August 20, 2024 • 37 mins
CW: Cannibalism, child death Dante's Inferno presents a stark view of the ninth circle of Hell, the circle reserved for traitors, in which sinners are stuck in agony in a frozen lake. One such sinner is the Ugolino della Gheradesca, a Pisan nobleman who, as Dante imagines, is forced forever to chew through the skull of the man in front of him, an eternal reminder of the crimes he committed in life.
Support Noble Blood:
— Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon
— Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story'
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm
and Mild from Aaron Manky listener discretion advised. According to
the medieval Italian writer Dante Alighieri, in the Lowest Circle
of hell sits a frozen lake. At first, that might
(00:24):
not sound so bad, kind of a winter wonderland vibe.
That is, until you take into account the countless heads
and bodies sticking out of the ice and their screams
of eternal agony. Those souls who are condemned to this
the ninth circle of Hell, the circle reserved for traders.
(00:47):
We're all frozen in various configurations according to the kind
and depth of their betrayal. We get this chilling depiction
of Hell from Dante's Inferno, the first part of his
Divine Comedy, which he completed around thirteen twenty one. The
(01:08):
poem is the story of Dante imagining himself journeying through
Hell with the ancient Roman poet Virgil as his guide,
meeting various characters along the way and contemplating the nature
of sin and the soul. Of course, in the story,
Dante and Virgil make their way through the concentric sections
(01:31):
of the lake called Cocitus after the mythical Greek River
of Lamentation in the underworld, and they eventually come upon
two men frozen together in the ice, one in front
of the other. Dante thought it was odd the men
were so close that their heads were practically touching. As
(01:56):
Dante and Virgil got closer, their confusion turned to horror
as they realized that the man behind was in fact
continuously gnawing through the skull of the man in front
of him, a gruesome element in their eternal torment aghast.
(02:16):
Dante asked the gnawing man who he was and why
he had been sentenced to such a fate. The poor
soul took a break from his meal, wiped his face
on a remaining patch of hair on the other man's head,
and began to tell his story of betrayal and horror.
(02:39):
His name, he told them, was Ugolino de la Guerridesco,
a disgraced peasan nobleman who had died some thirty years prior. Ugolino,
by his own admission, had led a treasonous life, always
willing to betray comrades, friends, and even family in the
pursuit of more his traitorous ways. Finally came to an end, however,
(03:05):
after he betrayed the Archbishop of Pisa, the man who
was now frozen in front of him during a riot
in the city. Enraged, the archbishop betrayed Ugolino, in turn
having him and his children imprisoned in a tower, before
throwing the key in the river and leaving them to starve.
(03:29):
After several days, Ugolino told the visitors his children saw
their father bite his knuckle in grief and mistook it
for hunger. With a sudden panic, they asked him to
eat their bodies when they died, so that he might
survive if only for a bit longer. Father, our pain
(03:51):
will lessen if you eat us, they begged. Ugolino had
tried to calm his children, but it did little good,
and soon it no longer mattered, as their already frail
bodies began to weaken one by one. Over the course
of two agonizing days, Ugolino outlived each of his children.
(04:15):
He grew hungrier by the minute. As the tortured soul
trapped in the frozen lake finished his tale, Dante and
Virgil realized exactly why his punishment was what it was
eternal cannibalism. Looking up at the writer and the poet
(04:35):
from his frozen tomb, Ugolino cried, quote, and I already
going blind, groped over my brood, calling to them, though
I had watched them die for two long days. And
then the hunger had more power than even sorrow over me.
I'm Danish schwartz, and this is noble blood. Thirteenth century
(05:02):
Italy could be a brutal place. Ugolino de la Gardesca
grew up amidst a long standing conflict that centered on
the tension between the ambitions of the Pope and his
papal states on one hand, and the Holy Roman Emperor
on the other. The inciting debate, known as the investiture controversy,
(05:25):
began in the early twelfth century, and it was a
question over whether secular rulers or the Pope had the
authority to appoint in areas bishops and abbots. Over time,
the ruling families of the city states of northern Italy
began to take their sides on the issue, with the
(05:45):
Holy Roman Emperor's supporters being known as Gibelines and the
popes as Guelphs. The Geradesca family were of Germanic descent,
and their ties to the Hoefenstauffen emperors made them the
leaders of the Gibelin faction in Pisa, where Ugolino was born.
(06:06):
The conflict died down to some extent in the late
twelfth century, but was revived shortly after Ugolino's birth around
twelve ten twelve fourteen. Like many dynastic rivalries throughout history,
conflicts arose both over the quote unquote main conflict and
(06:27):
increasingly over personal and political squabbles between the involved parties.
There is much more to the longstanding conflicts and entanglements
between the Ghibeline and Gwelf families, but for our purposes
it's mostly important to understand that Ugolino's personal and political
(06:49):
life was defined by pretty constant conflict. Pisa was a
Gibeline outpost surrounded by several powerful Gwelf city states, notably
Genoa and Florence. The early years of Ugolino's life are
pretty unclear to us, but we know that as he
(07:10):
came of age, he accumulated power, experience, and connections. He
also accumulated children at least ten or eleven split between
two marriages, as well as at least one child born
out of wedlock. Ugolino's early career was defined by military successes,
(07:31):
particularly as a naval commander. In the wake of a
twelve fifty eight victory against the Genoese sympathetic judicate of
Calliari in Sardinia, he founded the silver mining city of
Via de Quisa on the island's west coast, rejuvenating the
existing town and building a castle, a hospital, and a
(07:54):
defense wall. That city still exists today, known by its
Spanish name Iglesia. This victory would have had Ugolino on
a high he had defeated the Genoese, even if by proxy,
and cemented his own legacy through the founding of a city.
(08:14):
It would also have earned him popularity amongst his fellow
Gibelins in Pisa. But, as would become clear over the
next several years, Ugolino was far more interested in growing
his own power than in serving the interests of the
Peasan nobility or their political faction. By the early twelve
(08:37):
seventies we find Ugolino already barreling towards his first accusation
of treason. He began to arouse the suspicions of his
fellow Gibelins in twelve seventy one, when he married his
daughter off to Giovanni Visconti, the judge or ruler of Galura,
(08:57):
another Sardinian judicate. The Visconti were among the most powerful
Gwelph families in Pisa and the surrounding areas. Ugolino had
bound his flesh and blood to the enemy under different
political circumstances that might have been seen as a diplomatic move.
