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You and Betty and the Nancys

1:00

and Bills and Joes and Janes will

1:02

find in the study of science a

1:05

richer, more rewarding life.

1:08

Hey, welcome to Inquiring Minds. I'm

1:11

Andrea Vascontes. This is a podcast

1:13

that explores the space where science and society

1:15

collide. We want to find out what's true,

1:18

what's left to discover, and why it matters.

1:27

If you're like me and you have little

1:29

kids, maybe it's clear to you that a vacation and a trip

1:32

are no longer the same thing. But

1:34

even if you don't have kids, if you're out

1:36

on an adventure, it's good to mitigate your

1:38

risk and make sure that you're well prepared. To

1:41

help you prepare, I wondered, what can we learn from history?

1:45

And is there anything that science can

1:47

tell us that can help us survive disasters if

1:51

they come into our path?

1:59

Tyrannosaurus, escape Pompeii,

2:02

get off the Titanic, and survive the rest of

2:04

history's deadliest catastrophes. This

2:06

feels really useful in the current

2:09

day at age.

2:10

And so without further ado, let's

2:12

find out what we should be doing if

2:14

we are faced with one of these historical catastrophes.

2:22

Cody Cassidy, welcome to Inquiring

2:24

Wines. Thank you so much for having me. So

2:27

we pride ourselves on this show as providing our

2:29

listeners with pretty useful information.

2:31

We hope that the scientists and thought leaders we

2:33

talk to can help us make decisions

2:35

in our lives. But your book

2:37

seems particularly useful in

2:40

an era when it seems like disasters

2:42

are around the corner. And there

2:45

are some specific chapters in your book

2:47

that I am personally very, very interested

2:49

in. So I'm gonna like, you

2:52

know, I'm gonna be selfish and want

2:54

to delve into some of those. But before we

2:56

get to that,

2:56

how

2:57

did you come up with this concept of

3:00

learning about these different times

3:02

and situations in history by

3:05

thinking about how you would survive if you were there?

3:07

Yeah,

3:08

so the idea began when I

3:10

read an interesting study by some

3:13

paleontologists about the

3:15

Tyrannosaurus Rex, actually,

3:17

and his running speed, which I

3:19

had always assumed that they were incredibly

3:22

fast, incredibly powerful. And then their

3:24

top speed, it turns out, though, was only about 12 or 13 miles

3:27

an hour.

3:28

And then so I went outside and I timed

3:30

myself and I realized I would stand

3:32

a decent chance. And so I

3:35

thought that was sort of counterintuitive and

3:38

interesting and provided this sort of ground

3:40

level sort of advice and

3:43

sort of practical history that

3:45

you don't often get in historical books. So I

3:47

thought I sort of could expand that into

3:49

including other disasters. And

3:51

it sort of also helps us understand

3:54

or use maybe a technique that theater

3:56

and film has often used

3:59

in storytelling.

3:59

which is to sort of get into the specifics

4:02

of a couple of moments in time. You talk about

4:04

how, you know, if you focus in on a few

4:06

hours of what it's like to live in this

4:08

place in time, you can learn or

4:11

you can get a sense of place and

4:13

history much more deeply than if you're trying

4:15

to cover, you know, years or

4:17

decades or, you know, even days. So

4:21

can you tell us about this experience

4:24

that you might've had as you were writing this book in terms of

4:26

understanding more deeply what

4:28

it would have been like and sort of the

4:30

kind of historical facts of the place by

4:33

taking this approach of zooming in rather

4:36

than trying to understand a

4:38

sort of broader time period?

4:40

Yeah, I think, well, the first

4:42

fact that hits you and maybe this isn't

4:45

so surprising when you're focusing on disasters was

4:48

simply how difficult and

4:50

devastating

4:51

life during certain time periods

4:54

and certain areas and certain events would

4:56

have been. Sometimes I think reading

4:59

a history book, as they say, you know, sort

5:01

of death becomes statistics

5:04

and sort of we

5:06

read about the black death, for example. And

5:11

there's evidence that 40% of the city

5:14

of London, which was 100,000 people at the time

5:16

might have died in just 18 months.

