Hey everybody, it's me, Matt Whitman from the podcast you're about to listen to and that's Si that you are hearing is a Si of resignation and disappointment because Destin is making us do a content warning again. Destin, this is your idea. You explain yourself. Yeah, we were talking about Pompeii and there's just some stuff that went down in Pompeii and I think that there's a point- What kind of stuff?
I say, there's a point later in this episode where we say a single word, well, you say a single word over and over and over and- We were laughing pretty hard when I was saying I was laughing above it. I just think that parents and guardians should listen to it before they allow children to listen to this. Okay. And just in case people turn it off in my own defense, let me just say that the word I keep saying is the correct clinical, medical anatomical term for a certain male body part that is perhaps a bit over-represented in the art of Pompeii.
True. And so it just gets mentioned a lot, maybe a little bit, maybe a lot. Also the other thing that we talk about that it's not like a swear or anything, it's just a really bleak human practice. It's a particularly bleak aspect of something that people have done to other people for a very long time.
And I wouldn't want to podcast dictating to me in my family that now I have to talk about that with my kids. So you might want to listen to it first. I know it's been a couple of years, but we've been waiting to talk about it because then you're going to make a video about it and you were thinking deeply about it. You went to one of the most interesting places in the world to me.
And I watched your video and it seems like you had quite the experience there. What do you think of Pompeii? Dude, Pompeii was amazing. It was fantastic.
And it's not an Apollonnesian island. Like I used to think when I was a kid. Oh, I guess I never thought about that until you brought it up, but it does kind of have that ring. I always spelled it the same as I spelled Pompeii the general from Rome for a long time, all the way into college, getting a history degree.
And I got made fun of by the other history boys. It was embarrassing. So Pompeii the general, I always refer to him as Pompeii. Is that not how you say his name?
Some people do. Some people don't. It's from the same word. They both mean five.
So I don't know how one ended up meaning five and you spell it with an E in two eyes at the end of that's the town. The town is P-O-M-P-E-I-I. The general Nius Magnus Pompeii is P-O-M-P-E-Y. And a lot of fancy people I know say Pompeii, but do you hear how that sounds?
Did you hear it? I heard it. Yeah. Do you feel good about saying the word Pompeii?
No, I don't. I don't. But isn't there a place in Rome like the theater of Pompeii? Theater of Pompeii?
And that where Caesar was killed? Am I remembering this correctly? It was near there? Pompeii built a bunch of stuff.
I'm going to say Pompeii and Pompeii. By the way, we're just for the sake of the conversation. Okay. We're going to go Pompeii for the dude and Pompeii for the town.
Okay. But I'm not giving up this ground. I think that people who say Pompeii when they're talking about the general are just fine. But Pompeii was wildly successful about 70 plus, about 110, 120 years before Mount Vesuvius erupted and destroyed the city of Pompeii.
Okay. Big gap there. Yeah. Pompeii was Julius Caesar's really good buddy and he was a part of the triumvirate with Julius Caesar.
But eventually they ended up on opposite sides of the argument. Not even really an argument. They ended up on opposite sides of a popularity contest. Pompeii really liked his popularity.
He liked getting triumphs. Do you know what a triumph is? Is that the arch? Well, he would build an arch in the city.
No. Well, the arch would a lot of times be dedicated or the ground would be broken at the same time that you would get a triumph as a parade. That's when you come back and you're like, Hey, look here, I have these barbarian kings and they are naked and they are in a cage and I will parade them through Rome to show you what we went and did. That's a triumph.
Here are spoils. Huh? We will throw coins. We will throw all the money or German gold to you.
We defeated them. Here is some of their gold. Thank you for coming to our thing. You might get gold instead of candy like what we got when we were kids.
But the whole practice of chucking candy to kids in a parade that's derived from a Roman triumph when they were throughout. Really? And I'm on sorry, squirrel here, but I'm on is Spanish for German, right? Germany?
Yeah, really. And that's because Spanish is called the mule romantic language. Weird. Okay.
Okay. You're right on it. So Pompey, you're asking about his theater. He did a lot in terms of philanthropy and public works and things that made Pompey look cool.
