker 3: to build that castle, some of the scraps that they
Speaker 3: used were from the mausoleum. So you can still see
Speaker 3: original parts of the mausoleum, but they've been incorporated into
Speaker 3: the structure of the castle that you would view. Yeah,
Speaker 3: which is cool. So it's still around in some way, shape.
Speaker 1: Or form totally. That's very cool.
Speaker 3: But that earthquake that got it in the fourteen hundreds,
Speaker 3: it actually had a weird way of preserving some of it.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, So there are three big things that keep
Speaker 3: coming up.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: There is earthquakes that keep happening. There's people using scraps
Speaker 3: to build other cities nearby, and then there's the British Museum.
Speaker 3: Those three things figure into the Seven Wonders of the
Speaker 3: Ancient World big time because there's a piece of one
Speaker 3: of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World somewhere in
Speaker 3: the world outside of its original location. It's probably in
Speaker 3: the British Museum. And that's the case with some a
Speaker 3: few things from the mausoleum at Helicarnassis. They think that
Speaker 3: what happened was the earthquake toppled the sculpture of Masulis
Speaker 3: and Artemisia riding a chariot pulled by four horses. It
Speaker 3: was very famous that was on the top of the mausoleum,
Speaker 3: that it fell and was covered by rubble so that
Speaker 3: it was protected until it was finally excavated in the
Speaker 3: nineteenth century when they found huge old chariot wheel. And
Speaker 3: then they think the two sculptures of Artemisia and Mausoleus
Speaker 3: and now they're all in the British Museum. But they
Speaker 3: think that earthquake had a weird way of protecting it
Speaker 3: from looted and reused by the Knights of Saint John
Speaker 3: later on.
Speaker 2: Amazing, I'm telling you that's why it's my second favorite. Well,
Speaker 2: we're coming upon my favorite. I wondered if this was it,
Speaker 2: the Colossus of Rhodes.
Speaker 3: It's a good way to say it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I like this one.
Speaker 2: This was ancient Greece, and this one was the granddaddy
Speaker 2: of them all statue wise, this one was even bigger
Speaker 2: than the statue of Zeus at Olympia. Third century, and
Speaker 2: Rhodes was an island, still as an island, and Macedonians
Speaker 2: came knocking on the door, and they were angry, and
Speaker 2: they wanted the help of the people of Rhodes because
Speaker 2: Ptolemy was Ptolemy one that is was was conquering, and
Speaker 2: they said, we need your help here. And the people
Speaker 2: of Roads said, hey, we're not really, we don't want
Speaker 2: to get involved in all that. We kind of like
Speaker 2: it here on the island, living our peaceful lifestyle here.
Speaker 3: Well. Plus, if they was in anybody they were allied with,
Speaker 3: it was Ttolemy. Yeah, yeah, but they wanted to stay
Speaker 3: out of any wars.
Speaker 2: They just weren't into it, right, So they rebuffed the
Speaker 2: Macedonians and they left, but they left behind a bunch
Speaker 2: of supplies and equipment.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why they did that actually.
Speaker 3: So this article is so bizarre.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 3: The Macedonians besieged roads for over a year, and they
Speaker 3: had these huge war machines that were made of like
Speaker 3: bronze and wood and metal, and they would pull these
Speaker 3: huge machines up to the city walls and like they
Speaker 3: had catapults on top, and they were trying to crush
Speaker 3: the city for a year. And when the Roodians finally
Speaker 3: overcame the Macedonians, they were like, well, we're just leaving
Speaker 3: the stuff behind. It's too big to move. It didn't
Speaker 3: work anyway, so we'll leave it. Yeah, that's why they
Speaker 3: left it. This article puts it in a really weird way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So they ended up using like selling away that stuff
Speaker 2: right to make the money to build in part the statue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they reused some of it directly for the statue.
Speaker 3: Like that huge thing that they used to besiege the
Speaker 3: city they pulled up to the walls, they actually used
Speaker 3: that as scaffolding to build the statue with. Heck, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's making plowshers out of uh, I don't know. Guns.
