Dan Snow is taking Dan Jones places

By my count, this is only the third time we have a work together. - Oh is it? - Yeah, it's a bit like, to be fair to us, De Niro and Puccino, is it? - Hey! - Of course. - That's exactly what I'm saying. - No, I think we talked about the Knights Templar back in the 70s. - Oh, that's fun. Yeah, yeah. - And then I saw you running me. - Yeah, that was nice. - But apart from that, people find it hard to get their heads around that these are two- - Well, I've taken credit for more of your books than I can relate on this podcast. I honestly, I people around the world come up to me and go, "I love your books in the Middle Ages." And I go, and I go, "Thank you very much." - Yeah, I take credit for history. - Never ever, well, there's a lot of credit. Play your credits, go around when it comes to your books. And because also people are very earnest, 'cause people develop very great relationships authors. So I never want to go, "That's not me, leave me alone." I always just go, "I'm so glad." And then I always send your text and I let you know. So, the love ends up with you. - I think that's the right thing to do. I don't think you want to puncture people's dream on the spot. Let them find out themselves afterwards, or not at all. - But not, hopefully they don't. (upbeat music) - This is Bad Blood, the final chapter. A deep dive into the evidence against Elizabeth Holmes as we follow her federal trial. - Order John Kerry-- - I'm John Kerry. - That's the story of the Theranos deception. - And since then, I've learned a lot more about how she did it, how she got away with it for so long. - This is what happens when you work to change things. - With every new delay, every new development. - First they think you're crazy, then they fight you. - It seems less and less certain the prosecution can pull it off. - And then all of a sudden you change the world. - In the years leading up to this trial, things have gotten complicated. 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Dan, welcome to the show. - Thanks man, thanks for having me. - I want to talk today about the greatest places that we've visited in the course of doing history, because I think one of the great privileges and pleasures of this job is it kind of takes you around the world, and I don't know. Is there a constant you haven't been to? - There is not. I have, I mean, I've been to Antarctica, although I've still on the ice off Antarctica, which I think counts. But I've spent three weeks trapped in a vessel in the ice of the weddle sea, and some absolute knobs said to me, "Yeah, I'm in Antarctica, I have you." But it's like, if you're in lime bay, if you're in lime, if you're in the gutter in the Bristol channel for three weeks, I think you're allowed to say you've been to Europe, aren't you? - I think you are. - I think so. - I think you've been to Antarctica. You've certainly been closer than I have. But what I want to do is talk about some of the most memorable historical places that you've been in the past. And I'll throw in some of my own. I thought maybe we could start with the last place. I think I saw you, which was in Ronnie Mead. Because we were down there. It was quite a cold day, as I recall. But we had rather a nice time talking about Magna Carta there. It was 2015 was the big anniversary for Magna Carta. So that was the 800th anniversary. And I live about three miles away from Ronnie Mead. So it's, so, despite all your travels, actually, you came home, so you've been down there before. I've been down there a lot, but it was brilliant going with you. And it's a very particular, it's quite fun. Sometimes you go to historic sites, don't you, where the geology or the farming, or there's been urbanization and there's almost no reason for being there. When you're at Ronnie Mead, it all makes sense. It's like a water meadow, the tems as they can see it. And you can imagine it, and you to explain to me that it was flat, but it's damped. It's a safe place for meetings. It's a place where people go to parley. And actually the geography is quite important there, isn't it? Well, in 1215, and listeners to our regular fixture, in this is Difor, will cast their minds back and remember when we were talking about King John. But in this time, there was, you know, you had the barrens very angry with John for all of his manipulations of the law and all of his oppressions and all of his tyrannies, camped in stains, and then you had the king at Windsor. And it was this sort of meeting point in the middle where because of the geography of the river, it was almost impossible to launch an ambush. Yes. Whenever we think about historical places, I think it's always worth trying to go. Do you agree? Yes. Trying to narrate a story about a place and you don't know what the physicality of that spot is like. You can often miss the most obvious things about the story. There are two kinds of stories in the world. And there are those who go away on holiday and lie on a sun lounger and chill out. And then there are those who immediately scale the cliff behind the hotel to go and look at the castle or the gun batter. Do I need to ask which one? No, well, and you like about you, Dan Jones, is you are absolutely in the last category because I think it does matter. And when you're writing wonderful narrative history that you do or talking on the