Pompey was pompous. Also, he got made fun of all the time for being overly devoted to his wife and liking to take long breaks of being at home. So he's kind of a mixed bag in terms of, you know, he's kind of the foil to Julius Caesar and everybody likes Caesar. So Pompey gets a bad rap.
He's a politician. He was a warrior. He's going to be a mixed bag. And there are things about him that I think you'd really resonate with and other things about him that I think you might not like as much.
Tell me more about the wife thing. I don't remember much more about it other than he was legitimately in love, at least for a good part of his marriage. And he didn't necessarily, maybe he married for position or some sort of family alliance or political alliance. But even if that's how it started, it seems like he really liked her and she really liked him back.
And I'm pretty sure I remember reading about Pompey even getting made fun of and ribbed because he wouldn't step out on his wife along with the other politicians and military people who just always had an endless litany of side women. Pompey, I don't think you did that. And maybe I'm remembering the story wrong, but I know he got made fun of for that. That would be a really good thing to be remembered for.
Yeah, I suppose it would. Yeah. But he also wanted to be remembered for building things. So that would be part of the deal as well.
Anyway, we're not trying to talk about Pompey. I sidetracked us horribly. Yeah, but you did bring up an interesting question though. You brought up an interesting question is how will you be remembered?
That's an interesting question, right? What are you going for? I mean, what are you going for? I don't know.
I mean, I do know I have private ambitions, you know, but it's not fame. And fortune and all that kind of stuff. I want to be remembered as a person of integrity, a person that tried really hard and did the right thing, even if it was not politically expedient. But Christian, I think that's super important.
And so when we look back at these people in Pompey and all that, it makes me think about all that stuff. What about you? Have you got that nailed down? What do you want to be remembered for?
No, but it's starting to bother me. Why? I've seen some people in recent times die before they were expecting to. Yeah.
And they're young. I look at that, I think. Well, your legacy is now cemented. And I wonder if that's what you were going for.
If you were like, I'm going to do this for this chapter. And then at this later point in life, I'm going to try to really cement this. I'm going to really try to nurture these virtues and these values and would love to leave a legacy of this. I think you got to think about that young and throw energy at it young.
Do you want to be known as, for example, a person of integrity? Well, you can run through that opportunity pretty quick before you're even 30 years old. You can come back from anything, I guess. But those are how do you say positive virtues are built over a very long time.
Think of it like this. Winning a title for being a great home run hitter is a fundamentally different exercise than having the lowest ERA in the history of baseball. In one of those two things, you proactively go and do a thing a lot. I hit a lot of home runs.
And each time I hit one, my home run count goes up. It's cumulative. But to get your earned run average in baseball, to go down, you just need to not fail for a very long time. That's different psychologically, right?
Yeah. I think that's why I like Cal Ripian Jr. so much. I think so because it's like, he's just the Iron Man.
He's just going to go. He's going to do it. He's going to be consistent. He's not going to juice and eat a lot of Wheaties.
And we'll just pretend that's how they hit the home runs. He's just going to be good for an extended period of time. And that's why he's my favorite baseball player. Unlike your orders who cheated with Pine Tar, he tarnished his whole name.
How does Pine Tar help you hit home runs? Dustin, walk me through it. You're something of an engineer. Yeah, it's a grip thing.
And I mean, George Brett, his entire legacy comes down to that one Pine Tar incident. I'm joking. Yeah, I mean, you've seen the home run, right? It looks like the ball probably pretty clearly struck the handle on that home run down where the Pine Tar was.
What is the Pine Tar role? You're something of an engineer. You probably would know that a profoundly sticky substance would probably make a baseball go way further, right? No doubt.
You might think I'm on the defensive and mad. I am. Is that so what is George Brett? Your favorite player?
What's he known for? Third base Royals. Plan hard. Yeah.
Going hard, being a good teammate. Yep. Yep. Going hard, playing the game the right way and playing with in his abilities.
Great contact hitter, really impressive inside out swing so he could use the whole field from the plate. Really smooth, pretty swing, gritty, tough player, good teammate. And longevity. He's the only guy who ever won a batting title in three different decades.
That's pretty good. Really? Yeah. That's amazing.
That's awesome. 76, 80 and 90. So he was good for a long period of time. Yeah.
