July 15, 2019 • 28 mins
Despite ascending to power in a court filled with intrigue, juggling relations with Britain and France, and both likely having mental health conditions, the reign of Ferdinand VI of Spain and his wife Barbara was surprisingly stable.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
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 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy be Wilson. Tracy.
There's a little bit of housekeeping to be done, a
little exciting housekeeping. Yeah, we're going to go on tour again.
(00:23):
We heard the folks who ask if we could come
somewhere that didn't have the word coast as part of
the name, and that's what we're doing. Yes, So brace
middle of the country for fall, because we will be
a Denver, Colorado October, Chicago, Illinois October, Austin, Texas November, Dallas,
Texas November, and Houston, Texas November sixteen. So for our
(00:45):
super fans who listen to this show as soon as
it comes out, we have a pre sale happening. The
pre sale is going to start on the seventeen of July.
The pre sale password is make History. And then if
you're listening and it's after the seventeenth, don't worry, you
can still get tickets. The tickets will be on sale
to the general public on July nine. Come to our website,
(01:07):
which is Missed in History dot Com click on Live
shows up at the top of the page to get
links to all of the places that you can buy
tickets or go to missed in History dot com slash tour.
We are very excited to see everyone, me too, you
said we. I'm just gonna be also me, I partent,
me myself and I the royal we which is a
(01:29):
good way to transition into this episode because it's about royals,
but outside the royals you often hear me talk about
because they are my favorites. Uh, this is neither French
royalty nor anything having to do with Queen Victoria, although
there is some French relations in the mix, and it's
sort of a sad royal childhood's mad Monarchs combo in
(01:51):
that both of those things of the case, and there
are two people involved. I know that I've been leaning
a lot into French history brace because there is more
of that comeing. In fact, I was already working instead
for today on an episode that was related to Versailles
when I discovered another book that I wanted for that episode.
But I have to order that book I have and
it is not here yet. So this episode is happening
(02:14):
in that episode will come later. But I have also
been wanting to look at some other European countries because
they have been a little neglected in my in my work. Uh,
the early Bourbon rule in Spain is one that I
find fascinating because it's often boiled down to a little
bit of a degree of sensationalism owing to the sexual
appetites of some of the Bourbons, and how much people
(02:34):
like to write about that. But of course there's a
whole lot more to the whole thing than that, and
it isn't a very important family line because Bourbon descendants
ruled in so many places, starting with the descendants of
lou the ninth of France and Margaret of Provence in
the twelve hundreds, right up into the modern era. But
today we're just gonna look at one little slice and
(02:54):
it is centered primarily around one couple that ruled Spain,
Ferdinand and Barbara. They ruled from seventeen forty six to
seventeen fifty nine, and there's is a partnership um at
turns that is sweet and sorrowful, it is ultimately tragic.
Both of them displayed behaviors that would undoubtedly be recognized
today as likely mental health conditions or just in need
(03:16):
of some mental health attention. UM heads up for anyone listening.
There are some brief discussions of attempted suicide in this episode.
But one of the things that I find really interesting
about them is that despite the fact that they ascended
to power in a court that was filled with intrigue,
and they were pulled in two directions by those who
had interests in Britain and others who had interest in France,
(03:38):
which was a big conflict that was playing out. Uh,
Ferdinand turned out to be someone of a surprising ruler
and to have a pretty prosperous reign, and that is
in no small part due to his wife Barbara. So
I thought it would be fun to tell their story.
Ferdinand and six was born on September thirteen. He was
a Bourbon. His parents were Philip the fifth of Spain
(04:02):
and Maria Louisa of Savoy. Then on his father's side,
Ferdinand was also the great grandson of King Louis the
four of France and his first wife, Maria Theresa of Spain.
Philip the fifth had taken the throne of Spain upon
the death of King Charles the Second, who was also
Maria TRACE's half brother. It's a little complicated because Philip
(04:22):
the Fifth had grown up at Versailles. His court often
contained a lot of nobles and advisers from outside of Spain,
and that led to a lot of suspicion and intrigue
and friction. And that also meant that Ferdinand was born
into a fairly high drama court and at the end
of the War of the Spanish Succession, which was catalyzed
by Charles the Second Death. So we're gonna give you
kind of the quick and dirty version of that conflict.
(04:45):
Of course, it is much more drawn out and nuanced
than what you're getting here, because that is not the
focus of this episode. But leading up to Charles the
Second Death, the first Treaty of Partition was signed in
to get in front of a potential conflict about who
should succeed him, and per that agreement, Prince Joseph Ferdinand
of Bavaria would inherit Spain its colonies and the Spanish Netherlands.
(05:08):
The Italian interests of Spain that was Milan, Naples and
Sicily would be split between France and Austria. But Prince
Joseph Ferdinand died when that treaty was just months Old,
so a new treaty had to be negotiated. Essentially, the
treaty was the same, but instead of Prince Joseph Ferdinand,
the Spanish throne was going to go to the Archduke Charles.
(05:30):
He was the son of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold. But
Leopold wanted his son to get everything. He didn't want
these various holdings to be split up, so he refused
to sign it. And then that was why Charles the
Second named Philip the Fifth as a successor in his will,
and then that set off a fresh round of disagreement
and claimants to the throne. All that culminated in the
conflict known as the War of Spanish Succession. Ferdinand was
(05:54):
Philip and Maria Luis's fourth born son, although one of
their previous children had died in infancy, so he was
the third surviving child when he was born. And while
he did survive, his mother, Maria Louisa, had some pretty
serious health issues that were worsened by her fourth pregnancy
and delivery. She died only five months after Ferdinand was born.
Ferdinand was in a pretty unique position when he was
(06:15):
a child. For one, Spain had lost some of its
power At the conclusion of the War of Spanish Succession,
the alliance between Spain and France had been weakened, as
the territories that had originally been planned for them to
split were instead distributed among a wider field of world powers.
