January 22, 2015 • 38 mins
Nostradamus delighted us all in grade school, but it turns out the real guy wasn't quite as prescient as we were led to believe. In truth, he wrote a lot of purposefully confusing riddles that people have twisted into meaning exactly what they want them to mean. Learn all about Nostradamus in today's episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry. I
predicted this will be the best podcast of the new year. Man,
(00:23):
I don't know about that one, and I think that
prediction is coming true. And the first month when Gray
Filled the Sky, the recorders of Gobbledygook hit high water mark.
It's a little on the nose for Nostre Damas. Actually
it's I should have been even more vague, like way vaguer. Yeah,
(00:44):
that was like explicit for him. Yeah, because no, stredamis
used to like to just basically take concepts and words
and put them together and pretend like they were going
to happen. Yeah, no, Stredomas snort a little nutmeg. I Um.
When I was a younger person, I realized like from
(01:05):
this and esp that, uh, I was into some pretty
cool occult stuff. Read lots of books about ghosts and
things like that. Meet you a little bit. And then
now it's like an older person like I wanted to
go to Duke University to study parasychologist. I was into
like that kind of way. And then now as an
older person, I'm like, and some of the things I
(01:26):
used to believe just do a faith palm here there,
Like for example, we got into real science, and that's
usually what happens. Yes, so the pseudoscience is kind of
fade away and once you start educating yourself. Well, we
shouldn't say parasychology is necessarily as pseudoscience. It's not. We're
here to poopoo. No stradomas, not esp paras psychology in general.
(01:49):
But for instance, you were I remember not only believing,
but frequently saying, dude, no stredamus. He had to be
exu oomed once, like at the church he was buried at.
They were like expanding and they had to exume his
grave and they opened his casket and he was holding
a tablet that had the day they exhumed him. I
(02:13):
thought that was real. I thought that really happened. When
I was a slightly younger man. That's awesome when you
are in your late twenties, right, Yeah, I remember I
didn't read up on stuff like this, but I was
a big fan of like literary moys in search of
and TV shows that kind of dabbled in the fringe
(02:34):
and what's wrong with that? Nothing, There's nothing wrong with
enjoying that kind of thing, liking it, been wondering if
possibly some of it could be real. Nothing wrong with
the exploration, right, But the key to keeping egg off
your face as much as possible is to doing research,
especially when a claim is very extraordinary, really look into it,
(02:57):
Like had I had I looked around, had the Internet
been invented yet, and I looked around, and I probably
would have found somewhere some entries saying like that is
absolutely not true. Well, that's one of the Internet is
one of the big reasons, I think, because before that
was around, you know, it's you'd have to go search
out a book that was written, including Nostradamas in the
(03:18):
card catalog, and uh, it was just a lot harder
back then, you know. Yeah, But the Internet is a
double edged fiber optic line. I mean, there's a lot
of sites out there that I mean, No Stredamas has
gotten probably even more popular and even more play since
the Internet was invented, you know. Yeah, So let's talk
about this guy. Let's try to separate the man from
(03:39):
the myth and really get into who No stre Damas was.
Because he was a lot more than a crack pot
writer of vague predictions. That's true. He was. One of
the tough parts is though, is that there are so
many disagreements about his biography, even Um I didn't find
that necessarily. Yeah, I saw one guy wrote a book
(04:01):
at him that said he wasn't even a doctor. Oh, okay,
that is a disagreement. Yeah, well let's go ahead and
go there then. Okay. So he was supposedly born in
fifteen oh three. No, not true. In France, he was
born Michelle de Nostre Dame. He became Nostre Damis because
he latinized his name after he graduated medical school, which
(04:21):
apparently was custom at the time. That's right. But when
he was born he was Michelle de Nostradam. Yeah, and
he was his family was educated and they believed in education.
So he was from an early age an academic in
a traditional sense. Um, nothing wacky right out of the gate. Well,
his grandfather um instructed him as when he was a
younger man, taught him languages and kind of sparked his
(04:45):
interest in all sorts of different topics and all things learning. Yeah,
and do you remember when we did the Inquisition UM
episode where there are a lot of Jewish people who converted,
but just converted in name only. Apparently Nostra Damis his
family was one of those. Oh so that wasn't a
genuine conversion supposedly not Again, it could be myth, it
(05:06):
could be whatever. Because he was on good terms with
the local inquisition uh and the local church officials for
most of his life. So I guess either they didn't
suspect him, or they he had a pass. I don't know. Oh,
that's interesting, that makes sense. Uh. He studied a straw no,
I'm sorry, astrology um, which was UM at the time,
(05:28):
respected well respected as a science and um and supposedly
his fellow astrologers thought he was full of it. His
contemporary astrologer pals Well, one of the things that he
did was he studied and this would play out throughout
his Uh well, I would say his career as a predictor.
But he really just wrote the book, the Centuries book,
(05:51):
which we'll get to. But he studied astronomical patterns that
coincided with historical events. That's astrology. Well yeah, but he
he would basically use those to predict the future of it.
Like by some accounts he didn't even say that he
was a prophet. He said, I study history, and basically
(06:15):
history repeats itself, and so I'm going to use the
stars and when these things line up pattern wise in
a certain year in the future, this may happen again. Yeah.
So I'm that's like real astrology. Yeah, we should do
an episode on that. Yeah, I've been thinking about that
one for a while. This one, well, the the article
(06:35):
we have like almost like spits in the middle. It's
so one sided and skeptical. It's just a picture of
a big lube, right. But I looked into Um, I
looked into it and like, there's the It's fascinating what
they used to believe in all of the holes you
can punch in it, you know. But um, it's a
pretty We should do that for sometime. Yeah. I had
(06:57):
my chart done one time, like for real by my
friend's mom, and um, I remember looking at it and
thinking like, wow, that's a lot like me. Yeah, it's
pretty accurate. But and even even remove that last part,
the amount of thought and effort in what it's based on,
in the ancient tradition of it and everything that in
and of itself is fascinating, you know. And then you
(07:19):
can get into we're totally doing astrology at some point.
But um, so what he was doing was astrology. Apparently
where he ran a foul of his fellow astrologers was
to make predictions of how something would come about. Rather
than the next time Venus is in the seventh House
of Mars and a cat catches fire, um, the there's
(07:43):
gonna be an earthquake something like that, he went further
and like made predictions about you know, what was going
to set this off, and like where the people involved
we're going to come from, and like um, and then
he was very very vague. So all of that added
to the astrologers disdained for him because he gave him
(08:04):
a bad name pretty much because they were all right
exactly uh so uh he left home, supposedly in uh
to study medicine legit medicine and became a physician. Most
people agree that he became a professor in a physician
in southern France, and apparently it was pretty good doctor
(08:26):
uh at treating plague victims. He's very ahead of his time. Yeah,
even though he lost his wife and son, I'm sorry,
his children to the plague and yeah, and that had
a big effect on his life. Obviously, he basically sent
him on the road for a decade um, which is
where he kind of came up with this uh plan
(08:47):
to write this book. So he um he was he
was a progressive doctor in that like he prescribed sanitation practices, um,
he prescribed fresh air. Um. He also apparently came up
with a rose hip lozenge to help cure plague, mild
cases of plague, and that actually makes sense because rose
(09:09):
hips are packed of vitamin C. So he was a
pretty good doctor and had a good record. And from
that he lived in this village with his wife and
children and had a patron who basically supported the family.
