Laocoön and His Sons

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry, and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy. When we were in Italy, the Vatican museums blew my tiny mind. Yeah. Uh. We saw so much stuff, and we saw the tiniest sliver of what they actually have there, which was in and of itself kind of mind blowing. I saw things I did not realize the Vatican would have collected, including an entire room of chagles, which is not what we're talking about today, but is indicative of the breadth of their collection. But there were a lot of things that I was just instantly fascinated by, and some I just fell in love with, and others that I just couldn't stop thinking about. And one of those was the kind of casual way that our tour guide there, and Tracy and I were in two different groups. Um, the casual way that my tour guide, Alexandra mentioned the lost Arm of Laocoon, and that's a story the super up my alley. But I had never heard about it in any art history class, despite having taken a number of them. Yeah, I don't remember if our tour guide told us this story. I do have multiple photos of this sculpture in my pictures from when we were there, but like, there was just so much I don't remember if we talked about this in our group. We definitely did because I was like, um. But the other thing I want to mention before we start is pronunciation, because if you look up how to pronounce this on a site like four vo or on YouTube where people are talking about it, uh, boy, will you hear a whole lot of different versions. I did this morning when I was like, I'm always better when I hear people say it. Oh, I've heard people say it four different ways, so many different ways. I don't know what to do with this. So um, yeah, there are some people will say it Leo Cohen almost like with harder pronunciation of all of the all of the vowels and consonants. Um are wonderful. Tour guide pronounced it more like lao kun, which is what a lot of Europeans seemed to pronounce it like. So that's what we're going with. UM. I also want to give a quick warning there is a very sad beat towards the end of this episode. Involving the holocausts. I just want to give you a heads up because it does kind of come out of nowhere um. But most importantly, we're talking about the whole story of this work of art, which is known as lao Kun and his Sons. It has been on quite a journey. The legend that inspired it is quite fun as well, and that is where we're going to begin. So, yes, we're going to begin with who Alcun was in terms of Greek legend, and there are multiple versions of this story depending on who's the one telling it. He's pretty much always described as a trojan and as a priest, often as a priest of Apollo, but sometimes as a priest of Poseidon. Yes, there I I out was very tempted to start trying to make a branching chart of his story and where it varies, because some will be the same up to a certain point and then they branch in different ways. They have some commonalities. Laocoon's story always involves some action that angers the gods, although this gets a little bit muddled at times. In some versions. He brought the wrath of Apollo by breaking an oath of celibacy that he took as a priest, but even this is characterized a little bit differently depending on the source. The evidence of his breaking of the vow is sometimes simply the arrival of two sons, Antipas and tim Is, but the story is sometimes told with a little bit more of a salacious tone, with Laocoon actually having sex with his wife in the sanctuary of Apollo. There is yet another version where it is Posiden whose temple is desecrated. So, according to those variations in the story, either Apollo or Athena punished Laocoon for his sexual exploits by setting serpents on him, and these serpents crush Laocoon's twin sons. One interpretation of this story is mentioned in footnotes of an article by S. B. Tracy, and this article is titled Laocoon's Guilt. It appeared in the American Journal of Philology in and this interpretation is that all of this serves as part of an ongoing perception of Troy and its people as being known for their sexual misbehavior. Yeah, it kind of gets set up as though this was perhaps propaganda that supported these negative ideas about people from Troy at the time when this legend was being formed, but there is actually a much more popular and far more common story that involves Laocoon, the serpents, and the Sun's although the circumstances that lead to Laocoon's punishment by the gods are very very different. That version is the one that's told by the Roman poet Virgil, who lived in the first century BC and into the beginning of the Common Era. In Virgil's Aneed Laocun is the only person in Troy who sees that the horse sent by the Greeks, that's the one we know as the Trojan horse, sees that as actually a sneak attack, and the Anied Laocun is recorded as saying, quote, oh, unhappy citizens, what madness? Do you think the enemies sailed away? Or do you think any Greek's gift free of treachery? Is that Ulysses or Odysseus's reputation. Either there are Greeks and hiding concealed by the wood, or it's been built as a sheen to use against our walls, or spy on our homes, or fall on the city from above, or it hides some other trick. Trojans don't trust this horse, whatever it is. I'm afraid of Greeks, even those bearing gifts. I so want a T shirt now that just this Trojans don't trust this horse. Yeah, I love it. According to Virgil, Laocoon's warning brought the wrath of the gods, because this war that was going on between the Greeks and Troy was a