Philip the Fifth retained his position as King of Spain,
but he also lost a great deal, and the unification
(06:37):
of Spain and France was abandoned, so he was a
prince in a country that was kind of regrouping. As
the third of Philip's sons from his first marriage, Ferdinand's brothers,
Lewis and Philip were much more important to the monarchy,
and when Philip married Elizabeth Farnese, Princess of Parma, after
Maria Louise's death, Elizabeth busied herself with her own children
(06:58):
and even encouraged to valry between Ferdinand and her eldest son,
particularly after the deaths of Louis and Philip, which left
Ferdinand as Philip the Fifth Air. Additionally, Philip had his
own problems with mental health. He is often described as
a sad Soberman who had very few pleasures in life,
and his devotion to his first wife could be described
(07:19):
as obsession and could be its own show. After she died,
he was such a mess that everyone in the know
was busy trying to find that second wife, Elizabeth A
s a p. So Ferdinand was really an outsider. He
had suddenly become important to the monarchy after spending his
life thinking that one of his brothers would be the
one leading the country. He'd also been treated really maliciously
(07:42):
by his stepmother, so understandably he had become an introverted
and pretty anxious teenager and it's very stressful royal household.
In seventy five, when Ferdinand was just twelve, his father
arranged for his marriage that the actual wedding was planned
for several years later, when the prince and his intended
were both bit older, and that intended was Barbara of Braganza,
(08:03):
who was fourteen when this marriage was arranged, and this
was actually part of a package deal arranged by Philip
the Fifth and Portugal's King John the Fifth. In addition
to the union of Ferdinand and Barbara, the deal was
also brokered for the marriage of Barbara's brother Joseph to
Ferdinand's sister Maria Anna Victoria, and this tightly aligned Spain
with Portugal, which was kind of an effort to create
(08:25):
a better relationship with Britain, which had very good relations
with Portugal. Seventive was also the year that Ferdinand's second
older brother died, and that made him the heir to
the throne. So while he was just an awkward, shy kid,
his life had two major shifts in one year, although
the actual practical effects of those shifts wouldn't be felt
for some time, and just as an aside, Philip the
(08:48):
Fifth had actually abdicated to his son Louis in seventeen
twenty four. There are two different schools of thought on
this move. One suggests that he gave up the throne
because his mental state had reached a point where he
had neither the strength nor desire to continue h there
were also lots of times where he kind of let
Elizabeth run things. But the other school of thought is
(09:08):
that in putting his son Louis on the throne, he
could circumvent the Treaties of Utrecht, which had ended the
War of Spanish Succession, and he could get around the
terms that he agreed to within it, thus opening up
a possible avenue to regaining some of Spain's lost territory.
But his motivations mattered little in the end, because Louis
died just seven months into his reign, and with Ferdinand
(09:29):
still a child, Philip the fifth once again became king.
We're going to talk about Ferdinand's betrothed in just a moment,
but first we will pause for a word from one
of the sponsors that keeps our lights on. Maria Madelena
(09:49):
Barbara Javier Leonard Teresa Antonia Josepha de Braganza, known more
commonly as Barbara of Portugal or Barbara of Braganza, was
the daughter of Portugal's King John the Fifth and Austria's
Marie Antonia. She was born on December four, seventeen eleven.
She was a really smart, well educated girl. She was
(10:10):
multi lingual. I think I read somewhere. She spoke six
languages fluently. She was very spirited. She loved the arts,
particularly music. She actually trained under the composer scar Lottie,
and she could compose music as well as sing and
play harpsichord. Barbara was not considered attractive, particularly by the
standards of the Spanish court, and initially Ferdinand's reaction to
(10:30):
seeing her was allegedly kind of unkind and childish, but
that quickly changed. And also it's worth mentioning that, similar
to how we mentioned on our episode on hot Chepst
and the Voyage to Punt, that the Queen of Punt
is consistently described in kind of gross terms regarding her appearance.
Even in modern scholarly articles. The same can be said
of most of the accounts of Barbara. They talk about
(10:52):
her skin not being very pretty and her being overweighted,
and there it's just unkind. There are some reports that
Spain felt like Ferdinand was making this great sacrifice in
marrying her. In January of seventeen twenty nine, the slightly
older teenagers were finally married. They became Prince and Princess
of Asturious in a festival style series of events that
(11:12):
included both of the marriages that had been agreed to
back in seventeen. The two weddings were conducted at a
palace and the Spanish Portuguese border that was built just
for the occasion, and then another palace was built by
the Portuguese monarchist sort of an overnight stopping point for
the guests traveling back to Lisbon after the wedding gala
was over. Definitely no expense spared on celebrating these two weddings,
(11:36):
and as a married couple, Ferdinand and Barbara realized in
pretty short order that they actually had a lot in common,
in particular their love for music, and they seem to
have very genuinely fallen in love. They were very devoted
to each other for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately,
they also shared some similar problems with anxiety and melancholy,
which today might be categorized as some form of depression.
(11:57):
As we've said many times, it's always a little bit
tricky to try to retroactively, uh, apply labels of mental
health to people that lived in the past, and we
don't have a full sense of everything that was going on. Yeah,
they're not here for anyone to examine, right. Uh. Unlike
his father, Ferdinand's mental health ran in cycles of melancholy
and mania, and at times it seemed like he had
(12:18):
very little confidence. There's a lot of discussion in any
biography of him about both his wife and his adviser
sort of constantly having to prop him up in terms
of his confidence and be like, no, you can do it.
He needed a lot of encouragement. Uh. He was a
quiet man and very gentle for the most part, but
he did have some pretty angry outbursts in his mormonic periods.
It really didn't help that the Spanish court looked on
(12:41):
Ferdinand and Barbara with suspicion and distrust. This was because
of the influence of Ferdinand's stepmother, Elizabeth Farnese, who wanted
to keep both of them as far away from having
any kind of influence as possible. The young couple were
confined to their apartments a lot of the time, then
they would be trotted out for various big events. It's
certainly possible that this isolation might have strengthened their bond
(13:05):
to each other. Spain's relations with Portugal had hit rocky
times despite this double marriage that was intended to smooth
things out, and both Philip and Elizabeth seemed reluctant to
trust Ferdinand and his Portuguese wife. This situation continued. There
was a little sort of blipping in in seventeen thirty
two when Philip had a particularly bad episode during which
(13:27):
he refused to speak except on occasion, to his wife
Elizabeth or to his son Ferdinand, and during this time
Ferdinand was put on a regency council and he tried
to encourage his father to once again assume his duties
as king, and eventually the son's efforts did have some effect.
He was able to get his father to bathe and
change clothes and start taking on his duties and being
(13:48):
king once again. But it wasn't as though Philip was
magically cured just from getting cleaned up, and he still
had a lot of periods of deep melancholy that alternated
with manic phases. Although this did seem to get him
over the hump of this particular episode, this was a
particularly difficult period, and afterward Philip remained on the throne
for another thirteen years. Spain did expand its military and
(14:10):
land holdings under him, but it also fell into bankruptcy.