Speaker 2: So they used the sculptor Charros of Lindos, and he said,
Speaker 2: I got this one under control, and he used all
Speaker 2: these different materials iron, bronze, stone, and this one I'll
Speaker 2: have wrapped up, oh in about twelve years, which they said,
Speaker 2: that's about right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's not bad for what they did here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this was one hundred and ten feet tall.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it had a skeleton of iron, and inside the
Speaker 3: skeleton for structure, it had huge stone columns running through it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it was like the actual statue itself was
Speaker 3: about as big as the Statue of Liberty is today
Speaker 3: and followed like a pretty similar structure, but like a
Speaker 3: thousand or so years before, a couple thousand years before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people think from written accounts that it was holding
Speaker 2: a torch like Lady Liberty does, and that the face
Speaker 2: was modeled after Alexander the Great. Some say, and here's
Speaker 2: where it gets interesting to me is if you look
Speaker 2: up pictures of this thing, you will likely see it
Speaker 2: standing a straddle the entrance to the harbor, so literally
Speaker 2: standing there like kind of with his legs spread, and
Speaker 2: you would have to sail a ship between his legs to.
Speaker 1: Get into the harbor.
Speaker 3: You shouldn't look up, Yeah, don't look because the detail
Speaker 3: was really amazing.
Speaker 2: Very amazing, and one hundred and ten feet high, like
Speaker 2: you know what you're going to be staring at. So
Speaker 2: there are accounts and there are plenty of illustrations and
Speaker 2: other things that support this, and it looks trust me,
Speaker 2: if you look it up, it looks very cool. Like
Speaker 2: you know, they into they were into making things this tall,
Speaker 2: just because it was so mind blowing.
Speaker 3: But also they were thanking their patron god Helios for
Speaker 3: spading them from having to go to war, which is
Speaker 3: pretty cool. I that's one of the reasons I like
Speaker 3: this one is they were saying, like, you know what,
Speaker 3: we stayed out of war, we managed to remain at peace.
Speaker 3: We're going to build a monument to our god who
Speaker 3: we assume helped us out.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But when they did these things, like with most of these,
Speaker 2: I love that they were just like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: twenty foot high statue will be great.
Speaker 1: That's impressive.
Speaker 2: Like they would try and build things as large as
Speaker 2: humanly literally possible engineering wise at the time.
Speaker 3: I see your point. Yeah, that is pretty neat.
Speaker 2: So when you look at pictures of this straddling the harbor,
Speaker 2: it's just like it's enormous. It's huge, Unfortunately, that's probably
Speaker 2: not what he how he stood, right. That's the downer
Speaker 2: here is that they didn't really have the the materials
Speaker 2: or the knowledge or the skill to do something like that.
Speaker 2: Like the reason that statues back then were basically straight
Speaker 2: up and down is because that you needed that those
Speaker 2: legs to support the rest of the statue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they were atop a pedestal that could hold
Speaker 3: the weight of the statue above it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: They would Also if each foot was on either side
Speaker 3: of the harbor, that's usually not the strongest solid ground
Speaker 3: you can find, no, no way, So they wouldn't have
Speaker 3: had any means of reinforcing the ground beneath it, So
Speaker 3: it would have just sunk or fallen right over.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And plus the other thing too, Chuck, was that it
Speaker 3: would have closed the harbor down, and they relied on
Speaker 3: the harbor for their economy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's probably unlikely that it looked as cool
Speaker 2: as it looks in pictures. And what happened to this
Speaker 2: one fifty three years later?
Speaker 3: Yes, earthquake? Yep, fifty three years that is so quick.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that didn't last long at all.
Speaker 3: No, So the thing fell and they think that it
Speaker 3: probably was located closer to the center of town. Yeah,
Speaker 3: somewhere inland. But that when it fell, it crushed a
Speaker 3: bunch of people's houses and businesses, and some of it
Speaker 3: probably fell into the harbor itself.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: And this one was notable because I think because it
Speaker 2: was so young when it fell. It's still it's not
Speaker 2: like they were like, oh, let's get rid of this thing.
Speaker 2: They let it lay there as a tourist attraction in
Speaker 2: its prone state for many, many years, and people would
Speaker 2: come far and wide to go visit the fallen statue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for almost a thousand years. It's crazy. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: still stated a tourist attraction. Like apparently the cool thing
Speaker 3: to do was to try to put your arms around
Speaker 3: the thumb.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the thumb was bigger than most statues.