(09:19):
Countless royal marriages throughout history, many of which we've covered
on this podcast, were diplomatic marriages meant to soothe dynastic
rivalries or prevent disputes over succession, even to merge kingdoms
to accumulate more power for both families or parties. But
(09:40):
the deeply entrenched nature of the rivalry between the Gebelins
and the Guelphs, and the geographically precarious position Pisa was
in as a Gebeline city surrounded by Gwelf power, meant
that Ugolino's marriage brokering was seen as very suspicious, and
in fact, it seems unlikely that his motives were diplomatic.
(10:04):
The marriage resulted mostly in increased tension between the Gibilins
and Guelphs and an opportunity for Ugolino himself to grab
at more wealth and power. Over the next few years,
Pisa was beset by riots led by none other than
Ugolino and his son in law Giovanni Visconti. In twelve
(10:27):
seventy four, their involvement in these riots came back to
bite them. Giovanni was exiled and Ugolino imprisoned. When Giovanni
died in exile the following year, it was Ugolino's turn
to be sent away, and he spent the next few
years in Sardinia until Charles, the first of Anjou, helped
(10:48):
to engineer his return to Pisa. Upon his return, Ugolino
went right back to leading Pisa as a military commander.
His sins seemingly were given and forgotten. However, another opportunity
to grab yet more power soon fell right into Ugolino's lap.
(11:10):
On August fifth and sixth, twelve eighty four, Pisa fought
Genoa in a naval battle that would come to be
known as the Battle of Milura. Ugolino had been appointed
to captain a naval fleet by the Podesta, or head
magistrate of Pisa, Albertino Morrissini. The battle was a disaster
(11:32):
for Pisa. Genoa not only enjoyed a decisive victory, but
also managed to capture over twenty eight Peasan ships and
eleven thousand Peason soldiers, including the Podesta himself, along with
a significant portion of the city's nobility. Ugolino, however, had
(11:54):
managed to escape Genoa's clutches in a move that would
be interpreted as calculated by later writers, although it doesn't
seem to have been seen that way at the time.
He got away by signaling his surrender to the Genoese
and withdrawing from the battle. Now there was a power
(12:15):
vacuum in Pisa, and with much of the nobility in
Genoese custody, there really was only one choice for who
should serve as the new Podesta. Why Ugolino della Garadeska.
Of course, Two years later, in twelve eighty six, he
was also appointed Captain of the People, although in this
(12:37):
he was forced to share power with his grandson, Giovanni's
son Nino Visconti. It was something of an uncomfortable pairing
a Ghibeline and a Guelph ruling together. In twelve eighty seven,
Nino was elected to the position of Podesta, upsetting the
already delicate balance of power between the two warring factions. That,
(13:03):
of course, did not sit well with the power hungry Ugolino,
and worse, while his own gwelf grandson challenged his power
from within, Pisa gwelth powers Florence and Luca were beginning
to advance from the outside, along with PISA's longtime rival Genoa.
(13:25):
Ugolino managed to pacify Florence and Luca by relinquishing some
landholdings and castles. When Genoa suggested the same in return
for the Peasan prisoners, Ugolino hesitated. He was already fighting
his grandson for supremacy. What was going to happen if
(13:46):
all of the other nobles returned to the city. Ugolino's
wheels began to turn, but so did his grandson Nino's.
It was becoming increasingly clear that the two could not
ruled together peacefully, and a struggle for power seemed imminent.
In twelve eighty seven, Nino turned to the Archbishop of Pisa,
(14:10):
a leader of the Gibeline nobility, asking for his support
were he to make a play for the position of Podesta, permanently.
The archbishop seemed sympathetic to Nino's cause and agreed to
help him. Ugolino got wind of these negotiations and was incensed.
(14:31):
He responded with what amounted to a coup. He expelled
from the city not only Nino, his grandson, but also
several of the remaining powerful Gibelin families, destroying their palaces
in the process. Ugolino and his militia occupied the town hall,
where he proclaimed himself the Lord of Pisa. What had
(14:54):
been a republic was now an absolute monarchy, with Ugolino
at its own. To prevent his grandson from taking power back,
Ugolino allowed the return of several of the exiled noble
families to Pisa, offering safety and a modicum of power
in exchange for their support. This had the additional benefit
(15:19):
of placating the archbishop, who rewarded Ugolino with his loyalty
by refusing to help Nino attempt to regain power in
the city. Ugolino had finally reached the pinnacle of power
in Pisa. It had taken a lot of backstabbing to
get there. He had betrayed his political faction, his superiors
(15:42):
practically in entire cities worth of nobles and even his
own grandson. But he had made it to the top.
But it would soon turn out there was one betrayal
left in his feverish quest to retain control of Pisaino
betray the very archbishop who had helped secure his path
(16:05):
to power. By twelve eighty eight, it seemed Ugolino de
la Geradesca had successfully claimed all of the power he
could ever want. He was the sole lord of Pisa,
with practically no nobles left in the city to oppose him,
and a truce with the archbishop, which meant that the
(16:27):
nobles who had returned would be loyal, at least for now.
All that meant, however, that when increasing prices and food
shortages hit the city, the starving populace had no one
else to blame except Ugolino. Ravenous and panicking, the city
quickly descended into chaos. Riots erupted as hungry citizens turned
(16:53):
on each other in desperation. They also turned on their Podesta,
demanding Ugolino restore the balance, lower the prices, find new
food sources, whatever it would take to reverse their fortunes.
Ugolino attempted to quash the unrest, and in the process
committed one final betrayal that sealed his fate. During one
(17:17):
of these food riots, Ugolino made his way through the
unruly crowd, fighting back angry citizens calling for bread. Wielding
his sword indiscriminately, He just so happened to kill Farinata
of Pisa, one of the archbishop's nephews. The archbishop was incensed.
