Croesus of Lydia

The story of the ridiculously wealthy Croesus, which was fictionalized in a number of ways, becomes a cautionary tale about pride and hubris, and what really has value in life. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So, crisis
is a name that is now most commonly referenced when
someone wants to shorthand that a person is ridiculously wealthy.

(00:23):
That is a thing that it happens sometimes in English language,
but other languages use it all the time, and I
think possibly a little bit more than English speakers. Um
And he is one of those historical figures who was
both real and has taken on a mythical status. Also mythical.
Aesop was a member of his court, and there's all
kinds of mythical swirlings around him. But the story of

(00:47):
the ridiculously Wealthy Creases, which was likely fictionalized in a
number of ways, and we'll talk about that, also becomes
this sort of cautionary tale about pride and hubris and
what really has value you in life. So Crisus was
born into the royal family of Lydia. Lydia was a
kingdom that occupied the western section of Anatolia, roughly speaking

(01:10):
in modern shorthand, we're talking about the left half of
the Asia Minor peninsula, so it's part of modern day Turkey.
To the west set the Greeks, and to the east
or the lands of Persia. The Lydia that Cresus was
born into was very prosperous. When Phrygia, which had been
the dominant power on the peninsula since around twelve hundred
b C, was attacked by Sumerians and fell from power

(01:34):
circus seven d b C. Lydia became the most powerful
kingdom in the region. It's kind of filled that power vacuum,
and at that point it was ruled by king Jigs
from the newly established Lydian capital of Sartis. This also
established the Mermnad dynasty after Gigs came artists in the
mid seventh century b c. E, followed by Sodieties and

(01:57):
then Alliedies. A lie these was Crisus father, and it's
under Alliedies that Lydia is said to have really hit
its apex in terms of power and prosperity. The exact
dates for the reigns of those kings are pretty fuzzy.
The main source that's used for them is from Herodotus,
but if you do the math based on the counts

(02:19):
of the years that he uses, that math does not
quite add up. Also, just in general, Herodotus sometimes would
like to say this is how I heard it. Yes,
it's one of those things where he is listed as
a great historian. But as we'll discuss later, there's definitely
some um some flexibility with the records, like what serves

(02:41):
his purpose. But what is less fuzzy is the fact
that during the years from seven d b c E
two Creases becoming king circuit five sixty b C. Linea
had established itself as a very prosperous commercial culture. It
is one of the earliest cultures known to have instituted
the concept of retail shops like permanent stores, and the

(03:03):
Lydians were minting coinage way ahead of the rest of
the Western world. There is evidence of Chinese coinage that
predates the Lydians, although the coins that were minted specifically
under crisis more closely resemble what we would think of
today as coinage. When Aliantis died in five sixty b C.
Creasus became king, and he was thirty five at the time,

(03:24):
and Cresus was, like a lot of people in his day,
very into using things like dreams and oracles to predict
the future. He had two sons. One of them is
described again by Herodotus is having a very minor disability,
and this is treated just horribly within the text. Cresus says, quote,
since he is ruined, he doesn't exist for me. Yeah,

(03:46):
there's a whole side story about his son that I
may be going to save for our casual Friday chat. Um.
It's a weird thing. But the other son that he had, Attis,
was much beloved and was the king's pride. And when
creasse Us had a dream that showed at Us being
killed by an iron spear, Creasus then did everything in
his power to shelter his son. He arranged for a

(04:08):
speedy marriage, to give him a home life, and he
stopped tasking him with going out into battle, and he
basically tried to keep him safe and at home all
the time. But ultimately Creasus did allow Attis to go
on a hunt, and this was at his son's request
and after much debate, because Addis was sort of feeling like, Hey,

(04:30):
I don't have anything to be proud of in our
culture at this point because you won't let me go
to war and I can't even go outside the stinks,
so he allowed him to go on this hunt, and
of course another hunter spear missed the wild board that
they were hunting and killed Attis, and Creases reportedly mourned
this son for two full years. Lydia is usually cited

(04:53):
as the first kingdom to mint metal coinage. Under crease Us,
the first silver and gold coins for Lydia were made.
Uh And this is kind of reminding us a little
bit of the many episodes where we have talked about
the gold standard being challenged by the silver standard of
the United States and how much strife came out of
all that those precious metals were part of tender going

(05:15):
all the way back to the sixth century BC. Yeah,
and the coin type known as a crasid, featuring a
face off between a lion and a bowl was developed
during this time, and the representation of the lion actually
served as a means to indicate the purity and the
value of the coin, So a smaller piece of the
lion's body would be stamped on a coin to indicate