manifestation of their conflicts and desires. Athena and Poseidon were said to have been on the side of the Greeks and the Trojan war, so they did not appreciate laocoon red flagging that horse. The priest Laocoon used his spear at this point to pierce the side of the horse, and then sacrificed a bull and offering to the gods in the hopes of bringing favor and protection to Troy. But instead of favor, what appeared were to ven him as sea serpents. In Virgil's text, here's what happened next quote. They move on a set course towards Laocoon, and first each serpent entwines the slender bodies of his two sons and biting at them, devours their wretched limbs. Then, as he comes to their aid, weapons in hand, they seize him too and wreathe him in massive coils, now encircling his waist twice twice, winding their scaly folds around his throat. Their high necks and heads tower above him. He strains to burst the knots with his hands, his sacred headband drenched in blood and dark venom, while he sends terrible shouts up to the heavens, like the bellowing of a bull that has fled wounded from the altar, shaking the useless axe from its neck, certainly evocative. One Slocoon was dead from this attack. The Trojans in the uneeds seeing the serpent attack is a sign that he had clearly been wrong x scepted the gift of the horse, and then, of course, the Greeks were able, according to the legend, to take the city from within. Regardless of which specifics any reader may prefer regarding this whole Laocoon story, the image of the priest and his son's being killed by the serpents sent from the gods for mistakenly offending said gods has long been a powerful one, and it led to one of the most compelling statues in all of history. So around the same time that Virgil wrote his version of this story. According to art historians, someone carved a marble statue depicting Laocoon and his son's battling with serpents. This is sometimes estimated as being created around two hundred BC. That doesn't quite line up with the time frames of the sculptors that are usually name checked in relation to the sculpture. Plenty of the Elder, who lived in the first century wrote of the statue sculpted to commemorate the story in his The Natural History. He attributes the work to three artists, who he mentions by name. Quote. In the case of several works of very great excellence, the number of artists that have been engaged upon them has proved a considerable obstacle to the fame of each, no individual being able to engross the whole of the credit, and it being impossible to award it in due proportion to the names of the several artists combined, such as the case with the Laocoon, for example, in the Palace of the Emperor Titus. A work that may be looked upon as preferable to any other production of the art, or painting, or of statuary. It is sculpted from a single block both of the main figure, as well as the children and the serpents with their marvelous folds. This group was made in concert by three most eminent artists, Agissander, Polydorus and Athenodorus, natives of Rhodes. This statue is incredibly dynamic. Laocoon is shown with his body twisted as he wrestles with the serpents, and he is flanked on each side by his sons, who are also entangled in the serpent's bodies. One of the serpents is about to bite Laocoon on the hip. One of the children appears to be already varying near death, the other still struggling free and watching his brother and father in terror. Laocoon's face shows the agony of the struggle, although there has been some debate about his expression. We're going to talk about that later in the episode. This is considered to be an iconic artistic representation of agony, as well as an incredible achievement in representing human anatomy. It's also pretty large. It's almost life size. The dimensions are listed as a height of two d eight centimeters, a width of a hundred and sixty three centimeters, and a depth of a hundred and twelve centimeters, so that is six point eight feets all, five point three feet wide and three point seven ft deep. But despite its great size and the level of admiration that it garnered, and the fact that it was part of the collection of the Emperor Titus, just as was the case with so many other artifacts in the Roman Empire, this statue of Laocoon and his son's disappeared basically without any fanfare and with no record of its whereabouts. It was gone for almost fourteen hundred years. So coming up, we're going to talk about Laocoon's rediscovery, but first we will pause for a sponsor break. On January fifteen o six, vineyard owner Felicie de Fredis made a discovery while working on his land on one of the seven hills of Rome, Escalin Hill. It was part of a group of sculptures that was found on the site, something that happened with a degree of regularity as Rome went through a growth spurt starting in the fifteenth century. In this case, the find was under the site that had been the baths of Titus, a place known as Le Capoce, which means the heads. It's about six fathoms that's thirty six feet underground. The viticulturists find was communicated to the Vatican and Pope Julius the Second immediately sent a team to investigate. Included were Michelangelo and sculptor and architect Giuliano de Sangallo. So for context in terms to Michelangelo's career, he had completed The David two years before, and he would start his work on the Sistine Chapel two years later. Sangallo's son Francesco, also went to the site, and in the late fifteen sixties, which was sixty years after the find, he wrote about being there when the statue was first