Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm fair Dowdy and I'm to Bline and Chuck Reporting
Speaker 1: and Delinea. I have a question for you, what's that.
Speaker 1: Have you ever kept a travel journal? I mean, I
Speaker 1: know you like to travel a lot. I have kept well,
Speaker 1: I've attempted to, but I usually end up getting them.
Speaker 1: I have a collection of beautiful journals that have bought
Speaker 1: throughout the years, and I end up taking them and
Speaker 1: I fill out a page. And then I realized there's
Speaker 1: this big competition between actually wanting to do things and
Speaker 1: having time to write about the things. While I'm on
Speaker 1: vacation and I'm gonna get back, you get so busy
Speaker 1: that you just don't have time to rerecord everything happens
Speaker 1: to me too, if I'm lucky, I'll start writing on
Speaker 1: the plane ride home and maybe fill in the briefest details.
Speaker 1: So trying to imagine trying to keep a travel journal
Speaker 1: for forty years now, and imagine that are expeditions included,
Speaker 1: not just classic traveler high points, new meals, you eight monuments,
Speaker 1: he saw people, you met, that kind of thing, but
Speaker 1: events like wars and rebellions and pirate attacks. I mean,
Speaker 1: imagine having time for that. I mean, I think I
Speaker 1: would make time to write about a pirate attack. That
Speaker 1: would that would warrant an entry for sure, So our
Speaker 1: subject today. Eveliah Chellaby is a seventeenth century Ottoman gentleman,
Speaker 1: and he's considered by many people to be one of
Speaker 1: the world's greatest travelers and by extension, one of the
Speaker 1: world's greatest travel writers. He kept a two thousand, four
Speaker 1: hundred folio record of his journeys. He called it the
Speaker 1: Saya Hotanomy or Book of Travels, and it's the longest
Speaker 1: travel account in Islamic literature, maybe even the longest travel
Speaker 1: account in the world. And from about age thirty until
Speaker 1: his death in his seventies, Eveliah was on the move,
Speaker 1: and for as long as he traveled, he kept on writing,
Speaker 1: covering his journeys across rivers of ice in the far
Speaker 1: northern reaches of the Ottoman Empire, to the Sahara Desert
Speaker 1: and the Nile River in the south. And because Evliah
Speaker 1: went to places that many others didn't even bother to
Speaker 1: visit or at least document, his record has become a
Speaker 1: key source for archaeologists, geographers, and cultural historians, and that's why,
Speaker 1: in addition to discussing high points from Evliah's remarkable travels,
Speaker 1: we're also going to talk about the strange history of
Speaker 1: the Seahotana May, which, at nearly four hundred years old,
Speaker 1: is only now becoming an item of world interest. But
Speaker 1: before we get to that, there was the matter of
Speaker 1: Evliah's homebound years. Of course, he didn't start traveling until
Speaker 1: he was about thirty, So we mentioned Evliah was a gentleman,
Speaker 1: and in fact, his name Chellaby means gentleman, so appropriately enough.
Speaker 1: He grew up in the cultured atmosphere of the Ottoman court,
Speaker 1: where his father was the Sultan's chief goldsmith, and his
Speaker 1: mother was an Abcasian, possibly a slave girl given to
Speaker 1: the goldsmith in marriage by the Fulton, who told him,
Speaker 1: grand Aga, you're an old man in but God willing
Speaker 1: from this maiden you will have an angel like world
Speaker 1: adorning son. And sure enough Evil was born nine months
Speaker 1: ten days after that in sixteen eleven in Istanbul, and
Speaker 1: he started his education as other children of his class
Speaker 1: would have, at the Madressa, which was Arabic school, where
Speaker 1: he would have learned to recite the Koran, become a
Speaker 1: prayer caller, and he would have also studied languages to Turkish, Persian,
Speaker 1: Arabic plus Greek and Latin, and stories of Roman emperors
Speaker 1: and Alexander the Great that he picked up from the
Speaker 1: non Muslims who worked in his father's gold shop. And
Speaker 1: when he wasn't studying, Eedliah still learned in a different way.