(17:39):
It was a tragedy on top of indignity. Amidst the riots,
Ugolino's stonewalling of Genoa had continued, and the scores of
still captive nobles had sworn revenge against the Podesta for
their predicament aka allowing them to still be hostages. It
became clear to the archbishop that nothing was sacred to Ugolino,
(18:04):
and he would betray anyone, kill anyone, just to hold
on to his power. The archbishop had finally had enough,
and he began to hatch a plan. Some months later,
on July first, twelve eighty eight, Ugolino attended a council
meeting to discuss peace with Genoa. Some sources say that
(18:26):
the archbishop lured Ugolino to the meeting, pretending that he
wished to lend his support to the Podesta against attempts
by the still biitter Nino Visconti, his grandson, to regain
control of Pisa from his grandfather. It was, in any
case a trap. As Ugolino left the meeting, he was
(18:49):
attacked by a band of armed Gibeline nobles. He and
his supporters managed to hold off the attackers at first,
and they barricaded themselves in the town But the safety
of Ugolino's makeshift sanctuary would not last long, as the archbishop,
making his own betrayal clear, began to rouse the citizenry
(19:13):
against Ugolino. It wasn't hard, and the archbishop quickly and
successfully turned the desperation of the Peasan people against their Podesta.
Ugolino was a trader. He had betrayed not just the
captive nobles, not just Pisa, but every last citizen of
(19:33):
the republic who toiled and starved and died while he prospered.
Ugolino found that he had no choice but to surrender.
Once flames began to lick the edges of the town
hall's windows and doors, and smoke began to fill his
aged lungs. In the course of the unfolding riot outside,
(19:58):
someone had set fire to the town hall to force
the podestap from his hiding place. Ugolino was captured alongside
two of his sons and two of his grandsons, and
the archbishop imprisoned the five of them together. Ugolino stood
accused of treason. The archbishop chose to hang his hat
(20:20):
on the castles that Ugolino had taken from the nobles
and ceded to Florence and Luca. The archbishop argued that
this amounted to treachery against Pisa, although it was clear
to just about everyone that for many the archbishop included,
the betrayal was far more personal. The archbishop took the
(20:42):
opportunity to declare himself the new Podesta of Pisa, giving
himself nearly unchecked power when it came to deciding upon
a punishment for the deposed Ugolino and his captured heirs,
and with his rival now in charge, Ugolino must have
known that his punishment would be brutal, but the depth
(21:06):
of the Archbishop's vengeance would lead him to sentence Ugolino
and his family to a fate far worse than he
could have ever imagined. The Torre Delamuda, also called the
Torre del Gualandi now forms part of the Palazzo del Orolojo,
(21:28):
which houses the library of the Scuola Normale Superiore, PISA's
public university. It sits in a large square where visitors
can take in a number of historical buildings, including the
other part of the palazzo, which once was the seat
of the Peasan government. The facade of the tower itself
(21:51):
boasts some faded fragments of frescoes that give viewers a
tantalizing glimpse into what must have once been a magnificently
adorned building. What tends to draw the eyes of visitors
about the Torre de la Muda most, however, is not
its frescoes or even its surroundings, but a plaque that
(22:15):
sits at eye level as one approaches the building. If
you go to Pisa, take a break from the famous
leaning tower and try to find it. Upon reading the plaque,
one might understand how the tower got its third name,
the Torre de la Fame, the Tower of Hunger. The
(22:36):
plaque translates to read, here stood the Torre de Gualandi.
The tragic death of Count Ugolini Delaga Ordesca gave it
the title of Hunger, and sparked in the Divine Allegery,
indignation and a poem so that the memory of this
(22:56):
miserable event will be eternal. In March twelve eighty nine,
Ugolino della Geradesca, two of his sons and two of
his grandsons, who I should note were all most likely
fully adults, despite the way they had been implied in
Dante's poem to have been children, were still awaiting their
(23:18):
fate in the Torre de la Moudha. They had been
imprisoned months prior by the Archbishop of Pisa, who had
proclaimed himself Podesta after leading a popular resistance against Ugolino's
despotic and ineffective regime, but really also Ugolino's murder of
(23:39):
the archbishop's nephew. The time that passed did not seem
to have softened the archbishop's anger, and of course, now
the archbishop also had his own power to defend. After
months of not only deliberating on his rival's fate, but
likely also in enjoying keeping him and his family in limbo,
(24:03):
the archbishop came to a decision that Ugolino must die
for his crimes, and so must his heirs, at least
those heirs that he had in his custody, but executing
them in any of the usual ways beheading, which was
typical for the execution of nobles, hanging, even bludgeoning, ran
(24:25):
the risk of making them into murders. Even with someone
like Ugolino, executing a whole family, a noble family for
its patriarch's crime would seem excessive, and the archbishop couldn't
afford to lose even an ounce of support, and so
he needed a route that was quieter, more private. In
(24:49):
March twelve eighty nine, he finally found one that was
not only quiet and private, but sufficiently cruel to quench
his thirst for revenge. He ordered that the prisoners remain
in their cell and that the key be thrown away.
Ugolino and his family members were sentenced to death by starvation.
(25:14):
Although the walk from the Mudah to the River Arno
could only have taken a couple of minutes, it must
have felt longer for whatever servant, soldier or magistrate carried
out the archbishop's order. But the archbishop was far too
angry to reverse course, and in reality he couldn't. Although
(25:34):
Ugolino was at this point elderly at roughly seventy five
or eighty years old, and likely frail after months of imprisonment,
he was still the man who had nearly gotten Pisa
all to himself. He would never let the archbishop live
if he got free, and so the ad hoc executioner,
(25:55):
whoever he was, walked south from the tower, the key
to the Moudah jingling softly in his hand. He reached
the Arno, and perhaps after a moment of hesitation, threw
the keys in the river. They sank down and settled
into the murky river bed, any hope of a reprieve
(26:16):
or even a different kind of punishment sinking along with them.
The five bodies were removed from the tower and buried
once it was clear that all five of them had died.