At times, he'd spend long stretches of time in bed,
and sometimes he would only get up at night to eat.
Philip the Fifth died on July ninety six after having
a stroke. Ferdinand's coronation was August ten, and initially Ferdinand's
stepmother stayed in the Spanish court and made efforts to
(14:32):
retain some level of influence, but before long Barbara urged
the new king to show Elizabeth Farnesi the door and
to help bolster her cause, Barbara also allied herself with
three men of the court who were very influential. That
was Jose de Calvaja, the Marketa and Sonata, and Fernando
da Silva Alvarez de Toledo. And these men, while they
all had their own political leanings and alliances with other countries,
(14:56):
were united in wanting to rid the Court of Spain
of Elizabeth and her friends and their influence. So by
July of see Elizabeth and her supporters were exiled from court.
Ferdinand was not prepared to rule, though he had been
kept away from any sort of political events, so he
pretty much had no idea how anything worked. Barbara, on
(15:17):
the other hand, was a lot savvier. He started to
defer to her, and this has led to some conclusions
that like his father, he had married a controlling woman
and then knocked in to just let her take over.
But Elizabeth's moves I had always seemed to be motivated
by her own desire for power, but Barbara seemed to
really want to foster diplomacy and do it was best
(15:39):
for the country. One thing that often comes up in
discussions of this transition of power is the phrase it's
rather Barbara who succeeds Elizabeth than Ferdinand succeeding Philip, which
is apparently a statement that the French ambassador to Spain
made at the time. And Barbara, who was also kind
of shy like her husband, managed to overcome that part
of herself to rise to the accase Asian and helped
(16:01):
Ferdinand in any way possible. And Ferdinand was very much
in line with Barbara when it came to matters of regencies,
so even though he was deferring to her, they were
very like minded, so it was kind of like he
was letting her do a little more lifting uh and
his trust in her and in his ministers turned out
to be very very well founded. The country's debt turned around,
and Spain was able to stand in a neutral position
(16:22):
between France and Britain, who were forever at odds and
trying to learn lure Spain into their conflict. Ferdinand was,
because of the country's improved fortunes, able to make some
magnanimous decisions at times. He earned the trust of the
people this way. During particularly difficult times of strife, he
would suspend taxation so that the population could recover. He
(16:42):
also gave generously to charities, and through all of it,
Barbara was often consulted before the king when the ministers
had matters to discuss, and much of the work that
was done during ferdinand the Sixes reign, particularly in the
seventeen forties, was made possible through the work of the
marquis event Snata, who we mentioned earlier, and the king
had inherited him as prime minister from the period of
(17:03):
his father's reign. Ensenada was an important part of the
growth of Spain's economy under Ferdinand, and he stayed in
his position for quite a number of years until a
disagreement with Queen Barbara and a court scandal led to
his dismissal in seventeen fifty four. That is also a
whole other story, but during his time, Ensenada restructured the
banking system by establishing a system that kept currency exchanges
(17:26):
in the Royal treasury, and he helped funnel more funds
to the Royal Navy for both expansion and fortification of
the existing fleet. Ferdinand and Barbara continued to patronize the
arts and their roles as the leaders of Spain, and
while Ensenada it was instrumental to some of these efforts,
it was a cause near and dear to both the
monarchs as well. Under their reign, the Royal Academy of
(17:49):
Fine Arts and Madrid was formally founded, although the seeds
of that organization were planted during the reign of Philip
the Fifth, and they both continued to patronize the singer Farinelli,
who had been popular and fill up the Fifth court
as well. Barrinelli would often travel down the river on
a boat with the royal couple, singing as Barbara played
along on her harpsichord. After a fire in the summer
(18:10):
Palace in Ferdinand made sure that the plans for the
rebuild included a space where Farinelli and other opera singers
could perform. But even as the royal couple found ways
to settle into and seemingly even enjoy their lives as
King and Queen, both of them did struggle with their
mental health, and as they aged, their issues manifested more
and more severely. Ferdinand continued to have very wide mood
(18:34):
swings and sometimes just paralyzing self doubt, and Barbara seemed
consumed by anxiety. We're going to get into the ways
that the failing mental health of both Barbara and Ferdinand
played out and how impacted their lives in just a moment.
But first we will take a quick breather and have
a little sponsor break. So we mentioned before the break
(19:00):
that both Barbara and Ferdinand dealt with a lot of
mental health issues, and and one of those ways that
it manifested was that they were constantly petrified, each of
them that they might die suddenly. And in Barbara's case,
she had put on a great deal of weight as
she aged, which made movement a little more tricky, and
her asthma had gotten progressively worse, and her anxiety about
(19:22):
dying deepened as both of these things happened, and she
also became completely terrified that Ferdinand would die first and
that in the aftermath she would be left destitute. To
try to prepare for that eventuality, Barbara amassed a lot
of wealth, so much that she didn't need to worry
about ever losing her fortune, but she still did. Picturing
herself as an impoverished widow, she decided to have a
(19:45):
convent built so that she'd have a place to live
if this greatest fear of hers did come to pass.
This convent was called Silesis realist and it was designed
by Renee Carliger, who was a French architect. It also
served as a girl's school. It still exists in Madrid,
although it went from being a convent to being the
Palace of Justice in eighteen seventy, and then it became
(20:06):
the Church of Santa Barbara in eighteen ninety one. It's
quite pretty based on pictures. I have not been there
in person. Barbara, as it turned out, though, did not
have to prepare for widowhood. In the fall of seventeen
fifty seven, her health took a really severe downturn. She
had a chronic cough already, but it just got worse
and worse and never improved, and over the next year
(20:27):
she really just died a slow and painful death. She
became bedridden and she wasted away, and she struggled to
breathe due to her asthma's progression, and the King stayed
with her at all times until she died on August
seventeen fifty eight. She was buried in the chapel of
that convent that she founded. Barbara left everything to her brother, Joseph,
the First of Portugal, and this was something of a
(20:49):
shock to the Spanish public, because it was a much
larger fortune than anyone had anticipated, and she was sending
all that prosperity out of the country. Yeah, Barbara had
been a fairly below loved queen, and apparently in the
reading of her will, like immediately people kind of turned
on her because they were not happy with this. This
series of events um for Ferdinand's part, despite having known
(21:13):
that the queen was dying during that time. To be frank,
he was a mess. When she finally passed, his grief
was pronounced and prolonged, and at times any suggestion of
taking a second wife made him furious. Barbara had been
everything to him, his love, his partner, his closest friend,
and his most trusted guide and adviser in life. Without
her was something he was just unable to even contemplate.
