Transcript
A (0:00)
Get in the game with the College branded Venmo Debit Card. Wreck your team with every tap and earn up to 5% cash back with Venmo Stash, a new rewards program from Venmo. No monthly fee, no minimum balance, just school pride and spending power. Get in the game and sign up for the Venmo debit card@venmo.com collegecard the Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank NA Select Schools available Venmo Stash terms and exclusions apply at Venmo me stash terms max $100 cash back per month. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Brewing Co. No matter how you do game day, on the couch, in the crowd or manning the snack table, Athletic Brewing fits right in with a full lineup of non alcoholic beer styles you can enjoy bold flavors all game long. No hangovers, no buzz, no subbing out for water in the second half. Stock the fridge for tip off with a variety of non alcoholic craft styles. Available at your local grocery store or online at athleticbrewing.com near Beer Fit for all times. As the story goes, a single man in the 1500s predicted the future Pope and he also predicted the rise of Adolf Hitler. He was a renaissance doctor who got expelled for his alleged esoteric practices. And he was a prophet who claimed to see the future. It's said that he saved thousands from the bubonic plague, wrote prophecies so vague that they could mean anything. But somehow he knew specific details about events centuries before they happened. To skeptics, he was crazy, but to the queen, he was a genius. Two legacies in one man. This is the life and the predictions of Nostradamus. There are many Internet rumors about what he predicted. The true ones, the semi true ones, and the ones that are totally false. And today we're getting to the bottom of all of them. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. What's up people? And welcome back to camp. My name is Mark Gagnon and thank you for joining me in my tent where every single week we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from around the world. From all time forever. Yes, this is what we do. Here we go on deep dive wormholes. If you're a Wikipedia nerd like me and you would just scroll Wikipedia and just read random stuff. Well, hey, great news. That's why I made the show and it's not possible without you. And viewers like you shout out PBS for making the show possible. You guys tuning in every week, commenting. Hit me with a little subscribe action. Hit Me with like a little thumbs up action. Helps a bunch. Makes my dreams reality. Puts my child into college. He's not going to college. It puts him into a trade school. My child gets to go to trade school because of you guys. So thank you so much. And it's also not possible without my dear friend Christos. How are you doing? Great, Christos. We're also joined by my friend David. How are you, dude? This is the earliest you've ever brought me on an episode. I know. I'm so excited to talk to you, bro. Let's do it. I know, I can't wait. Right, Christos? Oh, yeah. All right, so we're gonna talk about a guy named Michel de Nostredame. Now, there's a lot of stuff around this guy, and people are like, oh, Nostradamus, he knew the future. He knows everything that ever happened. Da, da, da, da. And look, there's some interesting things about Nostradamus, but there's also a lot of farce, as they say, which I think is just a fun word. We got to bring that back. It's a lot of farcical information about old Nostradam. So where does it all begin? December 1503 in Saint Remy de Provence in France. Now, right off the bat, I just want to say something. I'm not going to say what his religion is. Okay. He was Jewish, but his grandfather, Guy Gasonet, had converted the family to Catholicism. Let's go, Catholics for the win. About 50 years earlier in order to. Avoid some persecution during the Inquisition. Okay, yeah, sorry. Okay. The Catholics did some bad stuff, all right? I'm not going to deny that. All right? It happens. Okay? But you got to. How are you gonna make an omelet? Crack some eggs? So look, I'm sorry to all the Jews out there that had to convert, okay? That's not right. But that is an interesting detail. Now, it's important because Nostradamus grew up in a household that was extremely intelligent, Right? I mean, if you know, many Torah Jews learned literacy much earlier than a lot of the rest of Europe. They were deeply, deeply academic. And that culture kind of carried on through many Jewish families to this day. And Nostradamus family, despite being Catholic, was no different. Now, it said that his grandfather tutored him in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and mathematics. So by the time he was 14, he was already attending the University de Avignon. Now, the timing of Nostradamus and his. At this point, Nostradamus and his attendance at the University of Avignon was bad because Only after a year of studying, the university has to shut down the doors. And why? The bubonic plague. Yes. AKA Covid 1.0. That's if you went to college in the 2000 and 20s, you probably know what this experience is like. And this is where Nostradamus and his story really begins. He didn't just go home and hide and do virtual school and call it a day. No, he spent eight years traveling the countryside researching herbal remedies and working as an apothecary. Basically, like prescribing people herbal remedies for their illnesses. Now, in the 1500s, there's a big difference between a doctor and an apothecary, right? An apothecary was considered like a manual trade, like a pharmacist, but like less respected by university professors kind of vibe. Now, eventually, in 1529, he tried to go back to school at the University of Montpellier, and