HILF 117 - The Black Death with Mary Ramos Part 1 [RE-RELEASE]

0:02 So Yarsinia pestis is the bacterium that causes plague, which I think you would agree, a great name for a band.

0:08 Absolutely. I'm sure there probably is one.

0:10 There's got to be. I didn't look that up. Ladies and gentlemen, we are Yarsinia pestis! And then just they throw dead bodies on the ground.

0:21 History I'd like to follow me down the rabbit hole. History I'd like to, frankly, I want to know.

0:40 Hello, and welcome to HILF, History I'd Like to Fuck with Dawn Brody. I'm Dawn Brody, your host who believes history is a party and everybody's coming. And this is episode 117, A Return to the Black Death. with Mary Ramos that originally came out in 2024. And I hate to say it, but it's timely again. Yeah? Because, like, as I record this, there have been two recent plague stories in the news. One, a natural outbreak near Madagascar, and the other that apparently may have gotten loose from a lab in Siberia. Right? So, these episodes may do a couple of things for us. One, give us some solid information regarding plague history, right? Help us navigate unnecessary hysteria.

1:36 Or two, what if hysteria is necessary, right? Well, then this episode might just save your life. So, joining us on this hilfing of the Black Death, a.k.a. the plague, is music supervisor to Quentin Tarantino's Mary Ramos, she has worked on everything from Pulp Fiction to Django Unchained and everything, all of them. I know she is seriously the coolest.

2:06 So join us as we discuss the very beginning of the plague, starting with patient zero in the Middle Ages, and then follow us and the rats and the fleas around the world and right to our own back door. Let's get started. Quentin Tarantino himself said of you, quote, she is the unsung hero of my filmography. Isn't that nice?

2:39 Yeah.

2:39 You've heard that quote. Yes. As soon as I heard that quote, I.

2:44 Pulled that quote and put it everywhere. I'm wearing it right now. I've got T-shirts. I've got T-shirts. I've got a pillow with it. I'm broader. I've got it everywhere. I mean, that was a really nice thing for him to say. But, you know, he's the reason I'm a music supervisor. I met him when I was just a lowly, just a lowly wannabe. writer, actor, all those things. And I was friends with, I became friends with an actor who had just moved over here from the UK. He didn't have any, he didn't know anybody. He didn't have any friends. And so we all became buddies with him.

3:19 Do you know Steve Alden, right?

3:21 Yeah.

3:21 Okay.

3:22 So Steve, so he's.

3:23 Like, you know, beer drinking. We became beer drinking buddies with Tim Roth. Right. So Tim is great. And, and, um, he just is a deer. He's a deer. And, uh, they were shooting Reservoir Dogs and he was like, you know, I'm going to invite, uh, this guy over. He's a director. I think he's going to be somebody. I was like, great.

3:44 So we would hang out and, and, and just chitty chat and talk, talk, talk, talk about all kinds of stuff. And, and, uh, They knew I was going to get broken up with by my boyfriend.

3:55 How'd they know?

3:57 Well, because he was one of our buddies.

3:58 Oh.

3:59 Because I didn't have a job. So they were like, why don't we introduce you to the woman who's doing the music for... Because I used to talk about music all the time. Introduce the music for... Reservoir Dogs. And so they introduced me to her and she had to hire me. Why wouldn't she?

4:12 Come on. I drink beer with Tim. I'm Tim's buddy.

4:16 And I mean, I'm a hard worker.

4:18 And I'm good. And I'm cool. And I'm hungry.

4:22 And so, and the rest is history. I never look back. It was like, wait a minute, this is a job you can have that has, that does all, all the things I love, you know, music, meeting, storytelling, all that stuff. And it's, So I never looked back. It was such a cool, flippant. And that was over 30 years ago.

4:47 How can that be when you are 22? I know. Isn't that crazy?

4:51 I was doing it in the womb.

4:52 Isn't that great? Now, at what point, though, did you get the feeling like, oh, I'm going to do this? This might be like a legendary filmmaker. Like, this is my buddy. I like his movies. His movies are famous. His movies are making money. This is exciting. Was there a point at which you were like, I mean, this could be like in the pantheon of like Hitchcock and Spielberg. Like, this is one of the guys.

5:13 I never really had that kind of a realization as I was working on things. When I work on anything, like I've worked with a bunch of different directors besides Quentin. Tom McCarthy. Regina Tom McCarthy.

5:24 Anyways. Here's the thing. I should tell you. This is one of my favorite things about living in L.A. I have known and drank beer with Mary for years. And one of the things that often happens with friends in L.A. I know you. You know Judy. We know Steve. You know Paul. And everyone knows. And you drink together. And you hang out together. And you may or may not talk about business. And other than like super forward actors like Melissa Peterman, you may know because she's all over TV.

5:47 So you may have known her. But you often don't know exactly what everyone's doing. I remember somebody telling me, Mary's a music supervisor. She was with Quentin Tarantino. I was like, oh, that's so cool because I'm a fan. I was like, and they go, she's done them all. She did all his movies. And I went, like Pulp Fiction?

6:02 They were like, yeah, all of his movies. And I was like, Kill Bill? You had done all of them. Yeah. And I was like, Kill Bill 2? And they were like, stop this. How many times do we have to tell you? They were all of them. But yeah, your IMDb is over 150 credits. And I've actually pulled my favorites, which is a percentage, a small percentage of your work. I do.

6:25 These are the ones that were.

6:26 Beverly Hills Ninja is on there.

6:27 It is. Yes. Of course it is. I got Django Unchained, Hateful Eight, Inglourious Bastards, Death Proof, Grindhouse, Kill Bill 1 and 2, Bride of Chucky Girl.

6:41 Yes.

6:42 Come on. Beverly Hills Ninja, Happy Gilmore Girl. Yeah, yeah, yeah. From Dusk Till Dawn, Four Rooms, Time Cop, Pulp Fiction, Reality Bites. The soundtrack to reality bites, girl.