(21:35):
For the next twelve months, there was just a long
series of progressively more troubling behavior from the king. He
retreated to a monastery at Villaviciosa. He essentially refused to
fulfill his duties as monarch any longer. He vacillated between
silent stillness and a kind of manic rage, and he
just refused to be comforted even when his favorite singer
(21:57):
Farinelli came to sing to him. That was something that
had often calmed him and even his worst episodes of
mania before. Yeah. Allegedly, when Fairinelle arrived and started singing,
the king just clapped his hands over his ears and
was like, I don't want any of this. Um. Ferdinand's
behavior was, of course, very, very troubling, and it only
got worse. He attempted suicide, first with a pair of
(22:18):
scissors and then by trying to hang himself in the
monastery's draperies. Alternately, he became so manic and afraid of
dying that he would refuse to lie down. Sometimes he
would walk around allegedly for like ten and eleven days
at a time he was completely certain that if he
were to lie down, he would never get up again.
He stopped dressing, he stopped eating everything but soup at first,
(22:40):
and then he started denying any food at all. Naturally,
this was not a healthful way to live. He wasted away,
and he died on August tenth, seventeen fifty nine, at
the age of forty six. That was just a little
less than a year after Barbara died, and he too,
was buried in the convent chapel with her. There's a
passage in the nineteen ten edition of Encyclopedia Britannica that reads, quote,
(23:01):
the memoirs of the Count of Ferdinand Nunez give a
shocking picture of his deathbed. So out of curiosity, Holly
tried to look into that. What did you find there, Holly? Well,
first of all, it's in Spanish, which I do not read. Um.
I ran it through Google Translate, and it did indeed
offer up some fairly horrific imagery of a man who
(23:21):
very clearly had lost all connection to any sense of
royal propriety, of course, but also just normal life. But
I also do not trust that translation enough to quote it.
It was pretty clunky in some places because it was
written in kind of an old school style. It is
also a little bit rambolly in its structure. It kind
of jumps from talking about one person to another without
(23:42):
a lot of warning involved. So sometimes the pronouns he's
still using pronouns even though he's actually referencing like a
different royal. Uh. It can be a little bit hard
to follow, and I will put the link to the
Spanish language one in the show notes, which is online
and digitized. But if anybody wants to look at it themselves,
but just know that at the end Ferdinand was in
a really, really bad state, both mentally and physically. Nothing
(24:05):
you would want for even your worst enemy. Ferdinand and
Barbara had had a pretty passionate marriage, but they never
had children. So when Ferdinand died, Elizabeth Farnese's wishes came true.
Her eldest son from her marriage to Philip the Fifth,
which was Charles the Third, took the throne. This was
the wish of King Ferdinand, who had left Madrid for
his self imposed exile at the monastery in December of
(24:27):
seventeen fifty eight. Just before leaving, he had named Charles
the Third as his air presumptive. And what's truly unique
to me about the reign of Ferdinand and Barbara is
not that they had mental health issues, or that, despite
being an arranged marriage that other people did not understand,
they felt in love and were so deeply devoted to
(24:47):
one another. Um it is, in fact, the surprising thing
to me is in fact that they were both, particularly Ferdinand,
incredibly earnest. They really wanted to do their best and
be good rulers, and they were are also kind of
almost naively trusting sometimes of their advisors, and they could
have really been exploited terribly and things could have gone
(25:07):
very badly. But for the most part, during Ferdinand's time
on the throne, Spain was prosperous and recovered from a
lot of problems and avoided any dramatic political entanglements. Uh.
To me, that's what surprising, even though a lot of
other parts of their their life and their rule is sensationalized.
That's kind of what I tend to come away with thinking, Yes,
(25:29):
but they really really did want to do their best job,
and in many ways they did, uh, which is sort
of a happy ending to a fairly tragic story. I'm
going in a way different direction on listener mail today. Okay,
we're gonna talk about some evolutionary biology. Uh. This is
a reference back to our episode on France. Nope, check
(25:51):
it came. It comes from our listener Adrian shrites Hi, Holly,
and Tracy. Thank you so much for your work on
the podcast. I listened to it every day during my
commute lab work and while reading assignments. I'm a PhD
candidate studying geology and evolutionary biology. A K. A paleontology
and the podcast helps get through those slower parts of
my day. I recently listened to your episode on Baron
(26:12):
Frantz Noche. Not only do I love learning about the
history of paleontologists that came before me, this episode in
particular caught my attention due to his work involving island animals.
I am studying the evolutionary history of some island lizards
for my dissertation. It is true that's some and maybe
most question mark cases uh island ecosystems support dwarfed animals. However,
(26:33):
in some cases there is island gigantism. I just read
a paper about an island that supports giant iguanas. It
is thought that in the case of gigantism, the presence
of marine birds and their guano can fertilize the plant
life and boost the nutritional value of those plants, which
trickles up the food chain. A fun historical tidbit, part
of the push for colonization of Pacific islands was to
(26:55):
gain control of islands that had large deposits of guano.
Up until the advent of the haber Bosch process, a
major source of fertilizer was bird guano. Unfortunately, the mining
of guano was often very disruptive to the ecosystem, and
island ecosystems are often viewed as particularly fragile. In good news,
the conservation and restoration of these bird rich islands is
being pushed by biologists. Adrian, thank you so much for
(27:18):
sharing your scientific knowledge of this. Uh yeah, I had
not thought about gigantism. If anybody needed a refresher. There's
a lot of debate during Baron Franz Nopea's time about
some of the discoveries he was making in a lot
of theorizing about why animals were smaller, including that he
was only ever finding immature animals. So if you would
(27:41):
like to write to us le's share your expertise, you
can do that at History Podcast at House of Works
dot com. You can also find us pretty much everywhere
on social media. As Missed in History and Missed in
History dot com is our website. You are l You
can come there and check out every episode of the
show that has ever existed, including those that came well
before Tracy and I were ever involved. If you would
like to subscribe to the podcast, we would not like
(28:02):
you to do that, as well, you can do that
on the I heart Radio app, at Apple Podcasts, or
wherever it is you listen to podcasts. Stuffy Missed in
History Class is a production of I heart Radios How
Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(28:23):
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy be Wilson. Tracy.