pod so eloquently, it's nice to be able to say now that, probably that slope is, you know, the gravels rain boots. And it, which is true, it is true. And it's like the first world war, you walk across the psalm after it rains, which is most days. And within five minutes, you've got a plate of clay, the size of a plate, a large plate thing, a salmon serving dish on each foot because that is the nature of the soil. So you're like, and that is something, actually, you can read about it. You're like, well, I'm on feet when they're all complaining about it. You know, there's certain things that in the comfort of your own library, it's very hard to internalize. And so I have enjoyed enormously going to places and getting that sense of things. And as a view through the writing, I can tell you, always trying, whenever I talk to you, I'm always going somewhere to do some research. And I do think if you're privileged enough to that, it is abscessantly, really helps to the geography, the geology, the weather can really help to sort of, just fill the filler picture out when you turn the story. And I guess the interesting about running me, I like, last thing I'd say about my image is critically, is I do think that in 2015, we. So it did feel important because at the moment, we are now resting again with this. And actually, it's the oldest question in human existence, which is, how do we, normal people, exert any control over those who rule over us? - Right. - And that question seems quite lively again now today, right? How do we, go hang on mate, person who rules over us for reasons that sometimes I'm slightly obscure, you can't, we need you not to do certain things, we need to, and I think that feels to me when I was at school and going up, I thought those questions were settled, turns out that it's not settled anymore. If you're in China, if you're in Russia, if you're in other countries, those are really very live questions like that. And Magna Carta is, that's essentially what it's about, right? - Well, it's interesting that we're sitting here marveling somewhat. I mean, they're not just sitting here in this room at this moment, but sitting here in society, marveling at the idea that these individual leaders can be out there, making decisions and then just kind of doing stuff. Because for the way I say it, for the most part in human history, that's been normal. - That's normality. - And the questions about how do you restrain a leader who really goes a bit off grid, as it were, off the rails. But we being of the same generation have grown up through probably the most unusual time of human history. And precious in which we probably grew up in the high point of the rule of law, of international norms. - Yeah, not everywhere, but so it's the kind of large being like, okay, we really do have restraining mechanisms on individuated power. And all of that seems to be regressing towards the historic moment. - It does seem like that, but yeah. - Running me to close to home for me. - Yeah, I grew up nearby, and I'm a landstone where you've chosen it. - But what about you? - Well, I've, weirdly, I've also chosen once close, so I don't even be embarrassed if we both came promising to tell stories of the far off and exotic, but I guess this is a landscape and a seascape that's very close to me. The soul is the strip of water, for those of you don't know, between on the south coast of England, between the Isle of White, which is a sort of a diamond-shaped island off the south coast. You up Port Smith and Haley Island in the east, and it runs all the way through to her amazing geology. Oh, world's oldest boatbuilding site has been found there. A mesolithic boatbuilding site, it's the Stone Age boat, and so you've got hollowed out canoe, evidence hollowed out canoe. World's oldest, you've got, and then you've just got a, very predominantly, lots of Romans, Vespasian as a young legionary commander, invades, Dr. Pazpaz, the Claudian invasion of the '40s AD. He invades and captures the Isle of White, we know that. And then you get lots of Anglosax and Viking activity. You've got the big cities of Southampton, where Henry V leads the leaves to. - Where do you stand on Southampton? There's a great rivalry for international viewers and listeners between Port Smith and the nearby town of Southampton. - Well, I live close to Southampton, so I'm afraid I'm a Southampton guy. - What's the name in Port Smith for Southampton? - The wonderful saints. - That was the scum. - I may have got that right. - It's the, no, there's an antipathy between the two cities. It's only neighbors can have. So Portsmouth, great naval base. Henry VIII does a lot of work there, and then subsequently, that's the site of HMS Victory now, and it's a wonderful, it's also Britain's still Britain's premier naval base. And to Alhampton's more commercial trading city, very interesting position on the outs, where two rivers converge, and it's got this beautiful deep water harbour, titanically some Southampton, Henry VIII leaves to Alhampton. D-Day roughly speaking, a huge number of the largest ships from the largest fleet ever assembled in human history. In June, 1944, they leave from Southampton, Portsmouth, other Ports from there, and the Solent, which the stretch of water was so busy, it was said you could walk from one side to the other without getting your feet wet, yeah. - So, I