Speaker 3: Right, Like people couldn't get their arms, they couldn't touch
Speaker 3: their hands around the thumb.
Speaker 1: Amazing.
Speaker 3: And apparently also the arms fell off pretty They may
Speaker 3: have even fallen off first during the earthquake. But did
Speaker 3: you say it broke off at a the knees, just
Speaker 3: below the knees, no, so those probably stayed for a while.
Speaker 3: But the they like.
Speaker 1: From the knee down, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: I'm sure, which looks a little weird, Like that picture
Speaker 3: of the person who suffered spontaneous combustion all that was
Speaker 3: left their one leg, I'll bet it looked kind of
Speaker 3: like that. But the stuff that was on the ground,
Speaker 3: like you could see into like the armholes, and apparently
Speaker 3: even that was just his breath ticking cavern. It was
Speaker 3: just such a massive structure.
Speaker 1: They're like, have you seen in those armholes?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: I have.
Speaker 3: I've seen all the armholes all over the world. I'm
Speaker 3: the best tourist ever.
Speaker 1: Have you tried to hug that thumb?
Speaker 3: I have a subscription to Monocle Magazine. I'm just as
Speaker 3: cool as they come.
Speaker 2: And so the final nugget on this one that I
Speaker 2: thought was pretty fun was in six fifty three, these
Speaker 2: invading Arabs sold, like all the rest of these stories,
Speaker 2: sold the scrap metal, and they sold it to a
Speaker 2: Jewish merchant who apparently used nine hundred camels to take
Speaker 2: this stuff away.
Speaker 1: Good lord, So how about that?
Speaker 3: So nine hundred camels are like just a few camels
Speaker 3: who had to make nine hundred trips total, You.
Speaker 1: Don't know, said nine hundred camels?
Speaker 2: This is plus I mean, if this is a Jewish
Speaker 2: merchant buying the scrap metal of the Colossus of Rhodes.
Speaker 2: He probably owned nine hundred camels.
Speaker 3: Gotcha, you know, and think of all the poop that
Speaker 3: generated around there. Man, there's a lot of camel poop.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's take one more break. We'll come
Speaker 2: back and we'll finish up with the final wonder of
Speaker 2: the ancient worlds right after this.
Speaker 3: Alright, all right, chuck, we're at the last one.
Speaker 2: This one's pretty neat too.
Speaker 3: I don't think we ever said when the Colossus of
Speaker 3: Rods was built, did we?
Speaker 1: Oh? Jeez, did we not?
Speaker 3: So it would have been in the fourth No, the
Speaker 3: third century, No, the fourth century BCE is when it
Speaker 3: was built.
Speaker 1: Four.
Speaker 3: So this this is Remember we've been going chronologically through
Speaker 3: all of these, and this is then the youngest of
Speaker 3: the ancient wonders.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the little baby of the of the group, the
Speaker 2: Lighthouse of Alexandria. And you know, I've got a lighthouse thing, sure, uh.
Speaker 1: And this one's a pretty great one.
Speaker 2: Was This was notable as one of the angers wonders
Speaker 2: of the ancient world because it was the only one
Speaker 2: that actually had a practical use and it wasn't just
Speaker 2: some monument or temple, you know.
Speaker 3: Right, it served a purpose. Who was it that said
Speaker 3: nothing useless can ever truly be beautiful? Or was it
Speaker 3: just a movie line that I remember?
Speaker 1: I think that was John Cusack.
Speaker 2: Okay, what nothing useless can ever be beautiful?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Man, I wish I could remember what that's from,
Speaker 3: because I'm sure we're going to get a lot of
Speaker 3: email about it. But they said in the movie, they
Speaker 3: say somebody said nothing useless can ever truly be beautiful?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't buy that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an opinion. There's a well put opinion, which
Speaker 3: is how it ends up in a movie, you know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying. Yeah, so this one, this one did
Speaker 3: have utility and it was kind of beautiful too from
Speaker 3: the artists renderings I've seen. I liked it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty pretty sweet lighthouse.
Speaker 3: So the Lighthouse at Alexander is supposedly it's got a
Speaker 3: pretty cool backstory to it. Allegedly, Alexander himself had a
Speaker 3: dream and in the dream they said, Alexander, you need
Speaker 3: to go find the Island of Pharaohs. And he said why.