And then once his wife and children died, he couldn't
cure them. His star really fell in this village. And
about the same time, he also had a pretty good
(09:30):
sense of humor. About the same time, they were raising
a statue of the Virgin Mary in the local church,
and he thought it was the ugliest thing he'd ever seen.
And he was making a comment on the artist's abilities,
not the Virgin Mary, but he said, these guys are
casting demons, like basically saying, that's a really ugly Virgin Mary. Well,
(09:51):
the artist didn't like this and turn him into the
Inquisition and that's about the time when he ended up
on the road. Yeah, and he went all over Europe.
Um just uh. Basically he was described as sort of wandering,
but he did meet another woman, uh and get remarried
on his wanderings, I think towards the tail end of
his wanderings about eight years later, and moved to Salon
(10:14):
uh in France, and then he started kind of getting
his uh, getting his act together in in a in
a real way to publish. Like he he he said,
you know what, I'm gonna put together this book of prophecies.
I've been messing around, I've been kicking the idea and
I'm just gonna do it. So we'll talk about what
(10:35):
came out of that. Right after this, So Chuck Nostre
Damas is settling down in Salon Salon, Yeah, selectives and
(11:03):
um he is deciding to put his awesome thoughts down
into quatrains that's right, into a book called the Centuries.
But at the time he just called it the Prophecies. Yeah,
the Prophecies of Michelle Nostradamis. I think when did they
rename it? Um, I think after his death. Yeah, And
apparently the centuries had nothing to do with time, but
(11:25):
it was in the structure, the organized structure of the
book itself, because there a thousand quatrains dreds for some reason.
So that's the centuries. And it wasn't it wasn't chronological
or anything like that. No, And it was, um, it
was a It became a huge sensation due to a
few things. Um. One, simply enough was that the printing
(11:49):
press was a recent invention and books were a big
deal now, you know, like widespread books like there was
now something could literally be a best seller for the
first time. So it aligned in that way. And another
is that he just sort of fit the dark times.
(12:09):
It was a book for and of its time, with
all his dire predictions. It was you know, when the
Catholics and Protestants were warring and there were all kinds
of people saying the end of the world was coming,
and it was just it was basically put out right
at the right time and widespread because of the printing press.
And then Queen Catherine de Medici of France was a
(12:34):
really superstitious queen, and um, he predicted her husband Henry
the seconds death, yeah, pretty specifically for once. Yeah, but
we'll poke holes on that too. Um, And it happened
a few years later, and so she invited him to
the court, which was like the most popular court in
Europe at the time, and so he got a lot
of attention there. So he was sort of like a
(12:55):
big uh writing superstar of his day because of all
these things. All yeah, I mean, like he wasn't one
of those posthumously honored authors like he was celebrated during
this time. Supposedly he met some monks on the road
once and um correctly said that one of them was
going to be the next pope. Bam case salved No
(13:17):
Astronomicus is the real deal, because that supposedly happened. So um,
he had like a whole whole jam going where he
would retire in the evenings and um, he would concentrate
on maybe a fire, the flames of a fire, yeah,
or he would take a bowl with some herbs or
(13:38):
something in it and just zone out on those, try
to read the herbs. Like you said, I don't know
if he was doing lines of nutmeg, but he was
ingesting nutmeg most likely, yeah, which could be hallucinogenic, right,
and he had to have been rich to just be
doing nutmeg, you know, um, because they had just discovered that. Um.
And he would just kind of zone out. He would
(14:00):
apparently he got help from an angelic figure, that's what
he says, and then he he would just see the future.
It would come to him. The thing is is no
str Damas. These prophecies didn't come to him, all convoluted
and kukie and however he put them, he understood exactly
(14:22):
what was going to happen. Well, he supposedly convoluted them
on purpose to avoid persecution during his lifetime. Yeah, that
is supposedly what he told his son from a second
marriage that, yeah, doing all this on purpose. And um,
because they will, you know, string me up as a
heretic because I'm so you really accurate, they will find out,
(14:46):
which I mean at the time, it was a genuine concern.
So it's it's not like this is just a preposterous
claim on no stredamss part. It's just that for skeptics
of no Stredamas, it's just one more venient little thing
because if you read the quad trains, they make almost
no sense in all sense. Simultaneously. Yeah, depending on whether
(15:11):
you're reading them on their own or whether you're trying
to look at them in context. Well, yeah, well we
might as well go and talk about that. That's one
of the big reasons you can poke holes in it
is because there were even experts say, it's hard to
find two copies of this book that are the same. Yeah,
because it was translated, you know, hundreds of times. It
(15:33):
was the early printing presses were you know, they weren't
super accurate, and they would if the printer maybe didn't
know exactly what he meant, they would say, well, I
think he meant to actually have an apostrophe here, and
in Middle French, that apostrophe could completely change the meaning
of the word um. So beyond that confusion and the
(15:53):
translation confusions, there are, like you said, there are many
different ways to enter for something, and if something didn't
come true, you could probably find a version out there
of it that supports whatever you think he predicted. You know. Yeah,
there's a pretty good example that people give of a
translation problem um after nine eleven, which we'll talk more
(16:17):
about in a second. They some some quatrain of or
I guess an assemblage of no sudamisis quad trains were
kind of bandied about his proof that he predicted it right.
One of them was there would be smoke in the
new city. Well, in his actual text in the centuries
(16:37):
he wrote Villaneuve Vienneuve, which means in French the new city,
But it was also a city in France at the
time that he was probably talking about. So there's a
lot of translation and interpretation that can come together and
(16:57):
really lead to a misunder standing. If there is even
such a thing at all with Nostre Damas. Can you
misunderstand him? I don't think it's possible. Can you misunderstand
what's not understandable? Yeah, Well, since we're talking about interpreting,
we might as well go onto the famous Hitler prediction.
Beasts ferocious with hunger will across the rivers. The greater
(17:20):
part of the battlefield would be against into a cage
of iron. Iron will the great one be drawn from
the child of Germany? Observes the man. I wouldn't I
hope we added some effect to that, Jerry, Yes, vocal effects, Yeah,
something menacing maybe, or maybe we should do like clown music.
(17:44):
Um so histor this was has long been looked at
as the prediction of the rise of Hitler. Yeah, he
says Germany in there. Yeah, it's Germany and histor Um.
But histor was actually the lower Danube River, and so
most people, um or skeptics would say, well, he didn't
say Hitler, he said Hstor since that was a place, Um,
(18:07):
that's probably what he meant. Or he would have said Hitler. Yeah,
it's kind of a miss right there. Um some people say, well,
Hitler was born around the Danube, so he still met Hitler.
That's exactly the point is that people will find a
way to interpret it if they choose to. But the
(18:30):
Nazis still use this to their advantage. They actually dropped
pamphlets containing this prediction onto France from plains because they
wanted to scare them, like, hey, even Nostradama said we're coming,
and we're coming, and it worked. I guess it did
for a while. So there's basically the if you're a
(18:51):
skeptic of Nostradamus, you say, Okay, first of all, he's
not really saying anything or anything crete, right, And a
believer of Nostre Dams would say, well, he even said that,
you're not supposed to get it. Unless you're one of
the enlightened, few can happen to be one of them.