6:56 Yeah, it's incredible. And look, by the way, I started out and that was, I started, I'm going to name her name, Karen Rackman. She was the supervisor on Reservoir Dogs. And so I became her coordinator. And so she was also the supervisor on Pulp Fiction. So I, you know, I came in and worked when we were delivering the album for Reservoir Dogs. So I kind of have worked on all of Quentin's movies, but in different capacities.

7:17 Wow.

7:18 As a coordinator, you know, I was the coordinator for Pulp Fiction. I did a lot of dirty work and I did a few kind of cool things. But Reality Bites was also her. But I did some cool things. I have a fun story about that, by the way.

7:32 Yeah, tell me, tell me.

7:33 Reality Bites and Pulp Fiction were at the same time. Both Quentin and Ben Stiller wanted to use the same song into very, very different scenes. My Sharona by The Knack. So we had the unusual experience of going to the publishing company and the record company and saying, okay. You have the choice. We can't use it in both because the directors will not use it in both. Right. One is for a scene where in Reality Bites where the people go into a convenience store and they hear a song on the radio that's like nostalgic and they start dancing around and it's a happy, fun scene. And then the other one is in a den of a weapons store and it's during a A rape scene. Like the, yeah, bring out the gimp.

8:29 The gimp, yeah.

8:31 So you guys decide which one you, because the money's the same.

8:35 Which one?

8:36 So, of course, they chose. And Quentin found a different song for that.

8:39 That's so funny. There was another story I read because I hilf my guests, of course, a little bit. You told a great story in Variety, I think, about how, girl, you'll be a woman soon. Yeah. made its way into pulp fiction. Can you tell us that story?

8:53 Well, actually, I mean, he quite wanted to use it, and it was the Urge Overkill cover. Well, you know, when you're trying to use music in a film, you, like, have to go to the people that wrote it and get the rights for it and pay for those rights.

9:09 Right.

9:10 And a lot of times, you know, you have to describe the scene and you have to like, and a lot of times people will go, nope, that's got drugs or that's got sex or that's got violence. Oh my God, how many times have I had to go to the mat for violence scene, you know? I know. Django uses this guy as a human shield and there's blood everywhere.

9:30 But it's, you know, it's a great use of the song. There's irony and juxtaposition.

9:33 All right.

9:34 Yeah.

9:35 So, and we got that song, by the way. But this one was interesting because Neil Diamond, through his publishers, declined, just declined. And I didn't want to go back to Quentin and say, you can't have it. You can't have this. Neither did Karen. And so I wrote him a letter and just doubled down and said... uh something because it was a long time ago something the effect of well um uh yes she does do drugs in this scene but it is in no way glorifying the use of drugs in that fact she almost dies from her folly yeah yeah use the word folly and smart i mean the whole thing i mean and we got the song Yeah.

10:19 We got the song. And it's an iconic use of the song. And Quentin and Neil have hung out and become friends years later. And years later, I met Neil on a movie. And he quoted me back to me without knowing it. But he was like, yeah, you know what? I decided to let that song. Because it didn't glorify drugs.

10:39 As a matter of fact, she always dies from her folly.

10:43 And you're under the table like, vocabularies.

10:48 Anyways. So, yeah, I mean, if you're passionate about what you do, and where this went was, I didn't know that he was going to be a historic director. But every time I work with somebody, it's going to take all of my time and all of my resources and all of my energy away from my family when I'm working on something. I believe it's great. I believe it's historic.

11:08 I believe whatever it is is like, this is amazing. I mean, that sounds Pollyanna and stupid, and it all sounds like BS, but it's not if you really, you know, because you've got to.

11:18 You've got to. I think you're exactly right. I think it's true probably with all labor that takes you away from your family, but maybe especially in creative work. Because it's not just taking your tool, your body as a tool. It is asking you to use the synapses in your brain and your conclusions about the world and your feelings about things. And that's, you know.

11:40 Everything.

11:41 Your passion.

11:42 Right. Just like what I said.

11:43 You know, having to go to the mat for something. Yeah. And, you know, that takes a lot of like. Yeah.

11:50 I don't know how I'd talk to Neil Diamond about it.

11:52 If I thought it was BS, I wouldn't be able to do my job very well. So, anyways. It's a long story, but anyway.

11:58 Well, it's fucking great. I love it. And I'm going to ask you, actually, to put your finely tuned skills to this episode, meaning we're going to get into some gore and some gross and some crazy. And so if your finely tuned skill is like, fuck, there's a great song that would play beautifully under this moment, I encourage you to let us know.

12:18 So many plague.

12:19 It's really a deep, deep well. You chose... Um, this subject, I gave you a list. I was like, Mary, we got, I got to get you in front of this microphone. We got to do this. And you asked for something from the fuck it bucket, which is my list of, of health subjects that have come to me from various listeners over the years. This particular wing one came from Zoe, a listener who threw this in the fuck it bucket way back in 2022.

12:47 Okay.

12:47 And you, Mary, like a claw machine, you were like, the plague, girl. That's what I want to heal for.

12:53 Black death, baby.

12:54 Yeah, why? What was it about it that got you up here?

12:57 I have always been fascinated by the black death, by the plague, as witnessed by the book, you know, the book I brought over with me. Yeah, you gave me a book. I'm all about medieval, medieval, olden day, you know, all of that stuff, the pestilence, all of it. It's just so interesting to me, especially now with what we've been through. recent history. And also I'm kind of like, I'm kind of into medical shiz.

13:24 Yeah, for sure.

13:25 There was a time in my, in my, like actually it was around Inglourious Bastards. I loved working on that movie and everything. But at the time I was thinking, you know what? I really read medical journals. I read medical, you know, magazines and stuff more than I read Rolling Stone. Maybe I'll go back to school and become a nurse.

13:44 Which is hilarious, right?

13:46 No, that's not hilarious at all.

13:48 When you think about, like, I was so unqualified. I mean, I was a theater major, but. I was a theater major.

13:55 Oh, that's true.

13:55 So I had none of the requisites, right? None of the.

13:59 Bones connected to the... I had that. I had that, baby.

