Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm de Believing Chalk Reboarding, and we are continuing with our Spooky Halloween October series and we figured it would be the perfect time to discuss an exhimation. And people do suggest exhlimations to us pretty regularly. I was going to say, isn't it always the perfect time to discuss an exhimation, is if it is stuff you missed in history class, But we promised that most of the time we don't go looking for these exclamations. They just kind of happen. It will be something completely unrelated to a potentially disinterred body, and then suddenly there is one, so it's kind of a surprise. But this one is not a surprise. The exhimation is really pretty impossible to avoid, and it's actually what drove listeners like Matthew and Naomi and Barry, as well as our friend and former coworker Molly Edmunds to suggest this topic to us in the first place, because it's a strange, strange topic. I mean to make the most obvious understatement, Yeah, it really is unusual. And like most exhamations that we mentioned on the podcast, this one wasn't done to verify a cause of death or to relocate the body. It was done to place the months old corpse on trial. So of course we have to address the question why would anyone disenter a body to put it on trial. Why, indeed, especially when that body wasn't just anyone but was a former pope. So Encyclopedia Britannica always a good place to start if you want a general picture for the basics. Yeah, they call this trial one of the most bizarre incidents in papal history, but you could also call it one of the most brutal incidents, one of the most disturbing incidents. But dead pope on trial wasn't just this freakish event at the time. Before we talk about the trial and the specific popes and players involved, we have to talk a little bit about a dark time called the papal pornocracy. Uh, it was, like I said, a series of kind of dark years that started just before the end of the Carolingian Imperial line in eight eight. So we're talking way back this old podcast. So first, just to give you a little context, we'll talk about something a little more recent. After the death of Pope John Paul the second few years back, people around the world, including non Catholics, learned a little bit about the papal electoral process called a conclave. But the pope hasn't always been elected by a conclave, and in the ninth and tenth centuries the selection process had a lot of input from Roman noble families and German princes. Now these families put forward their own candidates and had their own factions, and according to papal historian horse k Man quote, the one aim of each party, pursued by every resource of violence and intrigue, was to get control of the chair of St. Peter. It's occupant must be one of theirs at all costs. So it kind of figures that there would be quite a bit of trouble plus a pretty high turnover. And that's also a bit of an understatement. A third of the popes elected between eight seventy two and ten twelve died under suspicious circumstances, and between eight ninety six and nine oh four, the most violent unstable period, there were nine popes. So yeah, that's a remarkably high turnover, even considering that these are older fellows most of the time, even when they're actually not always old. But our story takes place in eight n so really right in the thick of this highly controversial, unsettled time, and we're gonna start with the pope who started off this high turnover decade, Pope for Moses, who is also are exhumed man on trial unfortunately for him. And I thought it was interesting because it's not just his um the terrible things that happened to him in death, but the ups and downs of his predeath religious career kind of epitomized the hazards of the time of being pope or or being um somebody who was a contender to be pope. So he had been born in Rome in about eight sixteen, and he was made a cardinal bishop in eight sixty four by Pope St. Nicholas the First. We're going to really rattle off a lot of successors of his in this brief life story. You may want to take note. Pope Adrian the Second had sent Um, the future Pope Formosis on missions to France, where he had performed quite well. He was highly regarded then under Pope John the Ape, he had been exiled and excommunicated, and um there were some pretty outrageous reasons for this, like despoiling cloisters, and it's seemed pretty obviously political since for Mosas had, like I said, a good reputation. He was considered ascetic and considered a very peaceful, intelligent man, So the reasons for this excommunication were probably more that he was himself a good contender to be pope. But after time he was pardoned but still not allowed to return. Then eventually another pope, Pope Marinis the first, allowed him back to Rome and returned him to his position, And then under the next two popes, st Adrian the Third and Stephen the Fifth sometimes Stephen the sixth, he finally grew more