mean, I cannot tell you. So in a way, it's sort of the epicenter of naval history, really, in the end. - I think so, I like to think of the episode of all history. - Yes, naval history in particular, maritime history, a lot of very important maritime history. Which is kind of your nerd specialty, right? - No specialty. - You're a naval. - Yeah, maritime. - Yeah, absolutely, for sure. Until 1830, when George Stevenson got that old train running down between Liverpool and Manchester, if you had a heavy object and you want to take it somewhere, you did it on the water, you did it by boat. And you see this, at the very door of our species, you see it with stonehenge, whatever it is. And it's so that the sea, if you looked out to the sea, now it looks empty, one enormous contingent, can't pass carrying the entire gross natural products of a small country every week. But the rest of the sea looks quite empty. And the sea would have looked busy until the modern ones. So they would have been fishing boats, they would have been coastal traders, they would have been passing ships, they would have been little pirates, whatever it might have been. The seas around Britain, the seas around France, the seas of the Mediterranean, would have just been crowded with sails. That's where humans did their business. It's where they traded, traveled, moved. And that's something I think it is difficult for us to get our heads around them. - Well, so in a way, that sounds a bit like a kind of unseen revolution in human history. But I was, I talk a lot about the pain revolution at the beginning of the 20th century and pain effectively became somewhat optional with the availability of anesthetic and its introduction into everyday life as well as the medical system. As being one of the massive revolutions that we kind of forget about, we live on the other side of it. So I wonder if we've lived through a similar one in terms of transport where it's so hard for us to imagine the world when Seaborn Power was and was everything. - And you've read about this so beautifully, but now if you look, show us on a map, the blue bit is a sea six of barrier. And on the map, there's highway, the highway map, the motorway map here. And you can, there's these big arteries of travel, you get from London to Manchester really easily. As you well know, until very recently, the links between Brittany, Cornwall, Normandy, Southern England, Norfolk and the Low Countries, absolutely vastly more important than the links between North and Manchester, right? So you would, in terms of language marriage, what a power structure. And trans maritime empires would have been very, very common. And so that has been a revolution. We see the waters, the barrier, the water traditionally was a bridge, a bridge in places. And so that has been a challenge of telling that story a little bit. People just go, you know what? I mean, yeah, and that's just madness. It doesn't make sense. I don't travel across water. It's pain, I feel ill. Yeah, I feel ill. Damn, where's one of the best places? Little further away, where's one of the best places you've been? The medieval aristocracy had many virtues, but dressing subtly wasn't one of them. Some outfits looked less like Lord of the Manor and more escaped upholstery. Which is one reason I like quince. They make the opposite. Timeless pieces in premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere and marino wool. I've been wearing one of their soft cashmere sweaters lately and these 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters start at just $60. Everything at quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. Find your next four favorites at quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when quince asks where you heard about them, let them know. It was, this is history. It's the best way to support the show. Well, so one of my favorite places that I've visited is probably the Templar tunnels in Acca. This is northern Israel, just near the Lebanese border. And you can, these dates to the era of the Crusades, so there's sort of high middle ages, but they're tunnels that run under the city from what was probably the Templar based through to the port. It's somewhere that I had a really interesting time visiting and don't think I could have really got into the history of this particular bit of history without seeing. I found that this took me into both the real history and the sort of the mythology of a subject, which, in this case, is the Knights Templar. Gosh, nearly 10 years ago, I read a book about the Templars. And you can't really go into Templar history hoping that you won't encounter Templar mythology as well. And there's a really interesting place in the city of Acca in Israel where you can sort of get a feel for both. Acca was once the capital of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. After the first Crusade, Jerusalem was in Christian hands, but after Saladin, Jerusalem was lost. And so Acca comes to toehold, doesn't it? Acca became the capital and eventually the last city standing of the Crusader Kingdom. And the Templars set up one of their great headquarters in this town and had tunnels that seemed to have run from the Templar headquarters to the port. So they could possibly so they could have made taxes, but probably just to give ease of access. And you can still go down into