he wanted to get his actual doctorate, but this time he got expelled. So the university found out that he was working as an apothecary, which was explicitly banned by the university. And on top of that, he had been pretty vocal about his criticism of, you know, doctors at the time. So he's kicked out of school and labeled like a medical rebel. Okay, think like holistic medicine. Doctor goes to school, but is, you know, ousted. But instead of letting this stop him from, you know, becoming a doctor, he goes back to fighting the plague. And this is where you got to give old Nostradam some credit. All right? At the time, medicine was built around the four humors. This is what the prevailing medical belief was at the time. You had blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. Now, doctors believe that when a person was sick, it was simply because those fluids were out of balance. So the doctor's solution to this was to use mercury, potions, garlic, soaked robes, and bloodletting. Yes, bloodletting. Like literally just letting blood go out of your body. It's still practiced in some parts of the world. I'm pretty sure it's how George Washington died. I think we fact checked this one time, and it wasn't the exact reason he died. That's what I meant to say. Now, they thought about cutting open a person and literally just like letting them bleed. Their humors would kind of balance back out, but oftentimes it just killed them faster, which is not what happened to George Washington. Now, Nostradamus was different. He didn't bleed his patients. He focused on hygiene. Imagine that. And then he famously created something called the rose pill. Which was a medicine to fight off the bubonic plague. Now, the pill was made from dried rose hips, sawdust from Greek cypress, iris, cloves, and line aloes. Now, rose hips were packed with vitamin C, which boosted the immune system. Cypress sawdust had some antiseptic properties, and he was actually able to deter some of the effects of the plague. And some people allege that he literally saved thousands of people. And at the time, was kind of hailed as, like, a local hero. And eventually he settled down in a town called Agen, and he got married. He had two kids. Life is good, right? He's good. He's a local hero. Saved a bunch of people from the plague. He survived the plague, he's got some kids. But then in 1534, when he was traveling and healing people of the plague, the worst possible thing happened. The plague came into his town, and it killed his wife and both his children. So get this right, Infamous plague doctor who's saving hundreds of strangers lives, but didn't save his own family. Now, overnight, the community turned on him. His own in laws sued him to return his wife's dowry. Now, a dowry is basically like money that the wife's family pays to a man when they get married, so they wanted it back. But around 1538, Nostradamus did something that got him in massive trouble. He was walking through a town when he saw a bronze worker making a statue of the Virgin Mary. Obviously, this is very important within a Catholic country. And the craftsmanship was apparently bad because Nostradamus looked at it and told the worker that he was making devils. Now, it's possible that he meant that the statue just looked bad, but some people overheard the comment and reported Nostradamus to the Inquisition for making blasphemous remarks about a religious statue. You can see classic mix up right now. The church officials in Toulouse then sent for Nostradamus to appear before them for questioning. But Nostradamus knew that being accused of blasphemy could get him killed during the French Inquisition. So instead of showing up to explain himself, he decided it's time to pack up your bags and leave France. So for the next several years, he essentially disappears. And there's not a ton that's known about what happens. It's believed that he travels through Italy and Greece and maybe Turkey. But again, there's no solid documents that confirm where he went or who he studied with or really what he was doing. And this period of his life is known as the lost decade. And this is also when historians Believe his focus begins to shift from medicine and things that are a little bit more grounded to more esoteric traditions. He doesn't outright abandon medicine, but he starts studying astrology and symbolism and prophetic traditions. And there's actually a famous legend from this time that serves kind of as, like, the origin story. Now, again, the. The veracity of this is difficult to really prove, but the story goes that while walking down a road in Italy, Nostradamus crossed paths with a group of Franciscan monks. He suddenly stops in his tracks, walked over to a young, broke friar named Felice Peretti and knelt down in the dirt before him. Now, as you can imagine, all these monks that are walking on the street are pretty confused at this random traveler is just kneeling in front of a random monk. Nostradamus reportedly says, I must kneel before His Holiness. Now, it sounds crazy. At the time, like, this guy Felice Peretti was, like, just a poor, like, friar, you know, trying to make his way in the clergy. But decades later, in 1585, that friar was ordained Pope Sixtus V. And that moment is often cited as the first real proof that he had legitimate prophetic abilities. Now, this takes us directly into the next chapter of Nostradamus's life. And this is a little activity known as scrying. In 1547, he settled in Salon de Provence and married a wealthy widow named Anne Poussard. He turned the attic of his house into a study room. And this is where the magic would happen. Literally, like, he was doing magic. Like, magic with, like, a ck. Like, you. Yeah, you