March 31, 2026 • 49 mins
Don't do lead, kids! Nowadays everyone knows the dangers this substance poses to humans -- especially children in their formative years -- but back in the day, lead was everywhere. Ancient Rome was riddled with the stuff, using lead in everything from pipes, to smelting, to cutlery, pottery and wine. It's tough to know just how much lead the average person encountered, but breathing the lead-filled air alone may have dropped children's IQs by up to three points. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max discover a fascinating, controversial theory: that Rome didn't fall due to war and economic troubles... but instead, the empire toppled because everyone slowly became dumber and dumber.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Pulled up your number two
pencils because we have one for you, with great thanks
to our super producer, Uh, mister Max Unleaded Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I hope you are unleaded Max, get the leadout, Williams.
There we go, and I made a straight corn No,
I don't understand the Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yeah, that is none other than mister Noel Brown. Noel,
how are you doing.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
I'm pretty good? Yeah, man, I'm excited to get the
let out. Remember when they used to that was like,
I think it was sort of a universal radio thing
for like a block of led Zeppelin. They just called
it get the It might have been a local, regional
thing for me. But for some reason it seems sort
of like morning shows with someone called the Goots. As
you like to say, Ben. It just seems like an
old school radio thing, like we're gonna get the let
(01:20):
out this hour nine raw. They do call me Ben Bullen.
The rumors are true, rumors about you forget let me Ad.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
I think it's Fleetwood met or Flee or Flee as well.
We're not gonna flee from this when I am a
research associate for this episode. Yeah, Noel, you and I
have been talking about this offline because we used to
hang out a lot off air, folks were We are
(01:54):
phenomenally obsessed with this concept. It is a topic that's
gonna pop up in a darker form on our sister
show Stuff. They don't want you to know, you see,
fellow ridiculous historians. For centuries upon centuries, some of the
smartest historians and all of human experience have debated what
(02:15):
exactly led to the fall of the Roman Empire. It's
one of the greatest civilizations in all known history?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
What led to it? Ben?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Okay, you caught Boiler, It's right there, you caught me.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
You caught the bad joke. Drama is going to be
working overtime in this episode.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
It's a feature, not a bug. Max so uh nol uh.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
You and I remember the Roman Empire? Yeah, like it
was only yesterday.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
It's almost as those histories repeating itself right now in
the world we find ourselves in. I'm not sure we
can blame lead for that one though. Yeah, that's true,
that's true.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
We'll have to see what future Ridiculous historians say, we
know it is impossible to overestimate just how much of
an impact this empire made on the rest of the
world up to the present day. Nol Uh, We've got
(03:17):
to joke in here for you, bro. What factors contributed
to the fall of the Roman Empire as far as
mainstream history is concerned?
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Oh, Ben, are you talking about my favorite food? What
is your favorite food? Cosmic gumbo of course. Oh yeah,
we used to say that on set. We used to
say it's a cosmic gumbo. It's a real cosmic gumbo.
Shout out to Santa Claus and his acting career. Also
shout out and rip to Biff Whiff. I think you
should leave fame that the gentleman who portrayed Santa and
(03:47):
that she passed away last year and really seemed like
a lovely dude as a human person and obviously a
delight in various characters on the Tim Robinson vehicle. I
think Shirt brother Rip Shirt Brothers. Yeah. Oh, with that
amazing song. I'm sorry not to get off the rails
(04:07):
too hard. But one thing I think we both love
about that show is that it has emotional gravitas like
there are there are sketches quote unquote in it that
like pull at your heartstrings and that is one with
our buddy Biffwiff. I used to be a p I
know you were there, slapstakes, you were there. What is it?
(04:28):
Was it a sloppy state? But what's the song like
dangerous Night? Dangerous Nights? Thank you very much? Which is
Vampire Weekend by the way, I think you knew that.
But that band there's a lot of hidden Easter Egg
band performances in there. And the Shirt Brothers song equally
emotionally devastating is the band Turnstile? That's right?
Speaker 1 (04:46):
What if there are now rules which people started asking
at the fall of the Roman Empire? Generally, yeah, yeah, yeah, generally,
I'm not proud of it, but I'm not.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Regret And if there was an award for segues, you
would at least be on the shortlist to get it.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Thank you, thank you. I love it, middle of it easily, Okay,
I'm here in top fifteen, and I appreciate you. Generally.
The boffins in the Ivory Towers of History will tell
you there was again an unpleasant cosmic gumbo of a
lot of different factors that led to the decline of
(05:27):
the Roman Empire military losses against what they called barbarians,
which is also kind of a dumb thing. Do we
want to be etymology nerds about barbarians?
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Do we want to be retroactively? I think we are.
I think we are, and we should lean into it
this very moment.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
So Barbarian was a term aside from Conan the barbarian,
but Barbarian was a term where in the Roman Empire
was exercising prejudice against people who spoke different languages. Barbar
was like their blah blah bay bar So they were
(06:08):
calling the elephant blablarians.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Oh, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha? Are the Are these the individuals
that occupied the Barbary coast? Or is that different?
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Well, there were blah blah about.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
It, Okay, bob blah blahs blah blah, yes, yes yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Uh. People selling people to people?
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Uh oh, my grandfather started this company with one rickety
slave ship and a motto, people selling people to people.
We're just hot on the classic comedy at the top
of this show, Thursday is our Friday. We're also exhibiting
some big Thursday energy and to your point, Pan, Thursday
is indeed our Friday. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Other people will tell you that political corruption contributed to
the fall of the Roman Empire, economic woes, internal strife,
all the hits, you know, all the good ones, all
the slow jazz, all the usual suspects. But what if
there was another factor? And Noel, you and I have
been talking about this for more than five years now.
(07:06):
I think we've been obsessed with this.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
One hundred percent. Ben, And as you mentioned on our
sister show, Stuff that, I want you to know, it's
it's it's absolutely red meat. But we do love a crossover, Ben,
and this is absolutely one of the ones that fits
right in the sweet spot of then diagram between our
two shows. Sorry, I had to say that so emphatically.
I just felt very strongly about it.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
I liked it.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
I liked it.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
When you do the news voice, what if lead exposure,
the exposure to the chemical lead number eighty two pb
on the periodic table, what if that was part of
the fall of the Roman Empire. As ridiculous as it sounds,
there is a surprising amount of heft to this argument. So,
(07:51):
first off, as we're getting into this, Noel, and then
you Max, what do we think of as Americans when
we hear the were lead. When you hear lead, what's
the first image that pops in your mind?
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Get the let out block a led zeppelin? Obviously as
previously mentioned, No, it's true. I mean we think maybe
unleaded gasoline. The fact that they still have to say
that it's always fun. I'm so irritated by that one.
Pretty funny.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Yeah, okay, we'll get back to that with Max.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
What about you?
Speaker 1 (08:20):
What do you think?
Speaker 3 (08:21):
I mean, this is dark, but this is honestly where
I go as a Michigan I think of Flint, Michigan.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
You think of Flint Michigan pipes. Yea, those pipes, those pipes. Uh,
some of us maybe thinking of old school number two pencils,
et cetera. They contained graphite and clay, they never actually
contained lead. That's something a bunch of people fell for.
But I love what you're pointing out there and old,
(08:45):
the idea of unleaded gas And I forgot to tell you, dude,
I was on an old plane recently, a plane that
was so.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Old that still had ashtrays on the arm.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
I had ashtrays in the bathroom. My guy and little
flippy boys, Yeah, little flippy boys right under the sign
that says non smoking flight, and I am still mystified
by America's love of unnecessary signage, you know, unleted gas
for real. Now in twenty twenty six, drug free school zone,
(09:19):
Where is the cool school?
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Ben? You say that, but you know there's somebody who's
gonna rip a dart on a flight if it weren't
for that flashing sign. I bet you're right.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yeah, we we.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Rely on signage here in the United States because we're
not very smart.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Also a largely because of lead boys.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Also a lot of our a lot of our road
signage is super neggy, it's super uh, it's super mad
at you and authoritarian. The nicest road sign I've ever
seen is keep going, dude.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
I love that. Where you'll live, I mean, if you
go to Germany, for example, the crosswalk signs are these
lovely little fellas called the Amphlmann. You know, they're not
aggressive at all. They're like little cartoon characters just going
for a stroll. There you are, and you can join
them too. Now, lead is still used in some fuel
products today, mainly small engine planes here in the States.
(10:19):
But you're you're not going to run into it at
your local gas station. You'll just see a bunch of
signs that say unleaded gas, and if you ask them
to sell you gas with lead in it because you're
a weird person or you've landed your plane on the
local street, you may be surprised that they do not
indeed sell leaded gasoline. Because the US finally, like so
(10:45):
many other empires, the US fell in love with lead
and then they finally figured out that stuff will kill you.
Do you remember while back we're doing the series on
inventors who die by their own inventions, and we mentioned
this guy named Tommy. How could I forget Thomas Midgeley Junior?