these tunnels today. I have to talk about my head. There are a couple of hundred meters long. And in themselves, they aren't particularly spectacular. They're tunnels. But they take you into this world firstly of the Templars in their real crusading historical setting. In this time when there was this coming together of religion and of military conquest, and of trade, and of all of these things sort of piled together in this really quite small bit of the Mediterranean, of the Eastern Mediterranean. But just by virtue of saying Templar tunnels, it implies this-- What the hell were they up to? And that I found so fascinating when I was doing a lot of work on the Templars and still do now, because it's an organization where people almost-- I mean, they want them in mythology to be-- No, you're in this position as a historian. When you start saying, well, I don't think the Templars necessarily did hide the secret bloodline of Christ and take a load of treasure up to Scotland and the hide Shakespeare's real writings on Oak Island. They feel you're really disappointing people by not playing along. But you're allowed to tap into it. You have fun with it, though. I mean, that's great. Well, I think that's the key. If you just sort of put your foot down and say, no, absolute bollocks, don't be so stupid, you kind of drive people away. Yes, any-- well, what we tell each other, isn't it, down that we tell each other-- in fact, the true stories are more exciting. So you go, come for the Templar gold, but actually leave with a much more nuanced understanding of the Templars, and that's the real. That's the friends you make along the way. Yes, it's about having this attitude of welcome in. There's a reason why people are interested in the Templars. And if one approaches the subject by saying, well, there's a perfectly good hospitaler fortress in that account, don't you see why you're not as interested in that as the Templar tunnels? In fact, oh, that happens to be true. So people are allowed to be interested in what they're interested in. I mean, I think you have to meet people where they are. I've always fun. You can't get angry at people being interested in things. And it's just wonderful. It's a great springboard, isn't it? You wrote a great book on Templars. Wonderful. Those people bought it. It's fantastic. Everyone's happy. You've got a lot of credit for it. I get around the world getting thanked for it. I take that credit. I'm everyone's a winner. And when Acre falls, unbelievable siege, go and check it out. It's one of the great medieval seizures. Is it the hospitalers that they slaughter? Or is it the temple? I think it's-- Well, at various times in Crusading history, they both get it quite literally in the neck. So it's after the Battle of Hattin in 1187. Yeah, but the Templars get lined up. The Templars and the Hospitlers, because they're kind of the crack troops in the Crusading army, Saladin, kind of-- he's willing to ransom everybody of any value, except for the Templars and Hospitlers. So even King Guy of Jerusalem, yeah, off you go. But the Templars and Hospitlers, yeah. I mean, it's like having all the Navy Seals and the SAS. Yeah, it's going to be really kind of an go. I think it might be better to just chop all the heads off. And so chop all the heads off is what he does. But I suppose it's the ultimate backhanded compliment. I suppose so. I suppose so, that's true. That's true. It's tough for them. So I-- microletters of the tunnels, which I would love to see out on the part of this, is HMS Victory, which I think is a massive 18th century battleship that you can still see today. It's the ship that was Nelson's Flight Ship Battle Trafalgar. Where is it? It's in Portsmouth, obviously. It's one of the best things in the world can see. So this is, at the time, the biggest warship ever laid down, ever built in Europe. 1759, the Kiehl's laid down. The year of victories were Britain's wins all these victories in the world. So it's called HMS Victory, Awesome. And it then serves from 1759-- amazing investment-- all the way through the Battle Trafalgar 1805. It goes on serving after that as well. So you're getting the money's worth. It-- 2000 oak trees went into building it. It's something like 60 acres of trees. 27 miles of ropes and rigging. It's got over 100-- just over 100 guns. It was the most complicated item on it. Like if a giant picked up something on Earth at the time, that was the most complicated. single thing that existed because again remember match with the thing that the ports ports are very important and so if HMS actually drops anchor off your port and you're in China you're in Peru you're in wherever you are it's like okay now we've we've got we've got we can't this person's just got their their their their heel on our jugular you know on our windpipe we so that's why in that's why Navy's sort of matters so much in that period and it's capable of obviously defeating the enemy fleet in battle it's just a astonishing and but it took to build it to man it to crew it to ensure no one crashes it into rocks you need an incredibly sophisticated the beginning is a really interesting modern state you need officers you can pass exams who are not just there because their granddad is posh you need you know armies fine the army you can have officers that are posh and thick because they're only job and officers