0:00

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History

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Class from how Stuff Works dot com.

0:12

Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm fair

0:14

Dowdy and I'm to Bline and Chuck Reporting and Delinea.

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I have a question for you, what's that. Have you ever

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kept a travel journal? I mean, I know you like to travel

0:21

a lot. I have kept well, I've attempted

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to, but I usually

0:25

end up getting them. I have a collection

0:28

of beautiful journals that have bought throughout

0:30

the years, and I end up taking them and I fill out

0:32

a page. And then I realized there's this big

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competition between actually wanting

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to do things and having time to

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write about the things. While I'm on vacation and I'm

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gonna get back, you get so busy that you just don't have

0:43

time to rerecord everything

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happens to me too, if I'm lucky, I'll

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start writing on the plane ride home and

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maybe fill in the briefest details. So trying

0:53

to imagine trying to keep

0:55

a travel journal for forty years

0:58

now, and imagine that are expeditions

1:00

included, not just classic

1:03

traveler high points, new meals, you eight

1:05

monuments, he saw people, you met, that kind

1:07

of thing, but events like wars

1:10

and rebellions and pirate attacks.

1:12

I mean, imagine having time for that. I

1:14

mean, I think I would make time to write about a pirate

1:16

attack. That would that

1:18

would warrant an entry for sure, So our

1:21

subject today. Eveliah Chellaby

1:24

is a seventeenth century Ottoman

1:26

gentleman, and he's considered by many people

1:28

to be one of the world's greatest travelers

1:30

and by extension, one of the world's

1:33

greatest travel writers. He kept a

1:35

two thousand, four hundred folio record

1:37

of his journeys. He called it the Saya

1:40

Hotanomy or Book of Travels, and it's

1:42

the longest travel account in Islamic

1:45

literature, maybe even the longest travel account

1:47

in the world. And from about age thirty until

1:49

his death in his seventies, Eveliah was

1:51

on the move, and for as long as he traveled,

1:54

he kept on writing, covering his journeys

1:56

across rivers of ice in the far northern

1:58

reaches of the Ottoman Empire, to the

2:00

Sahara Desert and the Nile River in the

2:02

south. And because Evliah went

2:04

to places that many others didn't

2:06

even bother to visit or at least document,

2:09

his record has become a key source

2:11

for archaeologists, geographers, and cultural

2:13

historians, and that's why, in addition

2:16

to discussing high points from Evliah's

2:18

remarkable travels, we're also going

2:20

to talk about the strange history of the

2:22

Seahotana May, which, at nearly

2:24

four hundred years old, is only now

2:26

becoming an item of world interest.