There's a little bit of housekeeping to be done, a
little exciting housekeeping. Yeah, we're going to go on tour again.
(00:23):
We heard the folks who ask if we could come
somewhere that didn't have the word coast as part of
the name, and that's what we're doing. Yes, So brace
middle of the country for fall, because we will be
a Denver, Colorado October, Chicago, Illinois October, Austin, Texas November, Dallas,
Texas November, and Houston, Texas November sixteen. So for our
(00:45):
super fans who listen to this show as soon as
it comes out, we have a pre sale happening. The
pre sale is going to start on the seventeen of July.
The pre sale password is make History. And then if
you're listening and it's after the seventeenth, don't worry, you
can still get tickets. The tickets will be on sale
to the general public on July nine. Come to our website,
(01:07):
which is Missed in History dot Com click on Live
shows up at the top of the page to get
links to all of the places that you can buy
tickets or go to missed in History dot com slash tour.
We are very excited to see everyone, me too, you
said we. I'm just gonna be also me, I partent,
me myself and I the royal we which is a
(01:29):
good way to transition into this episode because it's about royals,
but outside the royals you often hear me talk about
because they are my favorites. Uh, this is neither French
royalty nor anything having to do with Queen Victoria, although
there is some French relations in the mix, and it's
sort of a sad royal childhood's mad Monarchs combo in
(01:51):
that both of those things of the case, and there
are two people involved. I know that I've been leaning
a lot into French history brace because there is more
of that comeing. In fact, I was already working instead
for today on an episode that was related to Versailles
when I discovered another book that I wanted for that episode.
But I have to order that book I have and
it is not here yet. So this episode is happening
(02:14):
in that episode will come later. But I have also
been wanting to look at some other European countries because
they have been a little neglected in my in my work. Uh,
the early Bourbon rule in Spain is one that I
find fascinating because it's often boiled down to a little
bit of a degree of sensationalism owing to the sexual
appetites of some of the Bourbons, and how much people
(02:34):
like to write about that. But of course there's a
whole lot more to the whole thing than that, and
it isn't a very important family line because Bourbon descendants
ruled in so many places, starting with the descendants of
lou the ninth of France and Margaret of Provence in
the twelve hundreds, right up into the modern era. But
today we're just gonna look at one little slice and
(02:54):
it is centered primarily around one couple that ruled Spain,
Ferdinand and Barbara. They ruled from seventeen forty six to
seventeen fifty nine, and there's is a partnership um at
turns that is sweet and sorrowful, it is ultimately tragic.
Both of them displayed behaviors that would undoubtedly be recognized
today as likely mental health conditions or just in need
(03:16):
of some mental health attention. UM heads up for anyone listening.
There are some brief discussions of attempted suicide in this episode.
But one of the things that I find really interesting
about them is that despite the fact that they ascended
to power in a court that was filled with intrigue,
and they were pulled in two directions by those who
had interests in Britain and others who had interest in France,
(03:38):
which was a big conflict that was playing out. Uh,
Ferdinand turned out to be someone of a surprising ruler
and to have a pretty prosperous reign, and that is
in no small part due to his wife Barbara. So
I thought it would be fun to tell their story.
Ferdinand and six was born on September thirteen. He was
a Bourbon. His parents were Philip the fifth of Spain
(04:02):
and Maria Louisa of Savoy. Then on his father's side,
Ferdinand was also the great grandson of King Louis the
four of France and his first wife, Maria Theresa of Spain.
Philip the fifth had taken the throne of Spain upon
the death of King Charles the Second, who was also
Maria TRACE's half brother. It's a little complicated because Philip
(04:22):
the Fifth had grown up at Versailles. His court often
contained a lot of nobles and advisers from outside of Spain,
and that led to a lot of suspicion and intrigue
and friction. And that also meant that Ferdinand was born
into a fairly high drama court and at the end
of the War of the Spanish Succession, which was catalyzed
by Charles the Second Death. So we're gonna give you
kind of the quick and dirty version of that conflict.
(04:45):
Of course, it is much more drawn out and nuanced
than what you're getting here, because that is not the
focus of this episode. But leading up to Charles the
Second Death, the first Treaty of Partition was signed in
to get in front of a potential conflict about who
should succeed him, and per that agreement, Prince Joseph Ferdinand
of Bavaria would inherit Spain its colonies and the Spanish Netherlands.
(05:08):
The Italian interests of Spain that was Milan, Naples and
Sicily would be split between France and Austria. But Prince
Joseph Ferdinand died when that treaty was just months Old,
so a new treaty had to be negotiated. Essentially, the
treaty was the same, but instead of Prince Joseph Ferdinand,
the Spanish throne was going to go to the Archduke Charles.
(05:30):
He was the son of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold. But
Leopold wanted his son to get everything. He didn't want
these various holdings to be split up, so he refused
to sign it. And then that was why Charles the
Second named Philip the Fifth as a successor in his will,
and then that set off a fresh round of disagreement
and claimants to the throne. All that culminated in the
conflict known as the War of Spanish Succession. Ferdinand was
(05:54):
Philip and Maria Luis's fourth born son, although one of
their previous children had died in infancy, so he was
the third surviving child when he was born. And while
he did survive, his mother, Maria Louisa, had some pretty
serious health issues that were worsened by her fourth pregnancy
and delivery. She died only five months after Ferdinand was born.
Ferdinand was in a pretty unique position when he was
(06:15):
a child. For one, Spain had lost some of its
power At the conclusion of the War of Spanish Succession,
the alliance between Spain and France had been weakened, as
the territories that had originally been planned for them to
split were instead distributed among a wider field of world powers.
Philip the Fifth retained his position as King of Spain,
but he also lost a great deal, and the unification
(06:37):
of Spain and France was abandoned, so he was a
prince in a country that was kind of regrouping. As
the third of Philip's sons from his first marriage, Ferdinand's brothers,
Lewis and Philip were much more important to the monarchy,
and when Philip married Elizabeth Farnese, Princess of Parma, after
Maria Louise's death, Elizabeth busied herself with her own children
(06:58):
and even encouraged to valry between Ferdinand and her eldest son,
particularly after the deaths of Louis and Philip, which left
Ferdinand as Philip the Fifth Air. Additionally, Philip had his
own problems with mental health. He is often described as
a sad Soberman who had very few pleasures in life,
and his devotion to his first wife could be described
(07:19):
as obsession and could be its own show. After she died,
he was such a mess that everyone in the know
was busy trying to find that second wife, Elizabeth A
s a p. So Ferdinand was really an outsider. He
had suddenly become important to the monarchy after spending his
life thinking that one of his brothers would be the
one leading the country. He'd also been treated really maliciously
(07:42):
by his stepmother, so understandably he had become an introverted
and pretty anxious teenager and it's very stressful royal household.
