The Terrifying Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius • Puppet History 

Ancient Karen be like: "I'm still not sold on this whole volcano thing but do you think my house will be fine?"

“Dead men tell no tales” says Ryan, the man who believes in ghosts so hard he gets a buzzfeed show about it, for the second time on camera

Elmo just wants to entertain the kids. His brother, however, is an intellectual.

Ryan: "Dead men tell no tales." Dead Men: *"Apple Taters"*

Is... No one going to talk about the fact that this season is low-key uncovering the lore that the Professor is an immortal being ?

"some history is just a mystery." me crying: can't you just say it's unsolved

It makes me smile to imagine Shane staying up late to hot glue googly eyes and feathers to a cardboard volcano puppet

My history teacher once said: "Pompeii was put on the map by being taken off of it." and that is what I think of whenever I hear anything about Mt. Vesuvius or Pompeii.

why is no one talking about how cute the professor looks with a tiny pillow on his head 😖

There was no choice: i had to come extremely early to....”class”

love the fact that matt actively asks questions, like a true student! maybe if the _other_ student asked questions, he might get more chances of getting jelly beans

Something I think is important to note: my man Pliny the Elder was insane. One of the "facts" he wrote in his Natural History book was that elephants had religious beliefs and actively practiced. He never saw an elephant in his life

they found so much graffiti in the area around it, and a lot of it was gay.

“Notorious for hangover.... reportedly” - the professor was there and is definitely immortal this is why he knows history.

Genuinely can’t believe how cute the prof is w that little pillow on his head.... give me the professor plushie with the changeable hats

The fact that Pliny the Elder had a “weak windpipe” is actually important to the story that Pliny the Younger writes - Pliny the Elder was on the beach trying to help rescue people as he was a (retired?) naval & army captain. He died of an Asthma attack on the beach while he was helping because of the ash, and Pliny the Younger wrote about his heroic death in his letters detailing the eruption. Yes, I am an ancient history nerd and had to study Pompeii and Herculaneum extensively in both school and part of my first degree :)

Puppet History does online school better than my actual school system.

i love how transparently the show is rigged against ryan now. im so happy

In case anyone was curious, Romans actually had a really good mail service. They'd have multiple posts set up between destinations and would treat it like a relay race. Mail would be sent out and the mail carrier would ride a horse to the nearest post to hand off the mail, then that mail carrier will take it to the next post, and the cycle continues until the mail reaches its destination. By carrying mail over multiple short distances, messages were able to be sent and received on the same day because there isn't a need to stop and rest over the course of multiple hours/days.

The thing that haunts me about Pompeii is how just within a few years nobody could even remember where it'd stood. An *entire city* just wiped off the face of the Earth so thoroughly even their neighbors didn't know where they'd been buried.

16:17 "jesus christ" - "the guy who died a couple of years ago? what about him?" kdjkdfjdf

‘He put down his Pliny The Book, put on his Pliny the Shoes’ had me giggling incessantly

As someone who knew of Pliny the Elder from Sawbones (a podcast about medical history), Pliny taking a nap then running out with a pillow on his head is extremely on brand.

Just throwing this out there: Tiny Puppet History Winners packages with little trophies, jelly beans, and one of those The Professor cards, to order and send to your friends. You're sitting on a gold mine.

He protecc He attacc But most importantly His satchel’s full of snaccs

Ryan: Scared of Annabel Also Ryan: Nemesis to an immortal talking puppet that made a deal with a genie 😂

Just a quick side note to the "fortune favours the bold" quote: in latin it's "audaces fortuna iuvat". So theyre actually speaking about fortuna, goddes of luck and good fortune, who would have guessed. So when he said, "fortune favours the bold", he also coud have said, "the goddes of luck favours the bold".

"Don't call me rotten" the voice crack is IMPOSSIBLY good

The man said “fortune favors the bold” and that was pretty bold of him to ask for a bath in the midst of a volcano eruption

The thumbnail truly is a work of art. The fiery glow of lava shining in the professor's glazed eyes, his mouth open in awe at Vesuvius erupting from behind... beautiful.

Knowing how many people live directly in the path of our *near-yearly hurricanes* in the US, 3 million around Vesuvius doesn't surprise me at all.