(11:08):
Big reason for the lead craze. Yeah, as we mentioned
in that previous episode, our pale old Tommy figured out
that the compound tetra ethyl lad could be added to
gasoline in order to prevent that knock knock knocking on
Heaven's door coming from your automobiles engine. Though this ended up,
of course, having terrible consequences for the environment. He did, however,
(11:33):
receive numerous medals for her his work as a chemical
company executive and researcher. But it wasn't until much much
later the public finally figured out that maybe uh, these
were these awards were not warranted. Yeah, did you get
some damage? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Here ended the side notes, fellow ridiculous historians. Now, aside
from gas, flint, Michigan, and pencils.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
Led h what is it good for? Absolutely some things,
several things. Thanks, and let's please not forget lad Zeppelin. Guys,
let's please not forget that Zepplin. It is a legitimate element.
It's on the table with all the elements. Number eighty
two on the periodic table. What's the abbreviation PB. That's
(12:18):
so it's one of.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Those weird ones that related to Latin or something, right, Yeah,
number eighty two on the periodic table with a bullet
on weight basis. Lead has nearly the same abundance in
Earth's crust as another popular element, maybe more popular in
the past, much like its weight cousin ten. You don't
see ten nearly as much as we used to. It
(12:40):
used to be super super abundant in terms of manufacturing
and stuff. So, in addition to having a low melting point,
being plentiful and extremely malleable, it is also easy to
extract from the ground.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah, yeah, which means that human beings have been aware
of lead and have been working lead for a long
long time. You might be as surprised as we were, folks,
to learn that lead is even mentioned in the Bible,
not once, but multiple times.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
What was the last thing that we dropped that was
mentioned in the Bible that was a little unexpected? It
came up recently. It's okay if you don't remember. All
I remember is that this is the second time it's
come up in a week or two. We'll figure that
out and get right back to you, folks, or hey,
let us know to our jobs for us. The Babylonians
used lead as plating material for recording inscriptions, you know literally, yeah,
(13:40):
like a like a medium for for like thanks Ben, Yeah,
the great great sound cue. The Romans used it for
all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
They must add a billy maze or some very persuasive character,
because you know, if you picture the infomercial, it's it's like, Hi,
I'm Benanitis and Lowell Nikas and Maxima Gadish, Maxima Gadish.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
All right, we'll keep it.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
We're excited to talk to you ancient Rome about a
miracle substance. We call it lead. You can use it
in tablets, you can use it in pipes, you can
make coins.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
It ain't like we don't have somewhat of an equivalent
in modern history with asbestos.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Sure, yeah, that's a great observation.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
It was sold as like a miracle substance that could
be used for all kinds of stuff, to keep it
from you know, catching on fire.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Kind of similar to plastic. We're still rocking that one,
shout out bodies. Yeah, they we know that. People even
used a derivative of lead, what they called white lead,
as a decorative pigment. They lead was in everything in
(14:57):
ancient Rome. Lead was treated the way people treat plastic today,
or as bestis as you said, through the earlier part
of the twentieth century. And the thing is, it's a
devil's bargain. It's a pyrrhic victory because in addition to
being very very useful, lead is also cartoonishly toxic and
(15:20):
is so bad for you. It is bad for everyone.
It's not like gluten where some people are fine with it.
It is bad for every single living thing.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Full stop. Lead exposure can cause serious health issues, particularly
in small children when exposed to it at a young age,
causing developmental delays, learning difficulties or disabilities, damage to the
brain and the nervous system. Those, of course can you
happen to anybody, but specifically in those very very important
formative years. They can have very specific issues when young
(15:55):
people are exposed to it.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Oh yeah, even low levels of lead can harm you.
We do know that the ancient Romans appeared to be
aware of lead poisoning, at least by the time of
Augustus Caesar, not Julius Caesar, the other one. We know
that physicians would literally write stuff like lead makes the
(16:19):
mind give way, not as a pretty cool slogan, yeah,
not as a compli of it though that's way clarified.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
No, it's true. Still, they didn't really have any particularly
good notion of the long term ramifications. Ben you point
out in the dock here that lead is a bit
of an imposter because it's so similar to calcium that
human cells take it on instead of calcium, which is
of course needed to fortify the bones and other positive
(16:50):
health effects. So a perfect recipe for disaster there, And
it didn't take too long before a big old chunk
of the Roman population started to take on massive amounts
of lead into their bodies.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
They sure did no. This leads us to the Grand theory,
the concept that lead exposure and poisoning contributed to the
fall of the Roman Empire. So the idea of this
poisoning is actually pretty old. The theory dates back to
(17:29):
the eighteen hundreds. Historians were looking around at all the
stuff that Romans used containing lead, and they started looking
at cutlery, plates, tableware, you know, and they said, okay,
ancient Romans used lead utensils, right, They sometimes had lead.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Plates, cooking implements, right, and we're talking utensils like things
that you know, you put in your mouth alte exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Yeah. But it turns out this this theory was of
good intent. They were asking the right questions. But it
turns out that most ancient Romans were not very frequently
using lead utensils because that was more for the fancy
pants part of the socioeconomic pyramid.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
For sure, it would appear they were much more likely
to have used wooden utensils and tableware.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
And if you're super duper wealthy, you're using gilded tableware
or silver, or you're using glass plates. But the issue
is if people are using tableware at this time, they're
going to tend to be from the upper crust of society.
So it's possible that the leaders of the Roman Empire
(18:48):
got more of a dose of lead than most people.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
No mad king syndrome, right, Maybe we'll get to me. Also,
surely a lot of the proletariat were using like you know, pottery, Yeah, yep.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
No, that's a great point. So that enameler those decorative
pigments would also be a vector for lead exposure. If
we go back to the nineteen sixties, we see folks
like sc Gilfillan who picked up this idea of lead
poisoning and the Fall of Rome and ran with it.
He was so into this that nineteen sixty five he
(19:26):
published an article called in a Burst of Creativity, Lead
Poisoning and the Fall of Rome.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Also an excellent emo band.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Also an excellent emo band. They've got just one album
from nineteen ninety three. But we think they're going to
come back.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
I think so too. They'll be opening for My Chemical
Romance on tour before you know it. So this piece
or paper, I guess. It was argued that the aristocracy's
use of lead cookwear and lead infused wine led to
infertility and cognitive decline among the hoi. No, not the hoypeloi.
(20:04):
The hoypeloi is the lower class. This is the upper crust.
So the rulers, not the rules, We're the ones potentially
getting dumber as a result of this exposure, which is
of course a perfect recipe for revolution.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Oh yeah, very much so, because now you can now
you can look at your rulers and say, hey, guys,
I do think these people might be dumber than us. Like,
I'm not trying to be a hot headed revolutionary. I'm
just saying, whatever these folks are doing that we are
(20:39):
not doing, is making them kind of dunderheaded.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Yeah. You mix that with like, you know, a dose
of corrupting power and incest and incest it's a rest.
It's a real recipe for disaster.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Yeah. And then we see this theory about lead in
the fall of room continue to find interest through the
next few decades. People like the geochemist Jerome Ragu They
added gout to the mix. Gout. Yeah, well, sprinkling of
gout for a little bit of gout as a treat.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah, And it is historically in some of these accounts
associated with lead poisoning. This geochemist mentioned the following said, Hey,
maybe all the rich folks in ancient Rome having gout
was due to all that lead and the stuff that
they drank, and perhaps all the potted meat that they
were consuming. That's that's me, that's my take.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Yeah. And to explain what we're talking about with lead
as a sweetener, ancient Romans used something they called sappa
sugar of lead as a preservative and a sweetening agent
in wine. So they would boil this syrup in these
lead pots and it would make a sweet flavor, and
(21:56):
then they would you know, step on the wine with
it a little bit. I think step on is a
drug term, but you know, I'm saying they would dilute it.
The why with this stuff. It would lead to chronic
lead poisoning. It would cause infertility, dementia, and of course
gout because your wine tastes sweet, but you're paying for.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
It, oh for sure. However, a lot of us is
more or less various well intentioned forms of speculation. There
was not the technological means to gather concrete quantitative data
regarding these theories, so they were essentially just smart dudes
making pretty smart guesses. However, this all changed very recently.
(22:38):
In fact, just last year and this is this is
where this came up on, so they don't want you
to know. In our weekly Strange News segment, the Roman
lead fall theory is in fact back in a big way,
though not the way you might think. Yes, we were.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
We are very well adjusted entities, so we definitely don't
stay up late at night texting each.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Other weird theories like this.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
I am lying we do. So. In twenty twenty five
there was a report you you remember that I got
you and our pal Matt myself very excited. Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences led by da DA a
guy named Professor Joseph McConnell found that people of Rome,
(23:23):
they were able to prove it for the first time
that people of Rome were ingesting lad on a beat
me here Max, on a fucking bonkers level.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yeah, like on purpose. It was a feature, not a bug,
as I like to say, as I wanted to say,
They were in fact using a substance that was combined
with lead. In fact, lead ascetates not just to sweeten
their wine through the vessels that it was being held in,
but just putting it straight up in there to just
(23:55):
make it a little sweeter. Give it that lead that
led umami. We all crave like a mixer and a cocktail.
Huh yeah, a little bit of bitters in.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
There's a little dash of lead, right, yeah, I'll have
my pinots straight up with some lead.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yeah dirty, please, very very dirt dirty.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
And this practice of using lead acetate in wine continued
well after the fall of the empire. By the way,
we do have to give some aberration to the Romans.