In seventy five, when Ferdinand was just twelve, his father
arranged for his marriage that the actual wedding was planned
for several years later, when the prince and his intended
were both bit older, and that intended was Barbara of Braganza,
(08:03):
who was fourteen when this marriage was arranged, and this
was actually part of a package deal arranged by Philip
the Fifth and Portugal's King John the Fifth. In addition
to the union of Ferdinand and Barbara, the deal was
also brokered for the marriage of Barbara's brother Joseph to
Ferdinand's sister Maria Anna Victoria, and this tightly aligned Spain
with Portugal, which was kind of an effort to create
(08:25):
a better relationship with Britain, which had very good relations
with Portugal. Seventive was also the year that Ferdinand's second
older brother died, and that made him the heir to
the throne. So while he was just an awkward, shy kid,
his life had two major shifts in one year, although
the actual practical effects of those shifts wouldn't be felt
for some time, and just as an aside, Philip the
(08:48):
Fifth had actually abdicated to his son Louis in seventeen
twenty four. There are two different schools of thought on
this move. One suggests that he gave up the throne
because his mental state had reached a point where he
had neither the strength nor desire to continue h there
were also lots of times where he kind of let
Elizabeth run things. But the other school of thought is
(09:08):
that in putting his son Louis on the throne, he
could circumvent the Treaties of Utrecht, which had ended the
War of Spanish Succession, and he could get around the
terms that he agreed to within it, thus opening up
a possible avenue to regaining some of Spain's lost territory.
But his motivations mattered little in the end, because Louis
died just seven months into his reign, and with Ferdinand
(09:29):
still a child, Philip the fifth once again became king.
We're going to talk about Ferdinand's betrothed in just a moment,
but first we will pause for a word from one
of the sponsors that keeps our lights on. Maria Madelena
(09:49):
Barbara Javier Leonard Teresa Antonia Josepha de Braganza, known more
commonly as Barbara of Portugal or Barbara of Braganza, was
the daughter of Portugal's King John the Fifth and Austria's
Marie Antonia. She was born on December four, seventeen eleven.
She was a really smart, well educated girl. She was
(10:10):
multi lingual. I think I read somewhere. She spoke six
languages fluently. She was very spirited. She loved the arts,
particularly music. She actually trained under the composer scar Lottie,
and she could compose music as well as sing and
play harpsichord. Barbara was not considered attractive, particularly by the
standards of the Spanish court, and initially Ferdinand's reaction to
(10:30):
seeing her was allegedly kind of unkind and childish, but
that quickly changed. And also it's worth mentioning that, similar
to how we mentioned on our episode on hot Chepst
and the Voyage to Punt, that the Queen of Punt
is consistently described in kind of gross terms regarding her appearance.
Even in modern scholarly articles. The same can be said
of most of the accounts of Barbara. They talk about
(10:52):
her skin not being very pretty and her being overweighted,
and there it's just unkind. There are some reports that
Spain felt like Ferdinand was making this great sacrifice in
marrying her. In January of seventeen twenty nine, the slightly
older teenagers were finally married. They became Prince and Princess
of Asturious in a festival style series of events that
(11:12):
included both of the marriages that had been agreed to
back in seventeen. The two weddings were conducted at a
palace and the Spanish Portuguese border that was built just
for the occasion, and then another palace was built by
the Portuguese monarchist sort of an overnight stopping point for
the guests traveling back to Lisbon after the wedding gala
was over. Definitely no expense spared on celebrating these two weddings,
(11:36):
and as a married couple, Ferdinand and Barbara realized in
pretty short order that they actually had a lot in common,
in particular their love for music, and they seem to
have very genuinely fallen in love. They were very devoted
to each other for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately,
they also shared some similar problems with anxiety and melancholy,
which today might be categorized as some form of depression.
(11:57):
As we've said many times, it's always a little bit
tricky to try to retroactively, uh, apply labels of mental
health to people that lived in the past, and we
don't have a full sense of everything that was going on. Yeah,
they're not here for anyone to examine, right. Uh. Unlike
his father, Ferdinand's mental health ran in cycles of melancholy
and mania, and at times it seemed like he had
(12:18):
very little confidence. There's a lot of discussion in any
biography of him about both his wife and his adviser
sort of constantly having to prop him up in terms
of his confidence and be like, no, you can do it.
He needed a lot of encouragement. Uh. He was a
quiet man and very gentle for the most part, but
he did have some pretty angry outbursts in his mormonic periods.
It really didn't help that the Spanish court looked on
(12:41):
Ferdinand and Barbara with suspicion and distrust. This was because
of the influence of Ferdinand's stepmother, Elizabeth Farnese, who wanted
to keep both of them as far away from having
any kind of influence as possible. The young couple were
confined to their apartments a lot of the time, then
they would be trotted out for various big events. It's
certainly possible that this isolation might have strengthened their bond
(13:05):
to each other. Spain's relations with Portugal had hit rocky
times despite this double marriage that was intended to smooth
things out, and both Philip and Elizabeth seemed reluctant to
trust Ferdinand and his Portuguese wife. This situation continued. There
was a little sort of blipping in in seventeen thirty
two when Philip had a particularly bad episode during which
(13:27):
he refused to speak except on occasion, to his wife
Elizabeth or to his son Ferdinand, and during this time
Ferdinand was put on a regency council and he tried
to encourage his father to once again assume his duties
as king, and eventually the son's efforts did have some effect.
He was able to get his father to bathe and
change clothes and start taking on his duties and being
(13:48):
king once again. But it wasn't as though Philip was
magically cured just from getting cleaned up, and he still
had a lot of periods of deep melancholy that alternated
with manic phases. Although this did seem to get him
over the hump of this particular episode, this was a
particularly difficult period, and afterward Philip remained on the throne
for another thirteen years. Spain did expand its military and
(14:10):
land holdings under him, but it also fell into bankruptcy.
