People Knew the Earth Was Round Way Earlier Than You Think

Summary

Ridiculous History: "People Knew the Earth Was Round Way Earlier Than You Think"

Podcast: Ridiculous History
Hosts: Ben Bowlin, guest co-host Max “Flat Earth” Williams
Release Date: February 11, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this engaging episode, Ben Bowlin is joined by producer Max Williams (filling in for regular co-host Noel Brown) to tackle a ubiquitous historical myth: that Christopher Columbus “discovered” the Earth was round in 1492. The hosts dive deep into the messy, fascinating truth about humanity’s awareness of Earth’s shape, debunking the enduring legend surrounding Columbus and tracing how knowledge (and misinformation) about the world’s roundness has evolved through the centuries.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Columbus Flat Earth Myth

• The Myth: Most people believed the world was flat until Columbus courageously proved otherwise in 1492.
• Reality: "It turns out it is absolute fiction. And in today’s episode, we are going to figure out when people actually learned the Earth is round." (Ben, 06:23)

2. Why the Myth Endures

• The tale, presented as fact in textbooks and classroom lessons, persists due to a 19th-century piece of historical fiction rather than reality.
• Max recalls learning this myth in elementary school: "Later to find out that... all the context around this was lies. And also, this guy [Columbus] sucks." (Max, 05:13)

3. Life and Priorities in Ancient Times

• For most of history, day-to-day survival trumped abstract curiosity about Earth's shape.
• Max: "You're really kind of more focused on this whole, you know, surviving thing." (07:43)
• It was only after stabilization of societies that people could indulge in speculation and scientific inquiry.

4. Civilization Video Game Analogy

• The hosts compare human exploration and discovery in real history to the mechanics of "Civilization" video games (10:03–13:35), highlighting how limited knowledge and priorities shaped ancient worldviews:
  • "At the beginning you can only see a little bit of the land around you. The rest of the world... is shrouded in darkness. It only becomes visible as you explore..." (Ben, 13:09)

5. Obstacles to Scientific Consensus

• Early societies were not "knuckleheads," they simply lacked resources and incentives for scientific investigation.
• Challenges: Isolation, religious authority, and the danger of dissent ("People often died in cartoonishly gruesome ways for pitching other narratives." – Ben, 19:34)
• Past thinkers (often "nerds") faced persecution for challenging orthodoxy.

6. The True Columbus Story

• Columbus’s real issue wasn't convincing people the world was round; it was underestimating its size.
• "If anything, Chris had funding problems because he just underestimated the size of the planet by a cartoonish amount. He thought Earth was way smaller than it actually is." (Ben, 25:14)
• The flat Earth debate simply wasn’t an issue for educated people after the 3rd century BCE.

7. The Source of the Flat Earth Myth: Washington Irving

• The myth was popularized not in Columbus’s own day, but by writer Washington Irving in his 1828 multi-volume biography "A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus."
  • "He claims that Chris has fought the system... single-handedly revolutionized scientific thought. This is all malarkey." (Ben, 32:19)
• Irving’s blend of fact and fiction was taken as gospel, disseminated through textbooks and other writers.

8. Ancient Knowledge of a Round Earth

• As early as the 5th century BCE, Greek philosophers were speculating about a round Earth.
• Hellenistic astronomers mathematically proved the concept and attempted early circumference calculations.
• This knowledge was known throughout much of the so-called “Old World” and persisted through Roman times and the Middle Ages.
• "No educated person in the history of Western civilization from the third century B.C. onward, believed that the Earth was flat.” (Ben quoting historian Jeffrey Burton Russell, 24:47)

9. Magellan’s Real Historical Proof

• The first experiential proof for ordinary people came from Magellan’s circumnavigation (1519–1522).
• "His journey did become the first solid proof that the Earth is a sphere. And he was just proving something that people have known since before the time of Jesus Christ." (Ben, 41:11)

10. Reflection and Debunking

• The episode concludes with a reminder that ancient people were as intelligent as modern ones, but with different tools and context.
• The hosts urge listeners to challenge the ingrained flat Earth myth and appreciate the true timeline of human discovery.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Debunking Schoolhouse Lore:
  "The idea that most of human civilization thought the Earth was flat all the way up to the 1400s... It turns out it is absolute fiction." (Ben, 06:23)

• On Human Priorities:
  "If you're gonna sit around trying to debate, 'I wonder if this world is round,' you’re gonna probably just starve or get a cut and die or be eaten by something." (Max, 07:43)