To cement their infamy and put on just the right
amount of spectacle to placate the people and preserve his
(26:36):
own power, the archbishop slash Podesta raised Ugolino's house on
the southern bank of the Arno, salted the land, and
forbade any of his remaining family or heirs from rebuilding
on it. And though writers over time have tended to
paint the story as a complete wiping out of Ugolino
(26:58):
and all of his heirs. Ugolino did have remaining sons, daughters,
and grandchildren, and in fact still has living descendants, and
they indeed were not allowed to rebuild. To this day,
the land on which his palace once stood is the
only green space in Pisa that overlooks the Arno. Of course,
(27:22):
the story of Ugolino de la Gardesca did not end
with his death or even the fates of his land
and descendants. The gruesome suggestion that Ugolino ate the flesh
of his children and grandchildren to survive once they had
perished has overpowered his legacy. He is known as the
(27:43):
cannibal Count. Whether or not Ugolino or any of his
children for that matter, actually engaged in survival cannibalism during
their imprisonment has been a matter of intense scholarly debate.
The whispers of cannibalism seemed to have been somewhat contemporary
(28:04):
with the deaths of Ugolino and the family members, but
the story really gained traction through Dante's retelling of the
tale a few decades later. From there it took off,
and before long it became hard to tell where history
ended and legend began. The story as Dante told it
(28:27):
certainly rings apocryphal. A father, already forced to watch his
family suffer and die for his own sins, faced with
one last cruel indignity before the hunger took him too.
It's a little on the nose. There's also the matter
of Ugolino's advanced age. While we can't discount the possibility
(28:50):
that his son's or grandson's deaths were hastened by illness
or some other factor, it seems unlikely that a nearly
eighty year old old man would outlive all of them,
especially after he too had suffered after months of imprisonment
in likely harsh conditions. Additionally, although survival cannibalism under dire
(29:13):
circumstances is certainly not unheard of, it was recorded during
the Crusades, for example, not to mention better known and
more recent examples like the Jamestown Colony or the Donner Party.
Studies on the behavior of incarcerated people in particular have
suggested that it would be an unlikely outcome in this case.
(29:37):
But even as scholars began to doubt the veracity of
the cannibal legend, it has persisted. In popular culture. The
influence of Dante's telling, in particular, has inspired countless works
of art, film, and literature that take for granted this
morbid morsel of Ugolino's story and parley it into meditations
(30:02):
on the poisonous nature of power and the cruel consequences
of betrayal. For a while, it was believed that the
question of cannibalism had finally been settled when in two
thousand and two, Italian anthropologist Francesco Milegni claimed to have
confirmed a set of excavated remains to be Ugolino and
(30:25):
his family and found no evidence of cannibalism. In addition
to not finding telltale signs of cannibalism like teeth marks,
Milenni pointed in particular to Ugolina's advanced age and the
poor state of his teeth, arguing that it would have
been exceedingly unlikely for the elderly man to have outlived
(30:48):
his family members, let alone consumed their flesh. In fact,
he found no zinc in his bones, indicating that he
hadn't eaten any kind of meat in some time before
his death. The anthropologist also noted a head injury that
might have contributed to death. Before starvation. The evidence against
(31:11):
cannibalism seemed to be overwhelming. That is until a few
years later, in two thousand and eight, when Millennie's findings
were called into question by the Superintendent of Archival Heritage
of Tuscany, Paula Benini, who claimed that the documents Milennie
had used to find these supposed Garadsky bodies had been
(31:35):
forged in the twentieth century, during Italy's period of fascist rule.
And so although it remains unlikely that Dante's gruesome tale
is true to life, with that little bit of uncertainty,
the legend of the cannibal count lives on. That's the
(32:06):
gruesome story of Ugolino della Gerdeska's death and afterlife. But
keep listening after a brief sponsor break, to hear about
another famous depiction of his ordeal. The nineteenth century sculptor
(32:31):
Auguste Rodan is perhaps most famous for his Thinker, but
that pensive piece was in fact just one of many
of Rodin's bronze cast masterpieces. Rodin was fascinated by Dante,
and a number of his sculptures feature characters from the
Inferno or the Divine Comedy. More broadly, Ugolino's story had
(32:57):
a particularly strong impact, its themes of anguish, consumption, and betrayal,
offering a tantalizing set of subjects for a sculptor to
bring to life. Instead of recreating Dante's lake scene, Roden
chose to depict Ugolino with his children and Where earlier
(33:20):
sculptors and artists, most notably Jean Baptiste Carpo, had chosen
to depict the moment Ugolino bit his knuckle and his
fingers asked him to eat their bodies when they died,
Rodin instead showed Ugolino bending anguished over the bodies of
his already dead children, perhaps imagining the very moment before.
(33:45):
In Dante's words, hunger had more power than sorrow over him.
Rodin's take on Ugolino's story is well known on its own,
but it is also noted as an essential component of
one of the sculptor's most famous Dante inspired works, The
Gates of Hell. The Gates of Hell, which Rodin worked
(34:08):
on on and off for over thirty seven years from
its commission in eighteen eighty until his death in nineteen seventeen,
saw the sculptor utilize many of his individual sculptures, including
the thinker as component parts. The result is a nearly
(34:29):
twenty foot tall sculpture that looks like a set of doors,
but is in fact a collection of figures, a dizzying
scene of eternal damnation. Standing back from the sculpture, you
get an almost sickening sense of movement as your eyes
catch and then lose track of figures, both human and otherwise,
(34:52):
twisted in agony. It's almost as though the gates themselves
are pulsing and twisting along with their tormented decorations. When
you get closer, the figures come into sharper focus, highlighting
each distinct tortured part of the whole. It's that closer
(35:15):
look that allows you to see just about in the
middle of the left door, Rodin's Ugolino and his children.
Clearly Rodan chose to include the sculpture showing Ugolino agonizing
over his dead children, perhaps about to consume their flesh.
His children are harder to make out, some of them
(35:38):
seemingly milded into the background of the door, but Ugolino
and his tortured expression are prominent. The effect is as
striking as Dante himself described. They are frozen forever in
their torment, devouring and yet never sated, pun and punishing
(36:02):
until the end of time. Noble Blood is a production
of iHeart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky.
(36:22):
Noble Blood is hosted by me Danish Forts, with additional
writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zewick, Courtney Sender,
Julia Milani, and Armand Cassam. The show is edited and
produced by Noehmy Griffin and rima il Kaali, with supervising
producer Josh Thain and executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams,
(36:47):
and Matt Frederick. F More podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm
and Mild from Aaron Manky listener discretion advised. According to
the medieval Italian writer Dante Alighieri, in the Lowest Circle
of hell sits a frozen lake. At first, that might
(00:24):
not sound so bad, kind of a winter wonderland vibe.
