Stuff You Should Know - Selects: Nostradamus: Predictor of the future? Not so much.

Episode Date: December 17, 2022

Nostradamus delighted us all in grade school, but it turns out the real guy wasn't quite as prescient as we were led to believe. In truth, he wrote a lot of purposefully confusing riddles that people have twisted into meaning exactly what they want them to mean. Learn all about Nostradamus in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-Pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Just a Skyline drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, it's Josh and for this week's Select I've chosen our 2015 episode, Nostradamus – Predictor of the Future? Not so much. Nostradamus, if that even is his real name, which it isn't, must have rude the day he was born after he heard this episode. We disassemble his so-called prophetic ability so hard. Plus, this has 100% more Adam Sandler than you'd probably expected.

So sit back, light a candle, let your eyes roll back in your head, and enjoy this skeptical episode, a Skep App. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry. I predict this will be the best podcast of the new year.

Man, I don't know about that one. I don't think that prediction is coming true. And the first month when Gray filled the sky, the recorders of gobbledygook hit a high water mark. It's a little on the nose for Nostradamus. Actually, it should have been even more vague. Like way vaguer. Yeah, that was explicit for him.

Yeah. Yeah. Because Nostradamus used to like to just basically take concepts and words and put them together and pretend like they were going to happen. Yeah. Nostradamus. Snort a little nutmeg. When I was a younger person, I realized from this and ESP that I was into some pretty cool

occult stuff. Yeah. Like lots of books about ghosts and things like that. Sure. Me too a little bit. And then now I was like an older person. Like I wanted to go to Duke University to study parapsychology. Oh, really?

I was into like that kind of thing. Wow. And then now as an older person, I'm like, man, some of the things I used to believe. I just do a face palm here there. Like for example. Well, you got into real science and that's usually what happens. Yes. So the pseudoscience has kind of fade away once you start educating yourself about it.

Well, we shouldn't say parapsychology is necessarily a pseudoscience. That's not from where we're here. We're here to poo poo Nostradamus, not ESP or parapsychology in general. But for instance, I remember not only believing, but frequently saying, dude, Nostradamus, he had to be exhumed once, like the church he was buried at, they were like expanding and they had to exhume his grave and they opened his casket and he was holding a tablet that had the day they exhumed him. I thought that was real.

I thought that really happened when I was a slightly younger man. That's awesome. Yeah. When you were in your late 20s. Right. Yeah. I remember I didn't read up on stuff like this, but I was a big fan of like Litter Nemoise in search of and all those TV shows that kind of dabbled in the fringe science.

And what's wrong with that? Nothing. There's nothing wrong with enjoying that kind of thing, liking it. Very entertaining. I'm wondering if possibly some of it could be real. No. Nothing wrong with exploration. Right.

But the key to keeping egg off your face as much as possible is to doing research, especially when a claim is very extraordinary. Yeah. Really look into it. Yeah. Like had I looked around, had the internet been invented yet and I'd looked around and I probably would have found somewhere some entry saying like that is absolutely not true. Well, that's one of the, the internet is one of the big reasons, I think, because before

that was around, you know, it's, you'd have to go search out a book that was written pre-fooing Nostradamus. Yeah. And the card catalog. And it was just a lot harder back then, you know. Yeah. But the internet is a double-edged fiber optic line. I mean, there's a lot of sites out there that, I mean, Nostradamus has gotten probably even

more popular and even more play since the internet was invented. Oh, sure. You know? Yeah. So you try to separate the man from the myth and really get into who Nostradamus was because he was a lot more than a crackpot writer of vague predictions. That's true. He was, one of the tough parts is though is that there are so many disagreements about

his biography even. Yeah. You know. I didn't find that necessarily. Yeah. I saw one guy wrote a book at him that said he wasn't even a doctor. Oh, okay. That is a disagreement.

Yeah. Okay. Well, let's go ahead and go there then. Okay. So he was supposedly born in 1503. No, not true. I'm just kidding. In France, he was born Michel de Nostradamus.