And good job for a long period of time. But the Pine Tar incident is what everybody remembered, which of course, you know, he had a home run against the dreaded Hated Yankees and then we easily manage your Billy Martin comes out and grabs Brett's bat and the Pine Tar, which is a grip aid. It just helps the bat not slip in your hand because they always use wood bats. It couldn't go further up the handle than the width of home plate.
So he said it on home plate after Brett won the game with a home run and was like, look, that little bit of the Pine Tar goes slightly further up the bat handle than the width of home plate and the Dolby umpires instead of being like, this is stupid Billy. They call Brett out. Then Brett, you know, comes on hinge and he goes charging out of the dugout. Frankly, I kind of love that Viking berserker.
Yeah, he did. I did. Like somebody's trying to contain him and they can't. Yeah.
Yeah. I just had that clip in my mind. And so the people who don't know any better, they hear that. They're like the Pine Tar incident.
He cheated. How would that help you? No, he got technicality on a weasily thing. But back to your question of legacy.
What do you want to be remembered for? The most memorable image of my favorite baseball player's career is the one you just imagined with him freaking out and coming tearing out of the dugout with a mouthful of Shaw, blonde hair everywhere ready to murder Billy Martin. Then you know, legacy, man, you kind of get stuck with what you get stuck with, but it's fun to imagine that we have a lot of control over that. I've heard someone say that a lot of times if a person can exit the scene before they just screw up the legacy, then they'd be okay.
Like for example, Benedict Arnold, right? Who's good? What do you mean? Who's Benedict Arnold?
He is the epitome of a traitor. Yeah, a traitor. That's a doodle stab you in the back. He's a traitor.
That's what he's known for. What's so interesting is Benedict Arnold was hit in the leg by a musket ball in a previous engagement fighting for the Americans and had that musket ball hit him in the heart. He'd be a hero today. Yeah, you're right.
But he lived longer. Yeah, there'd be Edel school's named for him. Yeah, and I don't know the situation. I haven't dug deeply into that part of history, but I'm sure he had his reasons.
I don't know exactly what happened. It's interesting, isn't it? It is. Do you feel that when you read about history from the perspective of the great men and women who made it?
That when you read about Rome and Greece and Alexander, that sense of, man, we're still talking about these people 2300 years later. What am I doing with my life? Do you feel any of that pressure? No, no, no, I don't.
Is it because you're doing something with your life? I don't know. What do you mean by that? Well, how much do you care?
I mean, do people like that inspire you? Do they even matter? Is it just a historical curiosity? Those great men and women?
People that I find to be completely fascinating are people that were living in a very critical moment and they rose to the occasion, like Winston Churchill, right? There's this great thing happening in Europe and he rose up and he was like, it's time to do something. And he did. He rallied the people and they fought.
I think it's interesting. People that live in a certain time where there's an actionable thing they can do and it takes courage and they do it or they say the thing. I think that's special. I think that's a very important thing.
Our world is weird right now. Our world is quite weird and I don't know what to do. But I think there will be a moment when leadership is important. I just don't know that it's now.
That's something I've thought about. Have you thought about that? Yes, I think about that a lot. Yeah, I know.
And I think a lot about Winnicash and my chips. I'm sitting on a lot of them, man. There's a lot of news stories that have come down my waterfall app and it's free views. It's free clicks.
Just go say something about that. And every now and then I see something come up. I think I actually have something to contribute to that conversation that might be a little bit helpful. I'll use some of the tokens of whatever goodwill I have amassed with a handful of people on the internet.
I'll use them here. But for the most part, I just take those pitches and let them go by because they haven't seemed like the thing that matters yet. I'd rather use whatever credibility I have on conversations with a friend trying to think hard about your life, what you're doing, faith, Bible, things that are bigger and more timeless than us that I actually think will help people and make their lives better. But for the most part, I'm waiting.
I think there's a time come in where maybe there'll be things that you and I are called upon to do. People from our generation will be called upon to do something or serve in some way. And I hope we hope I'm equal to the task if called upon to help. And if there is no great urgent matter that requires me to be pressed into service in that way, I hope I do something good in the meantime that helps somebody that advances things that are transcendent, meaningful and good.