“pliny sounds like a john mulaney character”- proof the the professor is immortal and was friends with jm throughout history

shane’s been giving lin-manuel miranda a run for his money with all these bangers he’s putting out

4:38 Ryan's "Mattias' moustache is as large as he is stupid" has the same energy as Nina Zenik's “It's not natural for someone to be as stupid as he is tall, and yet here you stand” and I think that's beautiful and historically correct. AND SHE WAS TALKING TO MATTHIAS WHEN SHE SAID IT

Some geology facts! Volcanoes erupt for a variety of reasons depending on their makeup, location, and circumstances. In the case of immense ash explosions like Vesuvius and Mount St. Helens, there are a few factors that come into play. First, there needs to be a large volcano with a long chute and magma chamber. Then, the volcano needs to have formed a "cap" of sorts. A thick layer of cooled lava sealing up the top of the volcano. This sets thing up for massive pressure to build over time. Superheated gas collects, mostly comprised of acidic sulfur and other noxious fumes as a result of molten stone churning. In the human perspective, this takes a massive amount of time, hundreds of years to many thousands. But these explosions are INCREDIBLY rapid in the geologic timeframe, really. Anyway, as the pressure builds, things get intense. Eventually, usually instigated by a surge of magma moving, things pop. In the case of Vesuvius, it was a vertical explosion, sending out the infamous ash cloud to start. This brings down a burning rain of large ash flakes and rock, heating the air dangerously while at the same time beginning to darken the sky. Very scary. The cloud of fire and ash can rise very high because of just how hot it is, allowing for insane levels of spread of the debris. Once the initial pop passes, just like putting mentos in a bottle of coke, the "flow" period begins. In the case of ash explosions, this means the mentioned pyroclastic flows. A river of superheated toxic gases, ash, and crushed rock so dense it moves like a liquid. Because gaseous sulfur is denser than normal breathing air, it prevents the heated air from rising, turning the flows into insanely fast rivers of boiling death. Plants wither and burst into flame, living creatures are both smothered and burned alive if caught, the earth is scorched and coated with rapidly hardening ash and pumice.... It's a nightmarish wall of death that is nigh on impossible to escape because they move so rapidly. After all the heavy gases are vented out of the volcano in an ash cone explosion, what do we get? MORE ASH! Seriously, the things spew fire and ash until the turmoil below that sparked the eruption begins to ease. However, it's less "Sodom and Gomorrah" at this point, since the pressure is released and there will be a large decrease in things like fiery boulders and streams of death gas. But the ash cloud, still being fueled, will instead spread and continue to rise, coating areas even hundreds of miles away with thick layers of ash. The close areas around the volcano will be dark, like Pliny the Younger described. Dark, and smotheringly hot as the settling pumice and ash release heat. Part of why Pompeii was insanely hard to dig out is because the debris from the pyroclastic flow was basically fused together by the heat and motion. Once it reached level ground and began to gather over the city, of course the heat was released into the surrounding area as the ash and pumice solidified. If you've ever seen a chunk of the famous Mt. St. Helens ash, you'll see it's an incredibly hard, heavy, dense stone. Volcanic eruptions and pyroclastic flows are like metamorphic processes in rapidfire, leaving very tough material in their wake. As the heat disperses, and with no new sources emerging from the volcano, the ash cloud causes temperatures to drop quite rapidly. Like a mini nuclear winter... The ash clouds can be so dense that no sunlight can penetrate for days, making things pretty chilly. But eventually, the ash gets cool enough and descends as well, coating everything. In areas far enough from the devastation, this ash is wonderful! Highly beneficial for the soil, full of lots of minerals from the magma. But at the base of the volcano, it makes a thick, hard layer, adding more width to the volcano's base. Geology is so exciting!

Fun fact: they didn't have a word for volcano so they actually just called it an angry mountain; iratus mons in latin.

Professor wearing the tiny pillow over his head is SENDING ME It's truly the cutest thing ever

fun fact: "fortune favors the bold" originally derives from a passage in The Aeneid, Pliny just quoted it in that moment :)

25:21 Not entirely nutty when you consider that volcanic soil is some of the most fertile on Earth. It's the main reason regions around volcanoes are still heavily populated even today

I love how everyone is just vibin’ to the mount Vesuvius song, a song about mass genocide by Mother Nature.