5:18

And if you read about that in history

5:20

books, it's certainly a stunning figure, but I

5:23

think getting down into the sort of nitty

5:25

gritty and trying to imagine as

5:27

I did what life would have been like and

5:30

how to survive in the city that was undergoing

5:32

that much devastation, sort of aids

5:35

in hitting home how difficult and

5:37

deadly and awful some

5:40

of these ancient eras and

5:42

events and even days would have been. So

5:45

I'm about to embark on a cruise

5:48

to Italy and Greece with my extended

5:50

family, so Pompeii,

5:54

and the sinking

5:57

of the Titanic are, you know, ones that

5:59

I want to really get in.

5:59

to for sure because those might be particularly

6:02

relevant to me. I live in San Francisco, so

6:04

the 1906 earthquake is another one I want to talk about.

6:07

You brought it up and I was going to start

6:09

with the Black Death since I think we've all kind of gone

6:11

through something pretty phenomenal

6:14

over the last few years related

6:16

to a kind of plague. Tell

6:18

us a story of what we need

6:21

to know in order to survive the Black Death.

6:23

The Black Death occurred in,

6:26

I'm focusing on England and this and specifically

6:29

London. They actually know that the exact day

6:31

it arrived was on June 25, 1348, at least so they

6:33

say, according

6:36

to this legend, a sailor, a sickened

6:39

sailor arrived from a

6:40

Mediterranean port. The plague

6:42

had been moving across Europe for

6:44

more than a year at this time, so people

6:47

in England knew it was coming, but

6:49

there was very little they could do about

6:52

it. Seems like the only thing they really did

6:54

was the sort of grim task of digging

6:56

mass graves because there was no

6:59

idea how it was transmitted,

7:02

no idea how to avoid it. Of

7:05

course, we know now, so if you were

7:07

back then, we know it was transmitted by flea bite,

7:09

primarily by flea bite, and these

7:12

fleas were traveling on rats usually.

7:15

If you were in London, I thought initially that the

7:17

smart thing would be to run to a rural

7:20

city, somewhere or rural area where

7:22

there are less people like you would expect in most pandemics.

7:25

But

7:25

that would actually be a mistake because unlike

7:27

in most pandemics, this isn't determined

7:29

by human density. It's more rat to

7:31

human ratio.

7:33

In these farm villages that

7:35

had lots of rats and few people, the

7:37

plague would wipe out the rats and then

7:39

there would be a lot of hungry fleas searching

7:42

for meals. If there were fewer

7:44

humans, there would be more likely that you'd be

7:46

bitten. As great as the death

7:48

toll was in London, it was actually worse in

7:51

many of the rural farming villages.

7:53

The best choice of action

7:55

is to stay in the city and just try to avoid

7:57

rat

7:58

infested areas of the city.

7:59

which were generally the areas where

8:02

the dirtier parts of town where there's

8:04

more refuse on the ground.

8:07

There's other strategies I learned to avoiding

8:09

flea bites, long pants, tuck

8:11

in your socks,

8:12

tuck in the pant legs, long sleeves,

8:15

bathe frequently because there's a chance if you

8:17

see a flea, you can get it off before it transmits

8:20

the bacteria. Don't get a cat

8:23

or a rat trap because it

8:26

turns out the only thing more dangerous than a live

8:28

rat near you is a dead one because that's

8:30

forces its food to seek a new

8:32

host.

8:33

Yeah, as you're thinking about this, were

8:38

you influenced by the

8:40

methods that the people in the time were using?

8:43

And was it clear to you that if

8:45

they had a misconception about how the

8:48

plague was spreading that they

8:50

made some poor decisions?

8:52

Yeah, well, they did make poor decisions,

8:54

especially the first wave when there was really

8:57

no idea what was working.

8:59

And so they thought it was spore

9:01

opening activities, they called it would transmit

9:03

the plague. So they would exercise,

9:06

I thought was bad, but even more dangerously,

9:08

they were worried about bathing. They thought bathing open

9:11

spores and allowed the disease to

9:13

get inside, which is exactly the opposite

9:16

of what you should be doing, of course.