I could be content with that legacy. Same. I think one of the most important things you and I can do right now is to invest in our family. I think it's super important, hyper important.
I agree. I'm on right now. So, Pompeii got destroyed by a volcano. So, yeah, there's a reason that I hooked us back around to that legacy stuff though, right?
What are you going to be remembered for? What are you doing with this life? What did you expect going in and how did it compare to what you got? I expected to see all the engineering.
I expect full working aqueducts and pipes everywhere and things like that. I had read about the bakery that it still existed. I did not expect the roads at all. The cleverness that went into the building of the roads was amazing.
And also the brothel in the spa. I didn't see that coming. I didn't see the art on the walls. Apparently, they could just go in and point at pictures that were still on the walls and be like, hey, I want a number three.
And number three. Oh, that sounded awful. Just hearing your voice say that phrase in that context. I am tensed up.
I did not enjoy that. I didn't like it at all. Ew. Yeah.
Let me tell you, ancient Roman erotica, man, they had their outlook on things and they were not afraid to paint it. Yeah, that was bizarre, wasn't it? That was unexpected. I did not expect to see that in Pompeii.
Specifically the Vettie House. So, our guides there, I'm just going to throw a shout out for my guide, Chiro. PompeitourGuide.com, wonderful guide. If you go to Pompeii, I highly recommend going with Chiro.
He's from Italy. And you can tell because he's got an Italian accent, like culturally he's Italian. And it's just really fun to get a tour from Chiro. And he's generationally descended from Pompeii tour guides, right?
And we haven't talked about that, but I thought you said that in the video. Yeah, he's a fourth generation tour guide. And you can tell because of the URL he got, PompeitourGuide.com. You can get that today if you wanted it.
He won that one. Yeah, absolutely. And he was warm up. I know you didn't give us everything on the front end of the tour.
But how did he characterize to you what the whole proposition is? What is Pompeii? What happened here? What was his 10,000 foot view summary?
Yeah, so 79 AD, there was a large eruption of Mount Vesuvius. And the city of Pompeii was covered by pyroclastic flow, which is not lava. When you think of a volcano destroying a village or a town, at least I thought of red, magma, lava, flowing down the hillside, just covering everything in rock and setting it on fire. Not what happened to Pompeii.
So Pompeii. So if you imagine Mount Vesuvius is right on the coast of Italy on the western side. For the sake of the description, let's put it in the middle point of a clock. Okay.
Mount Vesuvius is where the two hands meet in the very center of a traditional analog clock. Okay. So the coast, and that scenario, the coast is at nine o'clock. And that's where the city of Herculaneum is.
And if you go down to like the 730 between the 7 and 8, maybe up towards eight o'clock, there's another town there called Applantes. And then straight down almost six o'clock is Pompeii. Initially, when the eruption happened, there was this big explosion. And Herculaneum and Applantes just got blasted quickly.
And we know this because of, did you say it was plenty the younger? Is that correct? I always have trouble keeping plenty of the younger and plenty of the elders straight because of how much of their name is the same. So I can't remember.
I feel like the younger wrote about the elder shuttling back and forth in boats and helping people get away from the flow. But I haven't looked it up and I don't remember for sure. It's one of them. And the other thing is plenty the younger was across the bay and he was an eyewitness to the whole thing going down.
And so he was like nine o'clock at Herculaneum. He was like across the water. There's a little bit of stretch of water in between. If you go past Herculaneum and keep going, that's where he was.
He was in another town over there. And they had a Roman fleet over there and plenty of the elder that got on a fleet and they went and they started to do some evacuation. Like during 9-11, there was a lot of firefighters that ran towards the buildings. That's what plenty of the elder did with the fleet.
Plenty of the younger was over at Mazzazizinum. How do you say that? Mizzinum? No, I don't know the town.
Yeah, M-I-S-E-N-U-M. It's across the bay from Herculaneum. Okay, but to be clear, if we're sure it was plenty the younger, then that makes the story add up. That means plenty of the elder not only was rescuing people but died trying.
Correct. He died there. Because he died there. One of the two died in the...
Yeah. From what I read... Okay, so it was that... He was dying to be plenty of the younger who...