I’m just going to take a wild guess that Ryan doesn’t win the jelly bean cup this time either

I'm a year late to this, but the professor wearing the tiny pillow is complete perfection. I didn't even notice it at first, but when I did I lost it. I can only dream of having a puppet as magical as him.

If you guys could get Brennan Lee Mulligan as a guest on the show it would be a riot

I’m a fan of the “the professor is as old of time” side plot starting in this series.

"Jesus Christ" "Oh the guy who died a few years ago. What about him" 😂😂😂 Underrated joke right there

I've grown so emotionally attached to The Professor.

I love whoever is doing these subtitles, the little detail of having the intro noise being written as "shweem... ka-BLONK" instead of a simple "intro sound" makes me happy

The Professor is an eldritch god who got tired of creating the destruction of the world without anybody knowing anything about it and is now teaching us so he gets the recognition he deserves.

It wouldn’t be a class if the teacher didn’t mispronounce your name

im so glad pliny the elder was in this. he is truly one of history`s greatest memelords.

The percentage of people who perished in that eruption is way smaller than I thought to be honest. Considering the entire town of Pompeii was covered in ash and whatnot, frozen in time, you would imagine that almost nobody made it out alive. Also can't believe that the Elder's first course of action when he arrived in Pompeii was to eat dinner and take a bath, the people would've been like 'This is the guy they sent to save us!? Flaming rocks are falling form the sky and he wants some pasta and a soak in the bathtub?!'

my favourite pompeii graffiti: "on April 19th i made bread"

*earth trembling* people in pompeii: “everything is fine”

Can you imagine the serotonin from the professor saying he's proud of you? I just wanna experience that.

Fun Latin fact! The word volcano is just the ablative form of Volcanus, the god of fire (among other things, see below) so it literally means ‘that thing from Vulcan.’

RYAN: "That sounds the most Old English-y." Time Period: 1st Century Place: Italy

Ryan: you’re a rotten thing or man or whatever you are The professor: ;o;

The Professor is basically Dumbledore at this point. Welcome to Slytherin, Ryan.

After the season 4 finale, I thought it would be fun to go back through the other videos and find out the real scores in each to see if Ryan actually won any. This will be focused on the points won during the questions only, not the extra points the professor gives out willy-nilly. Actual Score: Ryan had 3 points and Matt had ~4. The guest won "fairly," if you want to include that extra point in the last question. If not, it's a tie 3 to 3

I like how in almost all the thumbnails the Professor looks responsible for whatever event he is discussing today.

me: thinking that ryan finally won the professor: gives matt two points at the end me: 👁👄👁

They didn’t talk about the Pen*s carvings everywhere in Pompeii

I CAN'T BELIEVE I DIDN'T WATCH THESE UNTIL NOW. SHANE IS INCREDIBLE

I definetely don't say this enough: the editing for Puppet History is just brilliant. Incredible work

Can we just acknowledge how talented Shane is? Like he makes history interesting, makes the puppets and theatre, WROTE SONGS FOR SAID PUPPETS, and does genuinely good voice acting (at least to me) Like cmon

Okay, but I have a question: If Pliny the Younger was safely away in another town, how on earth does he have detailed accounts of how his uncle died? Love this show, guys, KEEP 'EM COMING!

Professor has never looked cuter than when he's wearing a little pillow as a hat! 😍 Also I love that I can hear the jellybeans shaking about in his satchel at 28:34

The Professor really has the classic “i’ll wait” teacher face

the professor is looking snazzy today

“Ryan Bergara, who thinks bears are scarier than volcanoes”😂😂

Funnily enough, even if you got out of the over ten feet of hot ash you still were likely to die. From what I remember about Latin lessons covering the event, the ash and hot air was so hot in some cases that inhaling it would cause the dust to cool into a concrete-like soup, and would then harden INSIDE YOUR LUNGS, basically filling your lungs to the brim with burning stone. And the process could occur in three breaths at the minimum. Not to mention that there were other cases of peoples HEADS EXPLODING FROM THE HEAT, with their skulls and brains bursting to pieces. Finally, some people flat out died instantly of thermal shock, due to temperatures of up 572 degrees Fahrenheit. So yeah, it was bad.

i wish they’d start selling lil professor plushies in their merch store bc i’d buy the shit outta that

"Aren't you a professor?" Uh, he's a professor of HISTORY, Ryan, not geology!