Speaker 3: They said, it doesn't matter, just do what we say,
Speaker 3: and he woke up in a cold sweat, and he
Speaker 3: like trembling, lit a cigarette and he said, I gotta
Speaker 3: find Pharaohs. And that's how it started.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much located off the coast of ancient Egypt.
Speaker 2: He said, you know what, uh, Ptolemy, since we're ptold
Speaker 2: me is such a cool name, I'm gonna choose you
Speaker 2: as one of my generals to go and habit and
Speaker 2: settle this place. Take care of it for me and
Speaker 2: told me, he said, I'm all over it.
Speaker 1: But you know.
Speaker 2: What pharaohs needs though, It needs like an identifier, something
Speaker 2: that you can see from a long way, something symbolic,
Speaker 2: something that literally helps you identify it because it's you know,
Speaker 2: tough navigating around those shores. And Alexander said, well, I
Speaker 2: don't know if it was Alexander, in my mind it was.
Speaker 2: He said, how about a lighthouse.
Speaker 3: Well, supposedly it was either Ptolemy or the Mausean, which
Speaker 3: is the predecessor to the museum, which is basically like
Speaker 3: a brain trust to think tank, an early prototype of
Speaker 3: the university where the Library Alexandria was housed. Either Ptolemy
Speaker 3: came up with it or the Mausean came.
Speaker 2: Up with them, that's right, And it's a great idea.
Speaker 2: Put a lighthouse because it serves a function, and it
Speaker 2: can be tall and grand, and the island will then
Speaker 2: be known for this right, and it most certainly was.
Speaker 3: I have to say. One of the things that I
Speaker 3: love about these is how some of them are tied together.
Speaker 3: Like this is the same Ptolemy that the Macedonians were
Speaker 3: fighting and tried to bring Rhads into roads, had been
Speaker 3: conquered by King Musulis, and then was later reconquered by Artemesia.
Speaker 3: Like all of these things kind of fit together, and
Speaker 3: when you start to learn about one, you learn about
Speaker 3: the story of the people who built them and how
Speaker 3: they relate to the stories of people who built other
Speaker 3: amazing wonders of the ancient world. It's just such a
Speaker 3: cool history lesson.
Speaker 2: Have you seen the new Noah Bomback movie on Netflix.
Speaker 2: Noy's called The Meerwitz Stories.
Speaker 3: No, I haven't seen it.
Speaker 2: It's on Netflix. It's funny. It's Adam Sandler, his Adam.
Speaker 2: The guy's not in the movie, but Adam Sandler neighbor.
Speaker 2: He references a lot. His name is Ptolemy, so he
Speaker 2: just keeps saying, well, you know, Ptolemy says this and
Speaker 2: that without the movie, it's pretty funny and a reminder
Speaker 2: that Adam Sandler should only play these roles.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he definitely well that or the original Billy Madison
Speaker 3: happy Gilmore role. He was pretty good that too.
Speaker 1: Man, he's so good in these kinds of movies.
Speaker 3: I know these.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so good.
Speaker 2: And this character is sort of like a grown up
Speaker 2: version of that punch drunk love character.
Speaker 1: A little bit to me. Good movie.
Speaker 3: Check it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks, so, uh it told me?
Speaker 2: Which has got a silent p by the way, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a cool name, which is why it's such a
Speaker 2: great name. It's Potolemy me so Potolemy is on the island.
Speaker 2: They get this thing built around two eighty five BC.
Speaker 2: They begin construction. Uh, there's a a dude named Sostrates
Speaker 2: of Nidos. Sure, and they don't know what part he
Speaker 2: played other than the fact that it was important. He
Speaker 2: could have been the architect, could have been the financier,
Speaker 2: could have been both. Yeah, absolutely could have been both.
Speaker 2: But he was definitely important to that project.
Speaker 3: So supposedly this project they actually have a monetary value
Speaker 3: for how much it costs. They said it costs eight
Speaker 3: hundred talents, which is a word for bars of silver,
Speaker 3: and apparently that's about three million dollars today. This is
Speaker 3: not bad for this lighthouse. Three million. Oh yeah, not
Speaker 3: bad at all.
Speaker 2: You couldn't build half a lighthouse today for that.