get it. He would spend his nights in his study with books and a brass bowl filled with water. And he would basically use this method. You call it a ritual, maybe called scrying. Now, this involves staring into water or maybe a candle flame until you basically enter a trance, and then you begin speaking predictions. And he believes that they were not random or meaningless, but clearly manifesting from somewhere in the universe. And the underlying belief about scrying is that all knowledge already exists and that the human mind is able to act as, like, an antenna and tap into it, and then the information passes through. Now, this practice led Nostradamus to start publishing annual almanacs in 1550. These were, like. Like, I don't know if you ever heard of, like, the Farmer's Almanac, but this is almost like a tabloid kind of, you know, with, like, weather reports, planting tips, you know, some predictions about the future, but, you know, things that felt kind of like opinions. But the crazy part is that these books These almanacs were massive. And with their success, he decided to go bigger. He began working on a huge collection of predictions. 1000 prophecies in total, all compiled into a single work that he called Le Prophetees or the Prophecies. However, instead of releasing it all at once, he published the book installments beginning in 1555. Hey, we're going to take a break really quick because I need to talk to the fellas. All right? If you're a woman, you can skip forward. I don't really care. But, guys, I want to talk about one of the most probably demoralizing things that can ever happen to you. All right? You're in the bathroom, you're brushing your teeth, you look up in the mirror, and suddenly you realize, my forehead looks bigger than it did before. Well, the thing with that is that men don't go bald overnight. Right, Christos? Anyway, it's sneaky, okay? It's like, all right, well, the lighting here is a little weird. And then you're like, I just. I just, you know, took a shower. So of course, you know what I mean? Or maybe my barber just actually pushed it back. And then one day someone tags you in a photo and you're like, what is going on? And the worst part is that most guys don't know what actually works. I mean, there's a million oils and, you know, all sorts of things like potions on the Internet basically, that are going to claim to help you out. But the reality is there are doctor trusted ingredients that have been trusted for decades. I mean, truly, they've been studied for years. And that's why a lot of guys are using hims. All right? HIMS makes it incredibly simple to get personalized hair loss treatment online. You don't have to go to the doctor, you don't have to take off work, you don't have to drive across town. You don't have to sit in a waiting room thinking, like, oh, everyone knows why I'm here. You know what I mean? Through hims, you get access to prescription hair loss treatments with ingredients that actually work, like finasteride, minoxidil, the actual stuff that's going to actually help your hair loss. These are clinically studied ingredients that can stop further hair loss and even regrow hair and as little to three to six months. So it's amazing. And the best part is that's 100% online. You literally just go to the website, do like a little consultation, you explain your situation, and a licensed medical provider reviews it. And then if you qualify, they send you treatments directly to your door. No hidden fees, no surprise cost. It's not going to cost you an arm and a leg. You get real treatment designed around your goals. So for simple online access to personalized and affordable care for hair loss, weight loss, and more, visit himss.comcamp that's hims h I m s.com camp c a m p for your free online visit hims.com camp featured products include compound drug products which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety, effectiveness, or quality. Prescription required. See website for full details, restrictions, and important safety information. Individual results may vary based on studies of topical and oral minoxidil and finasteride. Let's get back to the show. What's up, people? We're going to take a break really quick because I got to give a shout out to the good folks at Dylan Optics. I mean, for the longest time, I've been wanting a sunglass partner, and I'm so glad that it's a great sunglass brand. All right, if you've ever seen me on stage, ever, or just on this podcast with my hair down, I always have sunglasses. I use them to keep my hair back. But now with Dylan Optics, I can also use them on my eyes because I swear when I put these things on, life was in hd. All right, they've got this patented matte lens technology that kills internal reflections. My least favorite thing is when you're putting on glasses, you can like, see glare on the side. And these are amazing. There's no glare, no weird, like, seeing your own face thing. When the sun hits it just right, it is a clean, crisp vision. The founder is the most American dude ever. He was literally in the Air Force. And then after he started experimenting with lenses because he didn't like the sunglasses that he had and literally was baking the lenses in his mom's oven. I mean, that's America. And now they design and manufacture by hand, and they've got these matte lenses and stabilized resolution lenses that adjust to light and make everything a little sharper. So if you want sunglasses that actually make you see better, that look great and also rock with us over here at the campsite, you're going to go to Dylan optics.com that's-I l l o n optics.com and if you use the promo code camp c a m p, you're going to save 10% off. So go check it out. Thank