Speaker 1: He roamed a standbull, watching artisans, exploring mosques, and occasionally
Speaker 1: even attending court with his father. By his teens, Eliot
Speaker 1: could recite the entire Koran from memory. This took him
Speaker 1: about eight hours to do, and he'd do it every
Speaker 1: single Thursday, and he said he was proud to have
Speaker 1: made retained this tradition through his life. It was during
Speaker 1: one of those recitations, in fact, that he got kind
Speaker 1: of his big break in a sense. During a recital,
Speaker 1: Evlo was summoned by the reigning Sultan Murad the Fourth,
Speaker 1: who asked him how long his recitations took, and eight
Speaker 1: hours must have seemed like a really good answer to him,
Speaker 1: because the Sultan essentially then told him that they were
Speaker 1: going to be friends. Okay, so what does being friends
Speaker 1: with the Sultan really entailed. To me, it sounds a
Speaker 1: bit like pursuing a higher education, because Evilo was soon
Speaker 1: set up with a tutor, a calligraphy master, a spiritual advisor,
Speaker 1: a music teacher for music and singing, a grammar instructor,
Speaker 1: plus his old master for continued Koran studies, and so
Speaker 1: his job essentially became to read and write, you know,
Speaker 1: study during the day and night, refine his manners, dressed nicely,
Speaker 1: and recite entertaining things for the Sultan, really showing off
Speaker 1: his learning, and he he gives a sample of what
Speaker 1: this usually involved in his book of Travels. He recounts
Speaker 1: an early meeting where he asked the Sultan, look, I
Speaker 1: will what exactly do you want to hear me recite?
Speaker 1: You know, literature I can do Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew, Syriac, Greek,
Speaker 1: maybe a medley of musical forms, maybe a selection of
Speaker 1: different kinds of verse poetry. The Sultan actually even calls
Speaker 1: them out on showing off so much, because in between
Speaker 1: cataloging all this knowledge, this huge platter of things he
Speaker 1: can recite for the Sultan, he throwing puns and make
Speaker 1: witty remarks, some of them kind of risque and polished
Speaker 1: the whole performance off by somersaulting out of the room.
Speaker 1: I mean this kid, this kid knew how to put
Speaker 1: on a show for sure. So his next two years
Speaker 1: at court involved lots of study, beautiful books, calligraphy practice,
Speaker 1: and those audiences with the Sultan and fancy presence as well.
Speaker 1: A silver ink pot studded with jewels, wasn't one notable one?
Speaker 1: And also a writing board and lay it with mother
Speaker 1: of pearl good accessories for the scholar. Yeah, a gem
Speaker 1: encrusted back scratcher, that's a bonus. So handy. But he
Speaker 1: became especially valued when Murad the fourth was feeling down,
Speaker 1: since he could crack him up with his near constant jokes.
Speaker 1: Courtiers would hurry evliah In and Murad would say, quote, look,
Speaker 1: the dispeller of woe has arrived. Sometimes his duties would
Speaker 1: be a little more solemn, Koran recitations, leading calls to prayer,
Speaker 1: singing sad songs, things like that. Others were more outrageous,
Speaker 1: such as supervising the Sultan's wrestling matches and avoiding vomiting
Speaker 1: on the Sultan when he'd pick him up and spin
Speaker 1: him around, which sounds pretty nerve racking, not something you'd
Speaker 1: want to do to the Sultans, So it seems like
Speaker 1: with such a prestigious position, though minus the spinning. Of course,
Speaker 1: Everley would really enjoy every moment spent in his hometown
Speaker 1: of Istanbul and at the palace. But from about aged
Speaker 1: twenty onward he was itching to get away. He wanted
Speaker 1: to get outside of the city. He had only visited
Speaker 1: towns just outside of the city wall, so to make
Speaker 1: up for that, since he didn't have travel magazine studied,
Speaker 1: he'd quiz dervishes about their travels and learn about the
Speaker 1: seven Clients the four quarters of the Earth. Really just
Speaker 1: make the travel bug he already had really even more
Speaker 1: intense ready to go. In addition to his court connection,
Speaker 1: Evlie ahead family pressure is keeping him at home though
Speaker 1: as well. In an early book he wonders quote how
Speaker 1: to get free of pressure from mother and father and
Speaker 1: teacher and brother. I think that's probably a sentiment a
Speaker 1: lot of people can relate to. It must have been
Speaker 1: on his mind a lot, because when Evlie was in
Speaker 1: his early twenties, he had a dream, but not just
Speaker 1: a dream, It was a dream of vision, which appears
Speaker 1: sometimes in podcasts they do they popped up recently, I
Speaker 1: feel like now and again. But in this particular dream,
Speaker 1: he found himself with early Islamic saints and the prophet Mohammed,
Speaker 1: who asked Evlia to call the morning prayer. After he
Speaker 1: was done, Eliah went back before the prophet to ask
Speaker 1: for shaffat, or intercession, but messed up and asked instead
Speaker 1: for a similar sounding word in Ottoman Turkish say a
Speaker 1: hot or travel. So Mohammed promises him both, plus visits
Speaker 1: to the tombs of saints and prophets, which do end
Speaker 1: up coming along with his later travel. So according to
Speaker 1: the Ottoman historian Caroline Finkel, this type of dream vision
Speaker 1: is a common occurrence of literature from this time and
Speaker 1: when that Eviliah himself used in later accounts of his travels.