They had an impressively sophisticated aqueduct system, which I think
(24:35):
a lot of modern people forget the catches. The coffeat
is here that their aqueduct system used lead pipes because
plumbers of the time loved lead. It's malleable, right, it
doesn't take that much to heat it and form it.
It also leaches into everything, so we made pipes well,
(24:57):
but we made pipes out of bad MATERI. The big
reveal from this study is that Romans were also breathing
in huge amounts of lead through the air from silver
mining and smelting. It was like lead at this time,
you guys, was like teenage mutant ninja turtles in the
(25:18):
nineteen nineties. You couldn't get away from this stuff. Sorry,
I still got the turtles on the brain.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Where did that? That came up recently too? We're talked
about we talked about pizza of course, favorite turtles, and
I think we opened the discussion yesterday to the entire
Turtles universe, which I wasn't given the option to do
when posed with this question initially, So I would be
Krang or the big robot body that houses KRNG. Okay, great, yeah,
(25:43):
well you know that.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
We have sort of voluntold Max to get on board
with the TMNT lore Max. Thanks for playing along. We
also op Max is popping back on. Oh what'd you do?
What was the hand signal?
Speaker 2 (25:59):
This?
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Okay, horns, Okay, I'm on board.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
I thought you were doing that cool hand signal from
Big Trouble in Little China? Do you remember that one
like that? No, I see what you're doing. We're an
audio show. So it is true to your point all
about the danger of lead exposure to children. It's true
that this toxic substance polluting the air probably got into
(26:26):
children's blood. It leads to what these researchers call a
widespread cognitive decline.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Right with researchers including that lead poisoning or exposure rather
from the air alone may well have caused an estimated
two point five to three point drop and IQ's throughout
the entirety of the empire. And let's just really quickly
reframe the question here that we posed at the top,
which is a complex one. Did lead exposure cause the
(26:58):
fall of the Roman Empire? Just putting that one back
out there. So again, we're in a similar boat here,
not necessarily with lead poisoning, but with things like social
media and AI. We know that that stuff is absolutely
on a long enough timeline going to cause significant declines
in IQs.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Yeah, and stay tuned for our upcoming episode on whether
IQ tests are malarkey. But I love that point there, Noel,
because modern civilizations are not that different from ancient ones.
The researchers in this study, in particular, they say their
findings represent the first documented example of human caused industrial
(27:42):
pollution in all of history. And the way they figured
this out, it kind of ties into that episode we
did a few years back about the worst year in history.
Do you remember that one?
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Yeah? Yeah, I was the one where all the real
bad stuff, right, Yeah, a lot of plagues. It was plagues.
It was weather stuff. It was bad times.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah, very plague forward with notes of natural disaster. Right,
had a little bit of lead for fun. So these
folks did something fascinating. They went to Greenland and Russia
and they started hunting ice core samples. And this was
really cool because before this study even kicked off, the
(28:27):
scientists in those areas had spent decades and decades using
these specially designed large drills to go through ice sheets
in the Arctic, and they would come up with these long,
basically ice noodles, solid ice noodles, like eleven thousand feet
in length.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
It's pretty cool the way they store those too, Like
they have to store those, right. I don't know if
you guys saw that kind of not that great season
A true detective. I guess none of them have been
that great. After the Night Country, Night Country, which it
was cool for a minute, but it ended really weird
and not good.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
I don't think it was I don't think it was original, correct.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
I think the third season was pretty good. It has
similar flavor to the first one and similar character study. Yeah,
some people are real apologists for the second season. I
just remember some of the dialogue being like utterly cringed,
but I need to go back and revisit it. But
that season that I'm talking about in Alaska involved ice
core studies and research stations and all of that. So
the thing that's cool about ice cores is it's like
(29:30):
a you know, a time capsule. You can then you
can look down through these massively long ice noodles as
you put it in and see what happened in the
past based on layers of material that have been deposited
and then covered over and then et cetera. You can
see what was going on in the environment at the
time and guess. And these were full of a lot
of lead, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
It's kind of like dendo chrinology the science of reading
tree rings or the art of reading tree rings.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Or phrenology. Wait no, aha, no, no, no.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Similar intention, but maybe not inaccuracy. Oh phrenology, Noel can
just for anybody who somehow doesn't know, can you give
us like a quick three sentence summation on what phrenology is? Not?
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Good? There we go. Now, it's just a notion that
you could like figure out someone's lineage, I guess through
the bumps on their head. And it was typically harnessed
in order to other folks from different parts of the world,
not them, you know European experience, right, yeah, like saying
(30:39):
by studying the bumps on an African Americans head, for example,
you could see that they were inferior.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
And they got super weird with phrenology to the point
where they were saying things.
Speaker 5 (30:51):
Like, oh, the bump on this back part of the
ear right ear right behind the ear indicates this person
as Welsh heritage, which means they are thief in a gambler.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
That was very good. That's kind of how they do, no, no,
no question about it. And it was also one of
those pseudoscience's flim flam quackery kind of things that could
be molded to the.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Very nefarious purposes of whoever was wielding it. So dendo
chronology is different from this, even from phrenology, which is
a BS science and I love that. Aside, we know
how the study went because if we go to articles
like the Smithsonian in twenty twenty five, we see the
(31:38):
journalist Sarah Kuta puts it this way. She explains why
looking at these ice noodles is so important.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Sarah Kuda correct. She says, as snowflakes fall they capture
chemicals and particles from the air. When the snow touches
down in the Arctic, it compresses and solidifies in the
thin layers of ice, with those chemicals and particles still
trapped inside. I said, in these layerscientists can effectively peer
back in time. She said it way smarter than I did,
but the gist is there and it remains true. So
(32:07):
the team looked at layers of Arctic ice that corresponded
to between five hundred BCE and six hundred CE. In
examining those, they saw increased levels of lead pollution kind
of focused around a particular year fifteen BCE, which of
course lines up with the early years of the Roman Empire.
And then they also saw those lead levels remained high
(32:30):
until one hundred and eighty CE. Some of us might
remember that date from history class, the end of what
we call the Pax Romana, the two hundred ish year
height of the Roman Empire. Oh yeah, piece of Rome. Yeah,
the glory there was Rome.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
This is a crazy period in history. It's an era
of for the time, unprecedented prosperity. So as a result,
the Roman powers that were naturally making a lot of
currency because they didn't have you know, electronic debit cards
or chip and pen, So that meant they had to
(33:09):
do a lot of mining. That meant they had to
smelt a lot of silver, and both of those endeavors
send huge amounts of lead into the atmosphere. Speaking to
the New York Times, Catherine Corney in twenty twenty five,
doctor McConnell from this study said, you know, to produce
one ounce of silver at this time, the Romans probably
(33:33):
also produced something like ten thousand ounces of lead. And
they didn't have you know, an EPA, right, they didn't
have some kind of regulatory body saying hey, stop putting
that crap in the water.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Yeah, knock it off. Yeah, hey, you guys, knock it off.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
So they look at like you're saying, these ice samples
and they find these levels of lead. This is concrete
evidence that lead was in the air. They started working
backward and they said, okay, if we know how much
we can find in the ice from that time, we
can estimate how much lead the Romans must have just
(34:16):
been into the atmosphere.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Well, we can tell you atmospheric models suggest that's between
three three hundred and four thousand, six hundred tons of
lead being released each year during the Pax Romana. That's
a lot of lead. Ben that's more than four thousand
tons a year for around two hundred years.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Yeah, that's a lot of lead. And the pollution was
naturally worst in areas where there was a mining operation
or smelting industries. It was reaching concentrations of one hundred
and fifty nanograms per cubic meter of air. So it's
very rank in they are lead wise. Also, air knows
(35:03):
no terrestrial borders. Air is not a citizen of any government,
so it just flows. Man, it just goes with the flow.
It's kind of a cosmic gumbo.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
It is a little bit of a cosmic gumbo. It's true.
We're not saying that these folks were purposefully tainting everything.
In the same way we're not saying that like microplastics
were purposely done. It's just another example of people either
not knowing what the long term consequences of things would be.
(35:36):
There might be a tad of not caring and the
microplastics of it all, but it's not necessarily, you know,
utterly malicious for the purposes of poisoning the population like
on purpose. Yeah, it's not a thing here I am
apologized being an apologist for the for the plastics industry.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
No, but it's not a thing where the average person
or even the average man actual would have noticed damaging
potential on the way, right, You're not You're walking by
a mine and you might think, Ah, the air's bad,
it smells bad, but you're not thinking, oh, this is
making me dumber. Uh. The researchers use more modern data
(36:18):
to get a bullpark picture of how much lead would
have built up in the blood of ancient Roman children,
and from there they attempted to extrapolate how those accumulations
might have affected the IQ of those kids. Do it
for the kids, right? But why focus on children? Why
(36:39):
focus on the kids? Is it like we.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
Believe the children? You know, they literally are, They literally are.