2:28

But before we get to that, there was the matter

2:31

of Evliah's homebound years. Of course,

2:33

he didn't start traveling until he was about thirty,

2:35

So we mentioned Evliah was a gentleman,

2:38

and in fact, his name Chellaby

2:40

means gentleman, so appropriately

2:42

enough. He grew up in the cultured atmosphere

2:45

of the Ottoman court, where his father

2:47

was the Sultan's chief goldsmith, and

2:50

his mother was an Abcasian, possibly

2:52

a slave girl given to the goldsmith

2:55

in marriage by the Fulton, who told him,

2:57

grand Aga, you're an old man in

3:00

but God willing from this maiden

3:02

you will have an angel like world

3:04

adorning son. And sure enough Evil

3:07

was born nine months ten days after

3:10

that in sixteen eleven in Istanbul,

3:12

and he started his education as

3:14

other children of his class

3:17

would have, at the Madressa, which was Arabic

3:19

school, where he would have learned to recite the Koran,

3:23

become a prayer caller, and he would have also

3:25

studied languages to Turkish,

3:27

Persian, Arabic plus

3:30

Greek and Latin, and stories of Roman

3:32

emperors and Alexander the Great that

3:34

he picked up from the non Muslims

3:36

who worked in his father's gold shop. And

3:39

when he wasn't studying, Eedliah still

3:41

learned in a different way. He roamed a standbull,

3:43

watching artisans, exploring

3:46

mosques, and occasionally even attending

3:48

court with his father. By his teens,

3:50

Eliot could recite the entire Koran from

3:52

memory. This took him about

3:54

eight hours to do, and he'd do it every

3:57

single Thursday, and he said he was

3:59

proud to have made retained this tradition through

4:01

his life. It was during one of those recitations,

4:03

in fact, that he got kind of his big

4:06

break in a sense. During

4:08

a recital, Evlo was summoned by the reigning

4:10

Sultan Murad the Fourth, who asked

4:13

him how long his recitations

4:15

took, and eight hours

4:17

must have seemed like a really good answer to him,

4:19

because the Sultan essentially then told him

4:21

that they were going to be friends. Okay, so

4:23

what does being friends with the Sultan

4:26

really entailed. To me, it sounds a bit

4:28

like pursuing a higher education, because

4:30

Evilo was soon set up with a tutor,

4:33

a calligraphy master, a spiritual

4:35

advisor, a music teacher

4:37

for music and singing, a

4:39

grammar instructor, plus

4:41

his old master for continued

4:43

Koran studies, and so his job

4:46

essentially became to read and

4:48

write, you know, study during the day and night,

4:50

refine his manners, dressed nicely,

4:53

and recite entertaining

4:55

things for the Sultan, really showing off his

4:58

learning, and he he gives a sample of

5:00

what this usually involved in

5:02

his book of Travels. He recounts an early

5:04

meeting where he asked the

5:06

Sultan, look, I will what exactly do

5:08

you want to hear me recite? You know, literature

5:11

I can do Persian, Arabic, Turkish,

5:13

Hebrew, Syriac, Greek, maybe

5:15

a medley of musical forms, maybe a

5:17

selection of different kinds of verse poetry.

5:20

The Sultan actually even calls them out

5:22

on showing off so much, because

5:24

in between cataloging all this knowledge,

5:27

this huge platter of

5:29

things he can recite for the Sultan, he throwing

5:32

puns and make witty remarks,

5:34

some of them kind of risque and

5:36

polished the whole performance off by somersaulting

5:39

out of the room. I mean this kid, this kid

5:42

knew how to put on a show for sure. So

5:44

his next two years at court involved lots

5:46

of study, beautiful books, calligraphy

5:49

practice, and those audiences

5:51

with the Sultan and fancy

5:53

presence as well. A silver ink pot

5:55

studded with jewels, wasn't one notable

5:58

one? And also a writing board and lay it

6:00

with mother of pearl good accessories

6:02

for the scholar. Yeah, a gem encrusted

6:04

back scratcher, that's a bonus. So handy.

6:07

But he became especially valued when Murad

6:09

the fourth was feeling down, since he could

6:11

crack him up with his near constant jokes.

6:14

Courtiers would hurry evliah In and

6:17

Murad would say, quote, look,

6:19

the dispeller of woe has arrived. Sometimes

6:21

his duties would be a little more solemn,

6:24

Koran recitations, leading calls

6:26

to prayer, singing sad songs, things

6:28

like that. Others were more outrageous,

6:31

such as supervising the Sultan's wrestling

6:33

matches and avoiding

6:35

vomiting on the Sultan when he'd pick

6:37

him up and spin him around, which

6:40

sounds pretty nerve racking, not something

6:42

you'd want to do to the Sultans, So it

6:44

seems like with such a prestigious

6:47

position, though minus the spinning. Of course,

6:49

Everley would really enjoy every moment

6:51

spent in his hometown of Istanbul

6:54

and at the palace. But from about

6:56

aged twenty onward he was itching

6:59

to get away. He wanted to get outside of the

7:01

city. He had only visited towns

7:03

just outside of the city wall, so to

7:06

make up for that, since he didn't have travel

7:08

magazine studied, he'd quiz dervishes

7:11

about their travels and learn about the seven

7:13

Clients the four quarters of the Earth. Really

7:16

just make the travel

7:18

bug he already had really even more

7:20

intense ready to go. In addition

7:23

to his court connection, Evlie ahead family

7:25

pressure is keeping him at home though as well.

7:27

In an early book he wonders quote

7:30

how to get free of pressure from mother and

7:32

father and teacher and brother. I think that's

7:34

probably a sentiment a lot of people can relate to.