9:18

And in fact, you shouldn't see

9:20

a doctor at all. Their techniques were

9:22

simply painful, like bleeding, they

9:24

thought would help cure it. Of course, it's

9:26

ineffective and just painful. So

9:29

in later ways, they started to learn, in particular,

9:31

the wealthy would retreat to their if

9:33

they had these rat free manners

9:35

out in the countryside, that they would pursue

9:38

that. And that was that was effective, but

9:40

especially for the Black Death, the first wave,

9:42

there was really nothing anybody knew

9:44

what to do. All right, so keep your pants tucked

9:47

into your socks, try to avoid

9:49

killing any rats and places

9:51

where they might congregate. And

9:53

okay, that all sounds totally reasonable.

9:55

All right, so let's

9:58

get more specific to things that I might be facing.

9:59

Hopefully not, but maybe. Let's

10:02

talk about Pompeii. So how would you have survived

10:05

Pompeii?

10:06

So the first surprising thing

10:08

was that anybody survived Pompeii

10:10

to me. This is a massive

10:13

volcano. It was sort of, Vesuvius

10:15

is only six miles away from Pompeii when it started

10:17

erupting. We

10:18

actually know the day on August 24th and 79 AD,

10:21

probably about 10 in the morning actually.

10:23

And it was erupting one and a half million tons

10:25

of molten rock per second,

10:27

which you would think is unsurvivable.

10:30

But surprisingly, the

10:32

evidence suggests at least half of the people in Pompeii

10:35

did survive by running away. And

10:38

those that didn't took shelter, initially

10:40

the volcano was, as in

10:43

a lot of volcanoes, it's sort of cracking

10:46

the top of the volcano, releases the gases.

10:49

This is sort of a similar effect as popping

10:51

a bottle of champagne, all the

10:53

carbon dioxide that's desorbed into the

10:56

magma releases out. And this sort

10:58

of creates a sort of jet engine-like effect that shoots

11:00

the cloud high into the stratosphere.

11:03

And this is actually safer. The

11:05

stratosphere is a safe place for this cloud.

11:07

It's hot enough to melt lead. And

11:10

so initially, the only effect on Pompeii

11:12

was sort of falling ash, a bit like snow.

11:15

And so some people took cover from it,

11:17

and some people ran. And taking cover would be a

11:20

mistake.

11:21

Because

11:24

as the volcano progressed and released

11:26

most of its gases, the cloud became

11:29

denser.

11:30

And so early that afternoon,

11:32

instead of rising to the stratosphere, it only rose

11:35

a few hundred feet

11:38

and then collapsed and sort of rolled

11:40

down the hill. And the wind was

11:43

blowing toward Pompeii that morning,

11:45

so it rolled through Pompeii. It's

11:47

very fast. It's called a pyroclastic surge.

11:49

It's moved at about 80 miles an hour,

11:51

and it's about 1,800 degrees. And

11:54

it's also so dense, you would suffocate. So

11:57

when

11:57

that rolled through, anybody who took shelter

11:59

did it.

11:59

make it.

12:01

But perhaps the most surprising thing is because of the wind

12:03

direction that morning when

12:05

I spoke to the archaeologists,

12:07

they suggested you should actually run toward

12:09

the volcano and then past it

12:12

because you have about a five-hour window

12:14

before the real deadly

12:16

phases of the

12:19

eruption occurred. And if

12:20

you can just make it past it because the wind was blowing

12:23

toward Pompeii, you actually would

12:25

only need to run a shorter distance. If you can make

12:28

it to Naples, which is only about 13 miles

12:30

away, and you have about five hours to

12:32

do it, that's a fast

12:35

walk, jog, pace, and

12:38

then you would escape.

12:39

So 10 a.m., run

12:41

towards the volcano and

12:44

try to make it to Naples so you

12:46

can sit and have nice

12:47

pizza while

12:49

Pompeii gets destroyed. Okay? Yeah, that doesn't

12:52

apply to all volcanic eruptions. I

12:54

should add it. We're

12:56

all days, you know, this particular

12:58

day, right? I mean, there could be days where the wind

13:01

shifts or... Exactly. Okay,

13:04

okay, I like it.

13:06

All right, well, what about the Titanic? I'm about

13:08

to get onto a big cruise ship. That's

13:10

definitely, you know, I'll be going to figuring

13:12

out where my muster station is and where

13:16

the life jackets are. But, and

13:18

we do know that there were people that survived, but

13:20

why don't you tell us some of the specifics of what

13:23

you think would have been

13:23

the best strategy?