you, Dylan Optics, for making this possible. And let's get back to the show. Nostradamus was smart. He knew The Inquisition was burning people for witchcraft and heresy and, you know, scrying. And the last thing he wanted to do was end up at the stake. So he protected himself. He literally scrambled the text into a code and wrote in four line poems called quatrains and kind of mixed like French, Greek, Latin, and the provincial dialect altogether. And the result was a word puzzle. But it was deliberate and it was so vague and tangled that anyone that accused him of saying something heretical, he would be like, no, that's not what I meant at all. So this brings us to the predictions. Let's look at the predictions themselves and why people talk about them to this day. The prophecy that made him famous in his own lifetime involved the king of France, a guy named Henry ii. And there's a ton of King Henry's. So this is a picture of him on screen. That way you know which one I'm talking about. You know, it matters to you. You're probably like, oh, that King Henry. Yeah. In 1555, Nostradamus wrote a quatrain that says, the young lion will overcome the older one on the field of combat in a single battle. He will pierce his eyes through a golden cage. Two wounds made one, then he dies. A cruel deathlock. How can I help? The IRS said I filed my return, but I haven't. One in four tax paying Americans escape, paid the price of identity fraud. What do I do? My refund, though. I'm freaking out. Don't worry, I can fix this. LifeLock fixes identity theft, guaranteed, and gets your money back with up to $3 million in coverage. I'm so relieved. No problem. I'll be with you every step of the way. One in four was a fraud paying American. Not anymore. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply. So what does that mean? People read it and they were like, oh, interesting. All right, Fast forward to 1559. King Henry II is participating in a jousting tournament. He's 40 years old, facing off against a younger man, the Count of Montgomery. During the joust, Montgomery's lance shatters and a splinter of the wood flies up and pierces King Henry's visor, this golden cage. The splinter then enters his eye and goes into his brain, causing the king to suffer for 10 days in agony, which sounds like a pretty cruel death. And he suffered this way before he eventually died. Now let's go back to the quatrain. The young lion will overcome the older one. Now again, King Henry II at this time is, you know, the older lion, typically on his royal garb, he would show lions. The Count of Montgomery also had royal lions, and lions are often associated with royalty. The field of combat in a single battle, a joust, is how people interpret this. He will pierce his eyes through the golden cage, literally. This is how people interpret that cage. Around. Around his jousting helmet, two wounds made one. It's said, according to kind of folklore that the doctors examined, that the lance broke into two wounds, one into his eye and then the other splinter went into his brain, and then they became one, which was his cruel death. So this is how people interpreted this. And when it happened, people lost their minds. But there's a woman queen, Catherine de Medici, you probably heard her name before, and she was already a fan of Nostradamus, and she took this as absolute proof of his powers and vowed to protect him. So she invited him to the royal court several times over the years, and he cast horoscopes for her children. Nostradamus suggested that her sons would one day wear the crown. Which sounded pretty crazy, right? It's an absurd claim, since there were other heirs ahead of them in the line of secession. But over the following decades, three of Catherine's sons would in fact become kings of France. A coincidence, perhaps, but it only strengthened Nostradamus reputation in the court. So at this point, Nostradamus went from like a weird doctor in, like, an attic doing, like, some scrying stuff and a bowl of water, to a legit court advisor for the de Medicis. So let's jump forward a few centuries to another big one. The Great Fire of London. In the prophecies, Nostradamus wrote, the blood of the just will be demanded of London. Burnt by fire in the year 66. The ancient lady will fall from her high place and many of the same sect will be killed. Now, that's the prophecy. And if you know a little bit about history, this one is pretty weird. The prediction says, burnt by fire in the year 66. When did the Great Fire of London happen? 1666. The fire destroyed everything, including St Paul's Cathedral. Some people interpret this as the ancient lady falling from her high place. However, skeptics look at the original French that this prediction is written in, and the text actually says 23's the 6. So not exactly 66, right? 23's the 6, but if you do 20 times 3 plus 6, you get 66. Now, some people say perhaps he was using biblical numerology or there was some type of, you know, numerology. Associated with the stars. But it just again, shows the levels of carefulness that perhaps went into the writings, considering that he might have been killed, or maybe this was a retrospective, you know, analysis of his writings to prove his prediction correct. Another prediction that people point to is the French Revolution. In his writings, Nostradamus describes songs, chants, and demands rising from an enslaved population. He talks about princes and lords being dragged into prison and even refers to headless idiots, a line that many people connect to the guillotine. Now, we all know about the guillotine in the French Revolution, right? Aristocrats were thrown to prison and publicly beheaded. And because of that, that headless