powerful. So that's quite a busy life story just leading up to his eight ninety one election, where he himself becomes pope. Under Stephen, though some big political things had gone down, so we should tell you a little bit about that too. Charles the fat, the last Carolingian in the Imperial line, had died in his place. Stephen had reluctantly round Duke Guido of Spoleto out of a mess of contenders. Roman emperor, but by doing so he was giving tremendous power to an uncomfortably close neighbor of the papal states. So when for Mosis was elected, he also had to go along with Stephen and recognized Guido and his son Lambert as co Roman emperors. But just because for Moses recognized Guido and Lambert as co Roman empress didn't mean he was one behind them. In fact, he asked his own preferred candidate, this guy, King Arnulf of the East Franks, to come and invade Italy and take care of Guido, get rid of him, and get rid of his whole faction. And it almost worked. Arnulf launched a campaign to Italy and an eight for Moses did crown him emperor in Rome, so it seemed like almost success. But before Arnolf could actually battle Lambert out in Spoleto, Guido had by this point died. The German contender was struck by paralysis, and that's what you'll see it described as in miss First. I guess this is the eight hundreds, so we don't get too many more details than that. But anyway, Arnulf was out of the running. He had to quit, and not too long after that Formosis died, so it kind of seems like the end of this immediate story, but that was not the case at all. The story of Formosis actually picked up just a couple of weeks later after the brief pontificate of Boniface the sixth, when a new pope was again elected, Stephen the sixth, there's sometimes the seventh. Unlike Formosis, Stephen was a supporter of the splatant party Lambert and his mother, the Duchess Aggultrude, But he didn't just support them in traditional dignified ways. He agreed to conduct a trial to punish his predecessor who had betrayed them. So less than a year after Formosis had died, Stephen had him disinterred, dressed in papal vestiments, and enthroned. Stephen acted as a secutor here in this trial, charging for Mosis with the charges levied against him during his excommunication, but focusing on three main things perjury, coveting the papacy, and violating church cannons, specifically transferring from the sea of Porto to that of Rome. So a poor eighteen year old deacon was forced by Stephen to act as for Mostes's defense. You know, answer for him squeaking out some kind of defense whenever he could interrupt Steven's tirade against the deceased Pope, and he was really too scared to get out much more than mumbles. So unsurprisingly, Stephen found for most Is guilty and ruled that all of his acts would be null and all of his ordinations void. And this really had a double calculated perk in addition to obviously shaming for most of Memory, which was the primary reason to do it. For most has had appointed Stephen himself as a ship and by having that appointment annulled, Stephen got off the hook for some irregularities in his own transfer from one CE to that of Rome. So it was pretty pretty tricky on his part to to clean up his his own record a little bit. But it wasn't just about assuring Steven's legitimacy though, or cutting out for Moss proteges who he had um consecrated. It was about just completely disrespecting the deceased Pope's body. And I mean, the following is really pretty disturbing. What they what they did to the guy. And I think this is why um this story has stuck around so so prominently in history, ye know. For example, the papal vestimates were ripped from the corpse and it was redressed in layman's clothes. The fingers used for consecrations were cut off and Uncle Trude got to keep them, and the body was then dragged through the streets buried in a pauper's grave before being dug up again and dumped into the Tiber. But thankfully, there's such a thing as going too far, and even in this violent partisan time in Rome, folks were not happy with Stephen and this disgraceful treatment of his predecessor. So it was kind of a situation of what goes around comes around. For most of his body was eventually pulled out of the river by a hermit, where it was reburied, and not long after that miracles started being attributed to him. And to add to matters for for the Romans who were paying attention to the story, the latter in Basilica, which is the official ecclesiastical seat of the Bishop of Rome, also known as the Pope, collapsed in an earthquake, which seemed like a terrible, terrible sign. And so all of this plus Stephen really pushing the point too hard. His insistence that the clergy ordained by for most to send in letters acknowledging that their appointments were invalid. All of this bubbled up and finally led to rebellion. The clergy and the people of Rome rose up against Stephen. Yeah, so Stephen was stripped of his papal powers and thrown into