13:25

So the

13:27

Titanic was unlike

13:29

a modern cruise ship. Famously, they

13:32

had only lifeboats for about a third of

13:34

their passengers. So if you

13:36

were in the third class deck, it is possible

13:38

to survive, and some people did survive even

13:41

from down there, but they didn't tell anybody

13:44

how to get to the life rafts in

13:46

the Titanic. There were no escape drills. So

13:48

that's the first thing that I would advise anybody getting

13:50

on a ship is to know how to get to the life rafts.

13:53

And so they also kept the door locked

13:55

for a little while as the wreck

13:58

went on.

13:58

However, there were some escape lines.

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All right, and now sort of closer to home, what

18:43

about the 1906 earthquake? Or, you know, earthquakes

18:46

in general, because hopefully this is information

18:49

that would be useful. You were taught, you

18:51

know, go hide under a desk, which

18:54

now we know, or at least now I've been taught,

18:56

that that's not the thing to do. Rather,

18:58

stand in a doorway. Like, what

19:01

are the right answers here?

19:03

Well, the first answer is, yeah, definitely

19:05

get inside. Surprisingly, even

19:07

in 1906, when a lot of the buildings

19:09

in San Francisco were made of brick and

19:12

prone to collapse, it's still safer to

19:15

get inside because what happens when these

19:17

buildings collapsed was the sort of every

19:19

chimney and rock walls would sort of fall

19:21

into the streets. So as

19:23

dangerous as it is to be in one of these buildings that

19:25

collapses, it's actually

19:27

even more dangerous to be next to it. So

19:30

it would be best to get inside a building, preferentially

19:33

one with a lot of walls. The buildings

19:35

that fared the worst were the sort of warehouses

19:37

and buildings without a lot of interior structure.

19:40

When San Francisco was, these

19:42

buildings were built, they had very little concept

19:44

of earthquakes or their danger. They'd sort

19:47

of

19:47

just been discovered. Compounding

19:50

the problem, a lot of San Francisco is built

19:54

on sort of silt and even sort

19:56

of old pioneer trash, basically.

20:00

trash pits is the Mission District

20:02

used to be a muddy river

20:05

and it's been filled in. And

20:08

so that soil does particularly poorly. It sort

20:10

of liquefies when the waves

20:12

of energy pass through of

20:14

these earthquakes. And so that was a particularly

20:17

dangerous area to be. Okay.

20:20

So I'm going on this cruise with my family,

20:23

including my kids who sometimes act like pirates. So

20:25

I think it's helpful to know how you would survive

20:28

a voyage with Blackbeard. Because

20:30

maybe there's some tips in that chapter

20:32

that would be useful to be moving along

20:34

now.

20:35

Yeah. Pirates have a bad

20:37

reputation, but surprisingly surviving with

20:39

them would actually have been, I found better

20:42

than being a merchant sailor at the time.

20:45

It was a surprisingly

20:48

democratic venture, these pirate ships. They

20:50

had a lot of rules. There was

20:53

sort of

20:54

no fighting. There was a lot of bedtime

20:56

by eight o'clock even, these published

20:58

rules. Yeah. It's sort of not

21:01

really conforms with the Hollywood

21:03

image of a bunch of swashbucklers.

21:06

Whereas on these merchant

21:08

vessels, which a lot of these pirates had escaped

21:10

from, the discipline was

21:13

horrible. The work was

21:15

grueling. These merchant vessels, they had about

21:18

staffed by about 10 sailors.

21:20

And these pirate ships, they had

21:23

something like 200 often. They were sort

21:25

of, and so many hands make light

21:27

work. So the work was grueling on these

21:30

merchant ships, but

21:31

far easier on these well-staffed pirate

21:33

ships. And

21:34

even the captains didn't have the authoritarian

21:38

power on pirate ships that they did on

21:40

merchant vessels.

21:42

Only during combat could

21:44

these pirates make unilateral decisions, the captains,

21:46

that otherwise everybody voted on where

21:48

to go,

21:50

even what ships to attack. And

21:52

so there was actually a little bit more

21:54

honor amongst these thieves and

21:57

quite a lot of wealth

21:59

too.