That is, until you take into account the countless heads
and bodies sticking out of the ice and their screams
of eternal agony. Those souls who are condemned to this
the ninth circle of Hell, the circle reserved for traders.
(00:47):
We're all frozen in various configurations according to the kind
and depth of their betrayal. We get this chilling depiction
of Hell from Dante's Inferno, the first part of his
Divine Comedy, which he completed around thirteen twenty one. The
(01:08):
poem is the story of Dante imagining himself journeying through
Hell with the ancient Roman poet Virgil as his guide,
meeting various characters along the way and contemplating the nature
of sin and the soul. Of course, in the story,
Dante and Virgil make their way through the concentric sections
(01:31):
of the lake called Cocitus after the mythical Greek River
of Lamentation in the underworld, and they eventually come upon
two men frozen together in the ice, one in front
of the other. Dante thought it was odd the men
were so close that their heads were practically touching. As
(01:56):
Dante and Virgil got closer, their confusion turned to horror
as they realized that the man behind was in fact
continuously gnawing through the skull of the man in front
of him, a gruesome element in their eternal torment aghast.
(02:16):
Dante asked the gnawing man who he was and why
he had been sentenced to such a fate. The poor
soul took a break from his meal, wiped his face
on a remaining patch of hair on the other man's head,
and began to tell his story of betrayal and horror.
(02:39):
His name, he told them, was Ugolino de la Guerridesco,
a disgraced peasan nobleman who had died some thirty years prior. Ugolino,
by his own admission, had led a treasonous life, always
willing to betray comrades, friends, and even family in the
pursuit of more his traitorous ways. Finally came to an end, however,
(03:05):
after he betrayed the Archbishop of Pisa, the man who
was now frozen in front of him during a riot
in the city. Enraged, the archbishop betrayed Ugolino, in turn
having him and his children imprisoned in a tower, before
throwing the key in the river and leaving them to starve.
(03:29):
After several days, Ugolino told the visitors his children saw
their father bite his knuckle in grief and mistook it
for hunger. With a sudden panic, they asked him to
eat their bodies when they died, so that he might
survive if only for a bit longer. Father, our pain
(03:51):
will lessen if you eat us, they begged. Ugolino had
tried to calm his children, but it did little good,
and soon it no longer mattered, as their already frail
bodies began to weaken one by one. Over the course
of two agonizing days, Ugolino outlived each of his children.
(04:15):
He grew hungrier by the minute. As the tortured soul
trapped in the frozen lake finished his tale, Dante and
Virgil realized exactly why his punishment was what it was
eternal cannibalism. Looking up at the writer and the poet
(04:35):
from his frozen tomb, Ugolino cried, quote, and I already
going blind, groped over my brood, calling to them, though
I had watched them die for two long days. And
then the hunger had more power than even sorrow over me.
I'm Danish schwartz, and this is noble blood. Thirteenth century
(05:02):
Italy could be a brutal place. Ugolino de la Gardesca
grew up amidst a long standing conflict that centered on
the tension between the ambitions of the Pope and his
papal states on one hand, and the Holy Roman Emperor
on the other. The inciting debate, known as the investiture controversy,
(05:25):
began in the early twelfth century, and it was a
question over whether secular rulers or the Pope had the
authority to appoint in areas bishops and abbots. Over time,
the ruling families of the city states of northern Italy
began to take their sides on the issue, with the
(05:45):
Holy Roman Emperor's supporters being known as Gibelines and the
popes as Guelphs. The Geradesca family were of Germanic descent,
and their ties to the Hoefenstauffen emperors made them the
leaders of the Gibelin faction in Pisa, where Ugolino was born.
(06:06):
The conflict died down to some extent in the late
twelfth century, but was revived shortly after Ugolino's birth around
twelve ten twelve fourteen. Like many dynastic rivalries throughout history,
conflicts arose both over the quote unquote main conflict and
(06:27):
increasingly over personal and political squabbles between the involved parties.
There is much more to the longstanding conflicts and entanglements
between the Ghibeline and Gwelf families, but for our purposes
it's mostly important to understand that Ugolino's personal and political
(06:49):
life was defined by pretty constant conflict. Pisa was a
Gibeline outpost surrounded by several powerful Gwelf city states, notably
Genoa and Florence. The early years of Ugolino's life are
pretty unclear to us, but we know that as he
(07:10):
came of age, he accumulated power, experience, and connections. He
also accumulated children at least ten or eleven split between
two marriages, as well as at least one child born
out of wedlock. Ugolino's early career was defined by military successes,
(07:31):
particularly as a naval commander. In the wake of a
twelve fifty eight victory against the Genoese sympathetic judicate of
Calliari in Sardinia, he founded the silver mining city of
Via de Quisa on the island's west coast, rejuvenating the
existing town and building a castle, a hospital, and a
(07:54):
defense wall. That city still exists today, known by its
Spanish name Iglesia. This victory would have had Ugolino on
a high he had defeated the Genoese, even if by proxy,
and cemented his own legacy through the founding of a city.
(08:14):
It would also have earned him popularity amongst his fellow
Gibelins in Pisa. But, as would become clear over the
next several years, Ugolino was far more interested in growing
his own power than in serving the interests of the
Peasan nobility or their political faction. By the early twelve
(08:37):
seventies we find Ugolino already barreling towards his first accusation
of treason. He began to arouse the suspicions of his
fellow Gibelins in twelve seventy one, when he married his
daughter off to Giovanni Visconti, the judge or ruler of Galura,
(08:57):
another Sardinian judicate. The Visconti were among the most powerful
Gwelph families in Pisa and the surrounding areas. Ugolino had
bound his flesh and blood to the enemy under different
political circumstances that might have been seen as a diplomatic move.
(09:19):
Countless royal marriages throughout history, many of which we've covered
on this podcast, were diplomatic marriages meant to soothe dynastic
rivalries or prevent disputes over succession, even to merge kingdoms
to accumulate more power for both families or parties. But
(09:40):
the deeply entrenched nature of the rivalry between the Gebelins
and the Guelphs, and the geographically precarious position Pisa was
in as a Gebeline city surrounded by Gwelf power, meant
that Ugolino's marriage brokering was seen as very suspicious, and
in fact, it seems unlikely that his motives were diplomatic.