He became Nostradamus because he Latinized his name after he graduated from medical school, which apparently was custom at the time. That's right. But when he was born, he was Michel de Nostradamus. Yeah. And his family was educated and they believed in education. So he was from an early age, an academic in a traditional sense. Right.

Nothing wacky right out of the gate. Well, his grandfather instructed him when he was a younger man, taught him languages and kind of sparked his interest in all sorts of different topics. In all things learning. Yeah. And do you remember when we did the Inquisition episode? Yeah. Where there were a lot of Jewish people who converted, but just converted in name only?

Yeah. Yeah. Apparently Nostradamus' family was one of those. Oh, so that wasn't a genuine conversion? Supposedly not. Gotcha. It could be myth. It could be whatever because he was on good terms with the local Inquisition and the local

church officials for most of his life. So I guess either they didn't suspect him or he had a past, I don't know. Oh, that's interesting. That makes sense. He studied astrology, which was at the time respected, well respected as a science. Yeah. And supposedly his fellow astrologers thought he was full of it. Oh, really?

His contemporary astrologer pals. Well, one of the things that he did was he studied, and this would play out throughout his, well, I would say his career as a predictor, but he really just wrote the book, the centuries book, which we'll get to. But he studied astronomical patterns that coincided with historical events. That's astrology. Well, yeah, but he would basically use those to predict the future of it. Like, by some accounts, he didn't even say that he was a prophet.

He said, I study history, and basically history repeats itself. And so I'm going to use the stars. And when these things line up pattern-wise in the certain year in the future, this may happen again. Yeah. So that's like real astrology. We should do an episode on that. Yeah, I've been thinking about that one for a while.

This one, well, the article we have almost spits in the middle. It's so one-sided and skeptical. It's just a picture of a big luge. Right. But I looked into it, and it's fascinating what they used to believe in all of the holes you can punch in it, but it's a pretty... We should do that for some time. Yeah.

We've done one time, like for real, by my friend's mom. And I remember looking at it and thinking like, wow, that's a lot like me. Yeah. It's pretty accurate. And even remove that last part, the amount of thought and effort and what it's based on in the ancient tradition of it and everything, that in and of itself is fascinating. Yeah, totally agree. And then you get in the, we're totally doing astrology at some point.

But so what he was doing with astrology, apparently where he ran afoul of his fellow astrologers was to make predictions of how something would come about rather than the next time Venus is in the seventh house of Mars and a cat catches fire, there's going to be an earthquake. Something like that. He went further and made predictions about what was going to set this off and where the people involved were going to come from and then he was very, very vague. So all of that added to the astrologers disdain for him. Because he gave him a bad name.

Pretty much. Because they were all right. Exactly. So he left home supposedly in 1522 to study medicine, legit medicine and became a physician. Most people agree that he became a professor and a physician in Southern France. And apparently it was pretty good to doctor at treating plague victims. Yeah, he's very ahead of his time. Yeah.

Even though he lost his wife and son, I'm sorry, his children to the plague. And his wife. Yeah. And that had a big effect on his life, obviously. He basically sent him on the road for a decade, which is where he kind of came up with this plan to write this book. So he was a progressive doctor in that he prescribed sanitation practices. He prescribed fresh air.

He also apparently came up with a rose hip lozenge to help cure plague, mild cases of plague. And that actually makes sense because rose hips are packed with vitamin C. So he was a pretty good doctor and he had a good record. And from that, he lived in this village with his wife and children and had a patron who basically supported the family. And then once his wife and children died, he couldn't cure them. His star really fell in this village.

And about the same time, he also had a pretty good sense of humor. About the same time, they were raising a statue of the Virgin Mary in the local church. And he thought it was the ugliest thing he'd ever seen. And he was making a comment on the artist's abilities. Not the Virgin Mary, but he said, these guys are casting demons. Like basically saying, that's a really ugly Virgin Mary. Right. Well, the artist didn't like this and turned him into the Inquisition.