Yeah. Oh, well, that can happen, man. A lot of those Roman noblemen got pretty pudgy in their old age. It's Marius had a reputation for being particularly stout, 170 years earlier.
The old generals, they got tubby. And what I read is plenty of the elder took the fleet over and they were trying to save people. And they did all... There's really interesting stuff.
Like they tied some type of cushions to their heads because rocks were falling from the sky. They were like, huh, I need a cushion on my head. And so they were figuring stuff out in real time. And a lot of people died of aphyxiation.
I think plenty of the elder from what I read, it sounds like a heart attack is what it sounds like to me. Maybe he didn't get enough oxygen or something, but he just kind of got tired and sat down and died. Oh. They went back and got him and he didn't seem to be like pummeled to death by rocks or anything like that.
That's my understanding. I remember that, but it was just not particularly responsive. Yeah. It's toxic.
It's fascinating. Or maybe carbon dioxide running down the hill or something. I don't want to die. Exactly.
Exactly. So it's pretty fascinating. And so just imagine that scene, dude. Right?
I mean, they were trying to go Dunkirk on the situation or even 9-11, like when tragedy strikes near water, people think to themselves, how can I help? How do I rise to the occasion? And historically, there's a whole bunch of moments where people were like, I have a boat. All the land routes out are choked off.
The only way to save these people is for me to take my modest fishing boat and go try. And so there's this whole flotilla of, I mean, this makeshift impromptu navy that crops up from all of the local people trying to go and help their neighbors. What a scene. And they don't know how to defend against it.
They don't know what they're sailing into. There's just a lot of forgotten bravery there from very normal people, including a dude whose talents were such that he probably should have saved his own hide and not tried to save anyone because he's one of the five preeminent historians of Roman times. I mean, how much knowledge of Rome are you and I deprived of right now? Because even though he wasn't the most fit to do it, he didn't evaluate his own significance and instead value, hey, I have hands, I have legs, I have the ability to do something.
I've got to try. It's a pretty remarkable thing that plenty of the elder did and other people like him did. Absolutely. One of the things I find interesting is I start to think about the engineering implications of a bunch of hot stuff going up into the sky.
Hot air rises, right? Yeah, that's the rumor. So the top of a Suvius blows off or whatever it does and all this hot air is going up. Well, I'm in a boat and I'm launching from across the bay.
I'm heading towards Herculaneum, right? I'm sailing there. I'll probably get there pretty quick. But what do you think is happening to the wind?
It's probably rushing towards the volcano and rising up the side of it. Oh, right. Well, I hadn't thought about that at all. One of the things I've thought about is they probably got there and I heard a lot of people say they got in close, they got people on the boats and they couldn't get out.
And I think it's because they had a wind rushing in towards land. Wow. Yeah. I mean, which it would want to do anyway, sea breezes come in.
But... So you get a row out. But now that's wildly amplified and wow, think about that. All these people, you know, there's the old man in the sea, they all know these waters like the back of their hand.
They know which way the wind blows at what time of day and which seasons their masters of this and something they've never experienced in their entire life is happening that would scramble all of their knowledge, everything they know about what to do and how to proceed in that moment. Suddenly it doesn't work. It's like a trap. Yeah.
In other words, their knowledge was working against them in that moment if your assessment is true. Can you imagine what it would be like to be on that boat with an overweight, asthmatic bookworm, as I've heard him described, plenty of the elder as he's running towards the same people? That's messed up. He runs in there, tries to say people, they get some out, but yeah, he ends up kind of dying on the shore there.
It's not like a friend of mine who I used to go to church with a Michael that climbed a mountain in Peru and he got really high up there and he turns to the friend and he's like, I'm pretty tired. I think I'm just going to take a nap. And he's like, no, you cannot take a nap. But I'm really sleepy.
I just want to take everything out. No, man, that's how people die. You can't. Yeah.
And so he just talked about how he wanted to lay down and sleep. No, it was hypoxia. Yeah, but did he make it out? Oh, yeah, I guess I should finish the story.
Yes, he did. Thank you. A lot of times in stories that involve life and death. The really interesting payoff we're all waiting for is life or death?
Well, I didn't want to spoil it for you. Yeah. I wanted to spoil it. Please.