• Columbus’s Real Blunder:
  "If anything, Chris had funding problems because he just underestimated the size of the planet by a cartoonish amount." (Ben, 25:14)

• Washington Irving’s Responsibility:
  "Irving can’t help but zhuzh it up with all sorts of embellishment and tall tales. He doesn’t want the facts to get in the way of a good story..." (Ben, 32:43)

• Academic Consensus in Antiquity:
  "No educated person in the history of Western civilization from the third century B.C. onward, believed that the Earth was flat." (Ben quoting Jeffrey Burton Russell, 24:47)

• Colorful Aside:
  Max: "The story of Christopher Columbus is absolutely ridiculous. It is just full of so much lies and propaganda and stuff." (23:44)

• On Historical Transmission:
  "Other authors fall for this as well. They pick up on the thread, they cite Washington Irving extensively... This BS becomes accepted as historical fact." (Ben, 34:06)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 05:13–06:23 — The Classroom Myth of Flat Earth and Columbus
• 10:03–13:35 — Civilization Game Analogy & Ancient Discovery
• 14:49–15:58 — The Weight of Authority and Dangers of Dissent
• 22:10–23:44 — Society’s Persecution of “Nerds” and Outliers
• 24:47 — Historian Jeffrey Burton Russell’s Devastating (and Funny) Quote
• 27:47–34:53 — Washington Irving’s Biography and the Myth’s Propagation
• 36:49–40:00 — Ancient Greek and Indian Knowledge of Earth’s Shape
• 41:10 — Magellan’s Circumnavigation: Experiential Proof
• 43:00–44:05 — Modest Mouse Lyric, Reflections, and Episode Wrap-up

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Tone, Style, and Additional Highlights

• The hosts combine irreverent humor ("Chrissy boy ain't no hero. Never was." – Max, 24:14), pop culture references (Civ games, Modest Mouse, and Ja Rule), ribbing, and historical detail.
• Playful asides keep the episode light, even as it tackles deep misconceptions.
• The episode is interconnected with prior explorations of scientific heresy and historical correction.

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Summary Takeaway

The belief that people thought the world was flat until Columbus is a modern myth crafted by writers, not an accurate historical account. Whether through astronomical observations over two millennia ago or Magellan's circumnavigation, humanity has long known the true shape of our planet. This episode is a lively, richly detailed, and myth-busting journey—reminding us that real history is weirder, and often more impressive, than the simple stories we’re taught.

Transcript

[A]

Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartradio. Welcome back to the show, fellow Ridiculous historians. Thank you as always, so much for tuning. Now let's hear it for our super producer, none other than the man himself, Max Flat Earth Williams.

[B]

I'm here and I'm like Kyrie Irving. I don't believe the earth is round. Just kidding. No, the earth is round.

[A]

Okay. Okay. You know, that's an on air 180 from all the memes you've been sending me lo these many years. Our colleague, my brother in podcast arms, Mr. Noel Brown, is on Adventures will be returning very soon. Call me Ben Bolan. In various parts of the world and on this show in particular. Now, we're going to do something a little bit different today, folks, as Noel is on his various adventures and quest that we can't wait to hear about very soon. I have made a bit of a covenant off air and I've asked you, Max Williams, to serve some double duty as a guest co host here. So can I get you to confirm on air that you're okay with that?

[B]

Yeah, to be frank, I was kind of tempted to tell you no and make you just do the episode solo, but still just chime in periodically, just like once every like 15, 20 minutes with just like random facts. Just seeing how awkward that'd be. But you know, I actually have to listen to the episode a couple times through the edit and I don't know if I would be able to get through all that cringe. Well, I.

[A]

Am going to choose to appreciate that. And I did cut my teeth, as you know, over the decade plus now I've cut my teeth doing some solo podcasting. Respect where it's due. I learned a lot of that from our own nemesis, Jonathan Strickland, AKA the Blister. Our pal Dylan Fagan and I had had a show that I soloed for while called Strange News Daily. But I couldn't be more pleased to have you riding with us in the front seat here of this episode's car. The car of this episode. Yeah, it's got a car.

[B]

We're just driving around the world.

[A]

The car. We're just driving around the world. So thank you again, Max. This is going to be a weird and interesting ride for us and I know that it calls out to both of us specifically. This is the story of how humans figured out Earth was round.

[C]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[A]

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[A]

Earth. Right? As planets go, it's pretty great. I would say three out of five.