And that's about the time when he ended up on the road. Yeah. And he went all over Europe just basically, he was described as sort of wandering. But he did meet another woman and get remarried on his wanderings, I think toward the tail end of his wanderings about eight years later and moved to Salon in France. And then he started kind of getting his act together in a real way to publish. Like he said, you know what, I'm going to put together this book of prophecies. I've been messing around.

I've been kicking the idea around. I'm just going to do it. So we'll talk about what came out of that right after this. I'm Mange Shatikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology.

And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good.

There is a risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck Nostradamus is settling down in Salon, selectives. And he is deciding to put his awesome thoughts down into quatrains. That's right, into a book called The Centuries.

But at the time, he just called it The Prophecies. Yeah, The Prophecies of Michel Nostradamus. I think, when did they rename it? I think after his death. Yeah, and apparently The Centuries had nothing to do with time, but it was in the structure, the organized structure of the book itself. Right. Because there were a thousand quatrains through four line verses.

In hundreds, for some reason. So that's The Centuries. And it wasn't chronological or anything like that. No, and it became a huge sensation due to a few things. One simply enough was that the printing press was a recent invention. And books were a big deal now, like widespread books, like there was now something could literally be a bestseller for the first time. So it aligned in that way.

And another is that he just sort of fit the dark times. It was a book for and of its time with all his dire predictions. It was, you know, when the Catholics and Protestants were warring and there were all kinds of people saying the end of the world was coming. And it was just, it was basically put out right at the right time and widespread because of the printing press. And then Queen Catherine de Medici of France was a really superstitious queen. And he predicted her husband, Henry II's death.

Yeah. Pretty specifically for once. Yeah. But we'll poke holes in that too. And it happened a few years later. And so she invited him to the court, which was like the most popular court in Europe at the time. And so he got a lot of attention there.

So he was sort of like a big writing superstar of his day because of all these things aligning. Yeah. I mean, like he wasn't one of those posthumously honored authors, like he was celebrated during his time. Supposedly he met some monks on the road once and correctly said that one of them was going to be the next pope. Bam. No way.

Case solved. Nostradamus is the real deal. Because that supposedly happened. So he had like a whole jam going where he would retire in the evenings. And he would concentrate on maybe a fire, the flames of a fire. Yeah. Meditate on it. Yeah.

Or he would take a bowl with some herbs or something in it and just zone out on those. Right. Try to read the herbs. Yeah. Like you said, I don't know if he was doing lines of nutmeg, but he was ingesting nutmeg most likely. Yeah. Which could be hallucinogenic.

But, and he had to have been rich to just be doing nutmeg, you know? Yeah. Because they had just discovered that. Yeah. And he would just kind of zone out. He would apparently, he got help from an angelic figure. That's what he says, said. And then he would just see the future, it would come to him.

The thing is, is Nostradamus, these prophecies didn't come to him all convoluted and kooky and however he put them, he understood exactly what was going to happen. Well, yeah. He supposedly convoluted them on purpose to avoid persecution during his lifetime. Yeah. That is supposedly what he told his son from his second marriage is that. Cesar. Yeah.

Anyway. I'm doing all this on purpose. And because they will, you know, string me up as a heretic because I'm so eerily accurate. Yeah. They will find out. And at the time, it was a genuine concern. So it's not like this is just a preposterous claim on Nostradamus' part. It's just that for skeptics of Nostradamus, it's just one more convenient little thing.

Yeah. Because if you read the quatrains, they make almost no sense and all sense simultaneously. Yeah. Depending on whether you're reading them on their own or whether you're trying to look at them in context. Well, yeah, well, we might as well go and talk about that. That's one of the big reasons you can poke holes in it is because there were even experts say it's hard to find two copies of this book that are the same.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because it was translated, you know, hundreds of times. It was the early printing presses were, you know, they weren't super accurate and they would, if the printer maybe didn't know exactly what he meant, they would say, well, I think he meant to actually have an apostrophe here and in middle French, that apostrophe could completely change the meaning of the word. Right.