7:37

It must have been on his mind a lot, because when Evlie

7:39

was in his early twenties, he had a dream,

7:41

but not just a dream, It was a dream

7:44

of vision, which appears sometimes in podcasts

7:47

they do they popped up recently, I feel

7:49

like now and again. But in

7:51

this particular dream, he found himself with

7:54

early Islamic saints and the prophet Mohammed,

7:56

who asked Evlia to call the morning prayer.

7:59

After he was done, Eliah went back

8:01

before the prophet to ask for shaffat,

8:04

or intercession, but messed

8:06

up and asked instead for a similar

8:09

sounding word in Ottoman Turkish say

8:11

a hot or travel. So

8:14

Mohammed promises him both, plus

8:16

visits to the tombs of saints and prophets,

8:18

which do end up coming along with his later

8:21

travel. So according to the Ottoman

8:23

historian Caroline Finkel, this type

8:25

of dream vision is a common

8:28

occurrence of literature from this

8:30

time and when that Eviliah himself used

8:32

in later accounts of his travels.

8:34

But she also notes that in this case

8:36

he founds especially genuine, like

8:39

it really was a life changing

8:41

moment for him, not that

8:43

he woke up from his dream and started

8:46

packing, though it still took about ten years

8:48

before Elia could get away uh

8:50

the first time, accompanied by a friend

8:52

visiting nearby Bertha, and

8:55

on the trip back home, he decided

8:58

not to tell his folks but to set

9:01

out again and head off to the north Anatolian

9:03

coast um to to tour

9:06

that rage in a little bit. Since he was traveling

9:08

with a newly appointed governor, this also started

9:10

a trend of journeying and the entourage of various

9:13

public officials, so he'd serve

9:15

various functions along the way, including

9:17

things like prayer caller, tax collector,

9:19

courier, envoy, customs clerk,

9:21

even a mom basically anything

9:24

that allowed him to tour with the retinue or run

9:26

specific errands to places that he

9:28

was interested in. Imagine a more

9:30

practical version of his work for

9:32

the sultan, and that's kind of what it was. Yeah,

9:34

and it afforded him not only free

9:37

travel of course, a job that goes

9:39

along with traveling, but a certain amount of

9:41

protection to You've got to imagine bandits

9:44

in the woods and rebels and pirates

9:47

of course, as we've already mentioned,

9:49

so traveling with a group like this would

9:51

have been a safer way to go. So Elliott

9:54

eventually began calling himself despite

9:56

all those other professions to lean and

9:58

just rattled off world traveler

10:01

and boon companion to mankind,

10:03

which I think summs him up pretty well. Many

10:06

of his journeys were in the company of his mother's

10:08

kinsman, the one time Grand Vizier

10:11

Melik Ahmed Pasha,

10:13

and they traveled to modern Ukraine,

10:15

Sophia, Iran, Iraq,

10:18

Transylvania, Walachia,

10:20

and Maldavia, Poland Bosnia,

10:23

just a lot of places all

10:26

over the place. And everlas range also

10:28

starts to sound more impressive when you consider

10:30

he was usually taking the hard away

10:32

on these travels on horseback. After

10:34

at one shipwreck in the Black

10:36

Sea um he was kind of

10:39

put off sea travel and completely

10:41

all of his expeditions were over land.

10:44

When he finally hopped on a boat about thirty

10:46

years later, attempting to visit Cyprus,

10:48

he was quickly rewarded with that pirate

10:51

attack that we mentioned before, so it turned

10:53

out that sea travel was just not for him. Out

10:55

of commission for all sea travel, and

10:58

after Melik Ahmed died in sixteen

11:00

sixty two, Evilah no longer

11:03

had this major patron,

11:05

this man who he was mostly traveling with.