It's a big part of the motivation of this research
to study and tackle current problems related to chemical exposure
of children. Children are specially vulnerable, as we said, to
(37:02):
lead exposure as their brains are yet to develop fully,
have yet to develop fully, as well as their body
and various organs of course, various organs the body. And
today we know that no amount of lead exposure at
all is safe for kids. In addition to some of
those developmental delays that we were speaking of potential to
(37:23):
lower IQ. Lead accumulation in the bodies of children can
lead to slowed down physical growth conditions like anemia, hyperactivity,
hearing problems, and behavioral and learning problems.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah, this is serious stuff. And so our researchers find
that children during the Pax Romana likely the right. Yeah,
they likely had an extra two point four micrograms of
lead per desolater of blood just from the air pollution.
So if they combine that with research on the more
(37:57):
recent lead exposed populations, you see a drop in IQ
that we alluded to earlier, somewhere between two point five
and three points. So everybody, according to IQ test gets
a little bit dumber. But wait, as ancient Roman Billy
Mays was wont to say, there's more. This is just
(38:17):
the exposure from the air.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
That's what they study.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
They're not studying all the other sources.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
One hundred percent pence. So for the average Roman kid
living and ostensibly doing okay during the pox, your life
would have been absolutely chock full choco block riddles, as
you like to say, ben with lead. And weirdly enough,
the higher you were in the echelons of society, the
more likely you were to have multiple sources of lead poisoning.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
You've got the indoor plumbing, right, You've got the fancy plates.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Okay, sweetening of the boots, sweet wine, yeah, and so
sweet berry wine right right. And so it's tricky to
guess just how high these levels get when we factor in,
as you said, the why, the pipes, the decorations, and
so on. For a comparison to Max's earlier note about Flint, Michigan,
(39:12):
American children had about fifteen micrograms of lead per desolate
blood during the nineteen seventies. That's before lead paint and
leaded gasoline got banned. That likely different research. This is interesting.
This shows us a scary thing about Rome. Different research
from kids around the nineteen seventies. In the US estimate,
(39:36):
those US kids getting exposed to lead at this point
in history experienced a hard nine point drop in their IQ. Again,
please check out stuff they don't want you to know.
It's upcoming episode where we dive deep into the dark
side of that one one hundred percent man, and I
think this brings us up to the present, at least
(39:57):
in terms of this type of research, and we have
a bit of an update. We can all certainly agree
that all of this stuff was bad news for ancient
Rome in terms of the higher ups abilities to govern
all of that. Kind of the question then, though becomes
is this enough to be a top five candidate for
(40:20):
what caused the fall? The actual fall of the Roman Empire?
And I think the answer there is nay, probably not.
It's a bit of a stretch, right, I mean, is
it good enough to get shortlisted? We know it happened,
but there's something we wish people would mention more often
(40:41):
in these conversations. IQ tests are far from perfect. We're
talking about this off air, have we Gon'll be talking
about on an episode? Yeah, yes, here.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
We are shout out to our buddy Alfred Benney. He
had a good idea, he had noble intent. But the
testing itself, the structure of it, the methodology of how
it was derived, it is controversial because of things like
cultural bias, reductionism, limited predictive validity, which is, you know,
going to be familiar to all our fellow honors students. Right,
(41:14):
you're the smartest kid in second grade? Why are you
not the president?
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Well, not to mention something that we'll talk about much
more in depth and give some personal insights into when
we do the IQ episode. But like, some people don't
do well with timed tests, and it can be a
pretty shoddy metric for actual you know, life skills.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Yeah, the fact that some of Earth's smartest human beings
just get freak the heck out when they have to
take a test. We have all been there. Humans also
will at this still don't really understand how to define intelligence,
much less how to measure it. So that's our first
badger in the big bag of problems. And there's another
(41:57):
problem with the proposition of LED leading to the fall
of the Roman Empire.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Correct, even if we accept the you know validity, the
relative validity of IQ testing and measurement based on the
numbers drive from some of these studies, experts aren't in agreement,
or at least aren't universally persuaded that a provable two
point five to three point drop in IQ was enough
(42:25):
to do the thing, you know, to affect the entire population.
And would that be enough to be a sole factor
in the kind of decline that we're measuring here for
of an entire society?
Speaker 1 (42:37):
Yeah, you know, I got lost a little bit, guys,
because I was trying to remember the band that made
a really anomalous song for them, The Decline by New FX.
Do you remember that, It's like a twenty minute song.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
Oh no, no, I do. I just remember we're the
Bruce sporting anti swastika tattoo.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Yes, Fat byc show.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Jump in here.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
I saw one of my first concerts I ever saw
was No Effects at the Old Masquerade, and they opened
the concert by playing the Decline.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
They opened the concert with that way.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
It was pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
It was like, really cool way to start concerts.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
It's like a short film. They played a short version
of fifteen.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
Then it was like, oh man, it's gonna be awesome,
and then they just spent the rest of the time
talking about I thenk They played like six songs after that.
I talked about strip clubs for like half an hour.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
Two different me to decline.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
So we know that there is we know that there's
pushback on this theory. You'll speak to folks like the
pathologist Amy L. Pile Ilola speaking with New Scientists. This
pathologist said the magnitude of exposure and the correlated blood
lead levels were enough to negatively affect the cognitive function
(43:56):
of that population. Yet this is still a far pry
from causing the downfall of the Roman Empire. So this
pathologist is saying, Okay, yeah, we can acknowledge that everybody
probably got a little bit dumber.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Mm hmm, a little bit not good, certainly not, but not.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Enough to lead to the fall of one of history's
biggest empire single leadedly.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Yes, and other experts do agree. We've got Caleb Finch
and neurobiologists at the University of Southern California who told
science is you know science, Taylor Mitchell Brown of Science.
He said, the conclusion of widespread cognitive client from an
estimated three IQ point decrease does not match the huge
productivity of the Roman Empire when lead production was maximal.
(44:47):
We've mentioned that, of course, and given props where props
are due. These aqueducts, the architectural features that they, you know,
revolutionized various things that were done when the lead was flowing.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
Yeah. Another point on that topic is, consider, folks, how
complicated it is for you to order a thing now
with an ubiquitous Internet. Consider how tricky it can be
to order your own stuff now. These folks were still
despite let exposure, they were more than clever enough to
(45:21):
figure out global trade networks as far away as parts
of East Asia with no online access, no.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
GPS, no Aii Asians. I think one could argue that
the things that we mentioned at the top of the
show that we're contending with as a population would likely
lead to more of a malaise and social decline than
lead did for the Romans. Do you think people were
smarter back then, though? I think the Again, we know
(45:52):
it's tough to measure this concept. They were certainly craftier
and they had to get it done. You know, I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
I think people are playing life on harder difficulty mode,
So you would be more likely to be weeded out
if you were not competent.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
And you're stretching those life muscles a lot harder than
we have to.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Oh yeah, Yeah, you're walking a lot more, you're working
out a lot more, you're exposed to many more old
school pathogens.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Problem solving a lot more.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
Yeah, and you have to worry about where you can
sleep safely, where you can eat, figuring out if the
water is going to kill you. Yeah, it was harder
back then. In a lot of ways, but we still
have our speed bumps and obstacles to civilization.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
Today.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
We've had a lot of fun in today's episode. We
hope you have as well.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Here's a question, though, real quick, can you build lead
structures in SIEV six.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
That's where we get to one of our last questions,
which is about the wonder of the world for the
Roman Empire? And here we go to UMX in Civilization,
the game the franchise by sid Meyer.
Speaker 3 (47:09):
The best one to build to the Roman Empire really.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Just kind of throwing me, give me three to the wolves.
Speaker 3 (47:14):
But the Colosseum. Okay, Colosseum is overpowered, absolutely lousy with.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
Lead, absolutely lousy with led. Hopefully you are not lousy
with lead. But this gives us us some stuff to
think about. We can say the hypothesis or the theory
often gets overblown and pop culture, but it is pretty
tough to look at all this evidence and not think
exposure to lead had some kind of influence on ancient Rome. Right,
(47:46):
they did something, And if you take nothing else away
from this episode, please, fellow ridiculous historians, the next time
someone at a bar or on a street corner offers
you a tasty dose of lead.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Just say no, dare to say no to lead.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
Thank you again so much for tuning in, fellow ridiculous historians.
Thanks to our super producer, mister Max no Led Williams.
Max has this episode persuaded you to finally get off
the lead.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
I don't think the condition allows for ingestion of lead.
Get the lead.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
Actually, oddly enough, it's like one of the seven things
I can have. I'm not giving up my lead, cage
free lead. That's a prit from Max's Cold Dead.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
There we go, big, thanks of course to Eves, Jeff Coche.
Speaker 1 (48:37):
Chris vassiotis here in spirit just talking with both of them.
And hey, Noel Eaves had a birthday.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Quite recently she had a birthday and she also joined
forces with the Tennessee Pal Dylan Fagan for a really
sick yoga meditation sash that I was not able to
get into because it's so exclusy and it's sold out,
But I'm looking forward to getting in on the next one.