So beyond that confusion and the translation confusions, there are, like you said, there are many different ways to interpret something. And if something didn't come true, you could probably find a version out there of it that supports whatever you think he predicted. Right. Yeah. That's a pretty good example that people give of a translation problem after 9-11, which we'll talk more about in a second.

Yeah. They, some, some quatrain of, or I guess an assemblage of Nostradamus' quatrains were kind of bandied about as proof that he predicted it, right? Yeah. One of them was that there would be smoke in the new city. Well, in his actual text in the centuries, he wrote Villeneuve, Villeneuve, which means in French, the new city, but it was also a city in France at the time that he was probably talking about.

So there's a lot of translation and interpretation that can come together and really lead to a misunderstanding if there is even such a thing at all with Nostradamus. Can you misunderstand him? I don't think it's possible. Can you misunderstand what's not understandable? Right. In other words, yeah. Well, since we're talking about interpreting, we might as well go on to the famous Hitler

prediction. Beasts ferocious with hunger will cross the rivers. The greater part of the battlefield will be against Hister. Into a cage of iron will the great one be drawn when the child of Germany observes nothing. Man. I hope we added some effect to that. Jerry, yes? Vocal effects?

Yeah. Something menacing, maybe. Or maybe we should do like clown music. So Hister, this has long been looked at as the prediction of the rise of Hitler. Yeah. He says Germany in there. Yeah. He says Germany and Hister.

But Hister was actually the lower Danube River. And so most people or skeptics would say, well, he didn't say Hitler, he said Hister. Since that was a place, that's probably what he meant. Yeah. Or he would have said Hitler. Yeah. It's kind of a miss right there. Some people say, well, Hitler was born around the Danube, so he's still met Hitler.

That's exactly the point, is that people will find a way to interpret it if they choose to. But the Nazis still use this to their advantage. They actually dropped pamphlets containing this prediction onto France from planes because they wanted to scare them like, hey, even Nostradamus said we're coming and we're coming. And it worked. I guess it did for a while. So basically, if you're a skeptic of Nostradamus, you say, okay, first of all, he's not really

saying anything. Right. Or anything concrete. Right. And a believer of Nostradamus would say, well, he even said that you're not supposed to get it unless you're one of the enlightened few who get it in the future, and I happen to be one of them. It's not for this time.

It's for people far from now to understand. Right. And so the skeptic that's arguing will sigh and then say, okay, here's the thing though. Even if he is saying something, like even if there's something clear, he's making a prediction and it does seem to come true. If you look at events in human history as numbers on a graph, eventually, statistically speaking, one of Nostradamus' very vague predictions about the rise of a power, a war, an earthquake, something like that is going to happen and maybe something will have even a couple of

predictions that will fit one event. Yeah, like the date might align somehow or something. Because every once in a while he used dates, but for the most part he didn't. But if you look at it statistically, yes, even Nostradamus' predictions are going to come true over a long enough period of time. Right. Again, if you read the predictions, it's hard to say his predictions come true because he's not really predicting anything.

It's not like he sat back and said, sometime in the 20th century, a guy with a terrible mustache is going to come to power and there's going to be a horrific war as a result. Nothing even approaching that. Yeah. I mean, you read what the Hitler prediction was like, it could be anything. But even if you had predicted something, if you take his predictions as predictions, if you put them over the arc of time, eventually you're going to get hit. So that's one argument, a skeptical argument against Nostradamus.

Yeah, especially if you believe, like most people do, that history repeats itself in some fashion over a long enough timeline. When he himself said that that's the model he used was using the stars to look at past historical events to predict future events. So it kind of makes sense. And also some people say these aren't even predictions because a prediction is something that you realize before the fact, and despite the fact that thousands of scholars have studied Nostradamus and millions of people have read him, no one has ever pointed out something

before it happened. It's always afterward that they go back and see, look, see here? He said this was going to happen and it happened because we interpreted that way. But no one's ever said stopped anything in its tracks because Nostradamus predicted it. That's an excellent point. It also raises another argument against Nostradamus in that the people who follow Nostradamus, like you said, the interpretation is always after the fact. And allegations of shoehorning occur where basically you make something fit.