[B]

Yeah, three and a half. I mean, it doesn't boil us instantly, but it's no Ryza.

[A]

There we go. Right? And Max, you and Noel and myself and everybody that we have ever met and everybody that you've ever met, fellow ridiculous historians, was born here on Earth. Human civilization, probably. Allegedly. So far as we know, human civilization has spent thousands upon thousands of years learning about this planet and all the things on or around it. Surprisingly enough, here in 2026, there's still so much more to learn along the way. We got a few things wrong.

[B]

Yeah, a couple things wrong. And I mean, I guess the topic of today's episode is kind of one of these myths that I know I grew up with at least. And I'm assuming you grew up as well. I don't know if it's gotten out of it, but I remember being in like first, second grade that whenever, what is it? October, November. That day you're reading books, you're learning about how this guy, this Italian who was sailing for Spain, went across the Atlantic Ocean, this real heroic journey, and discovered that not only was there another giant landmass there, but that the Earth was round, like all of these things. And then later to find out that while this guy did exist and he did sail across the Atlantic Ocean to this continent, all the context around this was lies. And also, this guy sucks.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. The beginning of the old rhyme goes, in 1492, Columbus sailed, the ocean blew. A lot of us in the audience are going to be familiar with this Funny tall tale, like you said, Max. The idea that most of human civilization thought the Earth was flat all the way up to the 1400s, when a real drip, a real pill named Cristobal Colon sailed the ocean and proved, hey, you don't actually fall off the edge. It's a great story. It turns out it is absolute fiction. And in today's episode, we are going to figure out when people actually learned the Earth is round. And, Max, when you and I are doing our bit as research associates for our various episodes, we, you and I in particular, like to include little Easter eggs. Right. For Noel and myself, and little things in the notes that are not going to make it on the air or sometimes do. And just want you to know the top heading here is for us. I wasn't going to say it on air, but I think we should. And I want to thank you in advance for the beep that you're about to give yourself. And can you give us the title?

[B]

Oh, yeah. Life used to be terrifying and no one knew what was going on. Beep, beep.

[A]

That's about the size of it, right?

[B]

Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah. I mean, depending on your origin story or origin beliefs. Not gonna sit here or stand here in my case and tell you what to believe. One thing that can be agreed upon, humans have been around for a while. And for the vast majority of time that humans have been around, survival has not been the easiest thing. So if you're gonna sit around trying to debate, I wonder if this world is round, you're gonna probably just starve or get a cut and die or be eaten by something. You're really kind of more focused on this whole, you know, surviving thing.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. It's easy to take the shape of the Earth for granted today or the shape of planets in general. And it's also for most of human history, for most people who lived and died here, it was a very academic, non important point. It's not. The shape of the Earth is not something you can easily see with your own eyes because humans are in general, very small in comparison to the scale of the Earth. And this has happened to all of us in the audience tonight. You have maybe traveled to a very flat part of the world, like the endless plains of Iowa or the upper Midwest here in the United States, or maybe the right kind of desert environment. And you get out and you look around and it really does look flat. It looks like it's just flat. It goes on forever as a result. We cannot blame ancient peoples and communities for looking around and Shrugging and saying, oh, yeah, I guess that's the edge of the place. And this reminds us of one of our absolute favorite video game series or franchises, folks. Max and I are huge fans of a game called Civilization. So much so that we will text each other about it. We've actually held off recordings sometimes just to talk about updates on Civilization.

[B]

Yeah, it's a common go to for when we're qaing stuff. So like listening through, you know, our ears are occupied. And I'm like, I'll start a playthrough with Sweden. Why not? I gotta ask before we really dive into this, have you converted to Civ 7 yet or are you still on Civ 6? I'm still on Civ I know it's controversial right now.

[A]

I'm still on Civ 6, bro, because I'll even go back to Civ V, but I'm still on Civilization VI because like you said, it becomes a kind of comforting activity. The way the game is designed is brilliant in its psychological. It's psychological manipulation to keep you just. Just rewarding you a little bit every turn and keeping your attention, but not.

[B]

It's really got the dopamine hit stuff down.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And there's something comforting and pleasing in the repetition and the progress. It's similar to like a fidget spinner almost, or for some people in the audience, it's similar to playing with a rosary. You know, it continues and continues. Ed, what about you, Max? First off, what's the controversy between Civilization seven versus six?