11:07

But according to Caroline Finkel's article

11:09

on him in History Today, he also

11:11

didn't have anything stopping him anymore

11:14

from going exactly where he pleased,

11:16

so he ended up going to work as a cavalryman

11:18

and serving in several major

11:20

engagements before taking part in a really

11:23

notable peace mission to Vienna, which

11:25

established a twenty year truth between the

11:27

Hotsburgs and the Ottomans. And everley

11:29

Is account of his trip to Vienna is

11:32

really one of the best love parts of the Book of

11:34

Travels because it's so full

11:36

of both day to day beauties

11:38

and the horrors of

11:40

the seventeenth century. Yeah. For

11:43

example, he's impressed by the organ at

11:45

St. Stephen's and notes that it quote

11:47

fills the lungs with blood and the eyes

11:50

with tears. But he's also really taken

11:52

by an operation to remove a bullet

11:54

from a man's head and the doctrine

11:56

that he himself receives to stabilize

11:59

three teeth that had been hit by a javelin. And

12:01

he's kind of scandalized by

12:03

social customs he sees when he's in

12:05

Vienna, for instance, men and women socializing

12:08

together in public, women socializing without

12:10

their husband's present. But at the same

12:12

time, even though this clearly disturbs

12:15

him, he finds no problems talking with and

12:17

even befriending individual

12:19

Europeans. So after this

12:21

epic trip to Vienna, Evliah moved

12:24

up to Krimea, up the Volga

12:27

to Kazan, and then briefly back

12:29

to Istanbul. These trips back to Istanbul

12:31

are really really short

12:34

and um come with large

12:36

spans of travel in between. By

12:38

sixteen sixty eight he visited Greece.

12:40

This is another really famous part

12:43

of the Book of Travels because he described

12:45

the Parthenon, which was then functioning

12:47

as a mosque. And the reason why this account

12:49

is so particularly important and why

12:52

the detail is so valued is because

12:54

just about twenty years after Evlasa

12:57

saw the Parthenon, the building was of

13:00

horse blown up when a cannon ignited

13:02

an Ottoman munition. Stump. I mean, sometimes

13:04

it's easy to forget that the ruined

13:06

Parthenon didn't used to be quite as ruined

13:08

as it is today. In sixteen

13:11

sixty nine he saw the Ottomans take a Cretan

13:13

fortress after a twenty one year siege,

13:15

and he had the honor of calling the first prayer there.

13:18

And then in sixteen seventy one, at

13:20

about age sixty, he embarked

13:22

on his pilgrimage to Mecca, again

13:24

dreaming of blessings and this time from

13:26

his father and his former teacher. And it's

13:29

interesting too he did. I mean, of course,

13:31

for a man who traveled so much and

13:33

who was so devout, it seems

13:35

like he would have tried to get to Mecca earlier in

13:37

his life. He did try to go, he had

13:39

events waylay him. So this

13:41

was a real lifetime goal to finally

13:44

be making it to Mecca. And when

13:46

he did it, he went with three companions,

13:48

eight servants, and fifteen Arabian

13:50

horses, so every ended up spending twice

13:53

the time that a normal trip from Istan

13:55

Bowl to Mecca would take to After

13:58

his pilgrimage, Everley is settled Cairo, surveyed

14:01

the city, and made a short attempt to

14:03

find the source of the Nile. But he died

14:05

around six four, likely in Cairo,

14:07

though the exact date and location are still

14:10

unknown. Okay, so now that

14:12

we've covered in brief, of course

14:15

Everly is forty years of travel. What

14:17

did he have to say about all these

14:19

places? What mid what he had to say?

14:21

So unique in the first place, And to a

14:23

certain extent, his work is fairly

14:25

formulaic in towns or cities. He'll

14:27

write about topography, fortifications,

14:30

monuments, you know, what you might expect from

14:32

a newcomer to a town. But he'll also

14:35

talk about dress and cuisine, occupations,

14:38

class structure, medicine, naming,

14:40

customs, speech, literature, hygiene,

14:42

which, by the way, he was really pretty

14:45

into. He had his slaves at one point clean

14:47

out a public bath house where the

14:49

benefit of the people, he just thought it was too growth.