You shoehorn it in to the context. And in doing so, you cherry pick stuff that makes sense and you ignore stuff that doesn't make sense. Yeah. In fact, I think this article, this one line says it best, imprecise language lends itself well to subjective interpretation. If you throw something super vague out there, you could come up with 100 different interpretations of it.

Yep. That's what poetry is. Exactly. And despite all of these very great arguments, there's still plenty of people out there who believe in Nostradamus. Almost seems like there should be a phase in life where you do go through believing that Nostradamus is real because it does lend some sort of something to life. It also coincides with being really into Pink Floyd.

Exactly. That's true. We'll talk a little more about some of the people who argue for and against Nostradamus, specifically centered around 9-11, right after this. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology.

And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good.

There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Visit Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck, 9-Eleven happened and almost immediately, people said Nostradamus predicted this. Yeah, his sales went through the roof, apparently, and supposedly his name was Googled more than Usama Bin Laden or George Bush after 9-Eleven.

Really? That's what they say. That sounds like something someone just writes on the internet. But I believe it. Well, here's why his star rose again was because this quad train emerged where it was like, yeah, that's pretty close to what happened. Yeah, I remember hearing it and thinking, oh my gosh. So you want to read this one?

You're pretty good at reading it. Can we get the sound effect again, please? Yeah, cue the clown music. In the city of God, there will be a great thunder, two brothers torn apart by chaos. While the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb. The third big war will begin when the big city is burning. That's super specific. Yeah.

The only thing I don't know if most people would agree on is calling New York the city of God. Or George Bush the great leader. Yeah, but the two brothers, clearly, those are the two towers. The fortress endures, the Pentagon, the great leader, Bush, yeah, some people said. And then the third war will begin when the big city is burning. Well, at least one more war. I don't know if it was World War III, but a pretty huge couple of wars started up as

a result. So people are saying, here it is. Finally, evidence that shows almost incontrovertibly that Nostradamus was the real deal. What's the argument against it, Chuck? Well, it was made up. Yeah, Nostradamus didn't write that. No, it was apparently written by several years ago by a guy named Neil Marshall, was a student in Canada, and said he was actually using that as a demonstration of what Bonk Nostradamus

was. I could write something like this, and people would think he predicted 9-11, and somehow it became something that Nostradamus wrote. He actually proved it by writing that in 1997, and then it getting picked up in 2001. Yeah, so what he set out to do worked. Worked perfectly. He didn't even have to wait more than four years. So he basically showed just how, man, I hate to use this word, but global people can be

when they're reading Nostradamus' work. Because no one checks anything, dude. They see it, and they click on it, and they post it to social media, and then it's done. Here's another really good example of that. A little while ago, this still cracks me up. Clickhole, the onions Buzzfeed-like site? Oh, is that onion? Yeah.

I didn't know that. I believe so. Yeah, I'm almost positive. I know clickhole, yeah. Okay, so clickhole, satirical site of Buzzfeed-y sites. They released something called Five Tragedies Weirdly Predicted by Adam Sandler, and dude, they are, so can I read a couple? Yeah, yeah.

You read all five. In the wake of the 1993 tragedy, apparently people went back and saw that Adam Sandler, during his early stand-up career, would mutter something's coming to Waco, something dark, like during his stand-up show. Is that true? None of this is true. Okay. So you guys just picked apart real things and-

No. Okay. So the 1997 car crash that killed Princess Diana, apparently if you go back and watch Happy Gilmore, which was made in 1996, Sandler looks directly in the camera and says, our Queen's eldest, the beautiful flower will wilt under a Parisian bridge. Can I keep going? Oh, yeah. So the BP oil spill that happened in 2010 in the Gulf, apparently Adam Sandler was on

Conan O'Brien in 2005, and he was just wearing a T-shirt that said, BP oil spill in five years. The 2010 Haitian earthquake, the UN estimates that 222,570 people were killed. Apparently in Adam Sandler's Funny People, he estimated 220,000 on the nose. And then lastly, the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Adam Sandler, when he was opera man, there was a 1993 opera man sketch where he says, I'm missing plane, it's from Malaysia, makes me insane, this will all make sense in due time. That's good, man.