(05:37):
that that coin was a smaller denomination than one with
a larger, more complete image of a lion, and the
Lydians really made great strides under Creases in the purification
of gold, enabling them to ensure accuracy in these different coins.
This is basically the beginning of the gold standard, and
the wealth was incredible. Another name that you've on was

(06:00):
certainly heard in connection with ridiculous levels of riches as
King Midas, and Creasus's very great wealth is said to
have come from Midas. In a way, the Mernad dynasty
allegedly got its extraordinary riches in part by collecting it
from the river Pactolus, where Midas is said to have
washed his hands. There were also some taxes plundering other kingdoms,

(06:23):
including enslaving people from those kingdoms. Yeah, they actually gained
their riches in a number of ways. But that Midas
story is one that persists, and what defines much of
what we know of the rule of crisis is war,
and it said that conflict was ultimately what brought Cresus
out of his mourning state over his son. Once he
was refocused on military leadership, Crisus was eager to expand

(06:47):
his power, and he could be ruthless in this quest.
Herodotus wrote this of him quote this Creasus was the
first foreigner whom we know who subjugated some Greeks and
took tribute from them, and one the friendship of others,
the former being the Ionians, the a Aliens and the
Dorians of Asia, and the latter the Lacedaemonians. Before the

(07:09):
reign of Creasus, all Greeks were free for the Sumerian
host which invaded Ionia before his time, did not subjugate
the cities that raided and robbed them. Yeah, so keep
in mind as we talked about crisis, and he's an
interesting figure, but he was very big on enslavement as
something knew that was not a tradition, that was something

(07:30):
he uh instituted in his warmaking. So we mentioned a
moment ago that Cresus believed in oracles, but he really
wanted to run a test to ensure that the oracle
that he would patronize was going to be the best one.
So Herodotus wrote that Cresus sent men out to various shrines,

(07:50):
but after they left the palace at Sartists, they had
to bide their time for a hundred days, so they
didn't know what Cresus was doing before going to these shrines,
And on the hundredth day, each oracle was supposed to
be asked to divine what Cresus was doing at that
very moment, and then all of these messengers would bring
back the divinations, and it would be obvious which oracle

(08:12):
or oracles were the real deal. The men who had
visited the Oracle of Delphi at the Temple of Apollo
came back with the following verse quote, I know the
number of the grains of sand and the extent of
the sea, and understand the mute and hear the voiceless.
The smell has come to my senses of a strong
shelled tortoise boiling in a cauldron, together with a lamb's flesh,

(08:35):
under which is bronze, and over which is bronze. We
don't know what any of the others divined, because this
one was apparently spot on. Creasus said that the oracle
of Mprs had also given a quote true answer, but
we don't know the wording of what that answer specifically was.
But in an effort to concoct a strange enough event

(08:55):
that it would be impossible to guess what he had
been doing, Creasus had cut up a tortoise and a
lamb and boiled them together. In a covered bronze cauldron.
So let's move along from that less than pleasant image
and take a quick break and have a word from
some of the sponsors that keep stuff he missed in
history class going, So, Crismas was devoted to the Oracle

(09:24):
of Delphi after it had successfully passed this test. He
sacrificed literally thousands of animals and burned almost every valuable
thing he could lay hands on. He also commanded the
citizens of Lydia to do the same, and he sent
so much gold to the temple. Uh, there is a

(09:47):
line in the translation that I read that stated quote. Moreover,
he dedicated his own wife's necklaces and girdles, which I
just found funny as things to sacrifice to Apollo. So
the goal of all of these offerings was to ensure
that Crisis got good advice from the oracle regarding his

(10:08):
military plans, and the people he tasked with bringing his
many gifts to the temple were instructed to get this advice.
Two points came back. One was that if Cresus were
to attack the Persians, crossing a river to do so,
he would destroy a great empire, and two that he
should make friends with the most powerful Greeks. So at

(10:28):
this point in time, the power of the Persians, led
by Cyrus the Second, also known as Cyrus the Great,
was expanding. We actually talked at some length about Cyrus
the Second in our episode on the Acumenated Empire. In Crisis,
of course, wanted to curtail the expansion of the Persian Empire,
and he started a campaign of his own to make
sure that Cyrus the Seconds forces did not get close