Speaker 3: No, no, not one like this. So apparently it was
Speaker 3: about four hundred and fifty feet tall. And one of
Speaker 3: the reasons they built this too is not just to
Speaker 3: put Pharaohs on the map or Alexandria on the map.
Speaker 3: Alexandria was already like a pretty important city or it
Speaker 3: was becoming in a important city port city, but having
Speaker 3: a lighthouse there just helped navigation, which only helped the
Speaker 3: economy boom. And actually after the lighthouse came into operation,
Speaker 3: the economy did boom as a result of that.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, and four hundred and fifty feet is really
Speaker 2: really tall.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: They said that you could see this thing's light from
Speaker 3: one hundred miles away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw the ones that said it was more
Speaker 2: like thirty or forty still, but yeah, that's a pretty
Speaker 2: high functioning lighthouse.
Speaker 3: One hundred miles away. Is more believable than the Temple
Speaker 3: of Zeus being struck by a bolt of lightning after
Speaker 3: it was completed agreed, so you could see this thing
Speaker 3: thirty miles away. We'll even go with twenty miles away. Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm not even going above that. And the reason why
Speaker 3: you could see that is because atop this four hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty foot structure there was a polished disc of
Speaker 3: some sort they think it was probably bronze, and during
Speaker 3: the day they moved it so it would reflect the
Speaker 3: light of the sun, so you could see it then,
Speaker 3: and then at night they had of fire going all
Speaker 3: the time. And there were structures within this amazingly tall
Speaker 3: structure that were basically what you would call dumb waiters
Speaker 3: or that type of elevator on pulleys where you could
Speaker 3: raise and lower get to bring like firewood or animal
Speaker 3: dried animal dung up to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I don't think we said that.
Speaker 2: One of the things that makes this so cool to
Speaker 2: me is it's not just a big cylindrical lighthouse like
Speaker 2: most of them.
Speaker 1: You see.
Speaker 2: It is three different levels of three different shapes. So
Speaker 2: you've got your huge rectangular base, then you have the
Speaker 2: second level, which is octagonal, and then that third is cylindrical.
Speaker 1: So it's just really cool looking.
Speaker 2: And apparently you could even up to that first level,
Speaker 2: which I mean had to be over one hundred feet
Speaker 2: high in itself. You could bring carts and work horses
Speaker 2: and stuff all the way up to that level because
Speaker 2: they had a bunch of storage up there, right, this
Speaker 2: is pretty cool, and then dumbwaiters to take stuff to
Speaker 2: the highest hours.
Speaker 1: Right, And.
Speaker 3: They had like those ramps and like kind of circular
Speaker 3: or spiral staircases going around it to help to maximize
Speaker 3: the space that you use to get things up. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was very clever structure for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very cool and you can there are some
Speaker 2: cool renderings of this online as well.
Speaker 3: So this thing was a solid piece of work. Apparently
Speaker 3: it's it survived as tsunami in three sixty five CE.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, but what got it? Chuck earthquake? Earthquake yep,
Speaker 3: and thirteen oh three, so it's.
Speaker 2: After like dozens of earthquakes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it was. It was built around two to
Speaker 3: eighty BCE. It stood until thirteen hundred thirteen hundred, right, amazing,
Speaker 3: and finally some earthquakes took it down. And the other
Speaker 3: thing that happened they reused some of it as a
Speaker 3: fort which is still around today. But the cool thing
Speaker 3: about it. In nineteen ninety four, there was an underwater
Speaker 3: expedition around Pharos and they found what they're almost positive
Speaker 3: are original blocks from the from the lighthouse itself, original blocks. End.
Speaker 3: I think statues too, Oh wow, yeah, sculptures, I should say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did look at some of the underwater pictures.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's just as cool as it gets. Man,
Speaker 3: anything that's underwater now that used to be and was
Speaker 3: meant to be above water, so cool, so creepy. I
Speaker 3: was reading this really interesting article about the Andrea Doia,
Speaker 3: you know, the luxury liner family that I think it's
Speaker 3: sunk in the fifties or early sixties, but it's like
Speaker 3: this incredible reck site that people dive and they call
Speaker 3: it like the underwater Everest because if you're an underwater
Speaker 3: reck diver, that's like, it doesn't get any better than that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but you know it's also extremely dangerous. I read this
Speaker 3: really well written article about I can't remember who wrote it,
Speaker 3: but to start reading Andrea d'oria article everybody and you'll
Speaker 3: find the one eventually.