Here's the thing, man, people believe that. Oh, shut up, really? It went viral. I'm not kidding you. It went viral that somehow Adam Sandler had made all these crazy predictions and this is a real thing, because apparently they didn't announce that when clickbait came out that it was a satirical site. That BP oil spill on the T-shirt's pretty good.

Well, let's get into some of these then. First of all, to further the 9-11 thing, there were a couple of other quatrains which have been cobbled together to try and support the 9-11 thing. But like I said, they weren't as he wrote them. They would combine things, which is just silly, because that goes against everything that he was saying was each quatrain is its own thing. One of them, Century 10, Quatrain 72, the year 1999, seven months from the sky will come the great king of terror to resuscitate the great king of the Mongols before and after

Mars reigns by good luck. That last part sounds like it's from a fortune cookie. But before 9-11, back in 1999, some people thought he was foretelling the end of the world would be on July 24, 1999. And I remember this happening, and I remember it being a big deal. There was genuine concern from some people. Some stores in France had closeout sales. There was this one French designer who canceled his big.

He was a big believer, and he canceled his big show, and of course it didn't happen. And then it was recalculated, and everyone said, no, no, no, it wasn't supposed to be July 24th if you read it this way. It means August 11th, and of course the world didn't end then either. How do you get August 11th from seven months into 1999? Well, again, there were some different translations that maybe were different enough to recalculate. But then that one was also used for 9-11, was repurposed for 9-11. Right.

They were like, he was just close. Yeah, exactly. This is a couple of years off. Well, they combined that one with Century VI, Quaterain 97, which says, at 45 degrees, the sky will burn. Fire to approach the great new city. In an instant, a great scattered flame will leap up when one will want to demand proof of the Normans.

What is that last thing? I'm not sure. That's the thing. You can't just pick part of it and then discount the rest and say that he was wrong on that. But that's exactly what people did. Well, they did because several Quaterains refer to an Antichrist figure called Mabus. If you rearrange the letters, it could be Usam B. People use that as proof, but they also failed to mention that previous to that, they used

it as Saddam. Up to the day before 9-11. Yeah. They were saying it was Saddam Hussein was Mabus. Because Mabus fell backwards as Subam. Never reach, if you ask me. It is. Well, in that 45 degrees, part of the Quaterain, some people said that New York City is around

40 degrees, five minutes north latitude, so that's close. But again, he was said the new city will burn at 45 degrees. Villanueva or Villanuve is at about 45 degrees latitude. So it could just be interpretation. I don't know who's really at fault here. Is it Nostradamus? Is it the people who just blindly accept Nostradamus' predictions? Is it though because Nostradamus purposefully obfuscated his stuff?

So I think he's a little bit responsible for this too. I imagine, since he has that great sense of humor, it made fun of that one guy's statue of the Virgin Mary. He is sitting in his coffin holding a plaque with some future date when he'll be exhumed just laughing and laughing. Yeah, maybe. We mentioned Henry II, he predicted his death in this Quaterain. The young lion will overcome the old one on the field of battle in single combat.

He will put his eyes in a cage of gold, two fleets, one, then to die in a cruel death. So that means two injuries. And this actually happened. King Henry was in a jousting competition, but it wasn't on the field of battle. It was a friendly, it was a party basically. And Captain Montgomery, who was younger, the younger lion, did joust hit him in the eye and through the throat, so the two injuries supposedly from one. Man.

Yeah. But that was all that his wife, Queen DiMidici, needed to know. She was like, holy crap, this has come true. And he knows what he's doing. John F. Kennedy, the challenger, the great fire of London. People have said that he's predicted all these things, but we could sit here all day poking holes in the, you know, that, not that we're poking holes, but other people have poked legitimate holes.