(10:04):
The marriage resulted mostly in increased tension between the Gibilins
and Guelphs and an opportunity for Ugolino himself to grab
at more wealth and power. Over the next few years,
Pisa was beset by riots led by none other than
Ugolino and his son in law Giovanni Visconti. In twelve
(10:27):
seventy four, their involvement in these riots came back to
bite them. Giovanni was exiled and Ugolino imprisoned. When Giovanni
died in exile the following year, it was Ugolino's turn
to be sent away, and he spent the next few
years in Sardinia until Charles, the first of Anjou, helped
(10:48):
to engineer his return to Pisa. Upon his return, Ugolino
went right back to leading Pisa as a military commander.
His sins seemingly were given and forgotten. However, another opportunity
to grab yet more power soon fell right into Ugolino's lap.
(11:10):
On August fifth and sixth, twelve eighty four, Pisa fought
Genoa in a naval battle that would come to be
known as the Battle of Milura. Ugolino had been appointed
to captain a naval fleet by the Podesta, or head
magistrate of Pisa, Albertino Morrissini. The battle was a disaster
(11:32):
for Pisa. Genoa not only enjoyed a decisive victory, but
also managed to capture over twenty eight Peasan ships and
eleven thousand Peason soldiers, including the Podesta himself, along with
a significant portion of the city's nobility. Ugolino, however, had
(11:54):
managed to escape Genoa's clutches in a move that would
be interpreted as calculated by later writers, although it doesn't
seem to have been seen that way at the time.
He got away by signaling his surrender to the Genoese
and withdrawing from the battle. Now there was a power
(12:15):
vacuum in Pisa, and with much of the nobility in
Genoese custody, there really was only one choice for who
should serve as the new Podesta. Why Ugolino della Garadeska.
Of course, Two years later, in twelve eighty six, he
was also appointed Captain of the People, although in this
(12:37):
he was forced to share power with his grandson, Giovanni's
son Nino Visconti. It was something of an uncomfortable pairing
a Ghibeline and a Guelph ruling together. In twelve eighty seven,
Nino was elected to the position of Podesta, upsetting the
already delicate balance of power between the two warring factions. That,
(13:03):
of course, did not sit well with the power hungry Ugolino,
and worse, while his own gwelf grandson challenged his power
from within, Pisa gwelth powers Florence and Luca were beginning
to advance from the outside, along with PISA's longtime rival Genoa.
(13:25):
Ugolino managed to pacify Florence and Luca by relinquishing some
landholdings and castles. When Genoa suggested the same in return
for the Peasan prisoners, Ugolino hesitated. He was already fighting
his grandson for supremacy. What was going to happen if
(13:46):
all of the other nobles returned to the city. Ugolino's
wheels began to turn, but so did his grandson Nino's.
It was becoming increasingly clear that the two could not
ruled together peacefully, and a struggle for power seemed imminent.
In twelve eighty seven, Nino turned to the Archbishop of Pisa,
(14:10):
a leader of the Gibeline nobility, asking for his support
were he to make a play for the position of Podesta, permanently.
The archbishop seemed sympathetic to Nino's cause and agreed to
help him. Ugolino got wind of these negotiations and was incensed.
(14:31):
He responded with what amounted to a coup. He expelled
from the city not only Nino, his grandson, but also
several of the remaining powerful Gibelin families, destroying their palaces
in the process. Ugolino and his militia occupied the town hall,
where he proclaimed himself the Lord of Pisa. What had
(14:54):
been a republic was now an absolute monarchy, with Ugolino
at its own. To prevent his grandson from taking power back,
Ugolino allowed the return of several of the exiled noble
families to Pisa, offering safety and a modicum of power
in exchange for their support. This had the additional benefit
(15:19):
of placating the archbishop, who rewarded Ugolino with his loyalty
by refusing to help Nino attempt to regain power in
the city. Ugolino had finally reached the pinnacle of power
in Pisa. It had taken a lot of backstabbing to
get there. He had betrayed his political faction, his superiors
(15:42):
practically in entire cities worth of nobles and even his
own grandson. But he had made it to the top.
But it would soon turn out there was one betrayal
left in his feverish quest to retain control of Pisaino
betray the very archbishop who had helped secure his path
(16:05):
to power. By twelve eighty eight, it seemed Ugolino de
la Geradesca had successfully claimed all of the power he
could ever want. He was the sole lord of Pisa,
with practically no nobles left in the city to oppose him,
and a truce with the archbishop, which meant that the
(16:27):
nobles who had returned would be loyal, at least for now.
All that meant, however, that when increasing prices and food
shortages hit the city, the starving populace had no one
else to blame except Ugolino. Ravenous and panicking, the city
quickly descended into chaos. Riots erupted as hungry citizens turned
(16:53):
on each other in desperation. They also turned on their Podesta,
demanding Ugolino restore the balance, lower the prices, find new
food sources, whatever it would take to reverse their fortunes.
Ugolino attempted to quash the unrest, and in the process
committed one final betrayal that sealed his fate. During one
(17:17):
of these food riots, Ugolino made his way through the
unruly crowd, fighting back angry citizens calling for bread. Wielding
his sword indiscriminately, He just so happened to kill Farinata
of Pisa, one of the archbishop's nephews. The archbishop was incensed.
(17:39):
It was a tragedy on top of indignity. Amidst the riots,
Ugolino's stonewalling of Genoa had continued, and the scores of
still captive nobles had sworn revenge against the Podesta for
their predicament aka allowing them to still be hostages. It
became clear to the archbishop that nothing was sacred to Ugolino,
(18:04):
and he would betray anyone, kill anyone, just to hold
on to his power. The archbishop had finally had enough,
and he began to hatch a plan. Some months later,
on July first, twelve eighty eight, Ugolino attended a council
meeting to discuss peace with Genoa. Some sources say that
(18:26):
the archbishop lured Ugolino to the meeting, pretending that he
wished to lend his support to the Podesta against attempts
by the still biitter Nino Visconti, his grandson, to regain
control of Pisa from his grandfather. It was, in any
case a trap. As Ugolino left the meeting, he was
(18:49):
attacked by a band of armed Gibeline nobles. He and
his supporters managed to hold off the attackers at first,
and they barricaded themselves in the town But the safety
of Ugolino's makeshift sanctuary would not last long, as the archbishop,
making his own betrayal clear, began to rouse the citizenry
(19:13):
against Ugolino. It wasn't hard, and the archbishop quickly and
successfully turned the desperation of the Peasan people against their Podesta.