only job in the armies to show the men how to die to not flinch from bullets go past sergeant show the men how to fight officers show the men how to die but that's not good enough in the Navy you need exams you need you need the you know you need you need a sort of objective criteria which to test people you can't give them that much responsibility and and not have them know what they're doing and so this the beginning of a kind of meritocratic state is the beginning state has to find funding for this it has to upkeep you know you can't just you can as you know many of army you can if you've got gold you can sort of get an army together you've got probably retaining it but you can just get it together are meant yeah you can train a peasants in a year or so you know give them give them a primitive firearm you maybe a few months you can get them going you can't wish an avian to be you need dry docs you need seasoned oak you need canvas you so you're talking about a multi-year multi-generational project key a build age messaging and be keep it going and so if you people listening to think I'm just to sort of war you know excited about war yes that's an amazing you know extraordinary part of it it's it's story at the battle of Trafalgar is unbelievable but actually what I love about is what it represents in terms of what the the the it's the tip of the iceberg I'm not going underneath it and that talks about you know why Britain France and these other European countries sort of conquer the rest of the earth in this period they put together all these kind of killer apps is there a moment from the represents the beginning of that process of HMS victory is the kind of you know the the high point of it I mean when when when does this all begin in terms of the it's so interesting because Europe is this just a little promontory on the end of Asia and most of the action in the economic and political military action throughout much history has been in the ocean you've got Persia empire's of India started at our junks south China Sea over there and suddenly these mad little Europeans and it's the great expression on the peninsula's of the peninsula so not just in Europe but in Devon in in Brittany in in Portugal in Spain so these like these the outside bits of the outside bits they sort of put together that they put together shipbuilding technology navigational advances heavy weapons cannon and they start saying very long distances reasonably safely I'm still I wouldn't want to do it but reasonably safely they're highly competitive these absolute blighters you know Spanish Breton's Portuguese Brits Scots all compete so arms race absolutely frantically nicking each other's talent nicking each other's braids Magellan's going in Columbus going there Cabot Cabot's going over there they're stealing ideas from each other they're perfecting they're getting a bit of kit and adding onto it and and so yeah from about 1500 and and then it just starts to it's the kind of snowballs and initially as you know they turn up you know the British military will turn out English from British military will turn up a place like India now fight a reason to be even battle for a couple hundred and then suddenly you just see weirdly these Europeans just screaming ahead and it's and that's the other thing about navies very hard to catch up like insanely difficult if you're a very wealthy Mughal Emperor you look at you can you can summon a lot troops going to be look at a Navy ship you're like I don't know how to get one of those no I need I need I need factories I need I need arm you know iron works I get it's a lot of tech I mean it's making me think at the moment of the age that we're living in and there are several parallel huge technological leaps forward one of them is the sort of latest age of space exploration and I wonder if the comparable capital spend and just vision and just like dogged determination and belief that this technological revolution everything that we'll have to go into it is you know isn't the musk and toilet slightly less percent Bezos encouraged and supported by the the American economy saying you know what we can build this new generation of ships that will take us reliably back and forth and back and forth to the moon and eventually to Mars I mean is that too far-fetched and now I think all the nose you know in history kind of you know you have to take the pinch salt but it's a really useful way to think about that yeah and and I think we need to think about the rest of us who aren't lucky enough to have our own space companies need to think about the consequences and how we kind of regulate and go well when we get to Mars when we got to North America all we did was like right this is what let's immediately export our European squabbles to North America so do we want do we want to get to a world where there's American flags and Chinese flags and then and then private company flags being planted on Mars or do we want to kind of head that off before we get there and really try and be learn the lessons I guess of that period of of dash for global empire well here's a here's a big historical question do you do people ever learn the lessons I don't I don't know do they just what do you think about you get asked I get asked that every talk don't you you say I'm sure you get the same thing like do we learn the lessons I think I