discovered. Francesco wrote, quote, the first time I was in Rome, when I was very young. The Pope Julius the Second was told about the discovery of some very beautiful statues in a vineyard near Santa Maria Madio Are on the Escolan Hill. The Pope ordered one of his officers to run and tell Giuliano de Sangallo to go and see them. He set off immediately, since Picolango Bunorati was always to be found at our house. My father having summoned him and having assigned him the commission of the Pope's tomb. My father wanted him to come along too. I joined up with my father, and off we went. I had climbed down to where the statues were, when immediately my father said, that is the laocoon, which Pliny mentions. Then they dug the whole wider so that they could pull the statue out. As soon as it was visible. Everyone started to draw, all the while discoursing on ancient things, chatting about the ones in Florence, the ones he references their ancient statues owned by the Medici. Just a few weeks later, a deal was struck between the Vatican and Fliegia. If Freddy's in exchange for the statue, Freddis would receive as income um the tolls from one of the gates of Rome's that was the Porto San Giovanni. Shortly after that, the statue was moved to the vatcan It was placed in the Cortile del Belvedere, and its display position has since evolved. With the establishment of the Museo Pio Clementino in the seventeen seventies, it's in the gallery known as the Octagonal Courtyard. Yeah, we'll talk a little bit more about how it got moved around in a minute. The establishment of the Laocun sculpture as a possession of the Vatican was and remains significant. Pope Julius the Second put the artwork on public display, which marks the opening of the Vatican Museums to the public. Julius the second felt that it was important for people to see this work of art because he saw looking at great art as a means of spiritual renewal. Unsurprisingly, the depiction of Laocun and his Son's was not intact. When it was discovered there were pieces missing, most notably the right arm of each of the figures. A Additionally, the son on the right of the statue was detached from the rest. Laocoon's missing arm in particular, left the work feeling incomplete to enough people that after several years, the Pope's architect Donato Bramante, who started working on the Vatican's velvet or Court in fifteen o five and St. Peter's Basilica in fifteen o six, pulled the most accomplished sculptures of the day to see what they thought should be done. This is sometimes described as a contest, and I suppose it could have been but if it was, it was pretty informal. This challenge was issued by Bramante in Rafaelo Sanzio di Urbino, who was better known simply as Raphael, suggested that the arms should extend upward, but he wasn't even really in the mix. As far as this competition. Bramante had made him the judge of the whole thing. Jacopo d Antonio Sansovino also put forth a plan for an upward reaching arm. Michelangelo had a different idea that, based on the sculpt of the musculature of the chest and back and shoulder, that the arm should be bent back, as though Laokun was reaching to grasp the serpent on his back, and the end sense of Veno's idea one out, and the statue was restored with an upraised arm. This was not a particularly surprising decision. Michelangelo and Raphael were arrivals. They had an assortment of conflicts, making opposite decisions from one another. Not too surprising. Yeah, that's the gentlest way we can describe their relationship. Michelangelo in particular, was very angry about a lot of opportunities that Raphael received. The restoration of this sculpture, including not just the arm, but several other pieces as well, was completed in fifty Initially, the extension that they had decided upon was used just so that copies could be cast to the piece. It wasn't actually affixed to the sculpture in any kind of permanent way. Then one of michelangelo students, Shiovanni and al Montorloli, attached a version of the arm for display that reached upward. That one actually reached upward at a more um aggressive upward rise than even the one that had had won this little discussion among the artists. When it was done, the composition was undeniably eye catching. It created a diagonal line that drew the viewer's eyes upward, and it was viewed by a lot of people. It was also drawn by a lot of people, and it was lauded for its beauty with this new appendage and the composition of it, although not universally, of course, it's art. Everybody has a different opinion. So now we have to jump ahead two d and fifty years basically to April two seventy nine six, when Napoleon Bonaparte moved his forces into Italy and an effort to confront Austrian troops there. Although Napoleon's forces were not expected to fare very well because they were outnumbered, Bonaparte was aggressive and managed to victory. It was the first of many as he chased Austrian forces through the country. He took a lot of Italian territories in the process. That is, of course, the very brief version of the story. But the important thing about that conflict as it relates to Laocoon is the resulting Treaty of Tolentino. This treaty, signed in February seventeven, was the result of months of negotiations between the Papal States and France, and in that treaty, France officially gained control of many places it had occupied since the invasion, and the Vatican officially and formally recognized France as the owner of a number of works of art that had been looted during all of this, including the Laocoon. So that's how in July of sev