Ugolino was a trader. He had betrayed not just the
captive nobles, not just Pisa, but every last citizen of
(19:33):
the republic who toiled and starved and died while he prospered.
Ugolino found that he had no choice but to surrender.
Once flames began to lick the edges of the town
hall's windows and doors, and smoke began to fill his
aged lungs. In the course of the unfolding riot outside,
(19:58):
someone had set fire to the town hall to force
the podestap from his hiding place. Ugolino was captured alongside
two of his sons and two of his grandsons, and
the archbishop imprisoned the five of them together. Ugolino stood
accused of treason. The archbishop chose to hang his hat
(20:20):
on the castles that Ugolino had taken from the nobles
and ceded to Florence and Luca. The archbishop argued that
this amounted to treachery against Pisa, although it was clear
to just about everyone that for many the archbishop included,
the betrayal was far more personal. The archbishop took the
(20:42):
opportunity to declare himself the new Podesta of Pisa, giving
himself nearly unchecked power when it came to deciding upon
a punishment for the deposed Ugolino and his captured heirs,
and with his rival now in charge, Ugolino must have
known that his punishment would be brutal, but the depth
(21:06):
of the Archbishop's vengeance would lead him to sentence Ugolino
and his family to a fate far worse than he
could have ever imagined. The Torre Delamuda, also called the
Torre del Gualandi now forms part of the Palazzo del Orolojo,
(21:28):
which houses the library of the Scuola Normale Superiore, PISA's
public university. It sits in a large square where visitors
can take in a number of historical buildings, including the
other part of the palazzo, which once was the seat
of the Peasan government. The facade of the tower itself
(21:51):
boasts some faded fragments of frescoes that give viewers a
tantalizing glimpse into what must have once been a magnificently
adorned building. What tends to draw the eyes of visitors
about the Torre de la Muda most, however, is not
its frescoes or even its surroundings, but a plaque that
(22:15):
sits at eye level as one approaches the building. If
you go to Pisa, take a break from the famous
leaning tower and try to find it. Upon reading the plaque,
one might understand how the tower got its third name,
the Torre de la Fame, the Tower of Hunger. The
(22:36):
plaque translates to read, here stood the Torre de Gualandi.
The tragic death of Count Ugolini Delaga Ordesca gave it
the title of Hunger, and sparked in the Divine Allegery,
indignation and a poem so that the memory of this
(22:56):
miserable event will be eternal. In March twelve eighty nine,
Ugolino della Geradesca, two of his sons and two of
his grandsons, who I should note were all most likely
fully adults, despite the way they had been implied in
Dante's poem to have been children, were still awaiting their
(23:18):
fate in the Torre de la Moudha. They had been
imprisoned months prior by the Archbishop of Pisa, who had
proclaimed himself Podesta after leading a popular resistance against Ugolino's
despotic and ineffective regime, but really also Ugolino's murder of
(23:39):
the archbishop's nephew. The time that passed did not seem
to have softened the archbishop's anger, and of course, now
the archbishop also had his own power to defend. After
months of not only deliberating on his rival's fate, but
likely also in enjoying keeping him and his family in limbo,
(24:03):
the archbishop came to a decision that Ugolino must die
for his crimes, and so must his heirs, at least
those heirs that he had in his custody, but executing
them in any of the usual ways beheading, which was
typical for the execution of nobles, hanging, even bludgeoning, ran
(24:25):
the risk of making them into murders. Even with someone
like Ugolino, executing a whole family, a noble family for
its patriarch's crime would seem excessive, and the archbishop couldn't
afford to lose even an ounce of support, and so
he needed a route that was quieter, more private. In
(24:49):
March twelve eighty nine, he finally found one that was
not only quiet and private, but sufficiently cruel to quench
his thirst for revenge. He ordered that the prisoners remain
in their cell and that the key be thrown away.
Ugolino and his family members were sentenced to death by starvation.
(25:14):
Although the walk from the Mudah to the River Arno
could only have taken a couple of minutes, it must
have felt longer for whatever servant, soldier or magistrate carried
out the archbishop's order. But the archbishop was far too
angry to reverse course, and in reality he couldn't. Although
(25:34):
Ugolino was at this point elderly at roughly seventy five
or eighty years old, and likely frail after months of imprisonment,
he was still the man who had nearly gotten Pisa
all to himself. He would never let the archbishop live
if he got free, and so the ad hoc executioner,
(25:55):
whoever he was, walked south from the tower, the key
to the Moudah jingling softly in his hand. He reached
the Arno, and perhaps after a moment of hesitation, threw
the keys in the river. They sank down and settled
into the murky river bed, any hope of a reprieve
(26:16):
or even a different kind of punishment sinking along with them.
The five bodies were removed from the tower and buried
once it was clear that all five of them had died.
To cement their infamy and put on just the right
amount of spectacle to placate the people and preserve his
(26:36):
own power, the archbishop slash Podesta raised Ugolino's house on
the southern bank of the Arno, salted the land, and
forbade any of his remaining family or heirs from rebuilding
on it. And though writers over time have tended to
paint the story as a complete wiping out of Ugolino
(26:58):
and all of his heirs. Ugolino did have remaining sons, daughters,
and grandchildren, and in fact still has living descendants, and
they indeed were not allowed to rebuild. To this day,
the land on which his palace once stood is the
only green space in Pisa that overlooks the Arno. Of course,
(27:22):
the story of Ugolino de la Gardesca did not end
with his death or even the fates of his land
and descendants. The gruesome suggestion that Ugolino ate the flesh
of his children and grandchildren to survive once they had
perished has overpowered his legacy. He is known as the
(27:43):
cannibal Count. Whether or not Ugolino or any of his
children for that matter, actually engaged in survival cannibalism during
their imprisonment has been a matter of intense scholarly debate.