14:05 So it was kind of interesting. So I've always been really intrigued by anatomy and... The way the body works and all of it. So this was like, oh, yeah. Oh, yes.

14:15 I want to know all of it. Oh, my God.

14:16 Oh, my God.

14:17 It's so much fun. And you probably know slightly more than they knew in the medieval time. So you're going to be approaching this with a similar medical understanding to it, but better than what they had.

14:28 Well, I had a doctor, but, you know, I read about it.

14:31 Well, I do research on my episodes. I always do research, of course. Tons of research on our episodes. because i'm a geek and this is the the podcast is my.

14:39 Excuse you do sexy research i.

14:41 Do sexy research this episode though i will say was and this is my 71st episode what the research that i did on this one was two it was one the most fun Ever.

14:56 Easy.

14:56 The funnest thing ever to research. To the most. Because it was so fun, to your point, I don't do it if I'm not passionate about it. I probably wouldn't be very good if I didn't just, like, believe every single health subject I get is the single greatest health subject I've ever gotten, right? But I took a course on the plague for this episode.

15:14 Wow.

15:15 It's free through the library. Let me give you a plug for your public library right now. You go on Hoopla and or Libby. These are apps on your phone where, with your library card, you can take the great courses. And they have them on everything, and it is so much fun. And this course was 24 30-minute lectures. So I spent just over 12 hours with Professor Dorsey Armstrong, who... Dr.

15:45 Dorsey Armstrong, Mary, I got to tell you. Oh, my. Am I hot for teacher? She's a bombshell. She wears little jackets. And she also is like, oh, buckle up, girl. She doesn't swear, but you can see in her eyes. She's like, this fucking guy.

16:03 Oh, swoon.

16:05 So get thee to your great courses and find Dr. Dorsey Armstrong. She'll turn you on and get you smart. It is 12 hours of triple X hardcore learning. Okay. Okay. What's key about this course is that it was recorded in 2016. So there are video lectures. There are also audio lectures. They were recorded before COVID. Oh, my God.

16:26 It is key because you and I had to delay our recording today because life and moms and all the stuff, which means I had an opportunity to go back to Dr. Dorsey Armstrong and listen to an additional five hours on a subsequent course, what we've learned since COVID. Oh, wow.

16:45 Wow.

16:46 It is for this reason, my dear friend Mary, that this, what we are about to embark on, is a two-parter. The Plague. Here's my plan.

16:54 Okay.

16:55 Okay. Oh, my God. Can you hear this in my breath? I'm so fucking excited. I'm so down. I'm so down for it. Okay. Okay. Okay. So the first part is going to be the first wave of the plague. The plague is revealed as a thing. Okay. Mm-hmm. In the Middle Ages, in 1348, it kicks us in the side of the brain and kills half of everyone on Earth in five years. Five years. Which is nuts, and we'll kind of get into the nitty-gritty of them details later, but then it goes away.

17:26 Poof.

17:27 What? And we're like, wow. That was the greatest horror show in human history. Thank God it's dunk, dunk, dunk. The plague comes back every six to ten years. For the next 300 years. What? So when you talk about the great pestilence and these things, we talk about all these areas. It's because the plague came and went for centuries.

17:55 So the first part is going to be the first wave because it's your first movie. Okay? And then the waves are the many, many sequels to the greatest horror show in human history. God. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. As we go, I have done the math because I'm not really a math whiz, but I looked at things and I did the computations necessary for me. Along the way, we're going to literally roll the dice. We're going to put you like a time traveler into some of the places and times we're talking about. And then we're going to roll the dice to see if you get the plague and then if you survive.

18:33 Good God, it's that random. Yeah. There weren't like.

18:37 Every single human died at the same rate. If you got it, girl, it didn't matter if you were. Now, this is the first wave. Subsequent waves are more brutal. They're less virulent, but they kill mostly children. Then there's a wave that kills mostly men. But this first wave is a flood. Everybody drowns if it's over your head.

18:58 You know what I mean?

19:01 Oh, my God. It's too early for this, but we're going to do it.

19:03 We're going to do it.

19:03 We're going to do it because it's really interesting. By the way, I forgot to mention.

19:07 Yes.

19:08 One of the television shows that I totally watched the heck out of was, what was it? The Decameron? The Decameron? Oh, yeah. It's Tony Hale's.

19:16 Oh, I love, yeah, the Decameron, the short stories.

19:19 Loved it.

19:20 Well, it was a pre, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

19:21 It was all based on, well, yeah, it was based on the short stories. Yes, exactly.

19:25 That the Canterbury Tales is based on the Decameron.

19:29 Oh, we're going to have so much fun.

19:33 Oh my God. All right, so we're going to start with a story to get us in the mood, to get us into the Middle Ages, to just set our boundaries around us. Join me, Mary, in the city of Kaffa. Geographically, you're looking at the globe. This is in the Crimea, kind of the north coast of the Black Sea, present-day Fiducia.

19:56 We are hearing these names. This is a hot spot, of course, presently. At the moment... The reason the city of CAFA is a big deal is because, again, if you're looking at a map, it's kind of halfway between Europe and the Middle East. Kind of. Where if you're trading between the Europeans and the Chinese and the Indians, this is a great stop. So the Genoese specifically have their shit in CAFA. And this is helping them become the Italian traders that we all know and love because they got this thing. To even build their shit in CAFA...

20:28 They had to have a relationship with the Mongols because the Mongols own the deal. And so there's some rough stuff. We had to get through the Crusades. We've had some bumps and some bruises. But for the most part, up until this point, the Mongols and the Genoese have found this to be mutually beneficial.

20:44 Around what time are we talking about? 1340s.

20:47 They've had enough fights, though, that the city of Khaf itself has huge-ass walls because it's always great. And as you and I stand in the city of Kaffa right now, it's a bad spell between the Genoese and the Mongols. And there's been a two-year siege on the city. The Mongols are outside them walls. They're run by this guy named Yanni Beg. He's the leader of the Mongol army.