It's not for this time. It's for people far from
(19:13):
now to understand. And so the skeptic that's arguing wild
sigh and then say, okay, um, here's the thing though,
even if, even if he is saying something like even though,
if there's something clear, he's making a prediction, and it
does seem to come true if you look at events
in human history as numbers on a graph. Eventually, statistically speaking,
(19:39):
one of nostre dams is very vague predictions about the
rise of a power, a war, an earthquake, something like
that is going to happen, and maybe something will have
even a couple of predictions that will fit one event,
like the date might align somehow something because every once
(20:00):
while he used dates, but for the most part he didn't. Um.
But if you look at it statistically, yes, even Nostradamis's
predictions are going to come true over a long enough
period of time. If again, if you read the predictions,
it's hard to say his predictions come true because he's
not really predicting anything. It's not like he sat back
(20:20):
and said, uh, sometime in the twentieth century, a guy
with a terrible mustache is going to come to power
and there's going to be a a horrific war as
a result. Nothing even approaching that. I mean, you read
what the Hitler prediction was like, it could be anything.
But even if you have predicted something, if you take
(20:41):
his predictions as predictions, if you put them over the
arc of time, eventually you're gonna get hit. So that's
one argument. A skeptical argument against no stredamis yeah, especially
if you believe um, like most people do, that history
repeats itself in some fashion over a long enough timeline.
When he himself said that that's the model he used,
(21:02):
was using the stars to look at past historical events
to predict future events, So it kind of makes sense. Um.
And also some people say these aren't even predictions because
the prediction is something that you realize before the fact. Uh.
And despite the fact that thousands of scholars have studied
Nostre Damas and millions of people have read him, no
(21:24):
one has ever pointed out something before it happened. It's
always afterwards that they go back and see, look, see
here he said this was gonna happen, and it happened
because we interpreted that way. But no one's ever said
stopped anything in its tracks because No Stredamas predicted it
as an excellent point. You know, it also raises another
argument against um nostre Damas, and that the people who
(21:46):
follow no streams, like you said, it's always the interpretation
is always after the fact, and allegations of shoehorning occur
where basically you make something fit, you've shoehorn it in
to the cont x and in doing so you cherry
pick stuff that makes sense and you ignore stuff that
doesn't make sense. Yeah. In fact, I think this article,
(22:08):
this one line says it best imprecise language lends itself
well to subjective interpretation. Yeah. I mean, if you throw
something super vague out there, you could come up with
a hundred different interpretations of it. You know, that's what
poetry is exactly. And you know, uh, despite all of
these very great arguments, there's still plenty of people out
(22:29):
there who believe in No Stredamas. Almost seems like there
should be a phase in life where you do go
through believing that No Tredamas is real, because it does
kind of lend some sort of something to life. It
also coincides with being really into Pink Floyd exam it's true.
So um, we'll talk a little more about some of
the people who argue for and against no stre damas
(22:51):
specifically centered around nine eleven. Right after this, okay, Chuck,
nine eleven happened, and almost immediately people said, Nostra dam
(23:12):
has predicted this. Yeah, his sales went through the roof apparently,
and supposedly his name was Google's more than Usama bin
Laden or George Bush after nine eleven. Really, that's what
they say. That sounds like something someone just writes on
the internet exactly, but I believe it. Well, here's why
(23:32):
his star rose again is because this quatrain emerged where
it was like, yeah, that's pretty close to what happened. Yeah.
I remember hearing it and thinking, oh my gosh, so
you want to read this one. You're pretty good at reading.
Can we get the sound effect again? Please heep the
clown music. In the City of God, there will be
a great thunder, two brothers torn apart by chaos, while
(23:55):
the fortress endures. The great leader will become the third.
Big will begin when the big city is burning. That's
super specific Yeah. The only thing I don't know if
most people would agree on is calling New York the
City of God or George Bush the Great Leader. Yeah. Uh,
but the two brothers, clearly those are the two towers.
(24:17):
The Fortress endures, the Pentagon. Uh, the Great Leader Bush, Yes,
some people said, and then the third war will begin
when the big city is burning. Well, at least one
more war. I don't know if it was World War three,
but a pretty huge couple of wars started up as
a result. So people are saying, here it is finally
(24:38):
evidence that shows almost incontrovertibly that Nostre Thomas was the
real deal. What's the argument against the chuck? Well, it
was made up. Yeah, Nostre Thomas didn't write that. Now,
it was apparently written by um several years ago by
a guy named Neil Marshall was a student in Canada,
and said he was actually using that as a demonstration
(25:00):
and of what Bunk Nostre Damas was like. I could
write something like this and people would think he predicted
nine eleven, and somehow it became something that no stre
Damas wrote. He actually proved it by writing there and
then it getting picked up in two thousand one. So
what he set out to do worked perfectly. He and
(25:21):
you have to wait more than four years. So he
basically showed just how um man. I hate to use
this word, but global people can be when they're reading.
No stre damas is work because no one checks anything. Dude.
They see it and they click on it and they
post it to social media and then it's done. And
here's a here's another really good example of that a
(25:43):
little while ago. This still cracks me up. ClickHole you
know the onions like, uh, BuzzFeed like site? Oh is
that onion? Yeah? I didn't know that, I believe so yeah,
I'm almost positive I know. ClickHole Yeah, okay, so ClickHole
satirical site of buzzfeedee charts. Um, they released something called
(26:04):
five Tragedies Weirdly predicted by Adam Sandler, and dude, they
are so can I read a couple? So, in the
wake of the tragedy, um, apparently people went back and
saw that Adam Sandler, during his early stand up career,
would mutter something's coming to Waco, something dark like during
(26:28):
his stand up show. Is that true? None of this is? Okay?
I thought they just picked apart real things and no, okay.