Jonathan Strickland aka the Quist, he loves that he rubs
(49:05):
it on his bald head. Not sure. A. Jbahamas Jacob
is the puzzler.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
Yeah, Doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lance, also our compatriots over
a ridiculous crime. If you dig us, you will love
Elizabeth Zarin and Dave and Noel. Thank you so much
for this one. I know we've been cogitating.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
Over this for several years.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
Now, and I can't wait for everybody to tune into
the dark side of let exposure on stuff they don't
want you to know.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Pulled up your number two
pencils because we have one for you, with great thanks
to our super producer, Uh, mister Max Unleaded Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I hope you are unleaded Max, get the leadout, Williams.
There we go, and I made a straight corn No,
I don't understand the Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yeah, that is none other than mister Noel Brown. Noel,
how are you doing.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
I'm pretty good? Yeah, man, I'm excited to get the
let out. Remember when they used to that was like,
I think it was sort of a universal radio thing
for like a block of led Zeppelin. They just called
it get the It might have been a local, regional
thing for me. But for some reason it seems sort
of like morning shows with someone called the Goots. As
you like to say, Ben. It just seems like an
old school radio thing, like we're gonna get the let
(01:20):
out this hour nine raw. They do call me Ben Bullen.
The rumors are true, rumors about you forget let me Ad.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
I think it's Fleetwood met or Flee or Flee as well.
We're not gonna flee from this when I am a
research associate for this episode. Yeah, Noel, you and I
have been talking about this offline because we used to
hang out a lot off air, folks were We are
(01:54):
phenomenally obsessed with this concept. It is a topic that's
gonna pop up in a darker form on our sister
show Stuff. They don't want you to know, you see,
fellow ridiculous historians. For centuries upon centuries, some of the
smartest historians and all of human experience have debated what
(02:15):
exactly led to the fall of the Roman Empire. It's
one of the greatest civilizations in all known history?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
What led to it? Ben?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Okay, you caught Boiler, It's right there, you caught me.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
You caught the bad joke. Drama is going to be
working overtime in this episode.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
It's a feature, not a bug. Max so uh nol uh.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
You and I remember the Roman Empire? Yeah, like it
was only yesterday.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
It's almost as those histories repeating itself right now in
the world we find ourselves in. I'm not sure we
can blame lead for that one though. Yeah, that's true,
that's true.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
We'll have to see what future Ridiculous historians say, we
know it is impossible to overestimate just how much of
an impact this empire made on the rest of the
world up to the present day. Nol Uh, We've got
(03:17):
to joke in here for you, bro. What factors contributed
to the fall of the Roman Empire as far as
mainstream history is concerned?
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Oh, Ben, are you talking about my favorite food? What
is your favorite food? Cosmic gumbo of course. Oh yeah,
we used to say that on set. We used to
say it's a cosmic gumbo. It's a real cosmic gumbo.
Shout out to Santa Claus and his acting career. Also
shout out and rip to Biff Whiff. I think you
should leave fame that the gentleman who portrayed Santa and
(03:47):
that she passed away last year and really seemed like
a lovely dude as a human person and obviously a
delight in various characters on the Tim Robinson vehicle. I
think Shirt brother Rip Shirt Brothers. Yeah. Oh, with that
amazing song. I'm sorry not to get off the rails
(04:07):
too hard. But one thing I think we both love
about that show is that it has emotional gravitas like
there are there are sketches quote unquote in it that
like pull at your heartstrings and that is one with
our buddy Biffwiff. I used to be a p I
know you were there, slapstakes, you were there. What is it?
(04:28):
Was it a sloppy state? But what's the song like
dangerous Night? Dangerous Nights? Thank you very much? Which is
Vampire Weekend by the way, I think you knew that.
But that band there's a lot of hidden Easter Egg
band performances in there. And the Shirt Brothers song equally
emotionally devastating is the band Turnstile? That's right?
Speaker 1 (04:46):
What if there are now rules which people started asking
at the fall of the Roman Empire? Generally, yeah, yeah, yeah, generally,
I'm not proud of it, but I'm not.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Regret And if there was an award for segues, you
would at least be on the shortlist to get it.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Thank you, thank you. I love it, middle of it easily, Okay,
I'm here in top fifteen, and I appreciate you. Generally.
The boffins in the Ivory Towers of History will tell
you there was again an unpleasant cosmic gumbo of a
lot of different factors that led to the decline of
(05:27):
the Roman Empire military losses against what they called barbarians,
which is also kind of a dumb thing. Do we
want to be etymology nerds about barbarians?
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Do we want to be retroactively? I think we are.
I think we are, and we should lean into it
this very moment.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
So Barbarian was a term aside from Conan the barbarian,
but Barbarian was a term where in the Roman Empire
was exercising prejudice against people who spoke different languages. Barbar
was like their blah blah bay bar So they were
(06:08):
calling the elephant blablarians.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Oh, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha? Are the Are these the individuals
that occupied the Barbary coast? Or is that different?
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Well, there were blah blah about.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
It, Okay, bob blah blahs blah blah, yes, yes yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Uh. People selling people to people?
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Uh oh, my grandfather started this company with one rickety
slave ship and a motto, people selling people to people.
We're just hot on the classic comedy at the top
of this show, Thursday is our Friday. We're also exhibiting
some big Thursday energy and to your point, Pan, Thursday
is indeed our Friday. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Other people will tell you that political corruption contributed to
the fall of the Roman Empire, economic woes, internal strife,
all the hits, you know, all the good ones, all
the slow jazz, all the usual suspects. But what if
there was another factor? And Noel, you and I have
been talking about this for more than five years now.
(07:06):
I think we've been obsessed with this.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
One hundred percent. Ben, And as you mentioned on our
sister show, Stuff that, I want you to know, it's
it's it's absolutely red meat. But we do love a crossover, Ben,
and this is absolutely one of the ones that fits
right in the sweet spot of then diagram between our
two shows. Sorry, I had to say that so emphatically.
I just felt very strongly about it.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
I liked it.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
I liked it.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
When you do the news voice, what if lead exposure,
the exposure to the chemical lead number eighty two pb
on the periodic table, what if that was part of
the fall of the Roman Empire. As ridiculous as it sounds,
there is a surprising amount of heft to this argument. So,
(07:51):
first off, as we're getting into this, Noel, and then
you Max, what do we think of as Americans when
we hear the were lead. When you hear lead, what's
the first image that pops in your mind?
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Get the let out block a led zeppelin? Obviously as
previously mentioned, No, it's true. I mean we think maybe
unleaded gasoline. The fact that they still have to say
that it's always fun. I'm so irritated by that one.
Pretty funny.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Yeah, okay, we'll get back to that with Max.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
What about you?
Speaker 1 (08:20):
What do you think?
Speaker 3 (08:21):
I mean, this is dark, but this is honestly where
I go as a Michigan I think of Flint, Michigan.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
You think of Flint Michigan pipes. Yea, those pipes, those pipes. Uh,
some of us maybe thinking of old school number two pencils,
et cetera. They contained graphite and clay, they never actually
contained lead. That's something a bunch of people fell for.
But I love what you're pointing out there and old,
(08:45):
the idea of unleaded gas And I forgot to tell you, dude,
I was on an old plane recently, a plane that
was so.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Old that still had ashtrays on the arm.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
I had ashtrays in the bathroom. My guy and little
flippy boys, Yeah, little flippy boys right under the sign
that says non smoking flight, and I am still mystified
by America's love of unnecessary signage, you know, unleted gas
for real. Now in twenty twenty six, drug free school zone,
(09:19):
Where is the cool school?
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Ben? You say that, but you know there's somebody who's
gonna rip a dart on a flight if it weren't
for that flashing sign. I bet you're right.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yeah, we we.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Rely on signage here in the United States because we're
not very smart.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Also a largely because of lead boys.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Also a lot of our a lot of our road
signage is super neggy, it's super uh, it's super mad
at you and authoritarian. The nicest road sign I've ever
seen is keep going, dude.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
I love that. Where you'll live, I mean, if you
go to Germany, for example, the crosswalk signs are these
lovely little fellas called the Amphlmann. You know, they're not
aggressive at all. They're like little cartoon characters just going
for a stroll. There you are, and you can join
them too. Now, lead is still used in some fuel
products today, mainly small engine planes here in the States.
(10:19):
But you're you're not going to run into it at
your local gas station. You'll just see a bunch of
signs that say unleaded gas, and if you ask them
to sell you gas with lead in it because you're
a weird person or you've landed your plane on the
local street, you may be surprised that they do not
indeed sell leaded gasoline. Because the US finally, like so
(10:45):
many other empires, the US fell in love with lead
and then they finally figured out that stuff will kill you.
Do you remember while back we're doing the series on
inventors who die by their own inventions, and we mentioned
this guy named Tommy. How could I forget Thomas Midgeley Junior?
(11:08):
Big reason for the lead craze. Yeah, as we mentioned
in that previous episode, our pale old Tommy figured out
that the compound tetra ethyl lad could be added to
gasoline in order to prevent that knock knock knocking on
Heaven's door coming from your automobiles engine. Though this ended up,
of course, having terrible consequences for the environment. He did, however,
(11:33):
receive numerous medals for her his work as a chemical
company executive and researcher. But it wasn't until much much
later the public finally figured out that maybe uh, these
were these awards were not warranted. Yeah, did you get
some damage? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Here ended the side notes, fellow ridiculous historians. Now, aside
from gas, flint, Michigan, and pencils.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
Led h what is it good for? Absolutely some things,
several things. Thanks, and let's please not forget lad Zeppelin. Guys,
let's please not forget that Zepplin. It is a legitimate element.