prison, and there the allies of Formosis strangled him in August. The next Pope, Romanis, lasted only a few months, and the one following him, Theodore the Second, just a few weeks. But before Theodore died, he got right to work on honoring the dead desecrated Formosis. He held his own synod, regarding the cadaver synod and nulling Stephen's ruling and restoring for mosiss acts in consecrations. He also had the body brought back exhoomed once again to St. Peter's and reburied. And it's old too. So after the brief pontificate of Theodore the Second, next came John the Nine, who, to really make it clear how uncooled this whole trial of the dead pope had been, again nullified. Stephen Senate twice just for a good measure, and because it apparently needed spelling out too. He also prohibited future trials of dead people. Probably a good policy for anyone, but um not or at least if we're actually putting the body on trial. I'll add that caveat. But not everyone was a foremost a supporter. I know we're talking about overturning this cadaver syno uh. The last pope in this decade of rapid fire succession and intrigue, Pope Sergius the Third, had supported Stephen from the beginning. He had even taken part in the cadaver sin of the trial himself. And like Stephen, Pope Sergius the third also had an allegiance or alliance with the spoleetant faction and Um he had had a pope and an antipope strangled to pave the way for himself, and Um allied himself further with the most powerful family in Rome, Senator Theophile act in his Byzantine princess wife Theodora, and just kind of a side out here. Sergius even had a son with their teenage daughter, who became a very very powerful future Roman matriarch and popemaker herself. But as back back to our maintail, here as proof of his loyalty to the House of Spiletto. Sertius reaffirmed the cadaver synate. And this was really more than just talk. I mean, I know, it sounds like a few years after the fact, maybe just trying to keep your allies comfortable, but it meant that all of formoses ordinations were again invalid. So anyone who had received orders under him needed to go back and do it again. And Sergius was especially vengeual for any bishops who had been consecrated by Formoses, who would obviously be the men most closely connected to the former pope and his enemy. So all in all, this is a pretty grizzly story, and during the Papal por knock or see it extended a bit beyond Sergius. To John Peter fam former Vatican diplomat and author of Heirs of the Fisherman. Behind the Scenes of Papal death and Succession, puts it pretty succinctly when he writes that quote, Although at least in the minds of believers, the office that these popes have held in succession is of divine origin, how these men have been raised to that office is a very human affair. Yeah, and FAM's book that we just mentioned, I mean, really does go into the nitty gritty of it all, you know, um, looking at the history of popes and how they died and what happened after they died, and how uh the new pope was was chosen. And I think it's interesting to look at that. We're probably more familiar with the twentieth century history, but to look at these times in the eight hundreds and nine hundreds and and see what was going on and what power plays where we're going on, but we want to leave on a pretty interest staying side. Net's something to think about. There hasn't ever been a pope for most is the second poor guy. Though Cardinal Pietro Barboa did consider the name in fourteen sixty four, he had to be talked out of it. Apparently his choice instead was Paul the second sounds a lot safer, a lot safer, not calling to mind any dark chapters in history, and um, anything you might not want to think about during a celebratory time. So anyway, though, this was a really interesting thing to research. So I'm glad that Molly let us know about it. And thanks to Matthew and Naomi and Barry for all suggesting it as well making letting us know that it was something you'll really wanted to hear about. Two. Yeah, it seems like you can get taken to test sometimes for looking at the Pope in such a human light. But it is really fascinating, it is. So I think that is a good a time as any to bring us to listener mail while we're talking about listener suggestion. So our first email is from Jennifer and she wrote in to say, my family and I are traveling around the world for a year, two adults and two boys, age ten and eight. We first listened to your Marco Polo and Great Wall podcasts on the way to the Great Wall of China. We listened to your Medici series when we stayed in Italy and checked out all the most violent parts of Florence. We listened to your podcast about Mary, Queen of Scott's when we stayed in Sterling, her childhood home in Scotland. And now we are listening to your Book of Kells podcast on the way to Dublin to see it. So, I don't know this might be one that they would have wanted to to skip in Rome. I don't know. But she went on to