the sculpture was shipped to Paris. It was to go on display at the Museais Central Dessart, now part of the Louver, and the sculpture stayed in Paris for the next seventeen years. When Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo in June of eighteen fifteen, that agreement was voided and the art that had been signed over was returned to Italy. The journey home to Rome started for Laucoon and his son's in October of eighteen fifteen. It took several months to get there. It arrived the following January. Yeah, that was not the only piece of art that was shipped back, but for the purposes of our story, it is of course the most important. And once the sculpture was back in Italy, it was assessed the previously completed additions needed to be reattached. They had been removed before the statue was shipped to Paris. The task felt a sculptor Antonio Canova. He actually thought that the prior editions, the upstretched arm and the arm that was also added to the sun on the viewers right that son is often referred to as the older son. Uh kind of a thought those were not really correct. But he replaced them according to the prior restoration. And he actually told one of his colleagues in a letter that he knew the decisions on their composition had been made in error, but he felt that if he changed them or even raised the issue, it was just going to start a big fight with both artists and historians, and he wanted no part of it because there was no benefit to him and he did not see any possible way he would come out of such a conflict unscathed. But that was not the end of the Laocun makeovers. What maybe the most surprising of all of them is yet to come, and we will get to it right after we hear from some sponsors that keep Stuffy miss in history class going. Almost four hundred years after the Laocoon was found in Rome and acquired by the Vatican Museum, the mystery of Laocoon's missing arm was solved a little more satisfactorily through a stroke of luck and a good and well trained eye. At the time, the curator of the Museo Branco in Rome was archaeologist Ludwig Pollock, who was born in Czechoslovakian eighteen sixty eight. As a boy, Ludwig had always been drawn to antiquity, and he studied art history and archaeology in Prague and Vienna before moving on to Rome, where he settled down for the rest of his life, and in Rome he became recognized as an expert at assessing antiques and being able to correctly identify both their origin and their value. When Pollock happened to be visiting a Stonemason shop in Rome on the Via lab Acada, he spotted the arm. It was at this point just a few hundred meters away from the place where the Laocoon had first been found. Polack had studied the Laocoon and his son's enough to just visually I d the arm as a likely match. I feel like if this had happened in a different year, it would be something we would talk about on Unearthed. Yeah, and it really does speak to Pollock's great skill because he was there was one right up I read of him. I had to read it and train Leasian where they were like. No, he could with a glance tell you correctly like what era something was from and how much like it would be valued at. He was just incredibly skilled. Poblic had actually seen the arm in nineteen o three when he was scouting for another project, but he didn't publish his findings until nineteen o five. He took the time in between discovery and going public to collect supporting evidence, and he even took it to the Vatican during that time, in nineteen o four, presenting it to the curators of the art collection there, and he wrote in his diary of that particular meeting quote the custodians were quite astonished. Sadly, in nineteen forty three, Pollock appeared on the Gestapo list of Jews in Rome that were to be rounded up during the occupation. Pollock didn't believe he was in danger. He was prominent, guess, he was famous for his work and curating and dealing art and the Laocoon Arm in particular, but he hadn't done anything wrong or suspicious. He didn't think there was any reason for anyone to tar get him. Even the Vatican is said to have sent a driver to his home to offer to take him to the safety of Vatican City, and he declined. But on October sixteenth he was arrested with his family and they were all shipped to Auschwitz berken Now, and they were murdered there. Although Ligig Pollock did not live to see it. The arm that he had spotted was eventually reunited and restored to the statue in ninety seven, and it was a perfect fit. There was even a drill hole in the arm that perfectly matched up to a drill hole on the torso, and it was just as Michelangelo had described as the most likely position, bent behind Laocoon, grasping at the serpent on his back. And that is the version that remains on display today, even though it's been sixty five years since the correct arm was restored. You'll see a lot of images of the Laocoon that showed the upstretched arm. It's not because they're the photos of the one in the Vatican, but because there are a whole lot of copies that were made of the statue. These are floating around and all kinds of other collections. A lot of times those have been photographed. Uh. I saw one as I was listening to lots of different art historians say the name of the sculpture was a copy of it in another collection. I don't remember how the arm was positioned though, because I was just listening for the words. Yeah. A lot of them do have that upstretched raised to the Heaven's arm. And it's kind of great because it makes it really easy to compare and contrast how the the two different versions