So car crash that killed Princess Diana. Apparently if you
go back and watch Happy Gilmore, which was made in
Sandler looks directly in the camera and says our Queen's eldest,
(26:49):
the beautiful flower will will under a Parisian bridge. Can
I keep going? So the BP oil spill that happened
in two in the Gulf, apparently Adam Sandler was on
Conan O'Brien in two thousand five and he was just
wearing a T shirt that said BP oil spill. In
five years the two thousand ten Haitian earthquake, the UN
(27:14):
estimates that two d two thousand, five hundred seventy people
were killed. Apparently in Adam Sandler's Funny People, he estimated
two hundred and twenty thousand on the notes. And then lastly,
in Malaysia Airlines flight three seventy, Adam Sandler um when
he was operaman, there was a operaman sketch where he says,
(27:36):
I'm missing plane. It's from Malaysia. Makes me insane. This
will all make sense in due time. Here's the thing, man,
people believe that viral. I'm not kidding you. It went
viral that like somehow Adam Sandler had made all these
crazy predictions and this is a real thing. Apparently they
(28:00):
didn't announce that when click Bait came out that it
was a satirical site that bp oil spill and the
teachers pretty good. Um, well, let's get into some of
these then. Uh. First of all, to further the nine
eleven thing, there were a couple of um other quatrains
(28:20):
which have been cobbled together to try and support the
nine eleven thing. Um. But like I said, they weren't
as he wrote them. They like would combine things, which
is just silly because that goes against everything that he
was saying was each quatrain is its own thing. Uh,
one of them century ten Quatrain seventy two. Uh. The
(28:41):
year seven months from the sky will come the Great
King of Terror to resuscitate the Great King of the
Mongols before and after Mars reigns. By good luck. That
last part sounds like it's from a fortune cookie. Um
that before nine eleven, back in nineteen ninety nine, some
people for he was for telling the end of the
(29:01):
world would be on July. And I remember this happening,
and I remember it being a big deal. There was
like genuine concern from some people, like some stores and
France had like closeout sales. There was this one um
French designer who like canceled his big uh. He was
a big believer and he canceled this big show. And
(29:23):
of course it didn't happen, and then it was recalculated
and everyone said, no, no, no no, no. It was this
supposed to be July twenty four. If you read it
this way, it means August eleven, and of course the
world didn't and then either August. How do you get
August eleventh from seven months in the ninet Well again
it was there were some different translations that maybe we're
(29:43):
different enough to ye. But then that one was also
used for nine eleven, was repurposed for nine eleven, right there,
like he was this close, yeah, a couple of years off. Well,
they combined that one with Century six Quatrain ninety seven,
which says, at forty five degree reason, this guy will
burn fire to approach the great new city. In an instant,
(30:04):
a great scattered flame will leap up when one will
want to demand proof of the normans. What is that
last thing? I'm not sure that's the thing, Like you
can't just pick part of it and then discount the
rest and say that, you know, he was wrong on that,
But that's exactly what people did. Well they did because
Um several quatrains referred to an anti christ figure called Mabus,
(30:29):
and if you rearrange the letters, it could be Usam
b and so people use that as proof. But they
also didn't they failed to mention that previous to that,
they used it as Saddam, like up to the day
before even yeah, they were saying it was Saddam Hussein
was Maba's because maybe it's spell backwards a su bomb
(30:52):
kind of a reach if you ask me, it is well,
in that forty five degrees part of the quad trains,
some people said that New York cities around forty degrees
five minutes north latitude, so that's close. But again he
was said the new city UM will burn at forty
five degrees Villanueva or vienneuve Um is that about forty
(31:13):
five degrees latitude? So it could just be interpretation. I
don't know who's really at fault here. Is it nostre damas?
Is it the people who UM just blindly accept no
damas predictions? Is it though, because Nostre Damas purposefully obfuscated
his stuff. So I think he's a little bit responsible
(31:33):
for this too. I imagine since he has that great
sense of humor. It made fun of that one guy's
statue of the Virgin Mary. He is sitting in his
coffin holding a plaque with some future date when he'll
be exhumed. His laughing and laughing maybe. Uh. We mentioned
Henry the second he predicted his death. Um this quatrain, Uh,
(31:54):
the young lion will overcome the old one on the
field of battle in single combat. He will put his
eyes in a cage of gold two fleets one than
to die in a cruel death. So that means two injuries.
And this actually happened. King Henry was in a jousting competition,
but it wasn't on the field of battle. It was
(32:14):
a friendly. It was a party basically. And Uh, Captain Montgomery,
who was younger, the younger lion did joust hit hit
him in the in the eye and through the throat.
So the two injuries supposedly from one. Yeah, but that
was all that his his wife de Medici, Queen Demanici,
needed to know. She was like, you know, Holy crap.
(32:36):
This has come true and he knows what he's doing.
John F. Kennedy, The Challenger, the Great Fire of London.
People have said that he's predicted all these things. But
we could sit here all day poking holes in the
you know that, not that we're poking holes, but other
people have poked legitimate holes. I think we poked a few.
(33:00):
Well yeah, but I mean it's all been from other
people's stuff. That's true. You know, I didn't do my
own whole poking. No, we should probably say we'd never
begrudge anybody that believing in something like that or enjoying
like I don't think behind it or anything like that. Yes,
you can go out dump all your stocks and sell
your worldly possessions, or you cancel your big fashion debut. Yeah,
(33:22):
that's all that just hurt you. Although that may have
hurt the fashion world. Yeah, you probably had it the
week after. You want to hear something crazy about the
day before September eleven, this group called The Coup. They're
a rap group out of Oakland. They're pretty awesome. They
were releasing their album I can't remember what's called. I
(33:43):
want to say, like party Time or party Fever, party
something and um, like the day before they and it
had the the guy Boots Riley, who is like the
m C for the group. It had him like standing
there pressing a button in the twin towers were coming down,
like blowing up. They were going to release it like
(34:05):
the day before. It was scheduled to release in September
two thou one, and then nine eleven happened. They're like, well,
let's change the cover. And that's why you've never heard
of the coup I wonder Actually, yeah, well they were
getting kind of big right around that time. The album
had like good buzz around it, and then yeah, they
just went away. They're still around them. Well, all the
(34:26):
all the entertainment that was released around that time notoriously suffered. Yeah, um,
I can't remember what movies in particular, but yeah, exactly,
there are a lot of things later around the people
are like, well, we've released it right before nine eleven,
so we were you know, we were doomed, but it
was a movie. Who cares, you know. So if you
(34:46):
want to know more about in Nostro Damas, you can
go look this up on how Still works dot com
by skin in the search bar, or you can just
kind of look around the internet because there is plenty
of stuff about that dude on there, and enjoy yourself.
And since I said enjoy yourself, it's time for listener. Now,
I'm gonna call this um trailer builder. Um. Hey, guys,
(35:10):
Chuck and Josh or Josh and Chuck, whichever you prefer.
Prefer Josh and Chuck. I think he goes either way. Yeah,
well that's what we kind of settled on, consistent branding. No,
it goes both ways. We go both ways, all right,
Chuck and Josh, Josh and Chuck. Hey, guys, I must
admit that I tried very hard not to listen to you.
I was told by several of my friends that I
absolutely must subscribe to your show. However, is to stay
(35:33):
at home dad by day to a beautiful three year
old and three month old boys. Very busy small business
owner by night had trouble finding enough time to go
poop let alone indulge in any form of entertainment. Needless
to say, I did listen and wonder and became instantly addicted.
I had forgotten how much I enjoyed learning. The two
months since I first gave you, guys a shot, had
been on a steady binge and quickly running out of
(35:55):
back episodes to listen to, which is a frightening prospect
to me, considering podcast is a fuel that powers my
motivation engine. While I work, my brother and I own
and operate Oregon trailer. Uh, that's trail apostrophe are where
the two of us built high end, tiny, tear drop
style camp trailers. Have you ever seen those? Really cool? Like?
(36:17):
I want one of these? Um, he's gonna send anyone.
I found that while my hands are on autopilot building trailers,
my brain has been totally neglected listening to my requisite
Pandora stations. But now that I'm listening to you fellas
and receiving constant brain stimulation, getting more done than ever
and enjoying every second. Uh, my wife and sons thank you,
(36:37):
as well as my general mood is improved despite the
potentially unhealthy lack of sleep. However, my lovely wife is
still getting a little tired of the phrase. So. I
was listening to stuff you should know last night dot
dot dot. So I just want to say thanks for
everything you guys do, have done, and we'll do in
the future. Large amounts of platonic love that is Sawyer
Christensen and uh, I'm gonna plug Oregon trailer dot net
(37:00):
just because these things are really cool. Yeah, Oregon trail
apostrophe or no on on the website, it's trailer, Okay,
Oregon trailer dot Net. Good point. And um, if you're
in the market for one of those, like check them
out small business handmade, send me one, send Josh one
and i'd be sweet. Yeah, they're pretty neat. Thanks a lot,
(37:22):
Syr Christensen, great name by the way, and uh, we
appreciate the kudos. And if you out there, everybody else
who isn't so your Christensen wants to get in touch
with us to say anything at all. You can tweet
to us at s y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
(37:42):
how stuff Works dot com and join us at our
home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff Works dot com
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry. I
predicted this will be the best podcast of the new year. Man,
(00:23):
I don't know about that one, and I think that
prediction is coming true. And the first month when Gray
Filled the Sky, the recorders of Gobbledygook hit high water mark.