At times, he'd spend long stretches of time in bed,
and sometimes he would only get up at night to eat.
Philip the Fifth died on July ninety six after having
a stroke. Ferdinand's coronation was August ten, and initially Ferdinand's
stepmother stayed in the Spanish court and made efforts to
(14:32):
retain some level of influence, but before long Barbara urged
the new king to show Elizabeth Farnesi the door and
to help bolster her cause, Barbara also allied herself with
three men of the court who were very influential. That
was Jose de Calvaja, the Marketa and Sonata, and Fernando
da Silva Alvarez de Toledo. And these men, while they
all had their own political leanings and alliances with other countries,
(14:56):
were united in wanting to rid the Court of Spain
of Elizabeth and her friends and their influence. So by
July of see Elizabeth and her supporters were exiled from court.
Ferdinand was not prepared to rule, though he had been
kept away from any sort of political events, so he
pretty much had no idea how anything worked. Barbara, on
(15:17):
the other hand, was a lot savvier. He started to
defer to her, and this has led to some conclusions
that like his father, he had married a controlling woman
and then knocked in to just let her take over.
But Elizabeth's moves I had always seemed to be motivated
by her own desire for power, but Barbara seemed to
really want to foster diplomacy and do it was best
(15:39):
for the country. One thing that often comes up in
discussions of this transition of power is the phrase it's
rather Barbara who succeeds Elizabeth than Ferdinand succeeding Philip, which
is apparently a statement that the French ambassador to Spain
made at the time. And Barbara, who was also kind
of shy like her husband, managed to overcome that part
of herself to rise to the accase Asian and helped
(16:01):
Ferdinand in any way possible. And Ferdinand was very much
in line with Barbara when it came to matters of regencies,
so even though he was deferring to her, they were
very like minded, so it was kind of like he
was letting her do a little more lifting uh and
his trust in her and in his ministers turned out
to be very very well founded. The country's debt turned around,
and Spain was able to stand in a neutral position
(16:22):
between France and Britain, who were forever at odds and
trying to learn lure Spain into their conflict. Ferdinand was,
because of the country's improved fortunes, able to make some
magnanimous decisions at times. He earned the trust of the
people this way. During particularly difficult times of strife, he
would suspend taxation so that the population could recover. He
(16:42):
also gave generously to charities, and through all of it,
Barbara was often consulted before the king when the ministers
had matters to discuss, and much of the work that
was done during ferdinand the Sixes reign, particularly in the
seventeen forties, was made possible through the work of the
marquis event Snata, who we mentioned earlier, and the king
had inherited him as prime minister from the period of
(17:03):
his father's reign. Ensenada was an important part of the
growth of Spain's economy under Ferdinand, and he stayed in
his position for quite a number of years until a
disagreement with Queen Barbara and a court scandal led to
his dismissal in seventeen fifty four. That is also a
whole other story, but during his time, Ensenada restructured the
banking system by establishing a system that kept currency exchanges
(17:26):
in the Royal treasury, and he helped funnel more funds
to the Royal Navy for both expansion and fortification of
the existing fleet. Ferdinand and Barbara continued to patronize the
arts and their roles as the leaders of Spain, and
while Ensenada it was instrumental to some of these efforts,
it was a cause near and dear to both the
monarchs as well. Under their reign, the Royal Academy of
(17:49):
Fine Arts and Madrid was formally founded, although the seeds
of that organization were planted during the reign of Philip
the Fifth, and they both continued to patronize the singer Farinelli,
who had been popular and fill up the Fifth court
as well. Barrinelli would often travel down the river on
a boat with the royal couple, singing as Barbara played
along on her harpsichord. After a fire in the summer
(18:10):
Palace in Ferdinand made sure that the plans for the
rebuild included a space where Farinelli and other opera singers
could perform. But even as the royal couple found ways
to settle into and seemingly even enjoy their lives as
King and Queen, both of them did struggle with their
mental health, and as they aged, their issues manifested more
and more severely. Ferdinand continued to have very wide mood
(18:34):
swings and sometimes just paralyzing self doubt, and Barbara seemed
consumed by anxiety. We're going to get into the ways
that the failing mental health of both Barbara and Ferdinand
played out and how impacted their lives in just a moment.
But first we will take a quick breather and have
a little sponsor break. So we mentioned before the break
(19:00):
that both Barbara and Ferdinand dealt with a lot of
mental health issues, and and one of those ways that
it manifested was that they were constantly petrified, each of
them that they might die suddenly. And in Barbara's case,
she had put on a great deal of weight as
she aged, which made movement a little more tricky, and
her asthma had gotten progressively worse, and her anxiety about
(19:22):
dying deepened as both of these things happened, and she
also became completely terrified that Ferdinand would die first and
that in the aftermath she would be left destitute. To
try to prepare for that eventuality, Barbara amassed a lot
of wealth, so much that she didn't need to worry
about ever losing her fortune, but she still did. Picturing
herself as an impoverished widow, she decided to have a
(19:45):
convent built so that she'd have a place to live
if this greatest fear of hers did come to pass.
This convent was called Silesis realist and it was designed
by Renee Carliger, who was a French architect. It also
served as a girl's school. It still exists in Madrid,
although it went from being a convent to being the
Palace of Justice in eighteen seventy, and then it became
(20:06):
the Church of Santa Barbara in eighteen ninety one. It's
quite pretty based on pictures. I have not been there
in person. Barbara, as it turned out, though, did not
have to prepare for widowhood. In the fall of seventeen
fifty seven, her health took a really severe downturn. She
had a chronic cough already, but it just got worse
and worse and never improved, and over the next year
(20:27):
she really just died a slow and painful death. She
became bedridden and she wasted away, and she struggled to
breathe due to her asthma's progression, and the King stayed
with her at all times until she died on August
seventeen fifty eight. She was buried in the chapel of
that convent that she founded. Barbara left everything to her brother, Joseph,
the First of Portugal, and this was something of a
(20:49):
shock to the Spanish public, because it was a much
larger fortune than anyone had anticipated, and she was sending
all that prosperity out of the country. Yeah, Barbara had
been a fairly below loved queen, and apparently in the
reading of her will, like immediately people kind of turned
on her because they were not happy with this. This
series of events um for Ferdinand's part, despite having known
(21:13):
that the queen was dying during that time. To be frank,
he was a mess. When she finally passed, his grief
was pronounced and prolonged, and at times any suggestion of
taking a second wife made him furious. Barbara had been
everything to him, his love, his partner, his closest friend,
and his most trusted guide and adviser in life. Without
her was something he was just unable to even contemplate.