write, your podcast have made history come alive for all of us and really added some deaths to our travels around the world. Um So, I thought that was just such a neat email. We do get a lot of um mail from folks who are traveling and and sort of use the podcast is a little travel primer if they're headed somewhere, But I don't think I've ever heard from a family who was traveling around the world for a year. So I take us with you, Vegas will come. We can like deliver live podcasts for your entertainment. Maybe. Um So, thank you Jennifer for writing in. I hope you guys are having fun. And then I also have just kind of a funny email. Well it probably wasn't funny for Ruschelle of Toronto when she wrote it, but she said, today I had to go to the dentists and unfortunately get a root canal. I'm not good with dental procedures, but I'm happy to say your podcast on the War of the World's and historical hoaxes got me through. I hate hearing all those tools worrying and the dentist and hygiena's talking about all the weird stuff they see. I was so glad when they said I could listen to my iPod anyway. Thank you for those engaging and lengthy podcasts that were just the distraction I needed. So um, this too is a new sort of email. We do hear from lots of people who are using the podcast when they're training for a marathon or they're like working on an Excel spreadsheet all day or something, But I don't think I've ever heard from anybody who was listening during a dental procedure. No, I mean, I really don't know how long a route canal take. So maybe we should start time in our podcast to that specials. Yeah, we can start maybe advertising them as um. So thanks for writing in, Rochelle. We're glad that we helped you through your dental procedure. And um, if anybody else wants to write in and maybe share some other unusual podcasts listening stories with us, keep it clean though, please, UM you can write us. We are at history podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're also on Twitter at mist in history, and we're on Facebook, and you can of course send us um just your suggestions to you for for future episodes topics and if you want to learn a little bit more about the topics we talked about in this podcast, we have an article called how the Papacy Works and you can find it by searching for it on our homepage, which is at www dot how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The house dopp Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes.

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm de Believing Chalk Reboarding, and we are continuing with our Spooky Halloween October series and we figured it would be the perfect time to discuss an exhimation. And people do suggest exhlimations to us pretty regularly. I was going to say, isn't it always the perfect time to discuss an exhimation, is if it is stuff you missed in history class, But we promised that most of the time we don't go looking for these exclamations. They just kind of happen. It will be something completely unrelated to a potentially disinterred body, and then suddenly there is one, so it's kind of a surprise. But this one is not a surprise. The exhimation is really pretty impossible to avoid, and it's actually what drove listeners like Matthew and Naomi and Barry, as well as our friend and former coworker Molly Edmunds to suggest this topic to us in the first place, because it's a strange, strange topic. I mean to make the most obvious understatement, Yeah, it really is unusual. And like most exhamations that we mentioned on the podcast, this one wasn't done to verify a cause of death or to relocate the body. It was done to place the months old corpse on trial. So of course we have to address the question why would anyone disenter a body to put it on trial. Why, indeed, especially when that body wasn't just anyone but was a former pope. So Encyclopedia Britannica always a good place to start if you want a general picture for the basics. Yeah, they call this trial one of the most bizarre incidents in papal history, but you could also call it one of the most brutal incidents, one of the most disturbing incidents. But dead pope on trial wasn't just this freakish event at the time. Before we talk about the trial and the specific popes and players involved, we have to talk a little bit about a dark time called the papal pornocracy. Uh, it was, like I said, a series of kind of dark years that started just before the end of the Carolingian Imperial line in eight eight. So we're talking way back this old podcast. So first, just to give you a little context, we'll talk about something a little more recent. After the death of Pope John Paul the second few years back, people around the world, including non Catholics, learned a little bit about the papal electoral process called a conclave. But the pope hasn't always been elected by a conclave, and in the ninth and tenth centuries the selection process had a lot of input from Roman noble families