The whispers of cannibalism seemed to have been somewhat contemporary
(28:04):
with the deaths of Ugolino and the family members, but
the story really gained traction through Dante's retelling of the
tale a few decades later. From there it took off,
and before long it became hard to tell where history
ended and legend began. The story as Dante told it
(28:27):
certainly rings apocryphal. A father, already forced to watch his
family suffer and die for his own sins, faced with
one last cruel indignity before the hunger took him too.
It's a little on the nose. There's also the matter
of Ugolino's advanced age. While we can't discount the possibility
(28:50):
that his son's or grandson's deaths were hastened by illness
or some other factor, it seems unlikely that a nearly
eighty year old old man would outlive all of them,
especially after he too had suffered after months of imprisonment
in likely harsh conditions. Additionally, although survival cannibalism under dire
(29:13):
circumstances is certainly not unheard of, it was recorded during
the Crusades, for example, not to mention better known and
more recent examples like the Jamestown Colony or the Donner Party.
Studies on the behavior of incarcerated people in particular have
suggested that it would be an unlikely outcome in this case.
(29:37):
But even as scholars began to doubt the veracity of
the cannibal legend, it has persisted. In popular culture. The
influence of Dante's telling, in particular, has inspired countless works
of art, film, and literature that take for granted this
morbid morsel of Ugolino's story and parley it into meditations
(30:02):
on the poisonous nature of power and the cruel consequences
of betrayal. For a while, it was believed that the
question of cannibalism had finally been settled when in two
thousand and two, Italian anthropologist Francesco Milegni claimed to have
confirmed a set of excavated remains to be Ugolino and
(30:25):
his family and found no evidence of cannibalism. In addition
to not finding telltale signs of cannibalism like teeth marks,
Milenni pointed in particular to Ugolina's advanced age and the
poor state of his teeth, arguing that it would have
been exceedingly unlikely for the elderly man to have outlived
(30:48):
his family members, let alone consumed their flesh. In fact,
he found no zinc in his bones, indicating that he
hadn't eaten any kind of meat in some time before
his death. The anthropologist also noted a head injury that
might have contributed to death. Before starvation. The evidence against
(31:11):
cannibalism seemed to be overwhelming. That is until a few
years later, in two thousand and eight, when Millennie's findings
were called into question by the Superintendent of Archival Heritage
of Tuscany, Paula Benini, who claimed that the documents Milennie
had used to find these supposed Garadsky bodies had been
(31:35):
forged in the twentieth century, during Italy's period of fascist rule.
And so although it remains unlikely that Dante's gruesome tale
is true to life, with that little bit of uncertainty,
the legend of the cannibal count lives on. That's the
(32:06):
gruesome story of Ugolino della Gerdeska's death and afterlife. But
keep listening after a brief sponsor break, to hear about
another famous depiction of his ordeal. The nineteenth century sculptor
(32:31):
Auguste Rodan is perhaps most famous for his Thinker, but
that pensive piece was in fact just one of many
of Rodin's bronze cast masterpieces. Rodin was fascinated by Dante,
and a number of his sculptures feature characters from the
Inferno or the Divine Comedy. More broadly, Ugolino's story had
(32:57):
a particularly strong impact, its themes of anguish, consumption, and betrayal,
offering a tantalizing set of subjects for a sculptor to
bring to life. Instead of recreating Dante's lake scene, Roden
chose to depict Ugolino with his children and Where earlier
(33:20):
sculptors and artists, most notably Jean Baptiste Carpo, had chosen
to depict the moment Ugolino bit his knuckle and his
fingers asked him to eat their bodies when they died,
Rodin instead showed Ugolino bending anguished over the bodies of
his already dead children, perhaps imagining the very moment before.
(33:45):
In Dante's words, hunger had more power than sorrow over him.
Rodin's take on Ugolino's story is well known on its own,
but it is also noted as an essential component of
one of the sculptor's most famous Dante inspired works, The
Gates of Hell. The Gates of Hell, which Rodin worked
(34:08):
on on and off for over thirty seven years from
its commission in eighteen eighty until his death in nineteen seventeen,
saw the sculptor utilize many of his individual sculptures, including
the thinker as component parts. The result is a nearly
(34:29):
twenty foot tall sculpture that looks like a set of doors,
but is in fact a collection of figures, a dizzying
scene of eternal damnation. Standing back from the sculpture, you
get an almost sickening sense of movement as your eyes
catch and then lose track of figures, both human and otherwise,
(34:52):
twisted in agony. It's almost as though the gates themselves
are pulsing and twisting along with their tormented decorations. When
you get closer, the figures come into sharper focus, highlighting
each distinct tortured part of the whole. It's that closer
(35:15):
look that allows you to see just about in the
middle of the left door, Rodin's Ugolino and his children.
Clearly Rodan chose to include the sculpture showing Ugolino agonizing
over his dead children, perhaps about to consume their flesh.
His children are harder to make out, some of them
(35:38):
seemingly milded into the background of the door, but Ugolino
and his tortured expression are prominent. The effect is as
striking as Dante himself described. They are frozen forever in
their torment, devouring and yet never sated, pun and punishing
(36:02):
until the end of time. Noble Blood is a production
of iHeart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky.
(36:22):
Noble Blood is hosted by me Danish Forts, with additional
writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zewick, Courtney Sender,
Julia Milani, and Armand Cassam. The show is edited and
produced by Noehmy Griffin and rima il Kaali, with supervising
producer Josh Thain and executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams,
(36:47):
and Matt Frederick. F More podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Amy Robach & T.J. Holmes present: Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial
Introducing… Aubrey O’Day Diddy’s former protege, television personality, platinum selling music artist, Danity Kane alum Aubrey O’Day joins veteran journalists Amy Robach and TJ Holmes to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation. Join them throughout the trial as they discuss, debate, and dissect every detail, every aspect of the proceedings. Aubrey will offer her opinions and expertise, as only she is qualified to do given her first-hand knowledge. From her days on Making the Band, as she emerged as the breakout star, the truth of the situation would be the opposite of the glitz and glamour. Listen throughout every minute of the trial, for this exclusive coverage. Amy Robach and TJ Holmes present Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.