Speaker 1: But she also notes that in this case he founds
Speaker 1: especially genuine, like it really was a life changing moment
Speaker 1: for him, not that he woke up from his dream
Speaker 1: and started packing, though it still took about ten years
Speaker 1: before Elia could get away uh the first time, accompanied
Speaker 1: by a friend visiting nearby Bertha, and on the trip
Speaker 1: back home, he decided not to tell his folks but
Speaker 1: to set out again and head off to the north
Speaker 1: Anatolian coast um to to tour that rage in a
Speaker 1: little bit. Since he was traveling with a newly appointed governor,
Speaker 1: this also started a trend of journeying and the entourage
Speaker 1: of various public officials, so he'd serve various functions along
Speaker 1: the way, including things like prayer caller, tax collector, courier, envoy,
Speaker 1: customs clerk, even a mom basically anything that allowed him
Speaker 1: to tour with the retinue or run specific errands to
Speaker 1: places that he was interested in. Imagine a more practical
Speaker 1: version of his work for the sultan, and that's kind
Speaker 1: of what it was. Yeah, and it afforded him not
Speaker 1: only free travel of course, a job that goes along
Speaker 1: with traveling, but a certain amount of protection to You've
Speaker 1: got to imagine bandits in the woods and rebels and
Speaker 1: pirates of course, as we've already mentioned, so traveling with
Speaker 1: a group like this would have been a safer way
Speaker 1: to go. So Elliott eventually began calling himself despite all
Speaker 1: those other professions to lean and just rattled off world
Speaker 1: traveler and boon companion to mankind, which I think summs
Speaker 1: him up pretty well. Many of his journeys were in
Speaker 1: the company of his mother's kinsman, the one time Grand
Speaker 1: Vizier Melik Ahmed Pasha, and they traveled to modern Ukraine, Sophia, Iran, Iraq, Transylvania, Walachia,
Speaker 1: and Maldavia, Poland Bosnia, just a lot of places all
Speaker 1: over the place. And everlas range also starts to sound
Speaker 1: more impressive when you consider he was usually taking the
Speaker 1: hard away on these travels on horseback. After at one
Speaker 1: shipwreck in the Black Sea um he was kind of
Speaker 1: put off sea travel and completely all of his expeditions
Speaker 1: were over land. When he finally hopped on a boat
Speaker 1: about thirty years later, attempting to visit Cyprus, he was
Speaker 1: quickly rewarded with that pirate attack that we mentioned before,
Speaker 1: so it turned out that sea travel was just not
Speaker 1: for him. Out of commission for all sea travel, and
Speaker 1: after Melik Ahmed died in sixteen sixty two, Evilah no
Speaker 1: longer had this major patron, this man who he was
Speaker 1: mostly traveling with. But according to Caroline Finkel's article on
Speaker 1: him in History Today, he also didn't have anything stopping
Speaker 1: him anymore from going exactly where he pleased, so he
Speaker 1: ended up going to work as a cavalryman and serving
Speaker 1: in several major engagements before taking part in a really
Speaker 1: notable peace mission to Vienna, which established a twenty year
Speaker 1: truth between the Hotsburgs and the Ottomans. And everley Is
Speaker 1: account of his trip to Vienna is really one of
Speaker 1: the best love parts of the Book of Travels because
Speaker 1: it's so full of both day to day beauties and
Speaker 1: the horrors of the seventeenth century. Yeah. For example, he's
Speaker 1: impressed by the organ at St. Stephen's and notes that
Speaker 1: it quote fills the lungs with blood and the eyes
Speaker 1: with tears. But he's also really taken by an operation
Speaker 1: to remove a bullet from a man's head and the
Speaker 1: doctrine that he himself receives to stabilize three teeth that
Speaker 1: had been hit by a javelin. And he's kind of
Speaker 1: scandalized by social customs he sees when he's in Vienna,
Speaker 1: for instance, men and women socializing together in public, women
Speaker 1: socializing without their husband's present. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: even though this clearly disturbs him, he finds no problems
Speaker 1: talking with and even befriending individual Europeans. So after this
Speaker 1: epic trip to Vienna, Evliah moved up to Krimea, up
Speaker 1: the Volga to Kazan, and then briefly back to Istanbul.