look. And you can kind of see where the musculature does, as Michelangelo said, match up to to the gesture he finally ended up with. And we mentioned earlier that this statue is sometimes dated to circuit two and that being contradicted by the lifetimes of the artists that were mentioned as creating it. But though Plenty aimed Agissander, Polydorus and Athenodorus of Rhodes, he wasn't accurate in his description of the statue, so that kind of calls his entire account into question. The big problem with his description of it is that he claimed it was carved from one block of marble. That is untrue. It is made of several pieces seven in fact, of marble that are expertly fitted together. There have even been theories that this dates back to the fourth century b C. The Vatican Museum was its date of creation as being around forty b C. The sculpture doesn't really match stylistically with the fourth century BC date. The Classic period had a lot more static poses in sculptures, but it does match with the more dynamics styles found in artwork from the Hellenistic period. That period is dated from three BC to thirty three b c E. There's also a possible explanation for that disparity. Are a lot of art historians today who agree that the Laocoon that Plenty wrote about was a copy of an older bronze sculpture. Yes, so this one that we're seeing is probably the copy. Uh. There have always been more controversies about this work of art. From a composition and artistic perspective, There's been a lot of discussion and debate. In the mid seventeen hundreds, German art historian Johann Joachim Wincklemann had written about the work as an ideal representation of beauty. He had also commented on the arm and its debate, writing quote, this arm entangled by the snake must have been folded over the head of the statue. Yet it looks as if the arm folded above the head would have in some way made the work wrong. In seventeen sixty six, German philosopher Gotthold Lessing wrote an essay about art that was inspired by the Laocoon statue. It was titled Laocoon or the Limitations of poech E. The majority of the work is really about visual art versus poetical art. And the Laocoon is only discussed in the first part, but Lessing makes the case that the Laocoon is ultimately not conveying a realistic scenario because viewers would not be able to cope with it. He wrote, quote, the demands of beauty cannot be reconciled with the pain and all its disfiguring violence, so it had to be reduced. The scream had to be softened to a sigh. Not because screaming betrays an ignoble soul, but because it distorts the features in a disgusting manner. Simply imagine Laocoon's mouth forced wide open, and then Judge imagined him screaming, and then look. From a form which inspired pity, it has now become an ugly, repulsive figure from which we gladly turn away. For the fight of pain provokes distress. However, the distress should be transformed through beauty into the tender feeling of pity. There are lots and lots of papers and books written about whether the depiction of pain in the sculpture is beautiful or horrifying, and what it means in context of ideas of Greek manhood, Comparing and contrasting in some cases with Dcleman's and lessons takes on it as it relates to the Laocoon. So many papers and books. I just want to point that out if you have read one that you love. I did not read them all, obviously, and I apologize that it's not included so many, so many. One aspect of the statue that has troubled art historians and critics is the expression on Laocoon's face as a scientific study, specifically his forehead. If you look at his eyebrows, they're clearly tensed. They create a ridge in the center that points slightly upward. It's a pretty obvious expression of anguish, struggle and pain. But then his forehead has ripples on it and they stretched from side to side. They're unaffected by the furrowed brow. They look relatively placid. This has really irked a lot of people over the years. French neurologist Guillaume Benjamin Armand Duchen, often named as Deuschan de Boulogne, declared that the combination of characteristics was physically impossible and that the disparity detracted from the arts impact. Building on that, in eighteen seventy two, Charles Darwin wrote about the issue in his work The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, and he wrote it in a way that it first seems kind of damning, but then acknowledges that this might have just had to have been an aesthetic choice writing quote. The ancient Greek sculptors were familiar with the expression as shown in the statues of Laocoon and Aretino, but as Dechen remarks, they carried the transverse furrows across the whole breadth of the forehead, and thus committed a great anatomical mistake. This is likewise the case in some modern statues. It is, however, more probable that these wonderfully accurate observers intentionally sacrificed truth for the sake of beauty than that they made a mistake, for rectangular furrows on the forehead would not have had a grand appearance on the marble. William Blake saw this piece not as a representation of the story of Laocun, but as a copy and a mediocre one of a Hebraic work that depicted Jehovah and his son's Adam and Satan. Blake used the image of the Laocoon statue and an illustration for the Cyclopedia or Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Literature, which he illustrated for Welsh botanist and minister Abraham Reeves. Blake's two dimensional image also included inscriptions surrounding the image of Laocoon and his sons which commented on Christianity, morality, the