21:59

they on some of these ships

22:02

they've One

22:04

famous attack in the Indian Ocean

22:06

a pirate made away with 160 million dollars

22:08

of in today's money worth of gold

22:11

and jewels

22:12

Some pirate ships found off the

22:14

East Coast went down with like four tons of gold

22:16

and silver. So on one

22:19

successful Robbery

22:21

these pirates could make more than they would

22:23

make in a career as a merchant sailor.

22:26

So I

22:28

Would actually suggest

22:30

Being a pirate and and

22:33

they have a paper which I

22:35

admit sounds bad, but they actually have a

22:39

some ships were worse than others, but in many of them that

22:41

the they often let

22:43

their capture

22:45

ease go because it was

22:47

sort of in their interest they sort of wanted to cultivate

22:51

an aura of fearsome

22:54

sort of blood thirstiness, but If

22:57

you surrendered they would let you go that way they didn't have

22:59

to fight for the these vessels They didn't

23:01

want to shoot their cannons or

23:03

because that risked sinking their treasure

23:05

so

23:06

Blackbeard for example, there's no

23:09

it doesn't seem like like he actually killed anybody

23:11

until his sort of final famous

23:14

battle off of North Carolina

23:15

so I think I I

23:18

think if you were gonna survive it would actually be better

23:20

to go with the pirates and maybe these these merchant

23:22

vessels actually

23:24

So, why do you think the the

23:26

pirates were I mean, it seems like

23:28

do you think is because they Why

23:31

would they be sort of better behaved? More

23:35

democratic, you know, I get

23:37

I get like yeah, I get why there might be like a difference

23:39

between Hierarchy of and maybe there's

23:41

less of that. But

23:43

yeah, why yeah, no, I it's

23:45

it's really interesting and and I actually I spoke

23:47

with an economist who wrote a really

23:50

interesting paper on this talking about

23:52

the differences between Pirates

23:54

say and sort of like the the Mafia

23:56

and

23:58

the competition between was

24:00

low because it's

24:03

very difficult to establish a pirate

24:05

ship. It costs a lot of

24:07

money. It's sort of like the equivalent

24:09

of

24:10

I likened it to starting up an airline now where you

24:13

need a lot of investment, a lot of money, but

24:15

once you have an established pirate ship,

24:17

the competition is low because it's difficult to

24:20

bring

24:20

up competitors. And

24:22

that breeds a sort of less

24:25

need to violently keep down your competition.

24:28

Whereas the sort of

24:29

protection rackets that the mafia runs sort of

24:32

anybody with a gun can start up their own

24:35

business.

24:36

And therefore the only way to sort

24:38

of undercut each other's prices for protecting

24:41

establishments. And so the only way

24:43

for a

24:44

mafia like business to maintain high

24:46

profit is to establish

24:49

a monopoly

24:50

violently, of course, and violently

24:52

keeping down their competition. So he

24:54

proposed and I found it compelling was that

24:56

because it's so difficult and so

24:59

expensive to establish a pirate ship,

25:01

it actually once they were established, there was less

25:04

need to violently keep

25:06

down your competition, your fellow pirate.

25:08

Oh, yeah, super interesting. And I think

25:10

that's a great example of how delving deep into,

25:12

you know, I think that's something that you probably wouldn't

25:15

have gotten from the history books, or at least, you know,

25:17

like, if you're just reading them as there.

25:19

But when you think about like on the day to day,

25:21

yeah, that's the sort of

25:23

gives you a better better sense

25:26

and a more accurate perception, you know,

25:28

of how things actually were. We,

25:31

you know, there's there's

25:33

some still question of what

25:35

the world is going to be like, 100 years

25:38

from now, and thousands of years from

25:40

now. But if we do make it to the

25:42

next ice age, what

25:45

would be your advice?

25:47

Well, the first most interesting thing about the ice age

25:49

is that we still live in the ice age. If

25:51

you talk to a planetary scientist,

25:54

because technically an ice age is anytime

25:56

ice covers the northern hemisphere, which

25:58

year round. which it still does. Although

26:02

it's judging by the amount of carbon

26:04

in the atmosphere, it probably won't for much longer. And

26:08

this sort of began almost

26:11

three million years ago, actually, this current

26:13

ice age when

26:16

this occurred. I was really fascinated about

26:18

this. There was a recent study

26:20

across the Bay from me, these Berkeley

26:22

planetary scientists who found

26:25

that ice ages are caused

26:27

by a reduction of carbon in the atmosphere,

26:30

which is carbon dioxide, which is

26:32

our insulating blanket. And this occurs

26:34

when there's tectonic collisions in the tropics.