and German princes. Now these families put forward their own candidates and had their own factions, and according to papal historian horse k Man quote, the one aim of each party, pursued by every resource of violence and intrigue, was to get control of the chair of St. Peter. It's occupant must be one of theirs at all costs. So it kind of figures that there would be quite a bit of trouble plus a pretty high turnover. And that's also a bit of an understatement. A third of the popes elected between eight seventy two and ten twelve died under suspicious circumstances, and between eight ninety six and nine oh four, the most violent unstable period, there were nine popes. So yeah, that's a remarkably high turnover, even considering that these are older fellows most of the time, even when they're actually not always old. But our story takes place in eight n so really right in the thick of this highly controversial, unsettled time, and we're gonna start with the pope who started off this high turnover decade, Pope for Moses, who is also are exhumed man on trial unfortunately for him. And I thought it was interesting because it's not just his um the terrible things that happened to him in death, but the ups and downs of his predeath religious career kind of epitomized the hazards of the time of being pope or or being um somebody who was a contender to be pope. So he had been born in Rome in about eight sixteen, and he was made a cardinal bishop in eight sixty four by Pope St. Nicholas the First. We're going to really rattle off a lot of successors of his in this brief life story. You may want to take note. Pope Adrian the Second had sent Um, the future Pope Formosis on missions to France, where he had performed quite well. He was highly regarded then under Pope John the Ape, he had been exiled and excommunicated, and um there were some pretty outrageous reasons for this, like despoiling cloisters, and it's seemed pretty obviously political since for Mosas had, like I said, a good reputation. He was considered ascetic and considered a very peaceful, intelligent man, So the reasons for this excommunication were probably more that he was himself a good contender to be pope. But after time he was pardoned but still not allowed to return. Then eventually another pope, Pope Marinis the first, allowed him back to Rome and returned him to his position, And then under the next two popes, st Adrian the Third and Stephen the Fifth sometimes Stephen the sixth, he finally grew more powerful. So that's quite a busy life story just leading up to his eight ninety one election, where he himself becomes pope. Under Stephen, though some big political things had gone down, so we should tell you a little bit about that too. Charles the fat, the last Carolingian in the Imperial line, had died in his place. Stephen had reluctantly round Duke Guido of Spoleto out of a mess of contenders. Roman emperor, but by doing so he was giving tremendous power to an uncomfortably close neighbor of the papal states. So when for Mosis was elected, he also had to go along with Stephen and recognized Guido and his son Lambert as co Roman emperors. But just because for Moses recognized Guido and Lambert as co Roman empress didn't mean he was one behind them. In fact, he asked his own preferred candidate, this guy, King Arnulf of the East Franks, to come and invade Italy and take care of Guido, get rid of him, and get rid of his whole faction. And it almost worked. Arnulf launched a campaign to Italy and an eight for Moses did crown him emperor in Rome, so it seemed like almost success. But before Arnolf could actually battle Lambert out in Spoleto, Guido had by this point died. The German contender was struck by paralysis, and that's what you'll see it described as in miss First. I guess this is the eight hundreds, so we don't get too many more details than that. But anyway, Arnulf was out of the running. He had to quit, and not too long after that Formosis died, so it kind of seems like the end of this immediate story, but that was not the case at all. The story of Formosis actually picked up just a couple of weeks later after the brief pontificate of Boniface the sixth, when a new pope was again elected, Stephen the sixth, there's sometimes the seventh. Unlike Formosis, Stephen was a supporter of the splatant party Lambert and his mother, the Duchess Aggultrude, But he didn't just support them in traditional dignified ways. He agreed to conduct a trial to punish his predecessor who had betrayed them. So less than a year after Formosis had died, Stephen had him disinterred, dressed in papal vestiments, and enthroned. Stephen acted as a secutor here in this trial, charging for Mosis with the charges levied against him during his excommunication, but focusing on three main things perjury, coveting the papacy, and violating church cannons, specifically transferring from the sea of Porto to that of Rome. So a poor eighteen year old deacon was forced by Stephen to act as for