14:51

And then in the countryside he sort of stuck

14:54

to a formula to kind of the in

14:56

between parts of his travel. After

14:58

all, and you talk about the landscape,

15:00

how long it took to get somewhere, the

15:03

direction he was headed in any high

15:05

points like saints tombs along

15:07

the way. But and this is

15:09

the important part. With all the cataloging,

15:12

usually comes an anecdote, a

15:14

conversation he has with a local

15:16

authority or a legend. In

15:18

many cases, his is the

15:20

only record of notable people or strange

15:23

customs in a given area because other

15:25

people just didn't write it down. And

15:27

like any good travel writers, some of the neatest

15:29

examples of anecdotes have to do with

15:32

one of our favorite things food

15:34

food writing. So for instance,

15:36

he broods over whether it's religiously

15:39

acceptable to eat horse meat with

15:41

tatars and um questions

15:44

that a bit and another funny example, he assumes

15:46

that it's probably okay to eat

15:48

giraffe meat with the people in Sudan.

15:51

He actually writes, God willing it

15:53

is permitted. I have not found a discussion

15:55

of it in the sources. He also claims

15:57

to have found practicing cannibals among the Alms,

16:00

who are Western Mongols, who he

16:02

says would eat their dead to honor them. And

16:05

perhaps most memorably, he talks

16:07

about a Cerkashian village custom of

16:10

entering a dead body in a wooden box in a

16:12

hollow tree. So if the bees made

16:14

honey, that meant that the soul would go to heaven.

16:17

But unfortunately for Evliah,

16:19

he experiences this tradition firsthand

16:21

after he accepts some rather hairy

16:24

honey from a local and ends

16:26

up learning that it's honey from a hive that was

16:28

built on a dead man's crotch.

16:30

He has an appropriately freaking

16:32

out kind of reaction to learning

16:35

this, But Eveleah Chelloby biographer

16:38

Robert Dankoff also notes that

16:40

the further out on the frontier Evla gets,

16:43

the more remarkable his stories. And

16:45

I mean, I don't know if we should consider the cannibals

16:47

and the honey ones kind of in that end

16:50

of the spectrum. But some of the things

16:52

that sound really shocking are of course

16:54

true. He talks about female circumcision,

16:56

for instance, but others are clearly

16:59

made up and duds, fake trips to

17:01

Western Europe, ones with ridiculously

17:03

short timelines, especially considering Evlia

17:06

and what we can already assume about how

17:08

he preferred to travel, which was leisurely

17:11

um. And then also folk tales that are

17:13

obviously not true

17:16

and they're presented as fact. And I

17:18

think this was interesting though, according to Dankov,

17:20

wasn't like Evly was trying to pull on over on his

17:23

readers. He suggests that the readers

17:25

would have immediately recognized

17:27

these as fiction, just like modern readers

17:29

would, and they were really just included

17:32

to entertain something that doesn't

17:34

exactly fit. I guess with our

17:37

notions of travel writing today,

17:39

you don't want to just make things up. But I

17:41

like it too. Something about that appeals to me.

17:44

Yeah, well, I feel like nowadays people want

17:46

to know, they really want to know whether this is

17:48

journalistic, is it true, or is it something

17:51

that it has to fall in either camp.

17:53

But the combination of the two

17:55

does sound so interesting.

17:58

So, considering the important of the Book

18:00

of Travels as a geographic document, a

18:02

cultural archive, and just a bounty

18:05

of really well told

18:07

stories, you'd figure it would be widely

18:09

available. But that is not the

18:11

case. Though Everley is certainly considered

18:14

an audience in his writing, likely

18:16

people who were well off, educated Ottomans

18:18

like himself, that's really not how it went

18:21

down. After his death, the manuscript

18:23

stayed in private collections in Cairo until

18:25

seventy two, when it was given to the Chief

18:27

Black Eunuch, who was one of the highest officials

18:30

at Ottoman court, and he

18:32

realized that it was pure gold and ordered

18:34

up more copies of it right away. Excerts

18:37

of these copies were eventually

18:39

printed in Ottoman Turkish now,

18:41

which is kind of like Middle English for

18:44

modern Turkish, apparently pretty impossible

18:46

to read for anybody but scholars exactly,

18:49

and it was translated into English

18:51

as well. So the Book of Travels

18:53

became known for Book one, which

18:55

surveys is standbull. But the document

18:57

as a whole was considered pretty

19:00

much unimportant, not worth translating the whole

19:02

thing, so by the late eighteen hundreds

19:05

it was printed in its entirety,

19:07

but at that point, the Silton considered some

19:09

parts too too risky

19:11

and had large sections

19:13

censored, and that was really the only thing that people

19:16

had to work with for about a century.