Speaker 2: Well, we'll do a podcast on it, how about that.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's do it. And that's it. We did the
Speaker 3: Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Speaker 2: Finally, huh, that's the last One's that's it, everybody, that's
Speaker 2: the big one.
Speaker 3: That's a Chevy Chase quote, is it? Yeah? From Christmas
Speaker 3: Vacation when he reveals the pool. Oh right, it's so
Speaker 3: awkward the way he says it.
Speaker 1: It's perfect.
Speaker 3: That's it. That's a big one. Well, at any rate,
Speaker 3: Christmas is coming gone, Chuck. But this is the last
Speaker 3: episode that we're going to release this year, So I
Speaker 3: think we should wish everybody a happy New Year. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Happy New Year everybody. Thanks for sticking with us this
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen, and we'll see you in twenty eighteen. On
Speaker 3: a personal note, happy happy birthday to my sweet wife.
Speaker 3: You me, And we'll see you guys next.
Speaker 1: Year, right, I sure hope. So.
Speaker 3: So in the meantime, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 2: That's right, We're going to finish out this two part
Speaker 2: with a single listener mail about.
Speaker 1: Bath salts.
Speaker 3: Appropriately that's why not.
Speaker 2: Hey, guys, I'm not wanting to take hard drugs often,
Speaker 2: but my friend and I were going to an EDM
Speaker 2: festival and decided to take what we believed was molly.
Speaker 2: The drugs were crystalline, and we took them orally yuck.
Speaker 2: The experience did not go as planned. A few days later,
Speaker 2: we used a drug testing kit on the remaining crystals
Speaker 2: and find out dunt dun da bath salts. That's scary.
Speaker 1: I'll take that. That looks like a drug.
Speaker 3: Sure it's crystalline.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2: Unlike any other party drug that might make you feel
Speaker 2: ready to dance, this stuff gave my friend and I
Speaker 2: this sensation that our feet were stuck to the ground
Speaker 2: by a magnetic force and lifting them was almost impossible.
Speaker 2: This made dancing very difficult, as all we could do
Speaker 2: was awkwardly move around with the top.
Speaker 1: Half of our bodies.
Speaker 2: Additionally, we felt super paranoid that everyone around us was
Speaker 2: watching us and judging and laughing at our pitiful attempts
Speaker 2: to dance. By the way, Anonymous, no one noticed you.
Speaker 1: I can go ahead and tell you.
Speaker 2: That right now, right it was impossible to enjoy the
Speaker 2: music with my mind racing these unpleasant thoughts, and the
Speaker 2: feeling lasted for the full day. After the disappointing day,
Speaker 2: we headed back to the apartment ready to get some rest.
Speaker 2: Tackle the next day drug free but No, the Basalts
Speaker 2: would not let us sleep, try as we might. All
Speaker 2: night long, we lay there wide awake, part of the
Speaker 2: song turned down for what by DJ Snake layed over
Speaker 2: and over in my mind for eight hours straight.
Speaker 1: This sounds really bad, it does.
Speaker 2: My eyes were closed and it felt as though I
Speaker 2: was watching a show of squiggly neon colored shapes pulsating
Speaker 2: in rhythm to the incessant music in my mind.
Speaker 1: Somehow we managed to.
Speaker 2: Get to the festival the next day, but we felt
Speaker 2: like zombies and we were not even at the cannibalism
Speaker 2: stage yet.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what that even means.
Speaker 3: Well, you know the whole face eating bath Salt's ledgend
Speaker 3: Oh gotcha. She's like, we weren't even there yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, still was terrible.
Speaker 2: She didn't even get the pleasure of eating someone's face, right,
Speaker 2: so just from experience all well. Second, when Josh and
Speaker 2: Chuck said and urged steer clear, that is from Anonymous.
Speaker 3: Thanks a lot, Anonymous, appreciate that those the bore you
Speaker 3: know or No, that's one to grow on.
Speaker 1: That's one to grow on.
Speaker 3: If you want to send us one to grow on,
Speaker 3: hit us up. You can send us an email to
Speaker 3: stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com and as always, joined
Speaker 3: us at our home on the web but Stuff you
Speaker 3: Should Know dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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