21:09 And he's pretty much cut off trade from like the land side. And the Genoese and the people in Kaffa are doing a little bit of trade from their boats, but they're kind of in fucked because they're just sort of in lockdown for the most part until this fucking thing ends. And as they're sitting there in Kaffa, what the fuck are we going to do? They notice two things at the same time. One, over there over the wall, the Mongol army is noticeably thinning and retreating. They seem to be ending this thing. That's great. And there's one group of them, though, coming straight towards the wall with a bunch of catapults. And we know what catapults are.

21:45 And we get it. Get down. Because something's coming over the walls, everybody. Run away. We don't know if it's going to be lava or rocks. Yeah, run away.

21:53 Exactly.

21:54 And so the people of Caffa... And they hear the... And what comes raining down on the city of Caffa, Mary, are the rotten corpses... Oh, my God. I knew you were going to say that. of the plague dead... Oh, my God.

22:06 I knew you were going to say that.

22:07 From the Mongol army. Oh, my God. Splat. Five years from then, the plague sweeps across the entirety of Europe and kills a lot of people.

22:34 So it started with the Mongols.

22:37 Well.

22:37 We don't know.

22:38 I'm going to get into some origin stuff. Because there's some nuance, and especially since me and Dr. Armstrong did our little post-2016 dance. But yeah, certainly this coincides. We can talk causation. But yeah, them bodies splat. And poof. Was it bats?

22:55 Just tell me, was it bats? No, we're not going to cut to the chase.

22:59 Bats, she asked me. Could it be bats? Could it be bats? But this, five years after these bodies splat, 75 million people died of the plague. And there's occasionally, I'm going to stop on numbers. 75 million people is an insane motherfucking number. 75 million people is an insane number. Fucking motherfucking number. Now, for one thing, there's only 150 million people that we know of on Earth. So that's half of everybody. But even if you take aside stats, like ratios, I'd like you to guess. The Spanish flu, as we know, huge killer. That happened in the 20th century when there were literally billions of people on Earth.

23:41 What's your best guess? You can make it as wild as you want for how many people died during the Spanish flu of 1918. One of the biggest global killers ever.

23:53 I would say hundreds of thousands.

23:55 Hundreds of thousands.

23:56 Yeah.

23:56 Okay.

23:57 Right?

23:57 It was 50 million.

23:59 Oh, my God.

24:00 Can you believe it? 50 million, which is still less. Again, even taken into proportion, the 20th century with billions of people on Earth, the Spanish flu killed 50 million people. That's 25 million less than the plague. AIDS, to date, has killed 30 million people.

24:16 Oh, my God. I had a paltry little number, didn't I? Numbers are not my thing.

24:21 You were thinking it's all right. You were thinking like in Detroit?

24:26 What about the yellow fever? Do you have that one?

24:27 Yeah. COVID to date has killed 7 million people. 75 million people is a crazy, insane fucking number of people to have died. And before, if you can anywhere even conceptualize like, God, that's a lot of fucking people. By the end of the plague, like I told you, that was just the first wave killed 75 million people. 200 million people were killed by the plague at the end of it. It's an insane fucking number. It doesn't come fucking close, Mary. Nothing in human history comes anywhere fucking close to the number of people who died during the plague.

25:09 They called it the Black Death, not because of symptoms. That's a misconception. People talk about your hands turn black and shit like that. It was because of the feeling. The Black Death. Everybody's dead.

25:21 Oh, my God. Wow.

25:23 That name came from the feeling of what was going on. Yeah.

25:26 Nuts.

25:26 Okay, so here's your first character.

25:28 Okay.

25:28 Are you ready?

25:29 Okay.

25:31 You are Falco della Croce. What a guy. You're a father of four, you're 30 years old, and you live in the port city of Genoa, California. In December of 1347, and you're in a bit of a bind, Falco, because all these ships coming in from Caffa are being turned away, and it's really fucking up your trade. Right? Something's going on, and these boats that came from Caffa are getting turned away everywhere, and they're saying everybody's dying. And they're saying, like, everybody's dying. Like, there's, like, a ship of a thousand dudes, and, like, ten of them are alive. Oh, wow. And they've been turned away from everywhere, and it's just, like, problem, problem, problem, problem.

26:10 And you catch wind, Falco... That on one of these boats that ain't getting no harbor and everyone's dying is one survivor who happens to be a very dear, close, personal friend of yours. And he's gotten a message to you that says, man, I'm alive out here and we're starving though, those of us who are alive. And he also has a way to make it worth your while if you can help him out. You are emotionally motivated because you know and love this person and you're now financially motivated. Falco, you have several choices, of course, but I'm going to give you multiple choices. Do you say... Sorry, bud.

26:45 I can't. This is really gross and weird. I wish I could help. But you stay in the city of Genoa and continue to just keep an eye on things. Do you say, I'm so sorry. No, I can't help you. And this is fucking weird. I'm going to go home to Pienzia. This is my hometown out of Genoa because this is gross. Or do you, absolutely, buddy, a friend in need, man.

27:05 I'm going to help you out.

27:07 Oh, my God. What do you do?

27:08 I would probably... That one. I would probably that one.

27:11 Me too.

27:11 Help him out. Because you have no, because at the time, no concept.

27:15 Yeah.

27:15 Of what it was, right?

27:16 Me too. I would probably, yeah. I would probably do the same thing. I'm easily helping start a plague, even with all of my knowledge.

27:22 Well, I mean, because you had no, I mean, no.

27:25 You don't know. And some people are superstitious and some people have various things, but no, if it's your buddy and you can make some money and yeah.

27:31 Okay.

27:31 Yeah.

27:32 Yeah.

27:33 Well, it doesn't really matter. I'll tell you what doesn't matter. Because the plague comes to Genoa and Pienza. It doesn't matter. Your dice that we're about to roll would have been the same regardless of what you chose. It's just a moral... What I'm saying... And the reason I ask this is because people are going through these moral dilemmas. What do I do with my mom? What do I do with my baby? What do I do with my business? What do I do for myself? And it doesn't fucking matter.

27:54 It doesn't fucking matter. So we're going to roll the dice for you. And here's how our dice game goes. Okay. I told you half of everybody died.