(10:51):
to Lydia. So Crisis asked the oracle to once again
tell him the future. They sent messengers to Delphi to
ask if his reign would be a long one, and
the reply was quote, when the Metace have a mule
as king, just then, tenderfooted Lydian by the stone, shrewn
hermus flee and do not stay, and do not be

(11:12):
ashamed to be a coward. Cress took this pretty literally,
and he thought, well, a mule is never going to
be a king, so this must be telling me that
my rule is going to be very, very long, and
I have a lot of a lot of power ahead
of me. So, bolstered and confident, he continued his military campaigning.
Over the course of his rule, Cresus had attacked Ephesus,

(11:34):
than Ionian cities, than the cities of Alia. According to Herodotus,
all of these attacks are based on some sort of reason,
and in his words quote, he found graver charges where
he could, but sometimes alleged very petty grounds of offense. Yeah,
the justified invasions were pretty lightly justified in some cases.

(11:56):
So next, Creasus set his sights on the Lens of
Greece as a target, and he knew that he was
going to need to assemble a navy fleet to conquer them,
so he started up a shipbuilding project. But while this
was all underway, he was approached by a man from
the Lesbo's capital of Middling, whose name was either preen
A or Pitacus, depending on the source that you read,

(12:18):
and this man told Cresus that the Islanders were actually
amassing their own ground forces to attack Creasus at Sartis.
Creasus replied, essentially that he wished they would do that,
because his troops would destroy the Islanders, who had no
experience in ground battle warfare. In response to this, the
emissary from Middle Len pointed out that in starting a

(12:40):
navy from scratch, cress would be similarly disadvantaged if he
tried to take on the islander forces. So this put
an end to creasus navy project, and he opted instead
deform an alliance with the Ionian islanders. This story cracks.
We have that oh yeah, come at me on land,
and they're like, that's what we say about you coming

(13:01):
at us on sea. Dude, you are not going to
manage this. During his time as king of Lydia, Crisis
eventually became the ruler of most of the nations and
people's on the peninsula west of the Hollis River that
was the name of what is now known as the
Kaziller Mock River. Persians conquered the Median Empire in five

(13:22):
and this was a sobering event for Crisis. It became
immediately apparent that his own power could also be challenged
by the Persian forces. This led him to try to
fortify his own strength through an alliance, and this goes
back to that advice that he got from the Oracle
of Delphi to befriend the most powerful Greek state. So

(13:43):
Crisis had already made an alliance with Amasis, the king
of Egypt, and he also got the Lacedaemonians and then
the Spartans, which he believed to be the most powerful
Greek state to agree to stand with him. But Crisis
was not really content with waiting to see what would
happen with the Persia and getting all of these alliances arranged,
and he was very impatient, so he just decided that

(14:05):
he would go right on ahead and invade Anatolia. He
decided to invade Anatolia, specifically Cappadocia in the eastern part
of the territory, and that meant he had to cross
the Hollis River and the battle that ensued at Teria
was not what anybody had hoped. It sort of ended
in a draw. After Teria, Creasus wanted to regroup, so

(14:26):
he had summoned all of those groups that he had
allied with to join him in the springtime, five months
after he sent these messages out to them, so that
they would have time to assemble their armies and travel
after the winter. And so then he took his own
troops and headed back to Sartis. But apparently he didn't
realize that Cyrus the second and his Persian troops had
followed him home. When Sartis was attacked by Persia, it

(14:50):
came just as a complete surprise decreases. The Lydians scrambled
to meet the Persians in battle, and according to Herodotus,
Cyrus was afraid of the Adians, but on the advice
of a Median who was with him, Cyrus put his
cavalry on the pack camels. The camels drove back the
Lydian horses because apparently the horses were afraid of the

(15:12):
camels and their smell, and they retreated even as their
riders tried to move them forward into battle. The Lydian
army was forced to fight on foot, and ultimately they
were defeated by the Persians. Cresus sent word to his
allies to come and help, but efforts that assistants were
not enough or came too late. Cresus was taken captive
and Stardus was taken by the Persians after two weeks

(15:35):
of this conflict. So when the oracle of Delphi had
told Cressus about crossing a river and destroying a kingdom,
oops that was his own kingdom that would be destroyed,
and that story of the mule leading the may Day's empire.
Cyrus the second was half may Days and half Persian,
the child of two different groups of people. So the

(15:56):
mule reference was kind of a casual like slurry representation
Creasus had in his literalism in interpreting all of these
words of the oracle, failed to catch any of the
actual meaning in the oracle's words. We will talk about
the varied accounts of the end of Cresus's life after
we pause and have a quick sponsor break. In five