26:37

So three million years ago, Indonesia

26:39

collided with Northern Australia, the plates,

26:41

which are still colliding. And this

26:44

uplifts a lot of

26:46

mafic rock, these

26:49

minerals erode into the ocean, this

26:51

calcium and magnesium, which combines with the

26:53

carbon dioxide that's in our oceans and

26:56

locks it away as limestone.

26:58

So when they found that

27:00

the ice ages throughout history have always followed

27:03

these massive collisions, which

27:05

basically sequester lots of carbon dioxide,

27:08

removes the sort of Earth's insulating blanket,

27:11

and then the planet cools. And sort

27:13

of the opposite, of course, is volcanoes, large

27:15

volcanic activity releases the

27:17

carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. And so we're

27:19

on this cycle. So really, when

27:22

we talk about the ice age 25,000 years ago,

27:24

it's actually called the last glacial maximum, which is

27:27

just occurs when the Earth,

27:29

because the Earth is

27:32

on these 40,000 year wobbles, it sort of wobbles

27:35

as it spins a bit like a top,

27:37

as we tilt slightly away from

27:40

the sun. It's not as if we

27:42

are receiving

27:43

much less solar energy, but the slight tilt

27:46

away sort of changes how the ocean

27:48

currents release carbon into

27:50

the air. So this sort of

27:51

less upwelling and more

27:54

carbon is in the oceans and is in the air

27:56

and you have global

27:59

cooling.

27:59

Back in the Ice Age,

28:02

there was about 65% of

28:04

the carbon dioxide in the air than there is

28:06

pre-industrial humans.

28:11

If you're living in the shadow of these

28:13

mile-high glaciers at times, I

28:17

sort of in the book discussed how you would... I

28:19

became particularly fascinated with this culture

28:22

that hunted, specifically the

28:24

gravititans

28:25

culture that hunted mammoth almost to exclusion.

28:28

So I sort of talk about that in the book.

28:29

Yeah, you point out that you should not send your spear

28:32

to the butt of the mammoth, but rather I'm assuming

28:35

to in between its eyes.

28:36

Yeah, unfortunately, the

28:39

mammoth rears, like elephants are virtually

28:42

impenetrable. So

28:44

it would be nice to not have to

28:46

face the tusks, but that is

28:48

sadly not an option. You have to... And

28:52

I should add, you can't throw your spear. That

28:55

would be sort of like a mammoth tickler. It's

28:58

what they used were adlatls, spear

29:01

throwers, and it's

29:03

a pretty simple device. It's

29:05

just a stick that you rest the

29:07

spear on that gives you a little bit more leverage. You

29:10

actually see in a lot of dog parks today,

29:12

you see a similar device that aids

29:14

in throwing the tennis ball. So it's

29:17

quite similar to that idea. You just rest

29:20

the spear on that stick and launch it

29:22

and it adds a lot of velocity

29:24

to throw. Their

29:26

technique is they think these

29:29

cultures would trap a single

29:31

mammoth in a sort of cul-de-sac of rock

29:34

and then launch their atlatl spears

29:36

at it. And for

29:40

a long time, paleontologists were sort of even

29:44

though they found so many bones in

29:46

these mammoths, these camps,

29:48

some of them are almost exclusively

29:50

filled with mammoth bone. They

29:52

thought it would have been too dangerous to hunt these creatures.

29:54

They must have scavenged them. But

29:56

recently they've started finding these arrowheads

29:59

buried into

29:59

and Mammoth bone and

30:02

sort of the smoking gun that clearly

30:05

proving that these people somehow hunted one

30:07

of the most

30:08

dangerous creatures with stick and

30:10

stone.

30:10

Wow. And now we have people trying to bring

30:12

them back. So

30:15

I want to remind our listeners at Cody Cassidy's

30:17

book, How to Survive History, How

30:19

to Outrun a Tyrannosaurus,

30:22

Escape Pompeii, Get Off the Titanic, and

30:24

Survive the Rest of History's Deadliest Catastrophes,

30:26

is available at booksellers everywhere. And

30:29

also it says that you are the author of Who

30:31

Ate the First Oyster. So

30:34

I have a final question,

30:36

but first I need to know who ate

30:38

the first

30:38

oyster. Yeah.