Speaker 1: These trips back to Istanbul are really really short and
Speaker 1: um come with large spans of travel in between. By
Speaker 1: sixteen sixty eight he visited Greece. This is another really
Speaker 1: famous part of the Book of Travels because he described
Speaker 1: the Parthenon, which was then functioning as a mosque. And
Speaker 1: the reason why this account is so particularly important and
Speaker 1: why the detail is so valued is because just about
Speaker 1: twenty years after Evlasa saw the Parthenon, the building was
Speaker 1: of horse blown up when a cannon ignited an Ottoman munition. Stump.
Speaker 1: I mean, sometimes it's easy to forget that the ruined
Speaker 1: Parthenon didn't used to be quite as ruined as it
Speaker 1: is today. In sixteen sixty nine he saw the Ottomans
Speaker 1: take a Cretan fortress after a twenty one year siege,
Speaker 1: and he had the honor of calling the first prayer there.
Speaker 1: And then in sixteen seventy one, at about age sixty,
Speaker 1: he embarked on his pilgrimage to Mecca, again dreaming of
Speaker 1: blessings and this time from his father and his former teacher.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting too he did. I mean, of course,
Speaker 1: for a man who traveled so much and who was
Speaker 1: so devout, it seems like he would have tried to
Speaker 1: get to Mecca earlier in his life. He did try
Speaker 1: to go, he had events waylay him. So this was
Speaker 1: a real lifetime goal to finally be making it to Mecca.
Speaker 1: And when he did it, he went with three companions,
Speaker 1: eight servants, and fifteen Arabian horses, so every ended up
Speaker 1: spending twice the time that a normal trip from Istan
Speaker 1: Bowl to Mecca would take to After his pilgrimage, Everley
Speaker 1: is settled Cairo, surveyed the city, and made a short
Speaker 1: attempt to find the source of the Nile. But he
Speaker 1: died around six four, likely in Cairo, though the exact
Speaker 1: date and location are still unknown. Okay, so now that
Speaker 1: we've covered in brief, of course Everly is forty years
Speaker 1: of travel. What did he have to say about all
Speaker 1: these places? What mid what he had to say? So
Speaker 1: unique in the first place, And to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: his work is fairly formulaic in towns or cities. He'll
Speaker 1: write about topography, fortifications, monuments, you know, what you might
Speaker 1: expect from a newcomer to a town. But he'll also
Speaker 1: talk about dress and cuisine, occupations, class structure, medicine, naming, customs, speech, literature, hygiene, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, he was really pretty into. He had
Speaker 1: his slaves at one point clean out a public bath
Speaker 1: house where the benefit of the people, he just thought
Speaker 1: it was too growth. And then in the countryside he
Speaker 1: sort of stuck to a formula to kind of the
Speaker 1: in between parts of his travel. After all, and you
Speaker 1: talk about the landscape, how long it took to get somewhere,
Speaker 1: the direction he was headed in any high points like
Speaker 1: saints tombs along the way. But and this is the
Speaker 1: important part. With all the cataloging, usually comes an anecdote,
Speaker 1: a conversation he has with a local authority or a legend.