(16:25):
six b C. With his defeat by Cyrus the Second
and the Persian army, the reign of Cresus ended. But
what happened after this invasion is something that again is
a little unclear, and that's because there are a number
of different versions of the story. The Kylides, a poet
from Greece, tells the story and the Odes of the
Eponicians that Creasus built his own funeral pyre and then

(16:47):
tried to burn himself to death on it, and this was,
according to his writing, unsuccessful because the gods intervened before
Crisus actually met his final end. Yes, in that history,
it's written quote when he had come to that unexpected day,
Creasus had no intention of waiting any longer for the
tears of slavery. He had a pire built before his

(17:09):
bronze walled courtyard, and he mounted the pire with his
dear wife and his daughters with beautiful hair. They were
weeping inconsolably. He raised his arms to the steep sky
and shouted, overweening deity, where is the gratitude of the gods,
Where is Lord Apollo. So just as Cresus had gotten
a trusted servant to really get the flames going, and

(17:31):
as his wife and daughters were looking on in tears,
the day sex Macana arrives quote. But when the flashing
force of terrible fire began to shoot through the wood,
Zeus set a dark rain cloud over it and began
to quench the golden flame. Nothing is unbelievable, which is
brought about by the god's ambition, and Apolo shows up,

(17:52):
scoops up Cresus and his family, and carries them north
to Hyperborea, the land of the Giants, where they could
live safely. So we know that this particular version of
the story became an important part of Greek lore. This
moment is represented on a piece of art in the Louver,
decorated by Mason, a painter who decorated vases in Athens
using what is known as red figure technique and Mason's

(18:14):
work on the vase that depicts this particular subject is
dated in the five hundred to four nine BC range,
so we're talking fifty to sixty years after Cresus's defeat
would have happened. This vase shows Creasus sitting on a
throne pouring out a libation onto the servant Utmos, while
Utamos is lighting the pyre that the throne has been
placed upon. There's an inscription on the vase that specifically

(18:38):
names the king and the image as Creasus, so it's
not a case of like, well, this could be Creasus.
The opposite side of the vase has a totally different
and unrelated scene showing Theseus abducting the Amazon and typee.
If you're ever in Paris and you want to see it.
It is part of the Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities
collection and is on the first floor in the celly

(18:59):
wing Him sixty two. So after this happened and Cresus
was saved by the gods, the story goes that Creasis
became an ally of the leader who followed Cyrus, that
was cam Byss the second, and along with camp Byces
the second, Cresus in this version then traveled to Egypt.
That is not the only version of this story where

(19:19):
Cresus ends up friends with his former enemy state. The
Persian doctor Satsias, who was born in Greece, wrote an
account that suggests that Creasus actually became part of Cyrus's
court and eventually rose to a point of good enough
standing that he was appointed governor of Barni. Part of
what makes the Creases story so tricky to unravel is

(19:40):
the fact that he was such a big figure culturally
that people essentially started writing fan fiction about him, and
now when we referenced hundreds of years later, it's a
little hard to know which is fan fiction versus which
is actual historical record. And we mentioned one version of
his faith that was written by Herodotus just a moment ago,
but that was not the only writing that Herodotus did

(20:02):
featuring Creases as a protagonist. And another story by Herodotus
Crisis met with Solon, the lawmaker of Athens, whose life
ended just as Crisus' reign was starting. And this is
really a parable about values and happiness. There's really no
evidence that any of it actually took place, and the
story Solon, like a lot of important men of the

(20:23):
day decided to visit Creasus when the Lydian king was
at the height of his power. So there's actually sort
of a fun side story here about why Solon the
lawmaker would have been out and about traveling. This kind
of you know, justifies how this may have worked in
the writing of Herodotus. So this travel was part of
a ten year trip. The idea was that once Solon

(20:45):
had made all of the laws that he believed Athens
needed to be a fair and just society, he promised
to stay away from Athens for ten years so that
he would not be tempted to change or repeal any
of those laws. Athens wanted to live by the set
of laws that Solan had carefully penned, and so they
promised to do so, and they were not themselves allowed
to make any changes. An interesting governmental experiment, to be sure,

(21:10):
And yes, Solan is certainly on my list for his
own episode one day, no telling when that might happen
in any case. After receiving sullen crisis, basically spent the
whole visit entertaining his visitor and then making the household
staff point out all the expensive things that Cris has
had just lying around the palace so that Solan would