[B]

Well, first and foremost, you said rosary, which after playing Hollow Knight silksong, I cannot think of any differently now because that's the currency in that game and it is the most brutal economy in any video game ever. Oh, that game is so hard, but it's beautiful. But I have tried to go over Civ 7. The controversy is, at least in my opinion, Civ 7 is not very good.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And Civ VI is tremendous. And to your point also, Civ V is also tremendous. Civ V is way harder than Civ 6 in my opinion, though Civ 6, I think is actually probably in my opinion is pretty easy. I tried a few months ago to go into seven, but I just. It just. I think Civ 6 is just so good that it's hard to get off of it. But hopefully, I mean, I remember when Civ 6 first came out, it took me like four or five years to get off of Civ V because it's comfort. I was talking to my dad actually about this and it's like, you know, he, you know, 80s 90s video games. He was very in that earlier wave, like first, like games coming home and eventually we'll talk about a rounded Earth, by the way.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, we're getting to it.

[B]

But he, I talked to him and it's like the funny thing about Civ is like, it's the most entertaining game of all time. And it's also like doing your taxes.

[A]

That's a perfect comparison, Max, because it's very procedural. Right. And there are formulas to learn, there are stats to play with and balance. Here's why we're mentioning Civilization the game. We're mentioning it because Civilization the phenomena gets a pretty good depiction in Civilization the game. Regardless of which iteration of civilization you play, it does this astonishing job of depicting the experience of early ancient peoples. When you begin the game, you've got your little tribe. You're probably placed randomly on a world map. And at the beginning you can only see a little bit of the land around you. The rest of the world, the rest of the map is shrouded in darkness. It only becomes visible as you explore your planets and advance through the game.

[B]

Right. And very similar to how early people were. You don't know what's around you, you don't know what dangers are around you. And survival is of all paramount importance. But, you know, unlike the game, you don't know you're about to get sailing in five turns or three turns, you'll get a monument, or you're about to grow that tile where you'll get a luxury resource. You're just trying to survive. So you're not really busy trying to figure out stuff like, as you wrote here, the shape of the planet or existence on faraway continents.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. We've got, at this point in history, we've got other more practical concerns, as you said, chief of which is not dying and staying alive, hopefully long enough to reproduce. So these big questions of abstract concepts like the shape of the planet you live on, they're going to be largely informed by religious beliefs and spiritual thoughts instead of scientific inquiry. I gotta tell you, we always like to hit this point whenever we talk about the ancient past. The people who were alive at this time, they're not knuckleheads. They just had understandably different priorities.

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[B]

Segregation in the day, integration at night.

[C]

When segregation was the law, one mysterious black club owner had his own rule. We didn't worry about what went on outside.

[A]

It was like stepping in another world.

[C]

Inside Charlie's Place, black and white people danced together. But not everyone was happy about it.

[A]

You saw the kkk. Yeah, they was dressed up in their uniform.

[C]

The KKK set out to raid Charlie, take him away from here.

[A]

Charlie was an example of power. They had to crush him.

[C]

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[A]

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[B]

Right? Which makes sense because if you're going to the same areas, you at least know what's there. You go somewhere new, you don't know what's there. And discovering a new place with a new biome is like basically going to a new planet. And to a point you made a second ago, about how people of the past were not knuckleheads. I like to think about. I like to do a thought exercise about how basically screwed I would be if you removed away some assumptions that we have in life. I don't know how to electrically wire something, but I can do things with electricity, or at least I can do editing. But if you took away electricity, I wouldn't be able to fix it. We have this science. We have this buildup, knowledge and accumulation over time, where these people were laying down the foundations of that stuff, they don't have those foundations. So I think that's an important thing. And to continue on that point, critical thought, construction of theory, all this stuff, those were privileges. And obviously you have some of that stuff like the early Phoenicians with writing and stuff, but where your basic needs are not met, it's hard to focus on other things because you have to go meet these basic needs.

[A]

Yeah, well said, Ben. You have to advance past a certain threshold of sustainability. You have to be able to support some contingent of people in your community who are not constantly just trying to survive. The people who for some reason have enough of a support structure to sit down and think about stuff. And when people first reach that threshold, in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, there also was, okay, we eventually get the thinkers, but we don't get a lot in the way of fact checking. That becomes a thing way, way later. And humans are still not super great at it. So if you are Max Williams in the ancient past, your understanding of the world is probably going to be based on the statements of the local religious authority. They're going to pitch you a story and you probably just accept it it. Not because you are thick, as the Brits would say, or anything like that, but because there aren't alternative explanations to consider. And in fact, if you have an alternative explanation or if you encounter one, it's going to be treated as blasphemy. People often died in cartoonishly gruesome ways for pitching other narratives.