Speaker 1: In many cases, his is the only record of notable
Speaker 1: people or strange customs in a given area because other
Speaker 1: people just didn't write it down. And like any good
Speaker 1: travel writers, some of the neatest examples of anecdotes have
Speaker 1: to do with one of our favorite things food food writing.
Speaker 1: So for instance, he broods over whether it's religiously acceptable
Speaker 1: to eat horse meat with tatars and um questions that
Speaker 1: a bit and another funny example, he assumes that it's
Speaker 1: probably okay to eat giraffe meat with the people in Sudan.
Speaker 1: He actually writes, God willing it is permitted. I have
Speaker 1: not found a discussion of it in the sources. He
Speaker 1: also claims to have found practicing cannibals among the Alms,
Speaker 1: who are Western Mongols, who he says would eat their
Speaker 1: dead to honor them. And perhaps most memorably, he talks
Speaker 1: about a Cerkashian village custom of entering a dead body
Speaker 1: in a wooden box in a hollow tree. So if
Speaker 1: the bees made honey, that meant that the soul would
Speaker 1: go to heaven. But unfortunately for Evliah, he experiences this
Speaker 1: tradition firsthand after he accepts some rather hairy honey from
Speaker 1: a local and ends up learning that it's honey from
Speaker 1: a hive that was built on a dead man's crotch.
Speaker 1: He has an appropriately freaking out kind of reaction to
Speaker 1: learning this, But Eveleah Chelloby biographer Robert Dankoff also notes
Speaker 1: that the further out on the frontier Evla gets, the
Speaker 1: more remarkable his stories. And I mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: if we should consider the cannibals and the honey ones
Speaker 1: kind of in that end of the spectrum. But some
Speaker 1: of the things that sound really shocking are of course true.
Speaker 1: He talks about female circumcision, for instance, but others are
Speaker 1: clearly made up and duds, fake trips to Western Europe,
Speaker 1: ones with ridiculously short timelines, especially considering Evlia and what
Speaker 1: we can already assume about how he preferred to travel,
Speaker 1: which was leisurely um. And then also folk tales that
Speaker 1: are obviously not true and they're presented as fact. And
Speaker 1: I think this was interesting though, according to Dankov, wasn't
Speaker 1: like Evly was trying to pull on over on his readers.
Speaker 1: He suggests that the readers would have immediately recognized these
Speaker 1: as fiction, just like modern readers would, and they were
Speaker 1: really just included to entertain something that doesn't exactly fit.
Speaker 1: I guess with our notions of travel writing today, you
Speaker 1: don't want to just make things up. But I like
Speaker 1: it too. Something about that appeals to me. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I feel like nowadays people want to know, they really
Speaker 1: want to know whether this is journalistic, is it true,
Speaker 1: or is it something that it has to fall in
Speaker 1: either camp. But the combination of the two does sound
Speaker 1: so interesting. So, considering the important of the Book of
Speaker 1: Travels as a geographic document, a cultural archive, and just
Speaker 1: a bounty of really well told stories, you'd figure it
Speaker 1: would be widely available. But that is not the case.