(21:35):
For the next twelve months, there was just a long
series of progressively more troubling behavior from the king. He
retreated to a monastery at Villaviciosa. He essentially refused to
fulfill his duties as monarch any longer. He vacillated between
silent stillness and a kind of manic rage, and he
just refused to be comforted even when his favorite singer
(21:57):
Farinelli came to sing to him. That was something that
had often calmed him and even his worst episodes of
mania before. Yeah. Allegedly, when Fairinelle arrived and started singing,
the king just clapped his hands over his ears and
was like, I don't want any of this. Um. Ferdinand's
behavior was, of course, very, very troubling, and it only
got worse. He attempted suicide, first with a pair of
(22:18):
scissors and then by trying to hang himself in the
monastery's draperies. Alternately, he became so manic and afraid of
dying that he would refuse to lie down. Sometimes he
would walk around allegedly for like ten and eleven days
at a time he was completely certain that if he
were to lie down, he would never get up again.
He stopped dressing, he stopped eating everything but soup at first,
(22:40):
and then he started denying any food at all. Naturally,
this was not a healthful way to live. He wasted away,
and he died on August tenth, seventeen fifty nine, at
the age of forty six. That was just a little
less than a year after Barbara died, and he too,
was buried in the convent chapel with her. There's a
passage in the nineteen ten edition of Encyclopedia Britannica that reads, quote,
(23:01):
the memoirs of the Count of Ferdinand Nunez give a
shocking picture of his deathbed. So out of curiosity, Holly
tried to look into that. What did you find there, Holly? Well,
first of all, it's in Spanish, which I do not read. Um.
I ran it through Google Translate, and it did indeed
offer up some fairly horrific imagery of a man who
(23:21):
very clearly had lost all connection to any sense of
royal propriety, of course, but also just normal life. But
I also do not trust that translation enough to quote it.
It was pretty clunky in some places because it was
written in kind of an old school style. It is
also a little bit rambolly in its structure. It kind
of jumps from talking about one person to another without
(23:42):
a lot of warning involved. So sometimes the pronouns he's
still using pronouns even though he's actually referencing like a
different royal. Uh. It can be a little bit hard
to follow, and I will put the link to the
Spanish language one in the show notes, which is online
and digitized. But if anybody wants to look at it themselves,
but just know that at the end Ferdinand was in
a really, really bad state, both mentally and physically. Nothing
(24:05):
you would want for even your worst enemy. Ferdinand and
Barbara had had a pretty passionate marriage, but they never
had children. So when Ferdinand died, Elizabeth Farnese's wishes came true.
Her eldest son from her marriage to Philip the Fifth,
which was Charles the Third, took the throne. This was
the wish of King Ferdinand, who had left Madrid for
his self imposed exile at the monastery in December of
(24:27):
seventeen fifty eight. Just before leaving, he had named Charles
the Third as his air presumptive. And what's truly unique
to me about the reign of Ferdinand and Barbara is
not that they had mental health issues, or that, despite
being an arranged marriage that other people did not understand,
they felt in love and were so deeply devoted to
(24:47):
one another. Um it is, in fact, the surprising thing
to me is in fact that they were both, particularly Ferdinand,
incredibly earnest. They really wanted to do their best and
be good rulers, and they were are also kind of
almost naively trusting sometimes of their advisors, and they could
have really been exploited terribly and things could have gone
(25:07):
very badly. But for the most part, during Ferdinand's time
on the throne, Spain was prosperous and recovered from a
lot of problems and avoided any dramatic political entanglements. Uh.
To me, that's what surprising, even though a lot of
other parts of their their life and their rule is sensationalized.
That's kind of what I tend to come away with thinking, Yes,
(25:29):
but they really really did want to do their best job,
and in many ways they did, uh, which is sort
of a happy ending to a fairly tragic story. I'm
going in a way different direction on listener mail today. Okay,
we're gonna talk about some evolutionary biology. Uh. This is
a reference back to our episode on France. Nope, check
(25:51):
it came. It comes from our listener Adrian shrites Hi, Holly,
and Tracy. Thank you so much for your work on
the podcast. I listened to it every day during my
commute lab work and while reading assignments. I'm a PhD
candidate studying geology and evolutionary biology. A K. A paleontology
and the podcast helps get through those slower parts of
my day. I recently listened to your episode on Baron
(26:12):
Frantz Noche. Not only do I love learning about the
history of paleontologists that came before me, this episode in
particular caught my attention due to his work involving island animals.
I am studying the evolutionary history of some island lizards
for my dissertation. It is true that's some and maybe
most question mark cases uh island ecosystems support dwarfed animals. However,
(26:33):
in some cases there is island gigantism. I just read
a paper about an island that supports giant iguanas. It
is thought that in the case of gigantism, the presence
of marine birds and their guano can fertilize the plant
life and boost the nutritional value of those plants, which
trickles up the food chain. A fun historical tidbit, part
of the push for colonization of Pacific islands was to
(26:55):
gain control of islands that had large deposits of guano.
Up until the advent of the haber Bosch process, a
major source of fertilizer was bird guano. Unfortunately, the mining
of guano was often very disruptive to the ecosystem, and
island ecosystems are often viewed as particularly fragile. In good news,
the conservation and restoration of these bird rich islands is
being pushed by biologists. Adrian, thank you so much for
(27:18):
sharing your scientific knowledge of this. Uh yeah, I had
not thought about gigantism. If anybody needed a refresher. There's
a lot of debate during Baron Franz Nopea's time about
some of the discoveries he was making in a lot
of theorizing about why animals were smaller, including that he
was only ever finding immature animals. So if you would
(27:41):
like to write to us le's share your expertise, you
can do that at History Podcast at House of Works
dot com. You can also find us pretty much everywhere
on social media. As Missed in History and Missed in
History dot com is our website. You are l You
can come there and check out every episode of the
show that has ever existed, including those that came well
before Tracy and I were ever involved. If you would
like to subscribe to the podcast, we would not like
(28:02):
you to do that, as well, you can do that
on the I heart Radio app, at Apple Podcasts, or
wherever it is you listen to podcasts. Stuffy Missed in
History Class is a production of I heart Radios How
Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(28:23):
listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
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.
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