How many times have you been to Pompeii? I'm not sure. I think three. What?
I've had groups with me every time and all those group trips, they run together. So I will trouble keeping it straight. I think I'm at 13 times in Rome. What?
Total. And it seems like I've gone down to Pompeii about. Did you go to Herculeanium? Three maybe four.
No, I've never been. No, I've only been to Pompeii because every time I take a group who wants to go to Herculeanium, they want to go to the thing they've heard of. They want to go to the thing that Bastille wrote a song about and that Kit Harrington made a movie about. They want to go to the famous thing.
You know, you got to use your time wisely. So we got to Pompeii. Have you been to the National Archaeological Museum in Naples? Nope, still haven't.
Oh, dude. I've only been through Naples boringly a few times and I've never stopped at Montecassino Abbey. I've driven by it desperately looking out the window. How many times?
There it is. What is that? That's where one of the main threads of monasticism of Christian monk life started. It was right there between Rome and Naples.
Oh, interesting. That's where the Benedictine Order is from. Yeah, I want to see that. But Montecassino is this ancient abbey monastery up on the hill, but it got bombed out by the Allies in World War II.
Oh, come on, Alanis. It's a little of the original stuff is still there. Well, you know, you got to be the Nazis. What are you going to do?
What are you going to do? Have a lancion overlord. You got to win. What does that mean?
What does that mean? What does that mean? What does that mean? What operation, avalanche and operation overlord were the two big.
Now, imagine the old timey movie reel. Okay. The Allies are on the move again. Okay.
As the Allies press their way up the boot of Italy bombing at Montecassino Abbey regrettably, the Allies have to bomb out the Nazis who are dug in. You know, it's a picture of that kind of thing, right? That sucks. So the two big thrusts, you know, final maneuvers from the Allies were operation, avalanche and operation, overlord.
They were the pincer move from below and from above to finish off the Axis powers and that was in that final push. I think. Was that in Italy or just the bombing runs? Overall, that's from Northern Europe and from Southern Europe.
Interesting. Okay. So anyway, no, I haven't been to those other cool things. You're ahead of me on all of that.
I do recommend going to somebody. I'll catch up. I do recommend going to the archaeological museum in Naples. I thought Naples was stressful to drive in and I spent approximately two hours in Naples.
I remember going to that museum. Yeah, but it's not like you were forced to eat gas station octopus. So it could have been worse. I was.
Yeah. Good memory. That's a very good memory. I'm proud of you for that.
Yeah, we did eat gas station octopus. But what a phrase. Yeah. I've never said that in that order.
Yeah. So imagine gas station pizza, but make it octopus and that's a. So Derek, Derek and I were driving through and we're like, Hey, let's eat. Where do you want to eat?
I don't know. They said don't like drive into the city if you can avoid it. Like, okay, let's just put in food in the GPS. Like, okay, sounds like there's a family restaurant up here.
Should we do it? Yeah, let's do it. So we go into this family restaurant and it's a gas station and we go in and there's like a bunch of people eating it Sunday afternoon and it looks like somebody's having a birthday party over there. They brought their own cake and then over here there's two guys smoking with a bottle of coconut between them and they're watching soccer and then I walked in and broken Italian.
I don't even know how to say anymore. How do you say table in Italian? Tableau. Tableau.
Tableau. Tableau. Okay. I think I said, you know, Tableau for two, however you say that, I can't do it anymore.
I do. Sure. You're on it. Okay.
So I did that and he goes, okay, sure. No problem in English. She's like, all right, today, seafood. I was like, that's great.
Sounds wonderful. We can sit down and he gives us pasta with seafood in it. There's shrimp, mussels and there were octopus and for me, I had like two little baby octopus in mine. Tara had like a whole family of octopus in her bowl.
And it was, it was, she's like the barracuda from finding me. It's like one of our most memorable meals in our entire marriage. It was fantastic. So it's one of the most memorable meals I've ever heard of and I wasn't even there.
It was so good. It's so, she looked at me with like, I've eaten so much octopus. Will you help me? I'll talk to puss.
It's so, it's great. And if you are eating at an Italian restaurant in Italy, you answer the same way that you as a young man learned to answer in marriage. How do you like the casserole I made for you as your young wife? It's wonderful.