It's a little on the nose for Nostre Damas. Actually
it's I should have been even more vague, like way vaguer. Yeah,
(00:44):
that was like explicit for him. Yeah, because no, stredamis
used to like to just basically take concepts and words
and put them together and pretend like they were going
to happen. Yeah, no, Stredomas snort a little nutmeg. I Um.
When I was a younger person, I realized like from
(01:05):
this and esp that, uh, I was into some pretty
cool occult stuff. Read lots of books about ghosts and
things like that. Meet you a little bit. And then
now it's like an older person like I wanted to
go to Duke University to study parasychologist. I was into
like that kind of way. And then now as an
older person, I'm like, and some of the things I
(01:26):
used to believe just do a faith palm here there,
Like for example, we got into real science, and that's
usually what happens. Yes, so the pseudoscience is kind of
fade away and once you start educating yourself. Well, we
shouldn't say parasychology is necessarily as pseudoscience. It's not. We're
here to poopoo. No stradomas, not esp paras psychology in general.
(01:49):
But for instance, you were I remember not only believing,
but frequently saying, dude, no stredamus. He had to be
exu oomed once, like at the church he was buried at.
They were like expanding and they had to exume his
grave and they opened his casket and he was holding
a tablet that had the day they exhumed him. I
(02:13):
thought that was real. I thought that really happened. When
I was a slightly younger man. That's awesome when you
are in your late twenties, right, Yeah, I remember I
didn't read up on stuff like this, but I was
a big fan of like literary moys in search of
and TV shows that kind of dabbled in the fringe
(02:34):
and what's wrong with that? Nothing, There's nothing wrong with
enjoying that kind of thing, liking it, been wondering if
possibly some of it could be real. Nothing wrong with
the exploration, right, But the key to keeping egg off
your face as much as possible is to doing research,
especially when a claim is very extraordinary, really look into it,
(02:57):
Like had I had I looked around, had the Internet
been invented yet, and I looked around, and I probably
would have found somewhere some entries saying like that is
absolutely not true. Well, that's one of the Internet is
one of the big reasons, I think, because before that
was around, you know, it's you'd have to go search
out a book that was written, including Nostradamas in the
(03:18):
card catalog, and uh, it was just a lot harder
back then, you know. Yeah, But the Internet is a
double edged fiber optic line. I mean, there's a lot
of sites out there that I mean, No Stredamas has
gotten probably even more popular and even more play since
the Internet was invented, you know. Yeah, So let's talk
about this guy. Let's try to separate the man from
(03:39):
the myth and really get into who No stre Damas was.
Because he was a lot more than a crack pot
writer of vague predictions. That's true. He was. One of
the tough parts is though, is that there are so
many disagreements about his biography, even Um I didn't find
that necessarily. Yeah, I saw one guy wrote a book
(04:01):
at him that said he wasn't even a doctor. Oh, okay,
that is a disagreement. Yeah, well let's go ahead and
go there then. Okay. So he was supposedly born in
fifteen oh three. No, not true. In France, he was
born Michelle de Nostre Dame. He became Nostre Damis because
he latinized his name after he graduated medical school, which
(04:21):
apparently was custom at the time. That's right. But when
he was born he was Michelle de Nostradam. Yeah, and
he was his family was educated and they believed in education.
So he was from an early age an academic in
a traditional sense. Um, nothing wacky right out of the gate. Well,
his grandfather um instructed him as when he was a
younger man, taught him languages and kind of sparked his
(04:45):
interest in all sorts of different topics and all things learning. Yeah,
and do you remember when we did the Inquisition UM
episode where there are a lot of Jewish people who converted,
but just converted in name only. Apparently Nostra Damis his
family was one of those. Oh so that wasn't a
genuine conversion supposedly not Again, it could be myth, it
(05:06):
could be whatever. Because he was on good terms with
the local inquisition uh and the local church officials for
most of his life. So I guess either they didn't
suspect him, or they he had a pass. I don't know. Oh,
that's interesting, that makes sense. Uh. He studied a straw no,
I'm sorry, astrology um, which was UM at the time,
(05:28):
respected well respected as a science and um and supposedly
his fellow astrologers thought he was full of it. His
contemporary astrologer pals Well, one of the things that he
did was he studied and this would play out throughout
his Uh well, I would say his career as a predictor.
But he really just wrote the book, the Centuries book,
(05:51):
which we'll get to. But he studied astronomical patterns that
coincided with historical events. That's astrology. Well yeah, but he
he would basically use those to predict the future of it.
Like by some accounts he didn't even say that he
was a prophet. He said, I study history, and basically
(06:15):
history repeats itself, and so I'm going to use the
stars and when these things line up pattern wise in
a certain year in the future, this may happen again. Yeah.
So I'm that's like real astrology. Yeah, we should do
an episode on that. Yeah, I've been thinking about that
one for a while. This one, well, the the article
(06:35):
we have like almost like spits in the middle. It's
so one sided and skeptical. It's just a picture of
a big lube, right. But I looked into Um, I
looked into it and like, there's the It's fascinating what
they used to believe in all of the holes you
can punch in it, you know. But um, it's a
pretty We should do that for sometime. Yeah. I had
(06:57):
my chart done one time, like for real by my
friend's mom, and um, I remember looking at it and
thinking like, wow, that's a lot like me. Yeah, it's
pretty accurate. But and even even remove that last part,
the amount of thought and effort in what it's based on,
in the ancient tradition of it and everything that in
and of itself is fascinating, you know. And then you
(07:19):
can get into we're totally doing astrology at some point.
But um, so what he was doing was astrology. Apparently
where he ran a foul of his fellow astrologers was
to make predictions of how something would come about. Rather
than the next time Venus is in the seventh House
of Mars and a cat catches fire, um, the there's
(07:43):
gonna be an earthquake something like that, he went further
and like made predictions about you know, what was going
to set this off, and like where the people involved
we're going to come from, and like um, and then
he was very very vague. So all of that added
to the astrologers disdained for him because he gave him
(08:04):
a bad name pretty much because they were all right
exactly uh so uh he left home, supposedly in uh
to study medicine legit medicine and became a physician. Most
people agree that he became a professor in a physician
in southern France, and apparently it was pretty good doctor
(08:26):
uh at treating plague victims. He's very ahead of his time. Yeah,
even though he lost his wife and son, I'm sorry,
his children to the plague and yeah, and that had
a big effect on his life. Obviously, he basically sent
him on the road for a decade um, which is
where he kind of came up with this uh plan
(08:47):
to write this book. So he um he was he
was a progressive doctor in that like he prescribed sanitation practices, um,
he prescribed fresh air. Um. He also apparently came up
with a rose hip lozenge to help cure plague, mild
cases of plague, and that actually makes sense because rose
(09:09):
hips are packed of vitamin C. So he was a
pretty good doctor and had a good record. And from
that he lived in this village with his wife and
children and had a patron who basically supported the family.