It's on the table with all the elements. Number eighty
two on the periodic table. What's the abbreviation PB. That's
(12:18):
so it's one of.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Those weird ones that related to Latin or something, right, Yeah,
number eighty two on the periodic table with a bullet
on weight basis. Lead has nearly the same abundance in
Earth's crust as another popular element, maybe more popular in
the past, much like its weight cousin ten. You don't
see ten nearly as much as we used to. It
(12:40):
used to be super super abundant in terms of manufacturing
and stuff. So, in addition to having a low melting point,
being plentiful and extremely malleable, it is also easy to
extract from the ground.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah, yeah, which means that human beings have been aware
of lead and have been working lead for a long
long time. You might be as surprised as we were, folks,
to learn that lead is even mentioned in the Bible,
not once, but multiple times.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
What was the last thing that we dropped that was
mentioned in the Bible that was a little unexpected? It
came up recently. It's okay if you don't remember. All
I remember is that this is the second time it's
come up in a week or two. We'll figure that
out and get right back to you, folks, or hey,
let us know to our jobs for us. The Babylonians
used lead as plating material for recording inscriptions, you know literally, yeah,
(13:40):
like a like a medium for for like thanks Ben, Yeah,
the great great sound cue. The Romans used it for
all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
They must add a billy maze or some very persuasive character,
because you know, if you picture the infomercial, it's it's like, Hi,
I'm Benanitis and Lowell Nikas and Maxima Gadish, Maxima Gadish.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
All right, we'll keep it.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
We're excited to talk to you ancient Rome about a
miracle substance. We call it lead. You can use it
in tablets, you can use it in pipes, you can
make coins.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
It ain't like we don't have somewhat of an equivalent
in modern history with asbestos.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Sure, yeah, that's a great observation.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
It was sold as like a miracle substance that could
be used for all kinds of stuff, to keep it
from you know, catching on fire.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Kind of similar to plastic. We're still rocking that one,
shout out bodies. Yeah, they we know that. People even
used a derivative of lead, what they called white lead,
as a decorative pigment. They lead was in everything in
(14:57):
ancient Rome. Lead was treated the way people treat plastic today,
or as bestis as you said, through the earlier part
of the twentieth century. And the thing is, it's a
devil's bargain. It's a pyrrhic victory because in addition to
being very very useful, lead is also cartoonishly toxic and
(15:20):
is so bad for you. It is bad for everyone.
It's not like gluten where some people are fine with it.
It is bad for every single living thing.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Full stop. Lead exposure can cause serious health issues, particularly
in small children when exposed to it at a young age,
causing developmental delays, learning difficulties or disabilities, damage to the
brain and the nervous system. Those, of course can you
happen to anybody, but specifically in those very very important
formative years. They can have very specific issues when young
(15:55):
people are exposed to it.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Oh yeah, even low levels of lead can harm you.
We do know that the ancient Romans appeared to be
aware of lead poisoning, at least by the time of
Augustus Caesar, not Julius Caesar, the other one. We know
that physicians would literally write stuff like lead makes the
(16:19):
mind give way, not as a pretty cool slogan, yeah,
not as a compli of it though that's way clarified.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
No, it's true. Still, they didn't really have any particularly
good notion of the long term ramifications. Ben you point
out in the dock here that lead is a bit
of an imposter because it's so similar to calcium that
human cells take it on instead of calcium, which is
of course needed to fortify the bones and other positive
(16:50):
health effects. So a perfect recipe for disaster there, And
it didn't take too long before a big old chunk
of the Roman population started to take on massive amounts
of lead into their bodies.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
They sure did no. This leads us to the Grand theory,
the concept that lead exposure and poisoning contributed to the
fall of the Roman Empire. So the idea of this
poisoning is actually pretty old. The theory dates back to
(17:29):
the eighteen hundreds. Historians were looking around at all the
stuff that Romans used containing lead, and they started looking
at cutlery, plates, tableware, you know, and they said, okay,
ancient Romans used lead utensils, right, They sometimes had lead.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Plates, cooking implements, right, and we're talking utensils like things
that you know, you put in your mouth alte exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Yeah. But it turns out this this theory was of
good intent. They were asking the right questions. But it
turns out that most ancient Romans were not very frequently
using lead utensils because that was more for the fancy
pants part of the socioeconomic pyramid.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
For sure, it would appear they were much more likely
to have used wooden utensils and tableware.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
And if you're super duper wealthy, you're using gilded tableware
or silver, or you're using glass plates. But the issue
is if people are using tableware at this time, they're
going to tend to be from the upper crust of society.
So it's possible that the leaders of the Roman Empire
(18:48):
got more of a dose of lead than most people.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
No mad king syndrome, right, Maybe we'll get to me. Also,
surely a lot of the proletariat were using like you know, pottery, Yeah, yep.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
No, that's a great point. So that enameler those decorative
pigments would also be a vector for lead exposure. If
we go back to the nineteen sixties, we see folks
like sc Gilfillan who picked up this idea of lead
poisoning and the Fall of Rome and ran with it.
He was so into this that nineteen sixty five he
(19:26):
published an article called in a Burst of Creativity, Lead
Poisoning and the Fall of Rome.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Also an excellent emo band.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Also an excellent emo band. They've got just one album
from nineteen ninety three. But we think they're going to
come back.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
I think so too. They'll be opening for My Chemical
Romance on tour before you know it. So this piece
or paper, I guess. It was argued that the aristocracy's
use of lead cookwear and lead infused wine led to
infertility and cognitive decline among the hoi. No, not the hoypeloi.
(20:04):
The hoypeloi is the lower class. This is the upper crust.
So the rulers, not the rules, We're the ones potentially
getting dumber as a result of this exposure, which is
of course a perfect recipe for revolution.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Oh yeah, very much so, because now you can now
you can look at your rulers and say, hey, guys,
I do think these people might be dumber than us. Like,
I'm not trying to be a hot headed revolutionary. I'm
just saying, whatever these folks are doing that we are
(20:39):
not doing, is making them kind of dunderheaded.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Yeah. You mix that with like, you know, a dose
of corrupting power and incest and incest it's a rest.
It's a real recipe for disaster.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Yeah. And then we see this theory about lead in
the fall of room continue to find interest through the
next few decades. People like the geochemist Jerome Ragu They
added gout to the mix. Gout. Yeah, well, sprinkling of
gout for a little bit of gout as a treat.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah, And it is historically in some of these accounts
associated with lead poisoning. This geochemist mentioned the following said, Hey,
maybe all the rich folks in ancient Rome having gout
was due to all that lead and the stuff that
they drank, and perhaps all the potted meat that they
were consuming. That's that's me, that's my take.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Yeah. And to explain what we're talking about with lead
as a sweetener, ancient Romans used something they called sappa
sugar of lead as a preservative and a sweetening agent
in wine. So they would boil this syrup in these
lead pots and it would make a sweet flavor, and
(21:56):
then they would you know, step on the wine with
it a little bit. I think step on is a
drug term, but you know, I'm saying they would dilute it.
The why with this stuff. It would lead to chronic
lead poisoning. It would cause infertility, dementia, and of course
gout because your wine tastes sweet, but you're paying for.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
It, oh for sure. However, a lot of us is
more or less various well intentioned forms of speculation. There
was not the technological means to gather concrete quantitative data
regarding these theories, so they were essentially just smart dudes
making pretty smart guesses. However, this all changed very recently.
(22:38):
In fact, just last year and this is this is
where this came up on, so they don't want you
to know. In our weekly Strange News segment, the Roman
lead fall theory is in fact back in a big way,
though not the way you might think. Yes, we were.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
We are very well adjusted entities, so we definitely don't
stay up late at night texting each.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Other weird theories like this.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
I am lying we do. So. In twenty twenty five
there was a report you you remember that I got
you and our pal Matt myself very excited. Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences led by da DA a
guy named Professor Joseph McConnell found that people of Rome,
(23:23):
they were able to prove it for the first time
that people of Rome were ingesting lad on a beat
me here Max, on a fucking bonkers level.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yeah, like on purpose. It was a feature, not a bug,
as I like to say, as I wanted to say,
They were in fact using a substance that was combined
with lead. In fact, lead ascetates not just to sweeten
their wine through the vessels that it was being held in,
but just putting it straight up in there to just
(23:55):
make it a little sweeter. Give it that lead that
led umami. We all crave like a mixer and a cocktail.
Huh yeah, a little bit of bitters in.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
There's a little dash of lead, right, yeah, I'll have
my pinots straight up with some lead.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yeah dirty, please, very very dirt dirty.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
And this practice of using lead acetate in wine continued
well after the fall of the empire. By the way,
we do have to give some aberration to the Romans.
They had an impressively sophisticated aqueduct system, which I think
(24:35):
a lot of modern people forget the catches. The coffeat
is here that their aqueduct system used lead pipes because
plumbers of the time loved lead. It's malleable, right, it
doesn't take that much to heat it and form it.