(21:30):
understand just how rich and successful the king was. And
after this little exercise in wealth show and tell, Crisis
asked Soland, quote, my Athenian guests, we have heard a
lot about you because of your wisdom and of your wanderings.
How As one who loves learning, you have traveled much
of the world for the sake of seeing it. So
now I desire to ask you who is the most

(21:53):
fortunate man you have seen? And of course the king
expected that the lawmaker was going to say, Oh, it's you,
for sure, dude. You have everything like there's no reason
anybody could ever be any happier than you, but he
did not say that. Soland instead named an Athenian called
tell Us as the most fortunate man he knew. King
Crisis asked for an explanation of Solon's answer, and the

(22:16):
lawmaker told him that tell Us had been part of
a prosperous city, a good community, and that he had
children who grew up to be good people and all
gave him grandchildren, and that all of his progeny survived.
And then when tell Us died in battle against the
people of Eleusis, it was a good and honorable death,
and that he was honored in his burial. So, after

(22:37):
hearing this crisis, apparently hoping that he would get a
second place spot, then asked Solan who he thought was
the next most fortunate man, and Soland gave two men's
names in answer, Clebus and Byton, of our give. These
two brothers had a stable home life, they were physically
very strong, and they both died after pulling their mother

(22:58):
in a wagon five miles to the festival of Hera
and argos as the oxen that were intended to convey her,
we're not back from the fields in time to do so.
Before Clebus and Byton died, everyone present commented that their
mother had raised great children, and then she prayed to
Hera to grant her son's the best thing for a man,

(23:18):
and they both died in their sleep that night after
the evening's feast. Here's how Herodotus renders the speech about
this quote. Creasus, you ask me about human affairs, and
I know that the divine is entirely grudging and troublesome
to us. Creas Us, man is entirely chanced to me.
You seem to be very rich and to be king

(23:39):
of many people, but I cannot answer your question before
I learned that you ended your life well. He explains
in the story that wealth is not what leads to happiness,
and that one should focus instead on good fortune in
a more expansive sense. So the advice that Slan allegedly
gave to Creasus was quote count no man happy until

(23:59):
his death. That story actually feeds into a version of
the Tale of Cyrus Have Increases burned alive, in which
Creases has a moment of revelation related to Soulan's teaching
as he is being executed. In this version, as Cresus
begins to call out Solan's name while on the pire,
Cyrus asks why that was the name he invoked, and

(24:21):
he was moved by creasus realization that wealth was meaningless
in that moment. Creases, then released from his execution by Cyrus,
then asks Cyrus what his soldiers are doing. When Cyrus
responds that they are sacking the city, Creasus tells him, well,
it's your city now, they're destroying your kingdom, not mine,

(24:41):
and then this leads to the whole now where best
friends come hang out in my court business. In this version,
Cyrus the second also says he will grant Creasus a request,
any request, and that the former king asked that his
chains be taken to Delphi, and that the Pithea be
asked why Apollo should have him sent to its hack Persius,
since it doomed him. The oracle replied that quote, no

(25:04):
one may escape his lot, not even a god. Crisis
has paid for the sin of his ancestor of the
fifth generation before, who was led by the guile of
a woman to kill his master. Yeah, things, he had
no pardon. He was still paying for for the family dues,
and that was the whole thing. Ultimately. In that story,
I should point out, Creasus does kind of take personal

(25:25):
responsibility and recognize like, oh, I was the one that
got the information and acted on it. But here's the thing.
All of these stories of Creases being saved at the
last minute are considered these days to be simply useful
didactic tales, and some versions of the story actually just
say that Cresus was killed when Lydia was defeated. Uh.
Those are like translations that have been done by other cultures,

(25:51):
not not the ones that would be descendants of the Lydians.
For example, the boring reality is that Creasus kind of
vanishes from the historical record after the fall of Lydia,
although his grandson Pittheus does show up later in the
work of Herodotus. He is also very wealthy, although he
gets in some very serious and ugly trouble with Xerxes.