Speaker 1: Though Everley is certainly considered an audience in his writing,
Speaker 1: likely people who were well off, educated Ottomans like himself,
Speaker 1: that's really not how it went down. After his death,
Speaker 1: the manuscript stayed in private collections in Cairo until seventy two,
Speaker 1: when it was given to the Chief Black Eunuch, who
Speaker 1: was one of the highest officials at Ottoman court, and
Speaker 1: he realized that it was pure gold and ordered up
Speaker 1: more copies of it right away. Excerts of these copies
Speaker 1: were eventually printed in Ottoman Turkish now, which is kind
Speaker 1: of like Middle English for modern Turkish, apparently pretty impossible
Speaker 1: to read for anybody but scholars exactly, and it was
Speaker 1: translated into English as well. So the Book of Travels
Speaker 1: became known for Book one, which surveys is standbull. But
Speaker 1: the document as a whole was considered pretty much unimportant,
Speaker 1: not worth translating the whole thing, so by the late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds it was printed in its entirety, but at
Speaker 1: that point, the Silton considered some parts too too risky
Speaker 1: and had large sections censored, and that was really the
Speaker 1: only thing that people had to work with for about
Speaker 1: a century. Finally, in the mid nineteen nineties it was
Speaker 1: transcribed in its entirety into modern Turkish. Still they're only
Speaker 1: extracts available in English. I mean, when I first learned
Speaker 1: about this guy, I immediately checked my library expecting to
Speaker 1: be able to find a copy, and then I learned, like,
Speaker 1: good luck. But another hold up with people, I guess
Speaker 1: studying the whole manuscript, studying the whole piece of literature,
Speaker 1: is it's really huge. In his biography of Evliah, Robert
Speaker 1: Dankoff writes that quote, the gigantic scope of the work
Speaker 1: has deterred investigators from analyzing its structure beyond a mere
Speaker 1: enumeration of its basic contents. Characteristically, scholars have approached the
Speaker 1: stay A hootonomy as though it were a huge mind
Speaker 1: with numerous unconnected passageways. So what I take away from
Speaker 1: this is that because it does have so many relevant
Speaker 1: details to very specific areas of study, like botany or
Speaker 1: food in um but I don't know the Ukraine or
Speaker 1: something like that, people will go in and look for
Speaker 1: what concerns their own work and not really consider the
Speaker 1: whole work and the life behind it. But times are
Speaker 1: changing and Evla is kind of on his way up.
Speaker 1: He was named a UNESCO Man of the Year in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven, and a trail through western Turkey
Speaker 1: now follows the first stage of his sixteen seventy one pilgrimage.
Speaker 1: And it's meant to encourage historic and natural preservation, promote
Speaker 1: sustainable tourism, and also to advanced indigenous horse breeds. The
Speaker 1: horse trail it's called the Evil at Chellaby Way. And
Speaker 1: I think you listen to recording of a talk given
Speaker 1: by Caroline think about this right. Yeah. It was a
Speaker 1: talk given at the Royal Asiastic Society, and she said
Speaker 1: that when she was scouting out this trail, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to establish it with a group of other interested people,
Speaker 1: they found that a lot of the local folks along
Speaker 1: the way not only still knew who EVERLEA. Chelloby was,
Speaker 1: but still knew what he had written about their villages,
Speaker 1: you know, four hundred years earlier. It reminded me, I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe the best comparison we could make would
Speaker 1: be Lewis and Clark or something, knowing about the region
Speaker 1: they passed through if you still live in that region.
Speaker 1: But this is four hundred years ago, which definitely puts
Speaker 1: a puts a spin on the whole thing. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. I have one final point too, I want
Speaker 1: to make about travel writing in general. I was trying
Speaker 1: to think about what makes good travel writing. We've already
Speaker 1: established that we can't even keep you know, a week
Speaker 1: of journals when we go on vacations. But I do
Speaker 1: like reading travel writing, and I think that really strong
Speaker 1: travel writing usually does have all of those details, but
Speaker 1: has a strong enough presence behind it that somehow it
Speaker 1: all feelsunified without feeling like, oh, I'm just reading about
Speaker 1: what this person is thinking and going through. What appeals
Speaker 1: to you about good travel writing, Well, it makes me
Speaker 1: kind of think about what we were saying about Evliah.
Speaker 1: I mean, what really appeals to me is when a
Speaker 1: person becomes a part of a place. They're not just
Speaker 1: observing and you know, telling you what they're seeing and
Speaker 1: what they're tasting and whatever they're doing. They're talking to people,
Speaker 1: and not just talking to people, but maybe becoming friends
Speaker 1: with the people, um, you know, forming relationships with them
Speaker 1: and really becoming immersed in the culture, because I think, um,
Speaker 1: you know, that's what makes a really good trip. That's
Speaker 1: what really makes me want to go on a trip
Speaker 1: as knowing like, hey, I could become part of this
Speaker 1: place and this is what it's really like. Well, and
Speaker 1: that kind of writing is what's that's a good travel
Speaker 1: narrative apart from just a guide book or something where
Speaker 1: it's just telling you what you need to go see,
Speaker 1: there's no personality behind it. And I think one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why Evliah is such a strong travel writer
Speaker 1: and while why he is so appealing after all these years,
Speaker 1: is that even though he was very, you know, an
Speaker 1: elite man. He was well off, well educated, he was
Speaker 1: devoted to his empire, but he stayed pretty open minded
Speaker 1: during his travels. I mean, he would include stereotypes, but
Speaker 1: like I said earlier, he was willing to go meet
Speaker 1: people and talk to people, and um, talk to the
Speaker 1: average people too, and find out what they were doing.