idiots is often said to be a reference to the revolution. And now another one that really gets people talking is Adolf Hitler. Nostradamus wrote several quatrains that people link directly to the famous Viennese dictator. One of them says, from the depths of the west of Europe, a young child will be born of poor people. He who by his tongue will seduce a great troop. Now, Hitler was born in western Europe to poor parents and was famous for his public speaking skills. And, you know, his ability to seduce the masses, you could say. But to make things even wilder, it's said that Nostradamus mentions a name. He writes, the greater part of the battlefield will be against Hister. Hister Hitler. Again, this is what people suspect is what he was trying to say. Now, this is where you have to dig a little bit deeper, okay? Because hister is actually the ancient Latin name for the Danube river, which was a historical battlefield. So many people will say that Nostradamus was likely writing about a geographical region, not a literal person. But weirdly enough, Hitler was born just miles away from that river. Now, is it a coincidence? Is it a prophecy that was proven true? Or is it possible that, you know, his last name has some type of, you know, connection to a famous river that cuts through their town? This is for you to decide. Now, this brings us to the main issue with Nostradamus, this retroactive clairvoyance problem, which basically means that nobody uses Nostradamus to predict things before they happen. We only look at his book after something terrible happens to see if he mentioned it. His writing is actually so vague and so full of metaphors that you can kind of twist it to say anything. For example, take the rise of Napoleon. Nostradamus wrote, Pau ne Laurent will be more of fire than of the blood. Now, people looked at Pau ne Laurent and realized those are the names of towns in western France. But if you treat the letters as like an anagram and rearrange them and it says ne pour laurent, which sounds a lot like Napoleon. So either Nostradamus is brilliant, or maybe some people after the rise of Napoleon just looked back and made a really crazy Scrabble game. Who's to say, you know, the controversy doesn't stop there? And skeptics also point out that Nostradamus wasn't just getting visions from scrying, but he was also a nerd. He loved reading. So many people believe that he likely just copied a lot of, you know, prophecies, perhaps from older texts. There was a book published in 1522 called the Mirabilis Liber, which is the book of miracles. It was a collection of biblical and medieval prophecies that scholars found Nostradamus likely borrowed heavily from. He basically took old prophecies about the Apocalypse and plagues and invasions and rewrote them in his own kind of cryptic way. But one important clarification, people don't really think that he did this in a malicious way. Nostradamus believed that history repeats itself. So he was simply just kind of projecting past events into the future and suggesting that those are his prophecies, which is a pretty good, you know, pretty good bet, right? This takes us to one of the most recent prophecies related to Nostradamus, but sadly, it's not what you think. In 2001, right after September 11, the terror attack in New York City, there was a so called Nostradamus prophecy claiming he predicted the attacks. And this circulated through email chains and even to this day on social media sites. The verse talked about two steel birds falling from the sky over the new city with the sky burning at 45 degrees latitude. I mean, it's a pretty remarkable prophecy, right? New York City sits between the 40th and 45th latitude and steel birds sounds a lot like airplanes. And the difficulty with this prophecy because it's so accurate is that Nostradamus never wrote it. The verse was actually a combination of real lines and fake lines invented in 1997, which is interesting by a Canadian student who just wanted to show how easy it is to create a Nostradamus like prophecy. Now, Nostradamus did write about fire approaching the great New City at 45 degrees. But in the 1500s, New City usually referred to places like Naples, literally Neapolis, the new city. Now where does Naples sit? Right next to Mount Vesuvius. Fun fact, that's the same volcano that destroyed Pompeii and Almost destroyed Naples. So if you think about it, fire approaching Naples made a lot more sense in 1555 than airplanes hitting New York. But after 9 11, the Internet grabbed that line and added steel birds and it went viral. What's up, guys? We're gonna take a break real quick because I gotta ask you a question. Are you the type of person that just wakes up in the morning and immediately, like, hits your vape or gets a coffee or throws in a pouch because you just want to feel anything at all? Like, just throughout the day, you're like, okay, coffee pouch. Coffee pouch. Vape. Coffee pouch. I mean, to be honest with you, that was me. Like, I was just going from cold brew to pouch to cold brew to pouch all day. And my felt like it was gonna explode. Like, I was just, like, felt strung out, like, all day, truly. I was like, just kind of anxious and I didn't even know why. And I was trying to, like, eat clean. I was lifting weights. Meanwhile, I was also chemically nuking my nervous system. And that's why I started these ultra pouches. I'll be honest with you, I found these on my own. And then I reached out to the company. I was like, hey, I would love to work with you guys because I love what you guys do. Ultra is amazing because it's nicotine free and caffeine free and it still gives you that focus and energy. It's really the best. Like, I'm like, okay, there's no nicotine