28:02 Yeah.

28:03 That does not mean you have a 50-50 chance in the plague. Okay? 50... If you actually got infected, if the bacteria that is the plague, Yersinia pestis, gets into your body, your best case, best chance of survival is 18%.

28:20 Oh.

28:21 Okay.

28:23 So we're going to roll two dice. First dice is if you get infected, and then we're going to roll a second dice to see... if you survive.

28:29 Okay.

28:29 Okay.

28:30 I'm down. I am so intrigued to know how it, how it.

28:34 Yeah. I can't wait to tell you.

28:35 Okay.

28:37 So, um, oh, and here's something else to know. Here's to explain sort of what your odds are. So Yersinia pestis is the bacterium that causes the plague, which I think is, you would agree a great name for a band.

28:47 Absolutely. I'm sure there probably is one.

28:49 There's gotta be. I didn't look that up. There's gotta be. Ladies and gentlemen, we are Yersinia pestis. And then just they throw dead bodies on the ground. Well, let's say some of this hard rock Yersinia pestis gets into your biome, girl.

29:05 Okay.

29:06 And you have the plague. There's three ways that you can be infected. Like what systems? This is to your point about bodily symptoms. This is going to curl your toes. If it gets into your lymphatic system, system you get you the bubonic plague and it's called that because you got the bubos big welts big uh not welts big um bulbous gourds yep they appear in your groin your neck, your armpit.

29:35 Yikes.

29:36 Okay? They're not contagious unless you lance it, which people did, of course. I know. Yeah.

29:44 But if them bulbos, do they know what time it is?

29:47 It's not even noon, you guys. It's not even. This is not even me.

29:50 And it's that coffee.

29:53 And Dawn's lancing bulbos on me. Okay. Yeah, so if, you know, and that is the only one that you have a chance of surviving. The people who got bulbos and nothing else had the 18% chance of survival. Oh, wow. If the bulbous, if it spreads, the complications from that, right? If it gets into your blood, then you have the septicemic plague. This will reveal itself in fever, blisters, rash. Basically, your blood clots and then seeps. Your body just floods with blood. All things considered, though, and it's not contagious. Oh.

30:31 If I got to pick my plague, I think I'd probably pick the semi-septic. Zero percent chance of survival. Zero. You wake up fine. You're coughing at lunch. You're dead by fucking dinner. But it's not contagious. You're dead to, you know, all things considered.

30:46 What a dud.

30:48 The third kind... Is called the pneumonic plague. And that's like our COVID friend. It's the one that gets into your lungs and makes you cough. It is highly contagious. Also 0% survival rate. No one coughed and lived. If you cough, you bleed, you're dead. Just the bulbos, slight chance.

31:05 Okay. So.

31:07 What we're going to do when we roll the dice, the first one is, did you get it? I'm going to give you a 25% chance of not getting it, which is pretty good. Oh, okay. Because I live in the woods.

31:18 And I don't have any friends.

31:21 I don't do anything. You wash your hands just because you like it.

31:26 I make my own clothes. And then I'm.

31:29 Going to give you an 18% survival rate, which is also great. So I'm giving you better odds than an average person. Mm-hmm. but we're just going to see. So the first thing is we're going to roll a four-sided die and you just pick a number between one and four whenever you're ready. Okay. Three. It's three. You didn't get infected. Falco.

31:50 That's right. I'm going to play the lottery today.

31:53 Falco, congratulations. You just get to go home and watch. Your kids die. Oh, that's okay. But do you know what? It could be worse. It could be worse. Oh, listen. With that, we are going to take a short break.

32:09 Why didn't I pick a nice thing like cumin spice or something like Wayne did?

32:14 I mean, here I am. Oh, it goes downhill from here. When we come back from the break, we're going to talk about... How the Pope fucked this whole thing up? Oh. Because I told you, the plague kills everybody at the same rate. And we used to think that the only reason you won wars or got sick was because of something you did right or wrong with God. And all of a sudden, Jews, Muslims, babies, priests, they're all dying at the exact same rate, man. Uh-oh. And what the plague starts to do to the fabric of society Hey, before we rejoin the pestilence, a moment to acknowledge those who always lance my boobos, my patrons. The latest to jump in bed with the pod include Matthew C. Alice F.

33:21 and fuzz bubbles. Their good judgment and generosity keeps me stacked with books and highlighters and ensures that the history never stops coming. Hey, I also got to thank everyone who is coming out to the live shows, man. Hills Public School, first Thursdays at Flappers in Burbank. It's so nuts. It's so fun. Okay? Not only are we filling the house on a Thursday night, but the clips from the show are going viral. Yeah. And they're bringing in new folks all the time. It's so exciting. So if you find yourself in L.A. and the calendar lines up, girl, come health with us live. Tickets are in the show notes.

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34:17 And what I want to do now is.

34:21 Sort of Set the scene like any good horror movie, right? You see the monster. You see the bloodshed. You see the face ripped off. Don't go in that room. Don't go in that room. And then we go, brrring. And we start with, like, a lovely sunny day in a station wagon rolling down the driveway. And you think, oh, what happened between this and the blood face, right? So we're going to start now with, like, oh, look. It's Europe in 1347.

35:04 Oh, yes, please.

35:06 And everything's going so well. Oh, yeah. And it really is, man. Comparatively, I mean, the Middle Ages technically starts with the fall of Rome.

35:23 All right.

35:23 So you're talking like 500 or so. At this point, by the 1300s, the people are like, things are so much better than they were before. We have gone through the Crusades. What a bloodbath. I mean, there are scenes during the Crusades of people wading in blood. They killed so many people, their ankle deep in blood. Quentin would be like, this is too much. Right?

35:46 And.

35:51 And we have, the way society is set up now is there's three tiers of society, and they are rigid. You're born in one, and you stay in that one. Okay? God. You've got those who fight, a.k.a. the nobility, your knights, your kings, your feudal lords. You have those who pray, the clergy, the pope, the priests. And you have those who work, peasants. Everybody else.