Speaker 1: He didn't let it stop him from from really experiencing
Speaker 1: a place, and he knew how to describe things. He's
Speaker 1: known for comparing things to vegetables, for instance, when everyone
Speaker 1: can that's something everyone can relate to exactly even four
Speaker 1: hundred years later. So let us know what you think
Speaker 1: um makes a good travel travel writing or or any
Speaker 1: travel favorite travel story. Yeah, that's a very good question
Speaker 1: for you. I love to read good travel articles and
Speaker 1: notorious for buying those um you know, year and anthology
Speaker 1: travel writing cool. So let us know at history podcasts
Speaker 1: at Discovery dot com, and I guess that's a good
Speaker 1: time to go right to listener mel Okay, So today
Speaker 1: we have an email from Kathleen, and she wrote in
Speaker 1: to suggest that we cover genala Um and some French
Speaker 1: resistance history, which I have always wanted to do at
Speaker 1: some point, but I wanted to include one little story
Speaker 1: she shared with us. She said, the reason I'm sending
Speaker 1: this letter today is that I was prompted to write
Speaker 1: you by an unusual incident on my drive to work
Speaker 1: this morning. I was traveling down all of Avenue in Burbank, California,
Speaker 1: when I noticed a strange phenomenon. Whenever I stopped for
Speaker 1: a red light, my public radio station would fade out
Speaker 1: into my surprise and delight, your podcast would fade in.
Speaker 1: I recognized it immediately. It's the second in the H. H.
Speaker 1: Holmes two parter, an episode I hadn't done without yet
Speaker 1: and that I'd been anticipating. I thought at first you
Speaker 1: must have reached a deal to be broadcast on public radio,
Speaker 1: but later realized what must have happened an other missed
Speaker 1: in history fan must have been driving the exact same
Speaker 1: route at the exact same time, using an FM iPod
Speaker 1: transmitter to listen through his or her car stereo. I
Speaker 1: don't use an MP three player myself, so it couldn't
Speaker 1: have been coming from me. To add to the unlikeliness
Speaker 1: of this event, my public radio station couldn't have been
Speaker 1: more than point one or point two away on the
Speaker 1: FM number dial from the unassigned number this transmitter chose
Speaker 1: to broadcast on, or I would never have picked up
Speaker 1: its transmission. So there you have it. Burbank is so
Speaker 1: saturated with listeners that it is possible for us to
Speaker 1: be driving the same route at the same time, only
Speaker 1: a car length and a fraction of a radio dial
Speaker 1: number apart. So I thought this was pretty fun. And
Speaker 1: also I'm so glad Kathwayne as a listener, because imagine
Speaker 1: if you started hearing the H. H. Holmes podcast while
Speaker 1: you were driving to work in the morning, it might
Speaker 1: be creepy. Creepy would be afraid somebody was messing with me.
Speaker 1: So thank you for sharing that story with as Kathleen.
Speaker 1: And again, if you guys want to recommend any travel
Speaker 1: writers your favorite out there, you can email us at
Speaker 1: History Podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're also
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Misston History, and we are on Facebook
Speaker 1: and if you want to explore some of the topics
Speaker 1: we talked about today a little bit further, we have
Speaker 1: some great articles about travel on our website, including one
Speaker 1: that's called can Travel Make You Happy? By our own
Speaker 1: Amanda Arnold, and you can find it by visiting our
Speaker 1: homepage www dot how stuff works dot com. Be sure
Speaker 1: to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Speaker 1: Join how stuf Work staff as we explore the most
Speaker 1: promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The house Stuff Works
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