or caffeine. I was like, well, what is it? Well, basically they partnered with neuroscientists to put together a blend of, like, nootropics and adaptogens to actually help you focus and get energized and kind of, you know, help with that oral fixation. No Diddy without, like, the jittery crash. So it's got like, L theanine, infinity, PX alpha, GPC, vitamins B6 and B12. And I'll be honest, they taste great, they make you feel great. And I don't know if it's just me or what, but, like, I truly feel like I'm more locked in when I'm taking them and there's no crash. And the craziest thing is that, you know, sometimes I'll still use nicotine. It just helps me cut back and I feel way better now. Caffeine and nicotine are going to wreck your resting heart rate. It's going to make you feel anxious if you're taking them all the time. And on top of that, it's going to destroy your sleep. So that was my biggest issues. I felt cracked out, I felt anxious, and I wasn't sleeping that good. But ever since I've been taking Ultra, I'm still getting that same little kick. I'm getting that thing to do throughout the day, and I just feel better. In general. Ultra is absolutely amazing. And if you're interested in checking them out, I have great news. You're going to go to takeultra.com that's T A K-E-Ultra.com, and you're going to use the promo code camp, and you're going to get 15% off when you use that code. That's takeultra.com and use a code camp for 15 off. And when you check out, they're going to ask where you heard about Ultra. Just please tell them that we sent you over at Camp Cagna. It really helps us out a lot. Thank you guys so much. Feel better, sleep better. Get less anxious, but stay locked in. Now, let's get back to the show. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because I want to talk to the gentlemen that listen to this program. So if you're a woman, you can skip forward. That's fine. Now, I want to talk to you guys because I don't know if this is happening to you, but I'm at, like, my late 20s. You know, I'm about to turn 30 next year, and I'm starting to feel it. You know, I go to the gym and I'm doing the same workouts that I've done for years, and somehow gravity is stronger. Like, literally, I'm doing the same chess work, and I'm like, this is harder than it was five years ago. And then it starts happening other places. Like, I'm feeling more tired and my workouts are slower, and my motivation is, like, a little less. And I'm. I'm like, oh, it's probably because I had a kid, right? That's probably why I'm just tired. Then I asked my other friends that are also 30, and they're like, no, no, this is just a thing. It turns out a lot of men start losing testosterone around the age of 30, roughly, like, 1% every year after that. And no one ever tells you that you're supposed to just wake up one day and realize, like, oh, my body's not running the same program that has been going on for the last 30 years of my life. And that's why I started taking Mars Men. Mars Men is awesome. And I genuinely take this. Okay. And what I learned is actually, it's really interesting. Your body still produces testosterone, obviously. Okay. There's a protein called SHBG that can basically lock it up so your body doesn't really use it. It's like you basically have all the money in your bank, but like you're, you lost your credit card. Okay. And Mars Men is designed to basically free up that locked in testosterone so your body can actually access it and you can start feeling better, more motivated and have more energy. It's awesome because there's no injections, no crazy synthetic stuff. It's not gonna, you know, mess up fertility, all right? It's just natural ingredients that are designed to support energy, strength and focus, to be honest with you. Here's what's in it. Okay? It's tongat, Ali Sheilajit, Vitamin D, zinc boron. All right? These are just regular vitamins and supplements that help with testosterone production naturally in your body. You can just go buy them. You don't even, you don't, don't, you don't even need this. You could just go buy these ingredients. But the thing with Mars Men that makes it so nice is that they've already done the work to put everything in the proper dose, all in one container. All the ingredients that you need to support your healthy testosterone levels are all in this bottle right here. It's not like, you know, caffeine where you spike and crash, all right? It's more like your body's just used to feeling how it's always felt running the way that it always has. Your workouts feel stronger, your recovery feels better, and your energy is just way more consistent. Thousands of guys are already seeing the same thing that I'm seeing, which is that, you know, I have higher energy. 91 of users actually have higher energy levels. It's made in the USA, third party tested and they're even giving you a 90 day money back guarantee. So literally there's no risk in trying it. And for a limited time, our listeners are going to get 50 off for life plus free shipping and three gifts@ Mengotomars.com you guys heard that, right? This is like an insane value. Mengotomars.com 50 off. 3 free gifts when you check out and you're going to get a 90 day money back guarantee that it's unbelievable. You're getting half off and if you don't like it, you just, they just give you your money back and when you check out, they're going to ask where you heard about Mars Men, please tell them you heard about them from me and the good people over here at Camp Gagnon. Now let's get back to the show. So as you can see, the post 9 11, you know, circulated prophecy was an amalgamation of many other prophecies. Another one that people passed around is this one I mentioned