36:23 And that's where the women's are.

36:25 Well, they certainly aren't in the top two unless they're shooting out baby kings. So if you looked at a pie of all the people, 5% are nobility. 5% are clergy. 90% of the human bodies walking around are those who work. Exactly. Sounds right. Seems kind of equitable comparatively. It's like we only have 1%. They had a whole 10% that managed to be at the top. And this is, like I said, rigid.

36:55 Those two, the nobility and the clergy, can fucking around with each other. That can sort of meld because the king is ordained by God and the pope decides of God, but the king also protects the peonies, right? So they kind of fuck around. The work, the labor, the peasants, we just do whatever the fuck. The Crusades are over, but that was terrible. We're still having our babies, naturally, so that's just like a horror show that happens sort of constantly. You're living and dying in the Middle Ages.

37:20 No epidurals, I'm guessing.

37:23 And we've got disease, man. We know about typhoid. We've had that. We have malaria, leprosy, smallpox. We also know what it's like for just a disease to come through and just kill everybody, right? So think about how bad something would have to be For these people to go, what the hot fuck is this?

37:47 You know?

37:49 What the hot fuck is this? And to give you a real clear picture of what it must have felt like to be a person in 1348 and for the plague to come wandering into town, I'm going to put you and I very specifically in the city of Avignon, France. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it's burned through Italy. It's done been doing its plague thing, which is killing. I said, you wake up fine.

38:17 You're coughing at lunch. You're dead by dinner. God, thousands of people are dying a day, Mary. Piles of bodies in the streets. Bring home to dead. Not kidding. That is true. Piles. We run out of consecrated ground. There's nowhere to bury our dead anymore. The people who are supposed to take care of you die next to you.

38:37 Hours later, you walk in. It's just a house full of death. The Pope, okay, lives in Avignon. At that particular time, because long story, I learned it from Dr. Dosti. Don't think I don't know it, but I'll spare you why Avignon, France happens to be where the Pope lives. But that is it. And what that means is there's a lot of literate people there. More than usual. Only 10% of the population is literate. But because the Pope lives there, there's a lot. Which means they've heard. Yeah.

39:06 About this shit that's in Italy and it's crossing and like dead in a day and thousands and dying. So the Pope and the priests and everybody have been closed off. And Pope Clement VI is presently walking between two giant bonfires all day. Because that's what he was told to do and he's alive and he's doing fine. But a bunch of the other priests, they ain't even going out anymore.

39:24 They're not given last rites. They are not consecrating ground. And guess what? They're also dying at the exact same time. rate as the peasantry, at the exact same rate as the trade. It's everybody.

39:34 Even as sequestered as they were.

39:35 Yeah.

39:36 Oh, yeah.

39:38 But the pope, he himself seems to be fine, okay? But the people who are experiencing the plague are— are like, um, so like we're dying, which is bad, but like, I've always been more concerned with my immortal soul. All of us have. I'm not being buried on solid sacred ground. I am not getting my last rites. I am going to spend eternity in motherfucking hell, man. Where are all of the clergy? That's why we did this 90%, 10% bullshit was because you guarded the city gates with your bodies and you guarded my soul from hell. That was the deal, man. Like, where is everybody? And so... So here's what the Pope says. The Pope comes out from his two fires. Not literally, but he writes it down.

40:23 I'm so intrigued by that. I'm so intrigued by that. He comes out and he's like, okay.

40:26 Take two fires and call me.

40:28 In the morning. He's like, all right, listen, God called. Oh. Okay. God called, and ding, yes, God, good news. It's okay, and your soul won't go to hell if you give your last confession to whoever. Oh. If there's just whoever's around you, they don't have to be clergy, and they can even be a woman.

40:48 Okay.

40:49 I was like, wait, I'm sorry, what? And he was like, it can be a woman. And they're like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Did you just say that we can still get into heaven if we give our last rites to a woman? And he was like, I don't know, fine. Okay. Then the second thing he says is, also, God called back. Ding. Yes, God.

41:07 He said, totally cool for you to just dump them bodies in the river. I've consecrated the whole river. River's now sacred. You go ahead and dump your bodies in the river. They'll still go to heaven. Then he says, also as an added bonus, God said that I'm going to sing this on a missive, which is something in Latin.

41:25 You kind of sing it. And if you hear it, you've been blessed. Like that's how you receive it because they can't read. And if you hear this missive is very special, you, whoever you are, are going to get 260 years off of your purgatory sentence. You're welcome.

41:40 Purgatory.

41:40 And then he fucking left. He bails. He fucking bails. All paperwork stops. And 60,000 people, 60% of the city of Avignon dies over the course of like the next six weeks. Consider what that means when everything in your life, your faithful life is literal. and eternal. And let's also consider how inflexible the church has been prior to this point.

42:26 You can give your last confession to a woman, huh? That's interesting, because we just spent centuries butchering each other over who held the bowl. You know what I mean? Are you fucking nuts? Right, right.

42:41 Right.

42:42 Okay. So, here's your next character. Oh. Because I said all papal work stops. And this is like- Papal work. You heard me. Papal work. See what I did there? So funny. So one of the things the Pope did was like help out rich bitches, right? Yeah. And this one rich bitch in particular, her name is Marie Bourbon.

43:03 She comes to the Pope in the middle of all this horseshit.

43:06 Is she why Bourbon's called Bourbon?

43:07 I don't know.

43:08 Okay, I just wanted to know.

43:09 I'm ashamed. I wish I knew that.

43:11 Sorry.

43:11 Sorry. She's married. Her husband died. Endless thinks she did it. And they're going to kill her. And she's like, I'm so innocent. I'm so innocent. I'm going to go into the plague to the Pope himself. And he's going to say, you innocent girl. God will not give me the plague. The Pope is going to let you know. And then what?

43:31 Then you suck a butt, that's what. And I get to continue being queen and make all my money. You, Mary, are an attendant to Marie of Bourbon.

43:41 I ain't going. I ain't going. I ain't going.

43:45 You ain't going.

43:46 I ain't going there.