And then once his wife and children died, he couldn't
cure them. His star really fell in this village. And
about the same time, he also had a pretty good
(09:30):
sense of humor. About the same time, they were raising
a statue of the Virgin Mary in the local church,
and he thought it was the ugliest thing he'd ever seen.
And he was making a comment on the artist's abilities,
not the Virgin Mary, but he said, these guys are
casting demons, like basically saying, that's a really ugly Virgin Mary. Well,
(09:51):
the artist didn't like this and turn him into the
Inquisition and that's about the time when he ended up
on the road. Yeah, and he went all over Europe.
Um just uh. Basically he was described as sort of wandering,
but he did meet another woman, uh and get remarried
on his wanderings, I think towards the tail end of
his wanderings about eight years later, and moved to Salon
(10:14):
uh in France, and then he started kind of getting
his uh, getting his act together in in a in
a real way to publish. Like he he he said,
you know what, I'm gonna put together this book of prophecies.
I've been messing around, I've been kicking the idea and
I'm just gonna do it. So we'll talk about what
(10:35):
came out of that. Right after this, So Chuck Nostre
Damas is settling down in Salon Salon, Yeah, selectives and
(11:03):
um he is deciding to put his awesome thoughts down
into quatrains that's right, into a book called the Centuries.
But at the time he just called it the Prophecies. Yeah,
the Prophecies of Michelle Nostradamis. I think when did they
rename it? Um, I think after his death. Yeah, And
apparently the centuries had nothing to do with time, but
(11:25):
it was in the structure, the organized structure of the
book itself, because there a thousand quatrains dreds for some reason.
So that's the centuries. And it wasn't it wasn't chronological
or anything like that. No, And it was, um, it
was a It became a huge sensation due to a
few things. Um. One, simply enough was that the printing
(11:49):
press was a recent invention and books were a big
deal now, you know, like widespread books like there was
now something could literally be a best seller for the
first time. So it aligned in that way. And another
is that he just sort of fit the dark times.
(12:09):
It was a book for and of its time, with
all his dire predictions. It was you know, when the
Catholics and Protestants were warring and there were all kinds
of people saying the end of the world was coming,
and it was just it was basically put out right
at the right time and widespread because of the printing press.
And then Queen Catherine de Medici of France was a
(12:34):
really superstitious queen, and um, he predicted her husband Henry
the seconds death, yeah, pretty specifically for once. Yeah, but
we'll poke holes on that too. Um, And it happened
a few years later, and so she invited him to
the court, which was like the most popular court in
Europe at the time, and so he got a lot
of attention there. So he was sort of like a
(12:55):
big uh writing superstar of his day because of all
these things. All yeah, I mean, like he wasn't one
of those posthumously honored authors like he was celebrated during
this time. Supposedly he met some monks on the road
once and um correctly said that one of them was
going to be the next pope. Bam case salved No
(13:17):
Astronomicus is the real deal, because that supposedly happened. So um,
he had like a whole whole jam going where he
would retire in the evenings and um, he would concentrate
on maybe a fire, the flames of a fire, yeah,
or he would take a bowl with some herbs or
(13:38):
something in it and just zone out on those, try
to read the herbs. Like you said, I don't know
if he was doing lines of nutmeg, but he was
ingesting nutmeg most likely, yeah, which could be hallucinogenic, right,
and he had to have been rich to just be
doing nutmeg, you know, um, because they had just discovered that. Um.
And he would just kind of zone out. He would
(14:00):
apparently he got help from an angelic figure, that's what
he says, and then he he would just see the future.
It would come to him. The thing is is no
str Damas. These prophecies didn't come to him, all convoluted
and kukie and however he put them, he understood exactly
(14:22):
what was going to happen. Well, he supposedly convoluted them
on purpose to avoid persecution during his lifetime. Yeah, that
is supposedly what he told his son from a second
marriage that, yeah, doing all this on purpose. And um,
because they will, you know, string me up as a
heretic because I'm so you really accurate, they will find out,
(14:46):
which I mean at the time, it was a genuine concern.
So it's it's not like this is just a preposterous
claim on no stredamss part. It's just that for skeptics
of no Stredamas, it's just one more venient little thing
because if you read the quad trains, they make almost
no sense in all sense. Simultaneously. Yeah, depending on whether
(15:11):
you're reading them on their own or whether you're trying
to look at them in context. Well, yeah, well we
might as well go and talk about that. That's one
of the big reasons you can poke holes in it
is because there were even experts say, it's hard to
find two copies of this book that are the same. Yeah,
because it was translated, you know, hundreds of times. It
(15:33):
was the early printing presses were you know, they weren't
super accurate, and they would if the printer maybe didn't
know exactly what he meant, they would say, well, I
think he meant to actually have an apostrophe here, and
in Middle French, that apostrophe could completely change the meaning
of the word um. So beyond that confusion and the
(15:53):
translation confusions, there are, like you said, there are many
different ways to enter for something, and if something didn't
come true, you could probably find a version out there
of it that supports whatever you think he predicted. You know. Yeah,
there's a pretty good example that people give of a
translation problem um after nine eleven, which we'll talk more
(16:17):
about in a second. They some some quatrain of or
I guess an assemblage of no sudamisis quad trains were
kind of bandied about his proof that he predicted it right.
One of them was there would be smoke in the
new city. Well, in his actual text in the centuries
(16:37):
he wrote Villaneuve Vienneuve, which means in French the new city,
But it was also a city in France at the
time that he was probably talking about. So there's a
lot of translation and interpretation that can come together and
(16:57):
really lead to a misunder standing. If there is even
such a thing at all with Nostre Damas. Can you
misunderstand him? I don't think it's possible. Can you misunderstand
what's not understandable? Yeah, Well, since we're talking about interpreting,
we might as well go onto the famous Hitler prediction.
Beasts ferocious with hunger will across the rivers. The greater
(17:20):
part of the battlefield would be against into a cage
of iron. Iron will the great one be drawn from
the child of Germany? Observes the man. I wouldn't I
hope we added some effect to that, Jerry, Yes, vocal effects, Yeah,
something menacing maybe, or maybe we should do like clown music.
(17:44):
Um so histor this was has long been looked at
as the prediction of the rise of Hitler. Yeah, he
says Germany in there. Yeah, it's Germany and histor Um.
But histor was actually the lower Danube River, and so
most people, um or skeptics would say, well, he didn't
say Hitler, he said Hstor since that was a place, Um,
(18:07):
that's probably what he meant. Or he would have said Hitler. Yeah,
it's kind of a miss right there. Um some people say, well,
Hitler was born around the Danube, so he still met Hitler.
That's exactly the point is that people will find a
way to interpret it if they choose to. But the
(18:30):
Nazis still use this to their advantage. They actually dropped
pamphlets containing this prediction onto France from plains because they
wanted to scare them, like, hey, even Nostradama said we're coming,
and we're coming, and it worked. I guess it did
for a while. So there's basically the if you're a
(18:51):
skeptic of Nostradamus, you say, Okay, first of all, he's
not really saying anything or anything crete, right, And a
believer of Nostre Dams would say, well, he even said that,
you're not supposed to get it. Unless you're one of
the enlightened, few can happen to be one of them.