Mostes's defense. You know, answer for him squeaking out some kind of defense whenever he could interrupt Steven's tirade against the deceased Pope, and he was really too scared to get out much more than mumbles. So unsurprisingly, Stephen found for most Is guilty and ruled that all of his acts would be null and all of his ordinations void. And this really had a double calculated perk in addition to obviously shaming for most of Memory, which was the primary reason to do it. For most has had appointed Stephen himself as a ship and by having that appointment annulled, Stephen got off the hook for some irregularities in his own transfer from one CE to that of Rome. So it was pretty pretty tricky on his part to to clean up his his own record a little bit. But it wasn't just about assuring Steven's legitimacy though, or cutting out for Moss proteges who he had um consecrated. It was about just completely disrespecting the deceased Pope's body. And I mean, the following is really pretty disturbing. What they what they did to the guy. And I think this is why um this story has stuck around so so prominently in history, ye know. For example, the papal vestimates were ripped from the corpse and it was redressed in layman's clothes. The fingers used for consecrations were cut off and Uncle Trude got to keep them, and the body was then dragged through the streets buried in a pauper's grave before being dug up again and dumped into the Tiber. But thankfully, there's such a thing as going too far, and even in this violent partisan time in Rome, folks were not happy with Stephen and this disgraceful treatment of his predecessor. So it was kind of a situation of what goes around comes around. For most of his body was eventually pulled out of the river by a hermit, where it was reburied, and not long after that miracles started being attributed to him. And to add to matters for for the Romans who were paying attention to the story, the latter in Basilica, which is the official ecclesiastical seat of the Bishop of Rome, also known as the Pope, collapsed in an earthquake, which seemed like a terrible, terrible sign. And so all of this plus Stephen really pushing the point too hard. His insistence that the clergy ordained by for most to send in letters acknowledging that their appointments were invalid. All of this bubbled up and finally led to rebellion. The clergy and the people of Rome rose up against Stephen. Yeah, so Stephen was stripped of his papal powers and thrown into prison, and there the allies of Formosis strangled him in August. The next Pope, Romanis, lasted only a few months, and the one following him, Theodore the Second, just a few weeks. But before Theodore died, he got right to work on honoring the dead desecrated Formosis. He held his own synod, regarding the cadaver synod and nulling Stephen's ruling and restoring for mosiss acts in consecrations. He also had the body brought back exhoomed once again to St. Peter's and reburied. And it's old too. So after the brief pontificate of Theodore the Second, next came John the Nine, who, to really make it clear how uncooled this whole trial of the dead pope had been, again nullified. Stephen Senate twice just for a good measure, and because it apparently needed spelling out too. He also prohibited future trials of dead people. Probably a good policy for anyone, but um not or at least if we're actually putting the body on trial. I'll add that caveat. But not everyone was a foremost a supporter. I know we're talking about overturning this cadaver syno uh. The last pope in this decade of rapid fire succession and intrigue, Pope Sergius the Third, had supported Stephen from the beginning. He had even taken part in the cadaver sin of the trial himself. And like Stephen, Pope Sergius the third also had an allegiance or alliance with the spoleetant faction and Um he had had a pope and an antipope strangled to pave the way for himself, and Um allied himself further with the most powerful family in Rome, Senator Theophile act in his Byzantine princess wife Theodora, and just kind of a side out here. Sergius even had a son with their teenage daughter, who became a very very powerful future Roman matriarch and popemaker herself. But as back back to our maintail, here as proof of his loyalty to the House of Spiletto. Sertius reaffirmed the cadaver synate. And this was really more than just talk. I mean, I know, it sounds like a few years after the fact, maybe just trying to keep your allies comfortable, but it meant that all of formoses ordinations were again invalid. So anyone who had received orders under him needed to go back and do it again. And Sergius was especially vengeual for any bishops who had been consecrated by Formoses, who would obviously be the men most closely connected to the former pope and his enemy. So all in all, this is a pretty grizzly story, and during the Papal por knock or see it extended a bit beyond Sergius. To John Peter fam former Vatican diplomat and author