It's great. Could I have some more and you better dang well say that if you're in Italy when you're eating gas station octopus or they will run you out of it. Gosh, man. So much stuff.
They were kind. I've never been Herculaneum. I would love to do that. When it comes to Pompeii, what stood out to you the most since you've been there so many times?
What is your favorite thing about Pompeii or the most interesting? The house of the Faun with the got a little Mr. Tumnes. I mean, it's not Mr.
Tumnes, but Mr. Tumnes is based on the mythology of the Faun from the ancient Mediterranean world. Did not go there. And the mosaic, you did.
You just, you went right by it. You probably just didn't hear it called that. The mosaic there on the floor of Alexander the Great is it's the oldest good depiction of Alexander the Great that we have. I think the Battle of Gogamela, which would be 330 something BC and he's squaring off against Darius the third of the Persian.
So I like it too. Because it's a magnificent Greco-Roman depiction of somebody from the Achaemenid Persian dynasty and you know I like Persia. So it's just amazing depiction of this super important ancient battle and it's really intact. And if I showed it to you, you have seen this depiction of Alexander the Great even if you don't.
I can see it in my head right now. He's got like a pointy, triangular face, pointy jaw kind of thing. Yeah, I can see it in my head. It was in my old social studies.
Hey guys. Yeah, that's it. So I love that the I mean the Bravo certainly stood out to me as well. That's I went expecting to be shocked by all the bodies frozen in time.
But I was pretty shocked by some of the habits and culture and art frozen in time. Like you I found the brothel to be pretty bleak. I was really struck by the graffiti and the political posters that you could still see on the walls. I mean, I didn't see that fascinating.
What was this point is I didn't see a lot of that because we rolled into town. We told Chiro we were like we got two hours and we got to like give us your best. Like like if you have two hours, that's all we saw. And I could have spent a week there, man.
It was incredible. Oh, did you see the amphitheater with the intact arcade? Nope. Courtyard all around.
Nope. Didn't see that. I know, right? We should go back, buddy.
That would be cool. That would be fun to Italy together someday. I would never go there that much if it weren't for work, but I'm lucky I have a job that makes it makes sense to go to Italy a lot. And I will be back.
Maybe someday we will come pay together. Down there by the theater, there's one more thing that is the most shocking thing I've ever seen at a tourist site and it's called the Garden of the Fugitives. I think that's the name. Did you make it there?
No, sure didn't. I mean, I've died in the flow. You can see the agony and the behavior of the whole family. As they're trying to flee, you can see the old people fall first and you can see the kids fall next just seconds after the old people.
And then you can see the dad on his knees in agony reaching back trying to protect his family, but there's nothing he can do. Oh, man. And he's dead right there as well. It's man.
I mean, that is the most intense visual emotional connection that I feel with anybody from the ancient world is that spot right there in that garden. And it's not their bodies. It's how does that work exactly? Did you come to understand that?
Negative? No, it's left behind. Yes. So it is the bodies.
It's the bones at least. And so imagine you were to put me in concrete. I would eventually rot inside the void. But my bones would be there.
My bones would be there. And so that would leave a void where my flesh was. What the archeologists did is they came across these voids. They would take plaster and inject them in the void.
So that void would be destined shaped. And my understanding is some of the bodies at Pompeii, they're in really strange positions they look contorted. This is kind of graphic, but it's because they're going into rigamortis instantly. They're cooking.
I hate, I mean, it's gross. But when I was in Africa one time, I was in a village, visited my sister who was in the Peace Corps. And as I entered the village, they brought me a goat. They're like, hey, this is our gift to you, a goat.
I was like, it's a whole goat. They're like, yeah, it's a goat. And I was like, I named him Billy. And then they're like, a couple of days later, they started pressuring me.
They're like, hey, man, you got to eat this goat. I was like, Billy, we're going to eat Billy. Yeah. Okay.
Cool. How are we going to cook Billy? They said it means we just cook him on the fire. Like we could cut him up.