It also leaches into everything, so we made pipes well,
(24:57):
but we made pipes out of bad MATERI. The big
reveal from this study is that Romans were also breathing
in huge amounts of lead through the air from silver
mining and smelting. It was like lead at this time,
you guys, was like teenage mutant ninja turtles in the
(25:18):
nineteen nineties. You couldn't get away from this stuff. Sorry,
I still got the turtles on the brain.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Where did that? That came up recently too? We're talked
about we talked about pizza of course, favorite turtles, and
I think we opened the discussion yesterday to the entire
Turtles universe, which I wasn't given the option to do
when posed with this question initially, So I would be
Krang or the big robot body that houses KRNG. Okay, great, yeah,
(25:43):
well you know that.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
We have sort of voluntold Max to get on board
with the TMNT lore Max. Thanks for playing along. We
also op Max is popping back on. Oh what'd you do?
What was the hand signal?
Speaker 2 (25:59):
This?
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Okay, horns, Okay, I'm on board.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
I thought you were doing that cool hand signal from
Big Trouble in Little China? Do you remember that one
like that? No, I see what you're doing. We're an
audio show. So it is true to your point all
about the danger of lead exposure to children. It's true
that this toxic substance polluting the air probably got into
(26:26):
children's blood. It leads to what these researchers call a
widespread cognitive decline.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Right with researchers including that lead poisoning or exposure rather
from the air alone may well have caused an estimated
two point five to three point drop and IQ's throughout
the entirety of the empire. And let's just really quickly
reframe the question here that we posed at the top,
which is a complex one. Did lead exposure cause the
(26:58):
fall of the Roman Empire? Just putting that one back
out there. So again, we're in a similar boat here,
not necessarily with lead poisoning, but with things like social
media and AI. We know that that stuff is absolutely
on a long enough timeline going to cause significant declines
in IQs.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Yeah, and stay tuned for our upcoming episode on whether
IQ tests are malarkey. But I love that point there, Noel,
because modern civilizations are not that different from ancient ones.
The researchers in this study, in particular, they say their
findings represent the first documented example of human caused industrial
(27:42):
pollution in all of history. And the way they figured
this out, it kind of ties into that episode we
did a few years back about the worst year in history.
Do you remember that one?
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Yeah? Yeah, I was the one where all the real
bad stuff, right, Yeah, a lot of plagues. It was plagues.
It was weather stuff. It was bad times.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah, very plague forward with notes of natural disaster. Right,
had a little bit of lead for fun. So these
folks did something fascinating. They went to Greenland and Russia
and they started hunting ice core samples. And this was
really cool because before this study even kicked off, the
(28:27):
scientists in those areas had spent decades and decades using
these specially designed large drills to go through ice sheets
in the Arctic, and they would come up with these long,
basically ice noodles, solid ice noodles, like eleven thousand feet
in length.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
It's pretty cool the way they store those too, Like
they have to store those, right. I don't know if
you guys saw that kind of not that great season
A true detective. I guess none of them have been
that great. After the Night Country, Night Country, which it
was cool for a minute, but it ended really weird
and not good.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
I don't think it was I don't think it was original, correct.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
I think the third season was pretty good. It has
similar flavor to the first one and similar character study. Yeah,
some people are real apologists for the second season. I
just remember some of the dialogue being like utterly cringed,
but I need to go back and revisit it. But
that season that I'm talking about in Alaska involved ice
core studies and research stations and all of that. So
the thing that's cool about ice cores is it's like
(29:30):
a you know, a time capsule. You can then you
can look down through these massively long ice noodles as
you put it in and see what happened in the
past based on layers of material that have been deposited
and then covered over and then et cetera. You can
see what was going on in the environment at the
time and guess. And these were full of a lot
of lead, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
It's kind of like dendo chrinology the science of reading
tree rings or the art of reading tree rings.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Or phrenology. Wait no, aha, no, no, no.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Similar intention, but maybe not inaccuracy. Oh phrenology, Noel can
just for anybody who somehow doesn't know, can you give
us like a quick three sentence summation on what phrenology is? Not?
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Good? There we go. Now, it's just a notion that
you could like figure out someone's lineage, I guess through
the bumps on their head. And it was typically harnessed
in order to other folks from different parts of the world,
not them, you know European experience, right, yeah, like saying
(30:39):
by studying the bumps on an African Americans head, for example,
you could see that they were inferior.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
And they got super weird with phrenology to the point
where they were saying things.
Speaker 5 (30:51):
Like, oh, the bump on this back part of the
ear right ear right behind the ear indicates this person
as Welsh heritage, which means they are thief in a gambler.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
That was very good. That's kind of how they do, no, no,
no question about it. And it was also one of
those pseudoscience's flim flam quackery kind of things that could
be molded to the.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Very nefarious purposes of whoever was wielding it. So dendo
chronology is different from this, even from phrenology, which is
a BS science and I love that. Aside, we know
how the study went because if we go to articles
like the Smithsonian in twenty twenty five, we see the
(31:38):
journalist Sarah Kuta puts it this way. She explains why
looking at these ice noodles is so important.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Sarah Kuda correct. She says, as snowflakes fall they capture
chemicals and particles from the air. When the snow touches
down in the Arctic, it compresses and solidifies in the
thin layers of ice, with those chemicals and particles still
trapped inside. I said, in these layerscientists can effectively peer
back in time. She said it way smarter than I did,
but the gist is there and it remains true. So
(32:07):
the team looked at layers of Arctic ice that corresponded
to between five hundred BCE and six hundred CE. In
examining those, they saw increased levels of lead pollution kind
of focused around a particular year fifteen BCE, which of
course lines up with the early years of the Roman Empire.
And then they also saw those lead levels remained high
(32:30):
until one hundred and eighty CE. Some of us might
remember that date from history class, the end of what
we call the Pax Romana, the two hundred ish year
height of the Roman Empire. Oh yeah, piece of Rome. Yeah,
the glory there was Rome.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
This is a crazy period in history. It's an era
of for the time, unprecedented prosperity. So as a result,
the Roman powers that were naturally making a lot of
currency because they didn't have you know, electronic debit cards
or chip and pen, So that meant they had to
(33:09):
do a lot of mining. That meant they had to
smelt a lot of silver, and both of those endeavors
send huge amounts of lead into the atmosphere. Speaking to
the New York Times, Catherine Corney in twenty twenty five,
doctor McConnell from this study said, you know, to produce
one ounce of silver at this time, the Romans probably
(33:33):
also produced something like ten thousand ounces of lead. And
they didn't have you know, an EPA, right, they didn't
have some kind of regulatory body saying hey, stop putting
that crap in the water.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Yeah, knock it off. Yeah, hey, you guys, knock it off.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
So they look at like you're saying, these ice samples
and they find these levels of lead. This is concrete
evidence that lead was in the air. They started working
backward and they said, okay, if we know how much
we can find in the ice from that time, we
can estimate how much lead the Romans must have just
(34:16):
been into the atmosphere.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Well, we can tell you atmospheric models suggest that's between
three three hundred and four thousand, six hundred tons of
lead being released each year during the Pax Romana. That's
a lot of lead. Ben that's more than four thousand
tons a year for around two hundred years.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Yeah, that's a lot of lead. And the pollution was
naturally worst in areas where there was a mining operation
or smelting industries. It was reaching concentrations of one hundred
and fifty nanograms per cubic meter of air. So it's
very rank in they are lead wise. Also, air knows
(35:03):
no terrestrial borders. Air is not a citizen of any government,
so it just flows. Man, it just goes with the flow.
It's kind of a cosmic gumbo.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
It is a little bit of a cosmic gumbo. It's true.
We're not saying that these folks were purposefully tainting everything.
In the same way we're not saying that like microplastics
were purposely done. It's just another example of people either
not knowing what the long term consequences of things would be.
(35:36):
There might be a tad of not caring and the
microplastics of it all, but it's not necessarily, you know,
utterly malicious for the purposes of poisoning the population like
on purpose. Yeah, it's not a thing here I am
apologized being an apologist for the for the plastics industry.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
No, but it's not a thing where the average person
or even the average man actual would have noticed damaging
potential on the way, right, You're not You're walking by
a mine and you might think, Ah, the air's bad,
it smells bad, but you're not thinking, oh, this is
making me dumber. Uh. The researchers use more modern data
(36:18):
to get a bullpark picture of how much lead would
have built up in the blood of ancient Roman children,
and from there they attempted to extrapolate how those accumulations
might have affected the IQ of those kids. Do it
for the kids, right? But why focus on children? Why
(36:39):
focus on the kids? Is it like we.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
Believe the children? You know, they literally are, They literally are.
It's a big part of the motivation of this research
to study and tackle current problems related to chemical exposure
of children. Children are specially vulnerable, as we said, to
(37:02):
lead exposure as their brains are yet to develop fully,
have yet to develop fully, as well as their body
and various organs of course, various organs the body. And
today we know that no amount of lead exposure at
all is safe for kids. In addition to some of
those developmental delays that we were speaking of potential to
(37:23):
lower IQ. Lead accumulation in the bodies of children can
lead to slowed down physical growth conditions like anemia, hyperactivity,
hearing problems, and behavioral and learning problems.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah, this is serious stuff. And so our researchers find
that children during the Pax Romana likely the right. Yeah,
they likely had an extra two point four micrograms of
lead per desolater of blood just from the air pollution.