of Heirs of the Fisherman. Behind the Scenes of Papal death and Succession, puts it pretty succinctly when he writes that quote, Although at least in the minds of believers, the office that these popes have held in succession is of divine origin, how these men have been raised to that office is a very human affair. Yeah, and FAM's book that we just mentioned, I mean, really does go into the nitty gritty of it all, you know, um, looking at the history of popes and how they died and what happened after they died, and how uh the new pope was was chosen. And I think it's interesting to look at that. We're probably more familiar with the twentieth century history, but to look at these times in the eight hundreds and nine hundreds and and see what was going on and what power plays where we're going on, but we want to leave on a pretty interest staying side. Net's something to think about. There hasn't ever been a pope for most is the second poor guy. Though Cardinal Pietro Barboa did consider the name in fourteen sixty four, he had to be talked out of it. Apparently his choice instead was Paul the second sounds a lot safer, a lot safer, not calling to mind any dark chapters in history, and um, anything you might not want to think about during a celebratory time. So anyway, though, this was a really interesting thing to research. So I'm glad that Molly let us know about it. And thanks to Matthew and Naomi and Barry for all suggesting it as well making letting us know that it was something you'll really wanted to hear about. Two. Yeah, it seems like you can get taken to test sometimes for looking at the Pope in such a human light. But it is really fascinating, it is. So I think that is a good a time as any to bring us to listener mail while we're talking about listener suggestion. So our first email is from Jennifer and she wrote in to say, my family and I are traveling around the world for a year, two adults and two boys, age ten and eight. We first listened to your Marco Polo and Great Wall podcasts on the way to the Great Wall of China. We listened to your Medici series when we stayed in Italy and checked out all the most violent parts of Florence. We listened to your podcast about Mary, Queen of Scott's when we stayed in Sterling, her childhood home in Scotland. And now we are listening to your Book of Kells podcast on the way to Dublin to see it. So, I don't know this might be one that they would have wanted to to skip in Rome. I don't know. But she went on to write, your podcast have made history come alive for all of us and really added some deaths to our travels around the world. Um So, I thought that was just such a neat email. We do get a lot of um mail from folks who are traveling and and sort of use the podcast is a little travel primer if they're headed somewhere, But I don't think I've ever heard from a family who was traveling around the world for a year. So I take us with you, Vegas will come. We can like deliver live podcasts for your entertainment. Maybe. Um So, thank you Jennifer for writing in. I hope you guys are having fun. And then I also have just kind of a funny email. Well it probably wasn't funny for Ruschelle of Toronto when she wrote it, but she said, today I had to go to the dentists and unfortunately get a root canal. I'm not good with dental procedures, but I'm happy to say your podcast on the War of the World's and historical hoaxes got me through. I hate hearing all those tools worrying and the dentist and hygiena's talking about all the weird stuff they see. I was so glad when they said I could listen to my iPod anyway. Thank you for those engaging and lengthy podcasts that were just the distraction I needed. So um, this too is a new sort of email. We do hear from lots of people who are using the podcast when they're training for a marathon or they're like working on an Excel spreadsheet all day or something, But I don't think I've ever heard from anybody who was listening during a dental procedure. No, I mean, I really don't know how long a route canal take. So maybe we should start time in our podcast to that specials. Yeah, we can start maybe advertising them as um. So thanks for writing in, Rochelle. We're glad that we helped you through your dental procedure. And um, if anybody else wants to write in and maybe share some other unusual podcasts listening stories with us, keep it clean though, please, UM you can write us. We are at history podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're also on Twitter at mist in history, and we're on Facebook, and you can of course send us um just your suggestions to you for for future episodes topics and if you want to learn a little bit more about the topics we talked about in this podcast, we have an article called how the Papacy Works and you can find it by searching for it on our homepage, which is at www dot how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The house dopp Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on iTunes.