(26:12):
But that is a whole other thing. As for Lydia,
it became a sat repete under Tabitists, but it's treasury
money kept being managed by a Lydian, which was Pactius.
And if you play Assassin's Creed, that name may be
familiar to you as a newcomer to Assassin's Creed. It's not,
in fact familiar to me. Yet with the leverage of

(26:32):
that satrape's wealth, Pactius was able to hire Greek mercenaries
in a move to revolt against Persian rule, and that
ultimately led up to the Persian Wars. Oh crisis. Fascinating,
But I always got to remember, even in the stories,
you know, where it's like, and then he realized that
life is better, and I'm like, hey, we got to

(26:54):
address this slavery problem, whoever never gets addressed. Also, there's
a lot of stuff and a lot of historical accounts
from this time period that really seemed to follow literary
convention to a point that you're like, you know, that's
probably a little embellished. I think this made a good yarn,

(27:17):
but probably not. I mean, I don't wanna, uh, you know,
invalidate anybody's belief system. But I do not believe that
Zeus made a rain cloud go just over creases his fire. Yeah.
Maybe I know only that I know nothing. Um. I
have a little bit of listener mail that is um

(27:40):
related to our our White House episode, but is some
fun comedy. Okay. This is from our listener Bob, who writes,
I just finished part one of your White House episode.
Towards the end, you discussed Jackie Kennedy's remodel, and it
immediately brought me back to my childhood listening to the
Von Meter album The First Family, and Bob links to
it on YouTube. You can find it, and he says,

(28:01):
if you haven't heard it, I recommend you do. You
may be a bit young, but it is hilarious for
anyone who grew up in the sixties and remembers the
cultural and political realities and references of the times. As
are most things, the sensibilities are reflective of the times
relevant to your episode. I believe you will find the
track ten minutes five seconds in where Jackie gives a
white house tour especially interesting. I would make an episode suggestion,

(28:25):
but you guys seem to be doing just fine. Maybe
next time. That is a very very interesting thing. Von
Meter is someone who is historically very interesting to me.
He was a comedian. He became very famous for doing
a really good Kennedy impersonation, and so this first Family
album is essentially a satire, like a satirical version of
the Kennedy's, uh, including as Bob mentions, the Jackie Kennedy tour,

(28:49):
and it's very much that exaggerated, like sighing, slightly sleepy
sounding Jackie Kennedy. Uh. And he did a couple of
albums actually um about the Kennedy's, and then of course
stopped after the assassination because he thought it was im
poor taste. But if you are interested in von Meter,
because I really like uh, you know, old school comedian stories.

(29:14):
Morocca does a show called Mobituaries with Morocca and he
has a great von Meter episode, So I highly recommend it.
Um and it is a really good Kennedy impersonation that
that episode that Morocca did starts with a story of uh,
somebody who knew JFK in his car hearing what he

(29:34):
did not know at the time was this comedy troupe
doing Kennedy and he thought that what he was hearing
was something the President was actually saying, and it was
temporarily very upsetting. Um, that is the scoop. Go check
out that Morocca episode, and also, um, you know, I
also encourage people, if they haven't done it, to go
check out the the actual tour that Jackie Kennedy gave

(29:59):
for ABC of the White House because it is quite interesting.
I also will say this, we recorded, as I said
at the top of that episode, that White House episode,
we recorded it in response to the announcement that the
Rose Garden was getting redone, and we didn't we it
was completely by accident that it came out like the
day of the revie. Yeah, that was just a blind luck,

(30:24):
coincidence situation. Uh So, like just to be super clear,
like we had not seen what the actual reveal looked
like when we recorded it. Um. And what was kind
of hilarious to me was we got we we kea
all the episodes before we released them, and we got
all the emails about queaing the episodes. I think on
the day that the unveiling happens. Um, but just because

(30:49):
of the way my day worked, like I i q
eate all the episodes, It's like, Okay, that's really cool.
And then I was like, oh, this is funny. Now
that I'm looking at the computer again, there's what it
actually looks like. Now it's just super strange and weird. Yeah.
I don't know about you. I was not expecting it
to be finished that quickly after it was announced. It

(31:10):
was pretty fast. Yeah, I didn't have a good sense
of timeline. I did not think it would be done before.
But you know, we've watched enough home improvement shows to
know that, Um, if you get a team of very
energetic landscape ers, they can redo anything in forty eight hours.
So anyway, again, I hope that offered people a little

(31:33):
bit of solace if they are chagrined at the new design,
or if they've been chagrined at any previous redesign, just
remember it is always in motion. The White House and
its grounds were always intended to constantly change. Uh. Reassuring
if you don't like the way something is looking at
the moment. Odds are good it will change in the future.
You who can write to us if you'd like to.

(31:54):
You could do that at History Podcast at iHeart radio
dot com. You can also find us everywhere on social
media as Missed in History and we would love it
if you would subscribe to the show. You can do
that on the I heart radio app, at Apple podcasts,
or wherever it is you listen. Stuff you Missed in
History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For

(32:16):
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