think I'm I suppose on this subject I'm increasingly pessimistic and but not for the old reason I used to be pessimistic I used to think people repeatedly make the same mistakes in different eras of history because they don't know enough about history and then the the more sort of powerful political people I kind of bump into or off as I grow up the more I think no they usually know quite a lot about history but they it's usually no I've read a lot of history and now I'm not going to do the same things I'm I'm going to invade Russia in the summer yes or no no I'm still going to invade it in the winter but I because I know I'm going to fuck it up this time yeah I got sick yeah yeah yeah yeah so get some coats so my my my thinking about that is it would regard to you know it would be very nice for us to go and colonise the moon and Mars and they're not immediate to have a massive war about it who gets the best bit of it it would be lovely yeah yeah I know look I I hear what you're saying and I also they think well it's sort of we are learning something otherwise we'd all be still living in like whatland or how's it so so it feels like in some ways we are learning but obviously the eye catching examples of areas in which there are certain human problems seem to be kind of intractable it seems to be baked into the way that we do things yes and and that's why I suppose certain like foundational religious texts just endure I mean in their in their moral dimension because typically they're dealing with the well the seven deadly sins yeah yeah we have we have fatal flaws yeah talking of ancient texts yeah you're going to love this segue I mean I just think that's brilliant I'm so good I'm here for it observe the north american dad fifties great polo collection he enters his vehicle information on carvana and offer appears in minutes remarkable he squints reads it again smiles and says dang that's a good offer the highest form of approval no haggling no hassle no one called him boss he's still on the couch astonishing sell your car today on carvana.com pick up these may apply this is where do you want to go where do you want to go in the way I want to go to his salic and actually we were just talking about it before we started recording this time almost exactly to the day I went down to the putative site of the Trojan War that's called Troy absolutely amazing so this is in in southwest Turkey on the the Glippoli the Dardanelles the you know most famous historically for the Glippoli landings for the Glippoli landings but there's an archaeological site that's been an archaeological site since the the middle of the 19th century there which is associated with whatever the historical event was that we now call the Trojan War that's a hell of a mouthful because nobody knows the exact history of the Trojan War and the delineation between myth and history but but there is an exciting destruction layer at about 1180 BC or something it's about 1200 BC which is about right which is so exciting isn't it it's about right for possibly the events described so that's cool it's an amazing place and this is this was somewhere that I went because I was yeah I read this book about castles and I was trying to trace the origins of fortifications and of the human and you know thinking about war in the west at any rate back to this this this moment which if it happened at all happened in about 1180 BC but then there's an actual place which certainly since Roman times you know Caesar's visit was associated with the Trojan War is extraordinary and there's actually quite a lot of it left despite the efforts of the first guy to to excavate it Heinrich Lehmann who whose chief tool of excavation was dynamite so just dynamite at a gigantic trench in the middle and people are going to check out google the images of he found some jewelry in it there was a he found a burial which is actually before the period be thought it was he thought it was the right period and he called it Helen and Helen of Troy and he got his wife to dress up in it so you go see some amazing 90 tree images of his wife look at Helen Troy which I think then got taken about to Berlin and I think the Russian stole it after the second one so I think it's now in Moscow. - Weirdly that German title, somewhere like that. - Are you into the classics, is this something that goes in there? - What classics? I mean, these great sort of epics, the Greek epics, I love them, mate, love them. So I've just come back from Greece where we were sailing around the island of Ithaca, so that's great for that we're gonna make a show there. I, but what I speak to saying, where I've always wanted to go, so my version of Troy is East Ireland. That's for me, that's the one, I love the Polynesia, not just 'cause I watch Moana with my daughter in hand, sort of, epic meltdown. Basin, Moana is a movie about a dad and a daughter that loves sailing, or all historical tradition, but the dad's too scared to leave the reef and his daughter goes off and saves the world. And that, I think, really does roughly refer to me in my daughter's relationship. So I was shaking like a leaf coming out of there. And East Ireland was the furthest, is the furthest of this gigantic Pacific diaspora. And it's a great argument about East Ireland, is they make these huge heads. The heads now are all knocked over. There was a theory that