[B]

Yeah, check out our two part series of the past where we talk about scientists who were horrifically punished despite being right. It is not the cheeriest series we did, especially the second part which is just about Alan Turing, which is just like this guy was right about so many things and history did him dirty. But yeah, and to that point it's just like, you know, I might have a different thought, but you know, I don't have theories and stuff. I don't have a way to prove this wrong. And also it's just the fear of it all. Like, I know we've done a past episode on the origins of ostracized. Yes, Pots smashing them and stuff like that. Yeah, especially you see like one guy bring up maybe the earth is round and he gets thrown out of town and gets eaten by a lion as soon as he gets outside. I'm not going to bring that up.

[A]

Let's also consider one of my favorite parables in this genre. Which we mentioned in that previous episode. We can never forget that the human being is a specific type of primate. It's the kind of primate that will kill its own people for politely suggesting that you wash your hands before surgery, shout out to Semmelweis. He figured out a way to save millions of lives. They beat the crap out of him and threw him in an asylum.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not great.

[A]

It's unfortunate. Yeah.

[B]

Thankfully, though, with time and evolution, this new group of people that I think we both squarely belong in started to emerge, called nerds. And nerds like things. It's kind of an obsession over things. And obviously, there's many types of nerds, but we're talking about people who really like things like geography, physics, math, space, and, like, you know, what they started doing was recording and keeping track of this stuff, often getting horribly punished for proving things that were right, but right. If you want to hear us talk more about that, check out some past episodes. We're going to just kind of breeze past that.

[A]

Yeah. Again, we. Just to give you the long and short of it, folks, we cannot stress this enough. Society was still actively killing a lot of these nerds or treating them as absolute whack jobs. Yet a win is a win. That's a bit of quick context on science, religion, the grim reality of human life. Now we get to the myth. All right, we told you the pitch. The pitch is this. The entirety of human civilization assumed the world was flat all the way up until 1492. Cristobal Colon, aka Christopher Columbus, aka a bunch of different names that he gave himself. He sailed across the Atlantic. He discovered the quote unquote, New World as. And the story, the myth, really paints him as a hero. They say, look at this. He's a ballsy guy. He convinces King Ferdinand and Isabella, his Spanish patrons, to back him on this wild, dangerous gamble. And he stands up in front of court and he says, earth is round, and if you give me the ships I need, I will sail west, and eventually I will land in Asia. Dude, this story was so popular, it got printed in textbooks. It got taught in otherwise credible schools and halls of education. And as you pointed out so beautifully at the top of this episode, Max, a lot of us in the audience heard this story as kids. It just happens to be complete bunk.

[B]

Yeah. No, the story of Christopher Columbus is. Is absolutely ridiculous. It is just full of so much lies and propaganda and stuff. I remember actually one time pointing out to somebody who was trying to defend Christopher Columbus, to me, they were saying, like, he's like. He's like, oh, he's one of the greatest Americans ever. I'm like, he literally died hundreds of years before America was a thing, buddy. You gotta realize that. Like, I get it. I get it. I'm not gonna sit here and tell people what to believe and whatnot. But that is actually just facts right there. But, yeah, I mean, as you put it, but Chrissy boy ain't no hero. Never was. And this whole Earth being round, which this is a problem I have with the story completely. You tell me. This guy went in front of the king and queen of Spain, a superpower of the time, and told them that they're idiots and thinking the world is flat and I'm gonna sail around them. And they're like, oh, you know what? Sure, here's a couple ships. Go do it. No, no one is that bad at investing.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. This. This was a Shark Tank moment. And the story is unbelievable, if only for that specific aspect. And there's a historian who often gets quoted remarking about this guy named Jeffrey Burton Russell, who points out, quote, no educated person in the history of Western civilization from the third century B.C. onward, believed that the Earth was flat. End quote. No education.

[B]

That's a shot at a lot of people living today.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Everybody's catching strays on this one. So if anything, Chris had funding problems because he just underestimated the size of the planet by a cartoonish amount. He thought Earth was way smaller than it actually is. That was the complication in his Shark Tank moment. He spent years arguing with King Ferdinand's people, essentially, about scheduling, about how long it would take him to travel across the sea to China. And also, as we can tell, he had no idea that there were two gigantic continents between Europe and Asia if you sail west.