before, from 1997. Now it's said that this was written by Canadian student, typically cited as Neil Marshall, but you know, it's difficult to really attribute exactly who. And this circulated before 911 and then went viral afterwards. And the prophecy, again written by the student in 1997, says, 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. Now people interpreted that in, you know, December of 2001. They were like two brothers torn apart by chaos. Twin towers. The fortress endures. The great leader will succumb. Bush is going to be ousted. The third big war is going to begin. The city's burning. World War three. Now we can see in retrospect, World War III didn't really happen. Bush didn't step down. And really the only thing here is, you know, two brothers torn apart by chaos. But again, it just proves how effective retroactively looking at these prophecies can be. Because now we're taking all of our modern information, all the things that we know after the fact, and applying it to this prophecy that was written four years before. Now this isn't a one time thing. What's interesting about these types of prophecies that even During World War II, Nostradamus was actually used as a weapon. Now Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister for the Third Reich and one of Hitler's highest ranking members, hired astrologers to write fake quatrains predicting German victory and dropped them over France to basically scare civilians and decrease the morale of the French troops. But the crazy part is that the Allies responded by doing the exact same thing, dropping their own fake prophecies predicting Germany's defeat. So nearly 400 years after his death, Nostradamus writings were being used as like psychological warfare. But the final prophecy tied to his name wasn't about war or disaster. It was about himself. In 1566, Nostradamus was suffering badly from gout and edema. And on the evening of July 1, 1566, he allegedly told his secretary, tomorrow at sunrise, I shall no longer be here now. So some morbid thing to say, but sure Enough. The next morning he was found dead on the floor next to his bed. Now, over the course of his life, he became a pretty wealthy man, mostly from publishing his books, you know, these almanacs, and people were buying them all over the place. In his close relationship with the queen. And by the time of his death, his estate was worth roughly $300,000 in today's money. And it was divided amongst his new wife and children and then buried in a local chapel. But his story doesn't end there. In fact, it gets a little strange. It's said that Nostradamus was buried upright, literally standing inside the wall of the church of Cordelier in Ceylon. Now, legend says that he didn't want any filthy feet on my throat, meaning he didn't want anyone to walk on his grave. But that didn't stop a few drunk soldiers during the French revolution. Now this part of the story is just a legend, but like everything else in Nostradamus life, who knows? So in 1791, soldiers were angry at the establishment and they got drunk and they broke into the church and they started looting it. And eventually they broke open Nostradamus tomb. And when they opened the coffin, they found a skeleton wearing a medallion with the date 1791 engraved onto it, as if Nostradamus knew exactly when his grave would be disturbed. One of the soldiers, supposedly feeling brave or just very drunk, poured wine into the skull of Nostradamus and drank from it. This ties to an old superstition that went way beyond Nostradamus. Across Europe, there was a belief in sympathetic magic, which is the idea that power or wisdom could be transferred through physical contact. And skulls in particular. Right. These are the vessels of the soul, the mind, the brain. And so warriors drank from the skulls of their enemies that, you know, they respected. Scholars kept skulls as symbols of knowledge and prophets were believed to carry insight even after their death. So the idea was pretty simple. We're going to drink from Nostradamus skull and we're going to absorb the prophet's power again. This is a legend, this is a story. But according to it, it didn't go so good for the soldier. Nostradamus had supposedly written a curse that read, evil will come to him who opens the tomb. The soldier who drank from the skull was said to be killed by a sniper the very next day while returning to base. Now, whether or not this is true or just an interesting story that was told by the locals over the years, the mayor of Ceylon believed it enough and he actually saved the bones of Nostradamus and told the revolutionaries that he was a hero who had predicted the revolution, so they shouldn't trash his remains. Then they reburied him and he is still there today at his burial site in Cologne, St. Laurent. So in the end, Nostradamus, maybe he was a wizard, maybe he was a prophet, but maybe he was just a skilled self promoter and, you know, had some medical knowledge kind of as like a wandering doctor and a very careful writer who understood how to sound obscure and mystical in a way that people really liked. His prophecies didn't survive because all of them were correct. Right. They survived because every generation could find themselves written in those lines. And that, my friend, is a story of Nostradamus. Interesting guy. I mean, I'm not big on like, like, again, I, if, if gone to my head, am I going to say 100 certainty that people don't have prophetic powers? With scrying, could you access some type of information somewhere in the cosmos maybe? Like, I've never seen it, I've never heard of it, but who knows? With that said, do I think Nostradamus writings are some type of predictive tool to understand what's