I think we poked a few holes. Well, yeah, but I mean, it's all been from other people's stuff. Oh, that's true. You know, I didn't do my own hole poking. No, and we should probably say we never begrudge anybody that believing in something like that or enjoying like, I don't think it hurts anything behind it or anything like that. Yes. I mean, if you go out and dump all your stocks and sell your worldly possessions.

Or you cancel your big fashion debut. Yeah, that's all. That just hurts you. Yeah. Although that may have hurt the fashion world. Yeah, he probably had it the week after. You want to hear something crazy? Yeah.

About the day before September 11th, this group called The Coup, they're a rap group out of Oakland. They're pretty awesome. Uh-huh. They were releasing their album, I can't remember what it's called. I want to say like party time or party fever, party something. And like the day before, and it had the guy Boots Riley, who is like the emcee for the group.

It had him like standing there pressing a button and the twin towers were coming down, like blowing up. Oh, wow. They were going to release it like the day before. It was scheduled to release in September of 2001. And then 9-11 happened, they're like, well, let's change the cover. And that's why you've never heard of The Coup. I wonder, actually, yeah, because they were getting kind of big right around that time.

The album had like good buzz around it and then they just went away. They're still around though. Well, all the entertainment that was released around that time notoriously suffered. Yeah. Um, can't remember what movies in particular, but- Yeah, exactly. There were a lot of things later on that people are like, well, we've released it right before 9-11.

You know, we were doomed, but it was a movie who cares, you know? So if you want to know more about Nostradamus, you can go look this up on howstoworks.com by scanning the search bar, or you can just kind of look around the internet because there is plenty of stuff about that dude on there and enjoy yourself. And since I said enjoy yourself, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this trailer builder. Um, hey guys, Chuck and Josh, or Josh and Chuck, whichever you prefer, you prefer Josh and Chuck.

I think it goes either way. Yeah, well, that's what we kind of settled on. Consistent branding. No, it goes both ways. We go both ways? Yeah. All right. Chuck and Josh, Josh and Chuck.

Hey guys, I must admit that I tried very hard not to listen to you. I was told by several of my friends that I absolutely must subscribe to your show. However, as a stay-at-home dad, by day, to a beautiful three-year-old and three-month-old boy's very busy small business owner by night, I had trouble finding enough time to go poop, let alone indulge in any form of entertainment. Needless to say, I did listen and wonder and became instantly addicted. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed learning. In the two months since I first gave you guys a shot, I've been on a steady binge and I'm

quickly running out of back episodes to listen to, which is a frightening prospect to me, considering your podcast is a fuel that powers my motivation engine while I work. My brother and I own and operate Oregon Trailer. This trail, apostrophe R, where the two of us build high-end, tiny teardrop-style camp trailers. Nice. Have you ever seen those? Yeah.

Really cool. Yeah. I want one of these. Hand-to-hand. Duffy's going to send me one. I found that while my hands are on autopilot-building trailers, my brain has been totally neglected listening to my requisite Pandora stations, but now that I'm listening to you fellas and receiving constant brain stimulation, I'm getting more done than ever in enjoying every

second. My wife and sons thank you as well as my general mood has improved, despite the potentially unhealthy lack of sleep. However, my lovely wife is still getting a little tired of the phrase, so I was listening to stuff you should know last night, dot, dot, dot. I just want to say thanks for everything you guys do have done and will do in the future. Large amounts of platonic love. First it's Sawyer Christensen, and I'm going to plug OregonTrailer.net just because those

things are really cool. Yeah. OregonTrail, apostrophe, er. No. On the website, it's trailer. Okay. OregonTrailer.net. Good point.

If you're in the market for one of those, check them out. Small business, handmade. Send me one. Send Josh one. That'd be sweet. Yeah. They're pretty neat. Thanks a lot, Sawyer Christensen.

Great name, by the way, and we appreciate the kudos. If you out there, everybody else who isn't Sawyer Christensen, wants to get in touch with us to say anything at all, you can tweet to us at SYSKpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuffyoushouldknow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com and join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. Stuffyoushouldknow is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on myHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever

you listen to your favorite shows. I'm Munga Shatikler, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me, and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes, because I think your ideas

are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.