[B]

Right? Because it's like, you know, here's the thing, as Magellan would later find, getting even just past this big continent is ridiculous. Like, getting across the Atlantic Ocean is a lot. Going all the way down to Chile and around is a lot. And then you have the hardest task of it all called the Pacific Ocean, which is massive.

[A]

Massive.

[B]

So, yeah, I mean, I don't know the answer to this, but just asking.

[A]

You.

[B]

Do you know how big he thought it was? Like, how long it took. He thought it would take just to go from Spain to India?

[A]

We know he underestimated the size of the planet on the order of like, 25%. He thought it was 25% of its actual size.

[B]

Okay, so it's kind of like sailing across A big sea. He thought, yes.

[A]

Yeah. And that's not necessarily his fault because, you know, they have very limited information available. But we are perhaps being a little bit too credulous when we accept this mythology entirely. So how did this myth get started in the first place? This is cool. It did not start in Columbus's time, nowhere near it. And when we think about that, that makes sense because his contemporaries, world leaders and scholars of the day, when he was sailing, they already knew Earth was round. So it would not make sense for them to care about this story. It would be such a non issue. It would be as if we got together and wrote a breaking news that Elon Musk has proved people breathe air. Everybody would read the headline and go, why? Or yeah, we know. Like, we know.

[B]

So weirdly enough, the myth of Columbus in the round world didn't come until centuries after the fact, the actual year being 1828. With a fiction writer. Make sure to know that a fiction writer by the name of Washington Irving, who gained a interest, an obsession with this guy, with this guy Colon. And so a little more on Irving. He's a pretty famous writer. He published the book Rip Van Winkle, the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I'm guessing you've heard of those, Ben, along with other stuff. And this wasn't just some bloke. This guy was out here hobnobbing and hanging out with the rich and famous. He was well known. And people, when this guy said stuff, they were like, okay, let's listen to this guy. Including his friends in the politics.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. So we see this happen in our modern age of celebrity worship. You have probably seen those weird articles where someone will say, what does Ja Rule think about this geopolitical event? Or what is your.

[B]

No one cares. Ja Rule thinks about this.

[A]

Ja, where is Ja Rule? Yeah, Irving. Washington Irving is sort of like that guy for these people at the time. He is friends with some of, as you said, the most highfalutin folks in the government. One of these guys is a dude named Alexander Hill Everett. He is the US minister to Spain. At this point in history, being called the minister to a specific country, it's pretty much what you would call an ambassador today. So Alex hits up his buddy Irving and says, hey, man, come kick it with me in Madrid. It's dope AF or something to that effect. Washington Irving takes Alex up on the offer. So he travels to Madrid, which takes a very long time back then he falls in love with this huge archive of documents all about Christopher Columbus. He's. He's feeling it, man. And for fellow writers in the crowd, you know what we're talking about. Irving is inspired. He knows enough to take the inspiration whenever it comes. And so he tells himself, I'm going to write a biography of Columbus. It's going to be the definitive biography. I'm going to use all this stuff I'm learning about him now. And it does make sense, Max, because despite being just a terrible person, Christopher Columbus lives this cinematic, fascinating life. In the course of our research for this, by the way, we found that even after he died, he still traveled way more than most Europeans.

[B]

Right. So, you know, I think we should probably take this one, go back and forth just to kind of illustrate how ridiculous of a tour his body took. So he initially dies 1506, and he's buried in Valadolid, Spain. I totally pronounced that correct. But then three years later, his remains get taken and put into his family, Moslem, or mausoleum, actually named after the ruler Mausolus, the guy to be buried in a Moslem over in Seva.

[A]

And then in 1542, his remains get transferred to Santo Domingo, Hispaniola, which is now in the Dominican Republic.

[B]

And then again, a big time jump, about 250, 253 years, if we want to be specific. His bones are moved to Havana, Cuba. And then even more later, 100 years later, they're shipped back across the Atlantic back to Sevilla. Am I saying that one right?

[A]

Sevilla.

[B]

Sevilla. Sevilla in 1896. So, yeah, yeah.