We could butcher him and we could boil it, but it's going to be a lot faster if we just roast it. So okay, that's what we'll do. And so after we slaughtered Billy and we went to roast him, I noticed that his legs were in a certain position. But as he went over the fire and he started to cook, the sinews would draw up into different positions.
And you know, when we put you to him, killed him quickly. But just the fact that you're using anthropomorphic language to describe this is making it worse. I just want to give you that bit of real time feedback here. Does it help or hurt that the goat has a name?
Yeah, that hurts. Okay. So especially in the larger subject matter, we're discussing. So that's pretty bleak.
So anyway, okay, the bodies in Pompeii, a lot of them are not in the position where they died. Some of them are like Chiro showed us one position of a body where the person was clearly covering their mouth and trying to breathe with a cloth. However, some of the bodies that were exposed and heated by the pyroclastic flow because it was hot where they were, their bodies would contort as a result of the heating after death. I don't think there was a tremendous amount of pain there.
They would suffocate very quickly. It's horrible. Okay. What you're driving out right there, it's horrible.
For me, I felt two things at the same time. Well, not even the first time I went to Pompeii. Every time I bend to Pompeii, I feel two things at the same time. One, I feel like I'm at the site of a massacre and that it hasn't been cleaned up yet and that I need to be incredibly reverent.
Yes. Like the way I feel when I, you know, down the road from me not too far as the battlefield for the battle of Little Bighorn, you don't screw around there. When you go, you understand the vibe very quickly. Shut your mouth.
Think about what happened here. This is pretty heavy. So I feel that sort of Gettysburg, Johnstown flood site, I don't know. So much loss happened here and it's more present than anywhere else you go and encounter loss because kind of the bodies are still there.
But also, are you kidding? The 70s AD left us a town fully intact and people dug up the town and all the stuff was preserved and you can still see the colors and the layout of the streets and you can picture all of it. Well, this is like getting a time travel token. It is.
And so I'm simultaneously giddy with excitement and interest when I'm there and also feel like I need to be incredibly respectful and in mourning because the tragedy is still being dug up. We don't even know the extent of it yet. Dude, the pipes, looking at the lead pipes around the town. Like you have run PVC or copper or pecs pipe at your house.
You've done that. Sure. You have to make decisions when you're doing that. You're like, ah, I have to go to the left of this stud over that wall.
I'm going to make a writing will turn there. So I'm going to need a junction. Looking at the lead pipes and seeing the real time decisions that the plumber made, oh, by the way, plumber, the word plumber comes from plumbum from the lead. I mean, seeing all that in real time and say, man, there's a guy that figured that out with a brain just like mine.
It's so cool. Yeah. It's amazing. It's incredible.
And a lot of the times the mosaics are fantastic. One of the things I thought about looking at some of the mosaics on the ground, or man, they figured this out without Microsoft paint even. They just, hmm, I wonder what official looks like. I'm going to need some green rocks.
You know? Yeah. So it's just so much more than a museum site. It really is one of the weirdest, coolest, most interesting things I've ever seen in the world.
And it's at the intersection of so many important history things that I care about. And you sort of feel the weight of all of it while you're there and their bodies. The house of Vettie was amazing. The house owned by the two.
What is that? It's a house owned by the two wine merchant brothers. They were clearly rich. You can't buy a Lamborghini in ancient Rome.
So they just had money boxes when you walk in the house. Yeah, there's big bronze chest with gold in it. Okay. That maybe rings a bell.
Is there a roof on this house? Oh, there's a courtyard. I think most of the roof's collapsed through the way of the pyroclastic flow. Well, I just mean when you go there now, is there a roof on it?
I'm trying to picture. There is a roof. There is a courtyard. Well, as you walk in, there's a painting of Pripus, the Roman God, or maybe some kind of cult God.
I can picture him vividly. Yeah. Pripus with the massive, how do you say this? Schlong.
Just massive, massive. I thought you would go for some sort. No, I was going delicate things. So we don't have to put a warning at the front of this.
No, no, no. And you went that way. I was going with that because I wanted to shock you because that's what the image does. You see it and you're like, whoa, what's going on?
Look at you, mister. Wow. And so I think like that's the first thing you see when you walk in their house. That's what they want you to know about them.
That in their money box, which I thought was. That's what they want. You didn't work with them. Yeah.