19:18

Finally, in the mid nineteen nineties it

19:21

was transcribed in its

19:23

entirety into modern Turkish. Still

19:25

they're only extracts available in

19:27

English. I mean, when I first learned about this guy,

19:29

I immediately checked my library

19:31

expecting to be able to find a copy, and then

19:34

I learned, like, good luck. But another

19:36

hold up with people, I

19:38

guess studying the whole manuscript,

19:41

studying the whole piece of literature, is it's really

19:43

huge. In his biography of Evliah,

19:45

Robert Dankoff writes that quote, the gigantic

19:48

scope of the work has deterred investigators

19:51

from analyzing its structure beyond

19:53

a mere enumeration of its basic contents.

19:56

Characteristically, scholars have approached

19:58

the stay A hootonomy as though it were a huge

20:00

mind with numerous unconnected

20:03

passageways. So what I take away from this is that

20:05

because it does have so many relevant

20:07

details to very

20:10

specific areas of study, like botany

20:12

or food in um

20:15

but I don't know the Ukraine or something

20:17

like that, people will go in and

20:20

look for what concerns their own work

20:22

and not really consider the

20:24

whole work and the life behind it.

20:27

But times are changing and Evla is kind

20:29

of on his way up. He was named

20:31

a UNESCO Man of the Year in two

20:34

thousand and eleven, and a trail

20:36

through western Turkey now follows the first

20:38

stage of his sixteen seventy one pilgrimage.

20:41

And it's meant to encourage historic and

20:43

natural preservation, promote sustainable

20:45

tourism, and also to advanced

20:47

indigenous horse breeds. The horse trail

20:50

it's called the Evil at Chellaby Way.

20:52

And I think you listen to recording of

20:54

a talk given by Caroline think about

20:57

this right. Yeah. It was a talk given at

20:59

the Royal Asiastic Society,

21:01

and she said that when she was

21:03

scouting out this trail, you know, trying to establish

21:05

it with a group of other interested people, they

21:08

found that a lot of the local folks

21:10

along the way not only still knew who

21:12

EVERLEA. Chelloby was, but still knew

21:15

what he had written about their villages, you

21:17

know, four hundred years earlier. It reminded me, I

21:20

don't know, maybe the best comparison we could make

21:22

would be Lewis and Clark or something,

21:24

knowing about the region they passed through

21:26

if you still live in that region. But this

21:29

is four hundred years ago, which definitely

21:31

puts a puts a spin on the whole thing.

21:33

Yeah, it's pretty amazing. I have one final

21:35

point too, I want to make about travel writing

21:38

in general. I was trying to think about what makes

21:40

good travel writing. We've already established that

21:42

we can't even keep you know, a week of journals

21:45

when we go on vacations. But I

21:48

do like reading travel writing, and I

21:50

think that really strong travel

21:52

writing usually does have all

21:55

of those details, but has a strong

21:57

enough presence behind it that somehow it all

21:59

feelsunified without feeling like,

22:01

oh, I'm just reading about what this person

22:03

is thinking and going through. What

22:06

appeals to you about good travel writing, Well,

22:08

it makes me kind of think about what we were saying about Evliah.

22:10

I mean, what really appeals to me is when a person becomes

22:13

a part of a place. They're not just observing

22:16

and you know, telling you what they're seeing and what

22:18

they're tasting and whatever they're doing. They're

22:20

talking to people, and not

22:23

just talking to people, but maybe becoming friends

22:25

with the people, um, you know, forming relationships

22:27

with them and really becoming immersed

22:30

in the culture, because I think, um,

22:32

you know, that's what makes a really good trip. That's

22:34

what really makes me want to go on a trip as

22:36

knowing like, hey, I could become part of this place and

22:38

this is what it's really like. Well, and that kind of writing

22:41

is what's that's a good travel narrative

22:44

apart from just a guide book

22:46

or something where it's just telling you what you

22:48

need to go see, there's no personality

22:51

behind it. And I think one of the reasons why

22:53

Evliah is such a strong

22:55

travel writer and while why he is so appealing

22:58

after all these years, is that even though

23:00

he was very, you know, an elite man.