[A]

So what we're saying is this guy's whole existence, Sith lord of colonialism that he may be, his whole existence makes for a real page turner. So it also makes sense that Irving wants to write about it. But there's an issue that you had just emphasized there backs a little bit earlier. Our buddy Irving is an excellent writer. He's an excellent author. We're not going to take that away from him. But he's an excellent fiction writer. He's an excellent fiction author. So even though Chris's life is full of strange, fascinating events, Irving can't help but zhuzh it up with all sorts of embellishment and tall tales. He doesn't want the facts to get in the way of a good story, like our buddy Aaron Tracy said, talking about Roald Dahl. So Irving adds a little dramatic tension. And he claims that Chris has fought the system, that Christopher Columbus is the first real guy to claim Earth is round, that he bucked this system system of the day, that he beefed with the church and the geographers alike, that he talked trash to the royal court, tossed a middle finger to the haters, and single handedly revolutionized scientific thought. This is all malarkey.

[B]

Oh, yeah, all made up. But when you're famous like Irving, and to a point earlier in this episode, when you don't really have people who can sit up, stand up and just say no, you're wrong, or like, you know, obviously there's a lot more research at this point in time, but, you know, this guy sat here, he's famous. He's done all this research, he says it's true. Who's gonna call him out? He is, as you wrote here in your wonderful research brief, by the way, shout out to Ben here for writing this research. He is phone book famous, meaning he could write the most boring yellow pages or white pages even thing, and it'd be a runaway hit because he's just that famous. And so when he publishes this book, a history of the life and voyages of Christopher Columbus, massive hit, released in four volumes. Wild praise, breathless reviews, McGraw Hill's already putting in their textbooks. I'm making that last part up, but it might be true. Prove me wrong. Yeah, in other ways, it's just. It's a hit. Everyone wants it and everyone believes it.

[A]

Yeah, everybody who can read is talking about it. And virtually everyone who snags a copy of this considers it to be gospel. God's honest truth. Christopher Columbus told in detail with 100% accuracy. Other authors fall for this as well. They pick up on the thread, they cite Washington Irving extensively, especially other famous authors like the French guy Antoine Jean Letron. This BS becomes accepted as historical fact. And that is why even today you will still hear some people falling for the whole thing. Now we got to give credit where it's due. Nice one, Irving. We don't know why you did it, but you pulled it off, man.

[B]

Thanks, bud. You're so great. You really, you know.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Help that a lot. But I mean, I guess, you know, are we any better than Irving if we don't tell the truth? I mean, obviously, yes, we are, but not by a large enough margin that I think we should probably dive into it. So, again, you know, as we've mentioned multiple times in this episode, the show, everything, ancient people were just as smart as us. And, you know, there's, you know, some very smart people, some very dumb people, there's some good people, bad people, blah, blah, blah. They just didn't have the same access that we have now. They didn't have this foundation of knowledge that we had.

[A]

Right, yeah. They had their own pantheon of pet peeves, just like everybody does today. They had their own goals, they had daily annoyances, fart jokes. Then as now, we're still peak comedy. Not everybody was exceptional. But I love the point you're making, Max. The vast majority of people are far from stupid. They just don't have. They don't have things like encyclopedias. Right. They don't have communication channels that allow them to see alternative viewpoints or the opportunity podcasts. Right. For better or worse, I love the idea of a medieval podcast or late antiquity podcast. They don't have have these opportunities. But humans have always been pretty good at observing the world around them. We know as far back as the 5th century BCE there are written explorations or speculations about Earth as a sphere that comes from various Greek philosophers. Then you go a little further to 300 BCE because as you and I were talking about off air, BCE counts down. Yeah, we see.

[B]

Must have been so anxiety inducing because you're just like every year you're going down a number and you're like, what are we counting down to? Oh, bad joke. Draw myself for that one.

[A]

No, that's great. Let's keep the bad jokes going. Because I've always thought it had to be weird for Jesus Christ, you know what I mean? He's growing up and it's counting down. And he asked God why the system is counting down. And God is like, let's put a pin in that.

[B]

You'll know soon enough.

[A]

Exactly right. There are other jokes we could do here, but we're going to keep it PG 13. So, all right, it's 300 BCE circa thereabouts. And there's a Greek ethnographer named Megasthenes, and Megasthenes shouts out Brahman nerds in India. And he says, these guys have already figured out Earth was a sphere. Although to be fair, they did also argue that Earth is not just a sphere, but the center of the universe. This is a classic common human mistake.

[B]

That was a lot more work to prove.

[A]

Right?

[B]

I mean, that's the one you can just. Because you can't really. I mean, the well known fact is you can go by the ocean and get on something high. You can see that the Earth is round. It starts rounding.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

You can't go look at the stars and figure out that we're rotating around that big bright thing that you shouldn't stare at.