So if they combine that with research on the more
(37:57):
recent lead exposed populations, you see a drop in IQ
that we alluded to earlier, somewhere between two point five
and three points. So everybody, according to IQ test gets
a little bit dumber. But wait, as ancient Roman Billy
Mays was wont to say, there's more. This is just
(38:17):
the exposure from the air.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
That's what they study.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
They're not studying all the other sources.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
One hundred percent pence. So for the average Roman kid
living and ostensibly doing okay during the pox, your life
would have been absolutely chock full choco block riddles, as
you like to say, ben with lead. And weirdly enough,
the higher you were in the echelons of society, the
more likely you were to have multiple sources of lead poisoning.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
You've got the indoor plumbing, right, You've got the fancy plates.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Okay, sweetening of the boots, sweet wine, yeah, and so
sweet berry wine right right. And so it's tricky to
guess just how high these levels get when we factor in,
as you said, the why, the pipes, the decorations, and
so on. For a comparison to Max's earlier note about Flint, Michigan,
(39:12):
American children had about fifteen micrograms of lead per desolate
blood during the nineteen seventies. That's before lead paint and
leaded gasoline got banned. That likely different research. This is interesting.
This shows us a scary thing about Rome. Different research
from kids around the nineteen seventies. In the US estimate,
(39:36):
those US kids getting exposed to lead at this point
in history experienced a hard nine point drop in their IQ. Again,
please check out stuff they don't want you to know.
It's upcoming episode where we dive deep into the dark
side of that one one hundred percent man, and I
think this brings us up to the present, at least
(39:57):
in terms of this type of research, and we have
a bit of an update. We can all certainly agree
that all of this stuff was bad news for ancient
Rome in terms of the higher ups abilities to govern
all of that. Kind of the question then, though becomes
is this enough to be a top five candidate for
(40:20):
what caused the fall? The actual fall of the Roman Empire?
And I think the answer there is nay, probably not.
It's a bit of a stretch, right, I mean, is
it good enough to get shortlisted? We know it happened,
but there's something we wish people would mention more often
(40:41):
in these conversations. IQ tests are far from perfect. We're
talking about this off air, have we Gon'll be talking
about on an episode? Yeah, yes, here.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
We are shout out to our buddy Alfred Benney. He
had a good idea, he had noble intent. But the
testing itself, the structure of it, the methodology of how
it was derived, it is controversial because of things like
cultural bias, reductionism, limited predictive validity, which is, you know,
going to be familiar to all our fellow honors students. Right,
(41:14):
you're the smartest kid in second grade? Why are you
not the president?
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Well, not to mention something that we'll talk about much
more in depth and give some personal insights into when
we do the IQ episode. But like, some people don't
do well with timed tests, and it can be a
pretty shoddy metric for actual you know, life skills.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Yeah, the fact that some of Earth's smartest human beings
just get freak the heck out when they have to
take a test. We have all been there. Humans also
will at this still don't really understand how to define intelligence,
much less how to measure it. So that's our first
badger in the big bag of problems. And there's another
(41:57):
problem with the proposition of LED leading to the fall
of the Roman Empire.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Correct, even if we accept the you know validity, the
relative validity of IQ testing and measurement based on the
numbers drive from some of these studies, experts aren't in agreement,
or at least aren't universally persuaded that a provable two
point five to three point drop in IQ was enough
(42:25):
to do the thing, you know, to affect the entire population.
And would that be enough to be a sole factor
in the kind of decline that we're measuring here for
of an entire society?
Speaker 1 (42:37):
Yeah, you know, I got lost a little bit, guys,
because I was trying to remember the band that made
a really anomalous song for them, The Decline by New FX.
Do you remember that, It's like a twenty minute song.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
Oh no, no, I do. I just remember we're the
Bruce sporting anti swastika tattoo.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Yes, Fat byc show.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Jump in here.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
I saw one of my first concerts I ever saw
was No Effects at the Old Masquerade, and they opened
the concert by playing the Decline.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
They opened the concert with that way.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
It was pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
It was like, really cool way to start concerts.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
It's like a short film. They played a short version
of fifteen.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
Then it was like, oh man, it's gonna be awesome,
and then they just spent the rest of the time
talking about I thenk They played like six songs after that.
I talked about strip clubs for like half an hour.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
Two different me to decline.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
So we know that there is we know that there's
pushback on this theory. You'll speak to folks like the
pathologist Amy L. Pile Ilola speaking with New Scientists. This
pathologist said the magnitude of exposure and the correlated blood
lead levels were enough to negatively affect the cognitive function
(43:56):
of that population. Yet this is still a far pry
from causing the downfall of the Roman Empire. So this
pathologist is saying, Okay, yeah, we can acknowledge that everybody
probably got a little bit dumber.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Mm hmm, a little bit not good, certainly not, but not.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Enough to lead to the fall of one of history's
biggest empire single leadedly.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Yes, and other experts do agree. We've got Caleb Finch
and neurobiologists at the University of Southern California who told
science is you know science, Taylor Mitchell Brown of Science.
He said, the conclusion of widespread cognitive client from an
estimated three IQ point decrease does not match the huge
productivity of the Roman Empire when lead production was maximal.
(44:47):
We've mentioned that, of course, and given props where props
are due. These aqueducts, the architectural features that they, you know,
revolutionized various things that were done when the lead was flowing.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
Yeah. Another point on that topic is, consider, folks, how
complicated it is for you to order a thing now
with an ubiquitous Internet. Consider how tricky it can be
to order your own stuff now. These folks were still
despite let exposure, they were more than clever enough to
(45:21):
figure out global trade networks as far away as parts
of East Asia with no online access, no.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
GPS, no Aii Asians. I think one could argue that
the things that we mentioned at the top of the
show that we're contending with as a population would likely
lead to more of a malaise and social decline than
lead did for the Romans. Do you think people were
smarter back then, though? I think the Again, we know
(45:52):
it's tough to measure this concept. They were certainly craftier
and they had to get it done. You know, I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
I think people are playing life on harder difficulty mode,
So you would be more likely to be weeded out
if you were not competent.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
And you're stretching those life muscles a lot harder than
we have to.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Oh yeah, Yeah, you're walking a lot more, you're working
out a lot more, you're exposed to many more old
school pathogens.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Problem solving a lot more.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
Yeah, and you have to worry about where you can
sleep safely, where you can eat, figuring out if the
water is going to kill you. Yeah, it was harder
back then. In a lot of ways, but we still
have our speed bumps and obstacles to civilization.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
Today.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
We've had a lot of fun in today's episode. We
hope you have as well.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Here's a question, though, real quick, can you build lead
structures in SIEV six.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
That's where we get to one of our last questions,
which is about the wonder of the world for the
Roman Empire? And here we go to UMX in Civilization,
the game the franchise by sid Meyer.
Speaker 3 (47:09):
The best one to build to the Roman Empire really.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Just kind of throwing me, give me three to the wolves.
Speaker 3 (47:14):
But the Colosseum. Okay, Colosseum is overpowered, absolutely lousy with.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
Lead, absolutely lousy with led. Hopefully you are not lousy
with lead. But this gives us us some stuff to
think about. We can say the hypothesis or the theory
often gets overblown and pop culture, but it is pretty
tough to look at all this evidence and not think
exposure to lead had some kind of influence on ancient Rome. Right,
(47:46):
they did something, And if you take nothing else away
from this episode, please, fellow ridiculous historians, the next time
someone at a bar or on a street corner offers
you a tasty dose of lead.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Just say no, dare to say no to lead.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
Thank you again so much for tuning in, fellow ridiculous historians.
Thanks to our super producer, mister Max no Led Williams.
Max has this episode persuaded you to finally get off
the lead.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
I don't think the condition allows for ingestion of lead.
Get the lead.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
Actually, oddly enough, it's like one of the seven things
I can have. I'm not giving up my lead, cage
free lead. That's a prit from Max's Cold Dead.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
There we go, big, thanks of course to Eves, Jeff Coche.
Speaker 1 (48:37):
Chris vassiotis here in spirit just talking with both of them.
And hey, Noel Eaves had a birthday.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Quite recently she had a birthday and she also joined
forces with the Tennessee Pal Dylan Fagan for a really
sick yoga meditation sash that I was not able to
get into because it's so exclusy and it's sold out,
But I'm looking forward to getting in on the next one.
Jonathan Strickland aka the Quist, he loves that he rubs
(49:05):
it on his bald head. Not sure. A. Jbahamas Jacob
is the puzzler.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
Yeah, Doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lance, also our compatriots over
a ridiculous crime. If you dig us, you will love
Elizabeth Zarin and Dave and Noel. Thank you so much
for this one. I know we've been cogitating.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
Over this for several years.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
Now, and I can't wait for everybody to tune into
the dark side of let exposure on stuff they don't
want you to know.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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