23:02

He was well off, well educated, he was

23:05

devoted to his empire, but

23:08

he stayed pretty open minded during

23:10

his travels. I mean, he would include

23:13

stereotypes, but like I said earlier,

23:15

he was willing to go meet people and talk

23:17

to people, and um, talk to

23:19

the average people too, and find out what

23:21

they were doing. He didn't let it stop him

23:24

from from really experiencing

23:26

a place, and he knew how to describe things.

23:29

He's known for comparing things

23:31

to vegetables, for instance, when everyone

23:33

can that's something everyone can relate to exactly

23:36

even four hundred years later. So let

23:38

us know what you think um makes

23:40

a good travel travel writing

23:43

or or any travel favorite travel

23:45

story. Yeah, that's a very good question

23:47

for you. I love to read good travel articles

23:49

and notorious for buying those um

23:52

you know, year and anthology

23:56

travel writing cool. So let

23:58

us know at history podcasts at Discovery

24:01

dot com, and I guess that's a good

24:03

time to go right to listener mel Okay,

24:08

So today we have an email from Kathleen,

24:10

and she wrote in to suggest that we cover

24:13

genala Um and some

24:15

French resistance history, which I have always

24:18

wanted to do at some point, but I

24:20

wanted to include one little story she shared

24:22

with us. She said, the reason I'm sending this letter

24:25

today is that I was prompted to write

24:27

you by an unusual incident on my

24:29

drive to work this morning. I was traveling

24:31

down all of Avenue in Burbank, California,

24:34

when I noticed a strange phenomenon. Whenever

24:37

I stopped for a red light, my public radio

24:39

station would fade out into my surprise

24:41

and delight, your podcast would fade

24:43

in. I recognized it immediately. It's

24:45

the second in the H. H. Holmes two

24:47

parter, an episode I hadn't done without

24:50

yet and that I'd been anticipating.

24:52

I thought at first you must have reached a deal

24:54

to be broadcast on public radio, but

24:57

later realized what must have happened

24:59

an other missed in history fan must

25:01

have been driving the exact same route

25:04

at the exact same time, using an

25:06

FM iPod transmitter to

25:08

listen through his or her car stereo. I

25:10

don't use an MP three player myself, so it

25:13

couldn't have been coming from me. To

25:15

add to the unlikeliness of this event, my

25:17

public radio station couldn't have been more than

25:19

point one or point two away on the FM

25:21

number dial from the unassigned number

25:24

this transmitter chose to broadcast on,

25:26

or I would never have picked up its transmission.

25:29

So there you have it. Burbank is so saturated

25:31

with listeners that it is possible for us

25:33

to be driving the same route at the same

25:35

time, only a car length and a fraction of a

25:38

radio dial number apart. So

25:41

I thought this was pretty fun. And also

25:44

I'm so glad Kathwayne as a listener, because

25:46

imagine if you started

25:48

hearing the H. H. Holmes podcast while

25:50

you were driving to work in the morning, it might be creepy.

25:54

Creepy would be afraid somebody was messing

25:56

with me. So thank you for sharing

25:59

that story with as Kathleen. And

26:01

again, if you guys want to recommend

26:03

any travel writers your

26:05

favorite out there, you can email us

26:08

at History Podcast at how stuff

26:10

works dot com. We're also on Twitter at

26:12

Misston History, and we are on Facebook

26:14

and if you want to explore

26:16

some of the topics we talked about today

26:19

a little bit further, we have some great articles

26:21

about travel on our website, including one

26:23

that's called can Travel Make You Happy?

26:25

By our own Amanda Arnold, and you can

26:27

find it by visiting our homepage

26:30

www dot how stuff works dot

26:32

com.

26:36

Be sure to check out our new video podcast,

26:38

Stuff from the Future. Join how stuf

26:40

Work staff as we explore the most promising

26:42

and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.

26:45

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Download it today on ipuestation