[A]

Yeah. Because the perspective is so strange. It will take a lot of other very clever people to even prove the heliocentric model of the planets. And then when they prove the heliocentric model, for a time, they argue that the sun is the center of the universe. So, you know, it's a work in progress. It's a learning thing. Around the same time in this period in BCE history, Hellenistic astronomers proved the spherical shape of Earth as a concrete fact through math. They also attempted the first known calculations of Earth's circumference. This knowledge later migrated slowly throughout triumphant disaster to the Romans. Then it spreads again slowly throughout what is sometimes called the Old World, through late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Then our returning guest that you mentioned just a few minutes ago, Ferdinand Magellan and company finally demonstrate the concept that the Earth is round. They experientially prove it beginning in 1519 by literally circumnavigating the globe, sailing around the planet in an amazing, preposterous, disastrous expedition that was, to your earlier point, literally more dangerous than space travel is today. And Magellan didn't end his story the way he would have preferred.

[B]

Didn't he die on that journey? I can't remember.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, non consensual death as well.

[B]

Did he get put in a. In a barrel of pickles like Frederick Barbarossa, or did they respect his body?

[A]

To our knowledge, he did not end up literally pickled in a barrel. But there's a reason you're bringing this up, Max.

[B]

Oh, yeah, well, see, that kind of just seemed to be a thing. A thing people did. So Frederick Barbarossa, when he was doing crusade, how he died, we actually have an episode about this. He got annoyed in his army, rode off on his own. His horse threw him off in a river and he drowned. It was covered in armor. And his son wanted to preserve his body, so he put him in a barrel of vinegar, thinking that would work. It didn't. But then we also had a recent classic where we had a famous admiral. I think it was a barrel of brandy they put him in. Cause they were trying to. To, I mean. Yeah, trying to preserve the body. These journeys took a very long time. So I was curious because I don't remember which part of the journey Magellan died on. Like, I think they were in the Pacific Ocean by that point.

[A]

Yes. Yeah, you're correct. They were over in the Philippines and they spent several weeks there attempting to convert local populations to Christianity. Eventually they got caught up in something we call the Battle of Mactan today. And Magellan got struck by a spear and then surrounded and murdered with other weapons. This is not the way he wanted to go out, but his journey did become the first solid proof that the Earth is a sphere. And he was just proving something that people have known since before the time of Jesus Christ. That's the thing. So don't fall for the Columbus grift, whatever you would.

[B]

Proving that showing up at some place and telling a bunch of people that what they believe is wrong and you need to follow that is not a popular thing to do. He did prove that. Yes, many temptors did.

[A]

Yeah, that was.

[B]

The.

[A]

Actions in Mactan were perhaps one of the more violent predecessors to fact checking.

[B]

Maybe we.

[A]

I'll take the. Yeah, no, I'll take the drum riff. Okay. No, no, no, you're right. You're right. So, Max, I cannot thank you again enough for hopping on and co hosting this story, which is obviously pretty important to both. Both of us, because we were misled in our formative years, as was our brother in podcasting Arms, Mr. Noel Brown.

[B]

Yeah, no, it's been an absolute pleasure being on here. It's not that hard to track me down and get me on air. You know, it's kind of around. But I didn't want to. Leave us with one quote from my favorite band of all time, Modest Mouse. And the line is, yeah, the universe is shaped exactly like the Earth. You go straight long enough, we'll run into an ice wall. That'll stop us. Special thanks also to our composer and my real, actual facts brother, Alex Williams.

[A]

Yeah, you had you. You had me in the first half on that Modest Mouse riff. I'm not going to lie. That's one of my favorite songs of theirs.

[B]

It's an amazing song. This is my senior quote.

[A]

It's a beautiful, beautiful song. And this that you're hearing is a beautiful song made by, as you said, Alex Williams. We all also want to give a big thank you to Jonathan Strickland, aka the Quizter, AJ Bahamas Jacobs, Dr. Rachel Big Spinach Lance, and then our peer show, Ridiculous Crime. If you like us, you'll love them, Max. Who else do we want to thank? It could be a random person. Do you want to thank Modest Mouse?

[B]

Let's thank my friend Rob. Okay, I'm just going to shout him out. Oh, my friend Eric, who just had his first child last week. Congratulations, Eric. Nice get. Get some sleep. Ha. Just kidding. You're not going to get any sleep, you fool.

[A]

And as my pal Noel always likes to say, we'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[C]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.