arts, and the quest for wealth. Yeah that's if you ever just want to spend some time watching an artists work through his snark about a thing. Read all of those inscriptions that William Blake put on his illustration of the Laocoon. He seems to think it's great that they're getting bitten by the snakes up. In two thousand five, art historian Lynn Katterson put forth a very controversial idea that the Laocoon may have been a forgery by Michelangelo. She cited an anatomy study drawing the artist had done of a man's back is a piece of evidence, noting that in her interpretation, it appeared similar to the back of the Laocoon. If you've studied Michelangelo, you know he often drew out his his plan and kind of did anatomical studies before he started carving. She believed that Michelangelo may have been hoping that the wealthy Medici family would have wanted to purchase ancient grow Greek and Roman objects that was something they collected, and that this sculpture would have ent ice them. While Katersson said she never set out to cause an uproar, many many art historians have gotten very angry about it and spoken out against her theory. Art historian Richard Brilliant, author of My Laocoon Alternative Claims in the Interpretation of Artworks, called her theory quote non credible on any account. In January of this year, lit Big Pollock and his family were remembered with memorial stones that were set in place outside their last address at Piazza Santi Apostolie. And now you can go see the Laocoon if you happen to be in Rome and visit the Vatican Museum, which I highly recommend it. Be ready for your brain to be putting at the end of that. There's so much stuff there is. It's kind of one of the things where I wish in the future that I could take a leisurely trip to Rome and just spend like days visiting the Vatican museums and go into one area at a time and just skip the rest and be like today is sculpture, only today is paintings. Um. That is the story so far of the Laocoon. Who knows what else may happen? Uh, Since we're only a hundred years out from the last development, there could be more in it's uh two thousand plus year life. In the meantime, though, I have a kind of a fun listener mail from our listener, Aaron who writes High Ladies, longtime listener, sort of from both ends. But I'm not sure if I will ever get my PhD. I guess I'm just a master student in history. I was listening in early May when you both talked about the Star Wars rides at Disney's Hollywood Studios. I had just gone there with my family and had the experience that should give Tracy some potential comfort. I have written the Star Tours ride ever since the original at Disneyland, and when I was younger it was a repeat, great fun ride. In April on Spring break, me and my son's were at disney World and the line wait for the newest Star Wars rides were such that we decided to ride the updated version of the classic first. It was cool that there are cameos from the new movies, but I felt very nauseous and jittery by the end of the ride. It seemed that my time with roller coasters must be ending. The next ride was Millennium Falcon Smugglers Run, and that was great fun getting to pup my way through the ride and very little nausea. Last was the longest wait time Rise of the Resistance, and that ride basically takes you into a Star Wars movie. The weights between that and the actual ride were not great, and again no nausea. By the end of our trip in Orlando, I had ridden quite a few rather intense coasters and was a bit nauseous, but had a lot of fun, but not nearly as bad as that first Star Tours ride. I have a theory that there are people who cannot tolerate those types of rides at all, those who can excessively tolerate those rides and love every second, but most of us are in between and our bodies it used to it and enjoy the ride. There's probably scientific evidence to support this, but sorry, I'm too lazy to look it up. Anyway, to each their own, and we spent so much money just getting in the park that I was going to ride the rides. Um. I had meant to write sooner, but life got in the way. As it does. Listening to the comments about motion sickness made me want to share my own experience. Listening to your podcast to certainly help during the past few horrible years. Knowledge of the past can help give us perspective for today. Thanks Aaron. Aaron, I can tell you why you still have trouble with Star Tours and not the other rides. I don't think Tracy has been on the other two attractions. They don't involve three D glasses. That's what it is. It's the three D part. It's like the gimble rig may or may not make you ill, but the gimble rig plus three D, which your brain is trying to perceive while also maintaining your physical equilibrium, is what makes most people feel a little queasy, or can do it in Tracy's case quite quite as I recall, UM, So take heart for anybody that that has that problem, the other two probably won't bother you at all, um and are wonderful, So I just in case anybody was fearful after that discussion, you don't have to be rise to the Resistance. In particular, you could not do three D glasses because you're getting on and off different ride vehicles and walking through things at some parts and writing things at others, and that would be a trip and not very fun at all, and it would break the immersion. Uh you would like to write to us about your vacations to theme parks or the Vatican museums or anywhere else or anything else, You can do that at History podcast at iHeart radio dot com. 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