43:47 She's not going. Well, you know what? We've already told you the odds. You can stay. You can go. Girl, we're rolling the death dice. Oh, God. All right. We're rolling the death dice. First, pick a number one through four. Now, listen. You survived. Falco.

44:02 I did.

44:02 Falco made it.

44:03 He sure did. Using the same. I'm not going to use the same number.

44:06 I'm going to do one.

44:09 Nope. It's two. I almost said two.

44:12 Well, you didn't. Can I go back? No, you got the plague now. Oh, no. But here, you have an 18% chance of survival. Okay, I might get the one in my... So pick a number. You might.

44:20 You did it.

44:21 Feel. Talk to God. That's what a lot of people do. Burn some incense. Talk to a woman. Pick a number one through eight. Eight. It's one. Oh, son of a gun. Son of a bitch. You're dead.

44:34 Oh, okay. All right, then.

44:35 You know what I mean?

44:36 That's the other thing.

44:37 Plague's not great. You know. Marie of Bourbon, by the way, survives. She doesn't get the plague, but she goes home and her in-laws murder her. Oh, wow. Life's a bitch.

44:47 Life's a bitch.

44:54 We're in a position here. The people of Europe, we're in the middle of the first wave. This whole fuck, shit, fuck. This is nuts. Where is God? Is there a God? That's a big deal for any individual. It is a big deal for any population. It is hard to articulate the shattering of identity and sense of universe for a medieval person than for such a clear and immediate demonstration that you have not been doing it right. This isn't right.

45:26 Because the Jews are dying at the same rate as the Muslims are dying. There's no holy person that's spared. And the priests are scared. The priests won't come and do their fucking job. Wow. Okay. There were a lot of reactions to this, Mary.

45:41 Okay.

45:42 I'm going to give you some of my favorites. The people who lifted their heads and were like, okay, well, here's what I'm going to do. Okay. First we get, I think the group that I, this will shock no one. I suspect you and me would hold hands and skip our way right over to the hedonists. And the choreomaniacs. What?

46:05 Yeah.

46:06 The choreo? Dancing? Choreomaniacs.

46:08 Are they dancing?

46:09 Yeah.

46:09 Oh my God, that's what that means.

46:11 They were like, well, fuck. Let's dance, drink, fuck, do drugs, run around, have fun. Hedonists. Hedonists. choreomaniacs, sign me up, right? They were like, this is it. There is no God and we're all going to die. That's it, right?

46:27 Makes sense.

46:27 A lot of us did this during COVID, but you know, you can do it in a couple of weeks. Then you got the other side, the people who were like, I'll tell you what we've done wrong. Everything. We weren't good enough Christians. It is God. Everything's exactly the way it was. We were right.

46:38 We were right.

46:38 We were always right. It's all very right. It's just that we need to figure out the thing, the thing we're doing wrong. And so they go on pilgrimages and to holy sites, and they bring the plague with them. Oh. And they give sacrifices. They sacrifice children. Is that what he wants? No. Like Abraham, he wants a baby.

46:55 No.

46:56 No, that didn't work. So there's also a real leaning into orthodoxy and, like, the rigor. My personal favorite is ones to make a big scene during the first wave of the plague. They really swung for the princesses. You're going to love this. They're called the flagellants. No.

47:18 Okay.

47:19 Oh, I think I know. Okay. When I read it, I'll tell you, there's two things that immediately, if you're a linguist, you think, okay, flagellants. Do you mean flagellants?

47:35 Yeah.

47:38 Or do you mean like flagged? Oh, with the cat-o'-nine-tails on your back. Yeah, which is it? Oh, my goodness. And now, granted, you whip someone enough, they're going to fart.

47:47 They're going to fart.

47:48 So it's a little bit of both. But in this case, the flagellants were a group. This is fucking nuts, Mary. They appear on the scene. They come from nothing. Just like, poof, simultaneous decision made. The thing we gotta do, guys, is wear hoods, loincloths, beat the fuck out of ourselves. Whip, cut, slice ourselves. They lived communally, and they were nomadic. Okay?

48:26 Like I said, we'd never heard of these fucking guys until 1348. They come out in huge numbers. Whoa. In England and in Italy, and it could have been because there's this vacuum of clergy, right? I mean, 5% of the population was clergy and 50% of them died. It could have been just like, well, like when a child mimics...

48:50 We're making it up here, right? They were sort of trying to mimic Christ's walk to the cross. The idea is we will... We will treat ourselves the way Christ was treated before the sacrifice, before we die. Oh, my gosh. And this was sort of the logic, to whatever extent logic was even present.

49:14 Yeah.

49:14 And here's an example. If you live in a town, the flat flagellants come around. Here's what it looked like. They come in town possibly by the hundreds.

49:23 What?

49:24 They're all wearing white hoods. They find the church in your town and they all enter the church at once. Then, once they're all outside, it's fucking nuts, they burst out of one specific door that is like facing a certain direction, something that they determine. Then they lay their bodies out on the ground outside of that door, usually in some sort of meaningful shape, maybe a cross. One of them stands up and just whips and beats and cuts the people laying on the ground. I mean, they say, they describe it, the people who saw blood splashing. Then that person lays down. The next person gets up and does his turn. And he lays down and they just. The church, who's limping.

50:15 Yes.

50:16 Okay. And has, is losing their, to whatever extent they can still send out communication and stuff. At first it's like, whatever, man. Fucking times are weird. And then, and they're saying they're mimicking Christ. Who knows? Yeah. They eventually are like, this is fucking weird, man. And they're like, enough. Done. No more flagellant. They're all excommunicated. You see any of these guys?

50:39 They're out. They're not Christians. They're out. Two, don't let them into your towns. So people stop letting them into their towns. Interesting. Most importantly, they're dying at the same rate as anybody else. Oh. Even if, let's just say these guys lived, maybe it'd be like, okay. I mean. But they're dying at the same rate.

50:58 Okay.

50:58 They died. are never mentioned again. They wipe no historical record of another flatulence again within two years.

51:06 So they came, they did their thing, and they were gone.