It's not for this time. It's for people far from
(19:13):
now to understand. And so the skeptic that's arguing wild
sigh and then say, okay, um, here's the thing though,
even if, even if he is saying something like even though,
if there's something clear, he's making a prediction, and it
does seem to come true if you look at events
in human history as numbers on a graph. Eventually, statistically speaking,
(19:39):
one of nostre dams is very vague predictions about the
rise of a power, a war, an earthquake, something like
that is going to happen, and maybe something will have
even a couple of predictions that will fit one event,
like the date might align somehow something because every once
(20:00):
while he used dates, but for the most part he didn't. Um.
But if you look at it statistically, yes, even Nostradamis's
predictions are going to come true over a long enough
period of time. If again, if you read the predictions,
it's hard to say his predictions come true because he's
not really predicting anything. It's not like he sat back
(20:20):
and said, uh, sometime in the twentieth century, a guy
with a terrible mustache is going to come to power
and there's going to be a a horrific war as
a result. Nothing even approaching that. I mean, you read
what the Hitler prediction was like, it could be anything.
But even if you have predicted something, if you take
(20:41):
his predictions as predictions, if you put them over the
arc of time, eventually you're gonna get hit. So that's
one argument. A skeptical argument against no stredamis yeah, especially
if you believe um, like most people do, that history
repeats itself in some fashion over a long enough timeline.
When he himself said that that's the model he used,
(21:02):
was using the stars to look at past historical events
to predict future events, So it kind of makes sense. Um.
And also some people say these aren't even predictions because
the prediction is something that you realize before the fact. Uh.
And despite the fact that thousands of scholars have studied
Nostre Damas and millions of people have read him, no
(21:24):
one has ever pointed out something before it happened. It's
always afterwards that they go back and see, look, see
here he said this was gonna happen, and it happened
because we interpreted that way. But no one's ever said
stopped anything in its tracks because No Stredamas predicted it
as an excellent point. You know, it also raises another
argument against um nostre Damas, and that the people who
(21:46):
follow no streams, like you said, it's always the interpretation
is always after the fact, and allegations of shoehorning occur
where basically you make something fit, you've shoehorn it in
to the cont x and in doing so you cherry
pick stuff that makes sense and you ignore stuff that
doesn't make sense. Yeah. In fact, I think this article,
(22:08):
this one line says it best imprecise language lends itself
well to subjective interpretation. Yeah. I mean, if you throw
something super vague out there, you could come up with
a hundred different interpretations of it. You know, that's what
poetry is exactly. And you know, uh, despite all of
these very great arguments, there's still plenty of people out
(22:29):
there who believe in No Stredamas. Almost seems like there
should be a phase in life where you do go
through believing that No Tredamas is real, because it does
kind of lend some sort of something to life. It
also coincides with being really into Pink Floyd exam it's true.
So um, we'll talk a little more about some of
the people who argue for and against no stre damas
(22:51):
specifically centered around nine eleven. Right after this, okay, Chuck,
nine eleven happened, and almost immediately people said, Nostra dam
(23:12):
has predicted this. Yeah, his sales went through the roof apparently,
and supposedly his name was Google's more than Usama bin
Laden or George Bush after nine eleven. Really, that's what
they say. That sounds like something someone just writes on
the internet exactly, but I believe it. Well, here's why
(23:32):
his star rose again is because this quatrain emerged where
it was like, yeah, that's pretty close to what happened. Yeah.
I remember hearing it and thinking, oh my gosh, so
you want to read this one. You're pretty good at reading.
Can we get the sound effect again? Please heep the
clown music. In the City of God, there will be
a great thunder, two brothers torn apart by chaos, while
(23:55):
the fortress endures. The great leader will become the third.
Big will begin when the big city is burning. That's
super specific Yeah. The only thing I don't know if
most people would agree on is calling New York the
City of God or George Bush the Great Leader. Yeah. Uh,
but the two brothers, clearly those are the two towers.
(24:17):
The Fortress endures, the Pentagon. Uh, the Great Leader Bush, Yes,
some people said, and then the third war will begin
when the big city is burning. Well, at least one
more war. I don't know if it was World War three,
but a pretty huge couple of wars started up as
a result. So people are saying, here it is finally
(24:38):
evidence that shows almost incontrovertibly that Nostre Thomas was the
real deal. What's the argument against the chuck? Well, it
was made up. Yeah, Nostre Thomas didn't write that. Now,
it was apparently written by um several years ago by
a guy named Neil Marshall was a student in Canada,
and said he was actually using that as a demonstration
(25:00):
and of what Bunk Nostre Damas was like. I could
write something like this and people would think he predicted
nine eleven, and somehow it became something that no stre
Damas wrote. He actually proved it by writing there and
then it getting picked up in two thousand one. So
what he set out to do worked perfectly. He and
(25:21):
you have to wait more than four years. So he
basically showed just how um man. I hate to use
this word, but global people can be when they're reading.
No stre damas is work because no one checks anything. Dude.
They see it and they click on it and they
post it to social media and then it's done. And
here's a here's another really good example of that a
(25:43):
little while ago. This still cracks me up. ClickHole you
know the onions like, uh, BuzzFeed like site? Oh is
that onion? Yeah? I didn't know that, I believe so yeah,
I'm almost positive I know. ClickHole Yeah, okay, so ClickHole
satirical site of buzzfeedee charts. Um, they released something called
(26:04):
five Tragedies Weirdly predicted by Adam Sandler, and dude, they
are so can I read a couple? So, in the
wake of the tragedy, um, apparently people went back and
saw that Adam Sandler, during his early stand up career,
would mutter something's coming to Waco, something dark like during
(26:28):
his stand up show. Is that true? None of this is? Okay?
I thought they just picked apart real things and no, okay.
So car crash that killed Princess Diana. Apparently if you
go back and watch Happy Gilmore, which was made in
Sandler looks directly in the camera and says our Queen's eldest,
(26:49):
the beautiful flower will will under a Parisian bridge. Can
I keep going? So the BP oil spill that happened
in two in the Gulf, apparently Adam Sandler was on
Conan O'Brien in two thousand five and he was just
wearing a T shirt that said BP oil spill. In
five years the two thousand ten Haitian earthquake, the UN
(27:14):
estimates that two d two thousand, five hundred seventy people
were killed. Apparently in Adam Sandler's Funny People, he estimated
two hundred and twenty thousand on the notes. And then lastly,
in Malaysia Airlines flight three seventy, Adam Sandler um when
he was operaman, there was a operaman sketch where he says,
(27:36):
I'm missing plane. It's from Malaysia. Makes me insane. This
will all make sense in due time. Here's the thing, man,
people believe that viral. I'm not kidding you. It went
viral that like somehow Adam Sandler had made all these
crazy predictions and this is a real thing. Apparently they
(28:00):
didn't announce that when click Bait came out that it
was a satirical site that bp oil spill and the
teachers pretty good. Um, well, let's get into some of
these then. Uh. First of all, to further the nine
eleven thing, there were a couple of um other quatrains
(28:20):
which have been cobbled together to try and support the
nine eleven thing. Um. But like I said, they weren't
as he wrote them. They like would combine things, which
is just silly because that goes against everything that he
was saying was each quatrain is its own thing. Uh,
one of them century ten Quatrain seventy two. Uh. The
(28:41):
year seven months from the sky will come the Great
King of Terror to resuscitate the Great King of the
Mongols before and after Mars reigns. By good luck. That
last part sounds like it's from a fortune cookie. Um
that before nine eleven, back in nineteen ninety nine, some
people for he was for telling the end of the
(29:01):
world would be on July. And I remember this happening,
and I remember it being a big deal. There was
like genuine concern from some people, like some stores and
France had like closeout sales. There was this one um
French designer who like canceled his big uh. He was
a big believer and he canceled this big show. And
(29:23):
of course it didn't happen, and then it was recalculated
and everyone said, no, no, no no, no. It was this
supposed to be July twenty four. If you read it
this way, it means August eleven, and of course the
world didn't and then either August. How do you get
August eleventh from seven months in the ninet Well again
it was there were some different translations that maybe we're
(29:43):
different enough to ye. But then that one was also
used for nine eleven, was repurposed for nine eleven, right there,
like he was this close, yeah, a couple of years off. Well,
they combined that one with Century six Quatrain ninety seven,
which says, at forty five degree reason, this guy will
burn fire to approach the great new city. In an instant,
(30:04):
a great scattered flame will leap up when one will
want to demand proof of the normans. What is that
last thing? I'm not sure that's the thing, Like you
can't just pick part of it and then discount the
rest and say that, you know, he was wrong on that,
But that's exactly what people did. Well they did because
Um several quatrains referred to an anti christ figure called Mabus,
(30:29):
and if you rearrange the letters, it could be Usam
b and so people use that as proof. But they
also didn't they failed to mention that previous to that,
they used it as Saddam, like up to the day
before even yeah, they were saying it was Saddam Hussein
was Maba's because maybe it's spell backwards a su bomb
(30:52):
kind of a reach if you ask me, it is well,
in that forty five degrees part of the quad trains,
some people said that New York cities around forty degrees
five minutes north latitude, so that's close. But again he
was said the new city UM will burn at forty
five degrees Villanueva or vienneuve Um is that about forty
(31:13):
five degrees latitude? So it could just be interpretation. I
don't know who's really at fault here. Is it nostre damas?