there was a sort of environmental ecoside, they did chop down the trees, which was bad. We can all agree that there was trees, humans arrived, chop down, bringing invasive species, destroy much of the floor and floor. They build these amazing heads, they quarry these amazing heads. And it was thought that by the time the Europeans arrived, they'd already smashed something up with a few hundred people live, and it was all a kind of mad max style, kind of a lesson to us all about ecoside. I think the latest, it's fun, 'cause it's nice when there's a disagreement on scholarship, the latest scholarship is that actually, there was a pretty thriving community when the Europeans arrived. And the Europe, but the Britain, - Don't tell me the Europeans are the bad guys there. - Well, you'll be amazed to find out. And partly, they did shoot a few people when they accidentally arrived, it was a misunderstanding. But most importantly, of course, disease, they were carrying disease on their ships that they had no natural ability to withstand. And so this Dutch exhibition arrives about 1722, the heads upstanding, they report a community of about 3,000 people, well-organized, then it's about 80 years for another ship goes past. And at that stage, it's just chaotic. The heads falling down. A hundred, a couple of hundred people scrabbling lots of ability to make significant boats. So a, and it's thought probably that's because of disease. So catastrophic pandemics. And then possibly other ships visiting who haven't left a good record. So, and then because we know that after that, slavers came through would take the people of the islands into enslavement in South America. So just a complete catastrophe on every front really. And I'm just, and I love the fact that, hey, it's, I like monumental sort of archeology and I find that very romantic, go to those out of the way places of the idea of the sea, do you know what I'm saying? But I also like, yeah, I like the idea of that, really trying to get to them on what actually happened. Because it's quite important, you know, it's quite important to learn what happens to societies when they chop down the trees or when they encounter pandemic disease, or, you know, those things I still think are quite, they're very thought-provoking. Aren't they very important to speak in learning lessons? So yeah. You mentioned Stonehenge very briefly in passing earlier on. Are you up on the Stonehenge mythology, not the mythology, the theories about how, how do they get it? What are those stones going from Scotland? Also Stonehenge from Scotland is exciting. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. What does that tell you about the islands? Fascinating to me. More than once, I've almost crashed into the ditch going past Stonehenge. Just because, you know, and there is always the traffic jam going past it, even though, when compared to the pyramids, let's be honest, it's shit. Yeah, so I could see, yes, no, it's not very funny. It's less good than the pyramids, it's much less good than the pyramids and evidence to rehearse an early part of this conversation that for most of history, the very edge of Europe has been really quite primitive compared to the sort of beating heart of human civilization. But put that aside, Stonehenge is still good. He's good. He goes, "Oh my God, they did what?" And that's like the new bit of the monument. They brought some stuff from Wales. Yeah, amazing. And something absolutely wild was happening in the very, very late Stonehenge in that part of Britain. Did you read Ken Follett's latest novel? Did not lot of fucking going on on Salisbury Plain. Really? If you believe Ken Follett's version. I thought Ken Follett was more a medieval guy. He's slipping. You can slip into the Stonehenge and he's sex the same age up and that's not a criticism. Well, for anyone who wants to know just how sexy the Stonehenge can be, Ken Follett's latest novel, I think is called Circle of Days, Dan Snow. What are you up to at the moment? What should people be looking out for? I've had lots of fun this summer. I got to make a, went on a great journey around the Greek islands to make a podcast series and TV show about the Odyssey, to time with the movie. So speaking of Troy. So yeah, just check out Dan Snow's history. - Where have you get your pods? - Fantastic. Check that out. And for our royal favorites, this is history. Please listen to this week's bonus episode where Dan and I will be dissecting your favorite places, teeming with historical entry. You can listen to that at patreon.com/thisishistory. Could be the King of Portsmouth. Could be the King of Vile of Man for the wedding long. I'm glad you've asked, 'cause that is, and when I say, "Yeah, I mean, yes." I could, and plans are afoot. And there'll be no Mike and a Carter. There'll be no restraint. I will change my mind on the straining's octopus. I'm Catherine Nicolai, and I help millions of people around the world sleep better, rest their nervous systems, and shut their brains off when they won't stop spinning. On my podcast, "Nothing Much Happens," I tell cozy calming stories where nothing dramatic ever happens. Just soft narration, sensory detail, and gentle repetition designed to lull you to sleep. There's no plot to follow, nothing to figure out. Just peace. Listen to "Nothing Much Happens," wherever you get your podcasts.