51:10 By the hundreds. This enormous movement.

51:13 We'll try this.

51:16 We're good.

51:18 Try it.

51:19 We're thinking about doing a bowl cut and wearing Nikes. We're going to try it.

51:29 Why not?

51:30 All right.

51:32 All right.

51:34 It's time to roll the dice for you again, Mary.

51:36 What?

51:37 What now?

51:37 Am I going to be a flogger?

51:39 You're in the town. Okay? Everyone's died except for you and your whole family. You're like the last one. You've lost your pope. You've lost your priest. Because clearly you've done something right. You've done something right. And you see the flagellants come to town. You look great in white. You're thinking, I'm going to join them.

51:57 I can't hurt that much. I can't hurt that much.

51:59 Do you or do you not join the flagellants?

52:02 Do I have to roll the dice to find out if I do?

52:04 No, you get to choose if you do. No, hell no. No, no, no.

52:06 And no.

52:07 No. No. All right. Pick a number. One through four. Three.

52:10 It's a one.

52:14 Damn.

52:15 So I die anyways?

52:16 You got it? No, you've got it. Now we're going to see if you die. Pick a number one through eight to see if you die.

52:21 God. Four?

52:24 Eight.

52:25 I almost said eight again.

52:30 Wait, I'm hearing that.

52:32 I'm hearing that song the Pope sang, which is so bizarre that he would say, anybody who hears this? But they didn't have like, right?

52:39 It's bizarre, isn't it? Because, I mean, this is the other thing. They started putting out their missives. They didn't make a cassette, right? They didn't make a cassette. That's kind of the beauty of music at the time. There's obviously lower centuries from recorded music. So, and in senses. So your senses... really were transcendent. People were realizing that like, there's things that my senses experience that make me feel divine, connected to the divine. Music, as we all know, is one of those things. And when you stand in a church and music echoes through those domes, you feel something amazing.

53:15 Incense.

53:18 You smell certain things, and you are sort of transported, and it's crazy. So the church is like, we're going to get... But yeah, the divinity of you hearing me sing, and even if it's in Latin and you don't understand it, you've received the Spirit through me. You're welcome.

53:33 I get that, but it's only for the people that were.

53:36 But he could also send it. Now, if you could, then that's the importance of a priest that travels. So you get the thing in Latin and I've learned the song.

53:42 So now I take this.

53:43 Correct.

53:44 Don't get the plague.

53:45 I go, good news, everybody. The Pope sang this to me. Gather around and you too will get 260 years out of purgatory. It's a bargain basement. We really feel like we're giving you a good deal here, you guys. You've died three times, but you did survive one. We've lived, we've died. We're getting to the end of the first wave.

54:11 I told you it lasted five years. Mongol army comes in through Italy, up through France, England. It's just burning up. We can see it and it's just, and it's going and it's going. Everyone gets sick. And it's particularly bad in the summer. And the summers are just these. I mean, people are dying constantly. But those who live, summers are the worst. And then the summer of 1353 is over.

54:39 That was kind of a good summer, actually. Less people died. 1354, oh, hey. Nobody died. 55, 56, 57. The summer of 1358. I mean, we are doing great. And then, you know, again, for a movie, this is the part the monster's dead. Right? Yeah.

54:57 Yeah.

54:58 Blood pooling behind his head. Summer of 1360. The plague is back.

55:05 No way.

55:07 It's back. Thousands of bodies. People in the streets. You wake up fine. You're fucking dead by dinner. This just happened. Six years. My daughter's six. I know how long six years can be. What the hell? That is painful. And this motherfucking thing comes back. Give or take every six to ten years for 300 years. Sometimes it's gone for 15 years. Sometimes there's a big long gap where nobody dies of the plague. I mean, nobody really. And then there's one, for example, comes back in 1623 and it stays for 20 years. Mary, it is just like. Wow.

55:51 A fact of life. So when we come back for part two of the plague, it is plague stories, girl.

56:00 Okay.

56:01 Now we get into, we're going to talk about like, now we got it. Now it's a sin. Now great grandma lived through the plague. And you know what I mean? We've got generations of experience with this thing. We're going to talk about the theories at the time for treatment. How they started to try. Oh, my God.

56:18 We got a bloodlet.

56:19 We're going to talk about our theories of prevention. Okay. You know, the spooky bird face people. We're going to talk about that guy. We're going to follow the plague. We're going to go. We've been hanging out in Western Europe. We're going to follow this motherfucking thing into Scandinavia. We're going to figure out how it got like Finland. How the fuck did Finland deal with the plague? We're going to learn about that. Then we're going to learn the cool shit that started coming because with all great piles of shit groweth beautiful flowers at the end of the day.

56:47 We know that. And we are going to find the literature and the art that came from this time that is worth it and how it did shatter society for the better in some ways.

57:00 Okay.

57:01 I am all in.

57:03 I'm in. I want to know the stories. I want to know more, more. Give me more.

57:07 Oh, my God. All right. We'll see you next time. Thank you. I know, right? Now, Mary said she wanted more, and you know what? I got more. Okay, our next episode, part two of The Black Death, Mary and I are going to chase the plague around the world with the best and worst of the plague stories. Okay, and we'll also discuss the many theories on where this darn thing came from in the first place. Right, not the fleas, but like where do the rats get it? You know what I mean? Like the origin, origin of the plague.

57:46 And spoiler alert, we don't know for sure where it came from, but the theories include earthquakes and outer space. So buckle up. Until then, our theme song was composed and performed by Kat Perkins. A reminder that you can find my sources, links to the books, documentaries, and articles I reference in the summary of this episode, or by emailing us, hilfpodcast at gmail.com. or messaging us on social media at Hilf Podcast. If you'd like to leave a little cash on the nightstand, I am so grateful. Find me on Patreon or buy me a coffee. Links to these and more are all in the show notes. This has been Hilf. History, I'd like to fuck with Don Brody.

58:31 I'm Don Brody, reminding you that history is a party and everybody's coming. She'll turn you on and get you smart. It is 12 hours of triple X hardcore learning.