Is it the people who UM just blindly accept no
damas predictions? Is it though, because Nostre Damas purposefully obfuscated
his stuff. So I think he's a little bit responsible
(31:33):
for this too. I imagine since he has that great
sense of humor. It made fun of that one guy's
statue of the Virgin Mary. He is sitting in his
coffin holding a plaque with some future date when he'll
be exhumed. His laughing and laughing maybe. Uh. We mentioned
Henry the second he predicted his death. Um this quatrain, Uh,
(31:54):
the young lion will overcome the old one on the
field of battle in single combat. He will put his
eyes in a cage of gold two fleets one than
to die in a cruel death. So that means two injuries.
And this actually happened. King Henry was in a jousting competition,
but it wasn't on the field of battle. It was
(32:14):
a friendly. It was a party basically. And Uh, Captain Montgomery,
who was younger, the younger lion did joust hit hit
him in the in the eye and through the throat.
So the two injuries supposedly from one. Yeah, but that
was all that his his wife de Medici, Queen Demanici,
needed to know. She was like, you know, Holy crap.
(32:36):
This has come true and he knows what he's doing.
John F. Kennedy, The Challenger, the Great Fire of London.
People have said that he's predicted all these things. But
we could sit here all day poking holes in the
you know that, not that we're poking holes, but other
people have poked legitimate holes. I think we poked a few.
(33:00):
Well yeah, but I mean it's all been from other
people's stuff. That's true. You know, I didn't do my
own whole poking. No, we should probably say we'd never
begrudge anybody that believing in something like that or enjoying
like I don't think behind it or anything like that. Yes,
you can go out dump all your stocks and sell
your worldly possessions, or you cancel your big fashion debut. Yeah,
(33:22):
that's all that just hurt you. Although that may have
hurt the fashion world. Yeah, you probably had it the
week after. You want to hear something crazy about the
day before September eleven, this group called The Coup. They're
a rap group out of Oakland. They're pretty awesome. They
were releasing their album I can't remember what's called. I
(33:43):
want to say, like party Time or party Fever, party
something and um, like the day before they and it
had the the guy Boots Riley, who is like the
m C for the group. It had him like standing
there pressing a button in the twin towers were coming down,
like blowing up. They were going to release it like
(34:05):
the day before. It was scheduled to release in September
two thou one, and then nine eleven happened. They're like, well,
let's change the cover. And that's why you've never heard
of the coup I wonder Actually, yeah, well they were
getting kind of big right around that time. The album
had like good buzz around it, and then yeah, they
just went away. They're still around them. Well, all the
(34:26):
all the entertainment that was released around that time notoriously suffered. Yeah, um,
I can't remember what movies in particular, but yeah, exactly,
there are a lot of things later around the people
are like, well, we've released it right before nine eleven,
so we were you know, we were doomed, but it
was a movie. Who cares, you know. So if you
(34:46):
want to know more about in Nostro Damas, you can
go look this up on how Still works dot com
by skin in the search bar, or you can just
kind of look around the internet because there is plenty
of stuff about that dude on there, and enjoy yourself.
And since I said enjoy yourself, it's time for listener. Now,
I'm gonna call this um trailer builder. Um. Hey, guys,
(35:10):
Chuck and Josh or Josh and Chuck, whichever you prefer.
Prefer Josh and Chuck. I think he goes either way. Yeah,
well that's what we kind of settled on, consistent branding. No,
it goes both ways. We go both ways, all right,
Chuck and Josh, Josh and Chuck. Hey, guys, I must
admit that I tried very hard not to listen to you.
I was told by several of my friends that I
absolutely must subscribe to your show. However, is to stay
(35:33):
at home dad by day to a beautiful three year
old and three month old boys. Very busy small business
owner by night had trouble finding enough time to go
poop let alone indulge in any form of entertainment. Needless
to say, I did listen and wonder and became instantly addicted.
I had forgotten how much I enjoyed learning. The two
months since I first gave you, guys a shot, had
been on a steady binge and quickly running out of
(35:55):
back episodes to listen to, which is a frightening prospect
to me, considering podcast is a fuel that powers my
motivation engine. While I work, my brother and I own
and operate Oregon trailer. Uh, that's trail apostrophe are where
the two of us built high end, tiny, tear drop
style camp trailers. Have you ever seen those? Really cool? Like?
(36:17):
I want one of these? Um, he's gonna send anyone.
I found that while my hands are on autopilot building trailers,
my brain has been totally neglected listening to my requisite
Pandora stations. But now that I'm listening to you fellas
and receiving constant brain stimulation, getting more done than ever
and enjoying every second. Uh, my wife and sons thank you,
(36:37):
as well as my general mood is improved despite the
potentially unhealthy lack of sleep. However, my lovely wife is
still getting a little tired of the phrase. So. I
was listening to stuff you should know last night dot
dot dot. So I just want to say thanks for
everything you guys do, have done, and we'll do in
the future. Large amounts of platonic love that is Sawyer
Christensen and uh, I'm gonna plug Oregon trailer dot net
(37:00):
just because these things are really cool. Yeah, Oregon trail
apostrophe or no on on the website, it's trailer, Okay,
Oregon trailer dot Net. Good point. And um, if you're
in the market for one of those, like check them
out small business handmade, send me one, send Josh one
and i'd be sweet. Yeah, they're pretty neat. Thanks a lot,
(37:22):
Syr Christensen, great name by the way, and uh, we
appreciate the kudos. And if you out there, everybody else
who isn't so your Christensen wants to get in touch
with us to say anything at all. You can tweet
to us at s y s K podcast. You can
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You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
(37:42):
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