going to happen in the future? Probably not. I'm gonna go probably hard. No. But I do think what he represents is interesting, is that you have people doing this now with like every type of conspiracy. And again, there are some conspiracies that are legit. I'm not, not saying that, but what I'm saying is that people are looking for truth and meaning and understanding, and they want to believe that some guy told them what's going to happen, that some guy has the answers and that they're able to look back in these old books and be like, this is the truth I was looking for. This guy knew it all along. And there's some type of order to this chaos. It does remind me of Tsar Peter and Catherine the first of Russia prior to World War I. They bring in a guy named Grigory Rasputin. Who's this? You did a video on him? Absolutely. He's just a wandering holy man that is able to, you know, understand reality and the divine nature of, you know, creation. And he has these amazing prophecies and he's able to stop the bleeding of her son who has hemophilia. He's going to die out and saves a Alexei's life. But most people are like, yeah, he was like, knew a little bit of medicine stuff and like, dressed up to seem like this you know, wise sage that would wander the countryside. And this is kind of the same story. John D. Is another who was, like, very close to the queen of England's royal court, who was, like, another scryer who used, like, this obsidian, you know, mirror, to, like, speak with angels and get knowledge from the divine. But it's interesting. Like, once you have, like, power and influence and money, you're like, okay, what is the next level of power that I can get access to? And this guy's saying that he is able to talk to God. I'm gonna bring him in, of course, and I'm gonna get a little. Little scoop on the low. You know what I mean? Do we know how the lineage of Pope Sixtus was tracked from the poor friar? What do you mean? Like, how do we know that the guy who he knelt in front of ended up being Pope Sixtus? Yeah, well, again, it's a legend, but I'm assuming it comes from the friars that are like, oh, yeah, this guy sat kneel before me. I don't know exactly which source material. Like, what's the Original copy? Yeah. ChatGPT says it's explicitly an urban legend, but where does that come from? I don't know. It doesn't say. He must have gotten something right in order for this legend to happen. You know, like, it can't all be BS but again, that I think the Pope 6is one happens after his lifetime. The one that happened in his lifetime was two wounds become one. Henry ii. Jousting. Okay. And that was the one that put him on Medici's radar. I mean, it's kind of a layup. King's joust all the time. King's joust all the time. Also wearing lions on your robes. Like, he could have seen, like, you saw that he was like, oh, yeah, the lions. Da, da, da. Antonio Brown will get CT one day. Like, what a crazy. But is it possible that some people can access these prophetic messages? I don't know. Yeah, no, it's possible. I'd like. I wish so much I would be open to, like, the supernatural, you know? Yeah. I just tend to view these things as pretty black and white. If it had strong predictive ability. That's my whole thing. If there was, like, strong predictive ability where, like, there is a prophecy, even if it's kind of vague, but people were able to decode it and interpret it and be like, in the year 2030, a meteor will strike my house in Orlando, Florida. Then I would be like, that's. That's good. And Then it actually happens. I'd be like, okay, there's predictive power in this. Yeah. But the fact that it's all retroactive, that's my issue. Yeah. You then can pull more from his words to fit the narrative. But, like, yeah, to me, I'm like, what use is it if it's not reliably predictive? Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, if all the use of this is to, like, look back and be like, that's what happened, then it's like, all right, well, okay. I already know it happened. Yeah. Yeah. I need some. Some predictive element, you know? Yeah. Thank you guys so much for tuning into another episode of Camp. And my wife's calling me. She's pissed. Anyway, I. I should have predicted that. I could have had a feeling. I should have been home 10 minutes ago. Whoops. Anyway, thank you guys so much for tuning in another episode of Camp. This is the place where I explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stuff from around the world. We drop these episodes once a week, solo deep dives. Another one a week where I do an interview with someone way smarter than me. Thank goodness. And we also have religion camp, if you like religious deep dives. We also got history camp, if you like to go back in time to predict the future. But if you just rock with us over here, that's fine, too. Just drop a subscribe. It really helps out the numbers. And. Yeah. Thank you guys so much for making my dreams a reality. I'm so grateful. And if my, you know, entire career ended tomorrow, then it would all have been worth it because I got to spend the time with you. What? David, you keep saying this more often, and now I'm getting worried. I want to go back to die. If I die tomorrow. No, you don't want to. I'll be happy. As if you're not something. Tomorrow's not guaranteed. Yes, it is. I live every day like it's my last. Let's go rob a bank. Okay. Anyway, God bless you all, Christos. Thanks for not ruining the episode. David did a great job, guys. We'll see you next time. God bless. To realize the future America needs, We understand what's needed from us to face each threat head on. We've earned our place in the fight for our nation's future. We are Marines. We were made for this. Fuck you.