30:41

So there surprisingly is

30:43

an answer to this question. They

30:46

found the oldest eaten oyster shells in South

30:49

Africa in a cave. They're

30:51

about 164,000 years old. So this is near the beginning

30:55

of when humans

30:58

became sort of what they call

31:00

cognitively modern. And I spoke

31:02

with the archeologists who found

31:05

them and I asked him who he thought ate them. And he

31:07

had an interesting

31:09

theory, which was that at

31:10

this time cultures didn't actually live

31:13

on the coast because

31:15

they had

31:16

no means of getting food

31:18

from the water. It would have been a food

31:20

desert at the time. And so he thought they

31:22

must have traveled to the coast.

31:25

And this

31:26

brings up an interesting problem with oysters

31:28

because oysters are only available

31:31

above the water, sort of 10% of the time

31:33

at the very lowest tides.

31:35

So he wondered if

31:38

these first oyster eaters weren't the first people

31:40

to sort of recognize or some of the first

31:42

people to recognize that the moon and the

31:45

tides are related. And

31:47

they knew when there was a fuller new moon

31:50

that it was time to

31:51

travel to the ocean and

31:53

eat the oyster.

31:54

But they probably cooked it, I would say. I

31:57

prefer my oysters raw, but it's safer to

31:59

eat cooked.

31:59

oysters. So they've

32:02

really cooked food in general.

32:04

So if you were the first one to eat an oyster,

32:06

we assume you would have cooked it.

32:08

Well, so that brings me to my last question, which is

32:10

like, you know, in writing this book, what

32:12

have you learned that has affected kind of your

32:14

day to day? Is there anything that you've learned from history

32:16

that now you're like, well, now I, you know,

32:18

walk around with a spear that I can

32:21

toss with my with my special dog

32:23

tossing toy? Like,

32:25

what is it?

32:26

I think, I think

32:28

that the best way I, you know, what

32:31

I learned really is that these disasters sort of

32:33

repeat themselves. We sort

32:35

of looked through ancient, I looked to ancient history and, and

32:37

so many of these disasters,

32:40

these sort of pandemics and

32:42

earthquakes and fires and, and

32:44

shipwrecks sort of,

32:45

they, they, they're similar throughout history.

32:48

There's mid they move

32:50

in the same way, even the tornado that I discussed, they

32:52

move in the strike in the same place, move

32:54

in the same way, do similar kinds of damage.

32:57

So it was interesting to

32:59

write these survival

33:01

guides for such ancient events with

33:04

such different people.

33:06

And then sort of as you can't help it

33:08

as you're writing them and researching them, imagining them happening

33:10

today and realizing that

33:12

many of them would proceed in much

33:14

the same way as they did thousands

33:16

of years ago. So it

33:19

hasn't really turned me into a survivalist, I don't think,

33:21

but it's sort of added an interesting perspective

33:23

on these ancient events and sort of, you

33:26

can imagine how they would, after reading

33:28

and researching them, you can, you can clearly see how

33:31

they would probably proceed in the future. Well,

33:33

Cody Cassidy, thank you for being on Inquiring

33:36

Minds and helping us prepare for what I hope

33:38

are safe but adventurous travels

33:40

in our summertime.

33:42

Thank you so much

33:45

for having me. So

33:48

that's it for another episode. Thanks for listening.

33:50

If you want to hear more, don't forget to subscribe.

33:53

And if you'd like to get an ad-free version of the show,

33:55

consider supporting us at patreon.com

33:57

slash Inquiring Minds. I

34:00

especially thank David Noel, Herring Chang,

34:02

Sean Johnson, Jordan Miller, Kyle

34:04

Ryhala, Michael Galgoul, Eric Clark,

34:07

Yuxi Lin, Clark Lindgren, Joelle,

34:09

Stephen Meyer-Aewald, Dale LeMaster and Charles

34:12

Blyle. Inquiring Minds is produced by

34:14

Adam Isaac, and I'm your host, Indre

34:16

Viscontis. See you next time.

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