In response to Ryan's question, we can't know exactly when and why volcanoes go off, but Vesuvius itself is situated over the spot where tectonic plates are subducting, and the resulting turbulence vents through Campi Flagri, the supervolcano that's the size of the Bay of Naples

Knowing all the WILD medical shit Pliny the Elder said it makes total sense how he reacted during the eruptions of Vesuvius and how he beefed it in Pompeii. Pliny the Elder might've went out with a pillow tied to his head but by the gods his humors were balanced.

Y’all realize that if the professor has lived through all this history, bad things have followed him wherever he goes... His name is literally THE Professor: True Harbinger of the End, Professor

“Jesus Christ!!” “Oh you mean that guy who died a couple of years ago?”😂

What’s sad is how almost nobody really knows about Herculaneum, the other city to be destroyed by Mount Vesuvius. Everybody their had their body’s melted away which is an even worse fate than that of those in Pompeii.

I love that it’s being so strongly hinted at that The Professor is immortal and has been to/met a lot of the things they talk about

Fun fact: No one was worried about Vesuvius because it had a top on it. It looked like an ordinary mountain so no one knew it was a volcano. When it erupted, the force was so great that it blew the top of the mountain off and created the crater we can see today.

"Health to you, Victoria, and wherever you are may you sneeze sweetly" Me, someone named Victoria: Oh, my... Thank you, graffiti.

I just realized they probably got the message by pigeon. Messenger birds have been used for 3000 years for sure

I am answering the questions as I play along to see how many points I'd get: 1. Graffiti +1 point 2. can't join in there :( 3. The rich lady +1 point 4. fortune favours the bold +1 (I never heard this saying but I think he might be talking about the destiny goddess of the Romans - Fortuna, as she likes people who make bold moves.) 5. dinner and a bath +1 6. orgy time (no points - I love professors lil'pillow hat 🥺) 7. 33% (no points) 8. 150k peeps (I was closer than both of them so +1 point) 5 points! This was fun. I love this show.

"Vesuvius hasn't erupted in almost 400 years." 2020: 👀

You know I’m glad that Shane finally got to keep a history “show” alive I really enjoyed ruining history and I was sad when there wasn’t a second series. It was almost endearing that one of his main shows on ‘The Watcher’ was about history

It cracks me up because when Shane is ghost hunting, he's definitely just following along, but on puppet history, he takes command! It's fun watching them do their own thing

this series, and i say this with with the highest possible praise that it can connote, is the real spiritual successor to the BBC's Horrible Histories (a program that raised me and many other nerds around the world). absolutely fantastic, keep it up!

"We'll see what happens in the sequel." LITERALLY the mindset of 2020 right now.

Me, watching the last episode: "Wait, did Shane have someone waiting in Kate's hallway or something? How did he get the trophy to her so quickly?" Me, watching this episode, remembering: "Ohhhhhh that's right Ryan will never win"

24:00 "Cut to twelve hours later and they're like R̶̅̍Ȃ̶̈A̸͂̇Á̸̐A̷̿̋Ä̸̓Ȃ̶̎A̴̾̂A̷̒̏"

"pliny the elder put down his pliny the book and put on his pliny the shoes-" i fuckin lost it

Why is the professor so much better with his expressions than me, I mean look at the thumbnail, the fear, the courage, couldn't expect less from him.

As someone who enjoys learning but dropped out of school so I never got to learn much, this is my favorite series

i can just imagine how happy shane was to find that 'the grooviest' rhymes with vesuvius lmao

So, I'm a Geologist and although I'm not from Italy I'm working with a geologist group from Napoli. I would like to share 2 things with you all but first of all THANK YOU SHANE I loved the episode! So, the first fact is that actually Naples is not endangered by the Vesuvius, there is an other big big volcano at the west of Napoli called "The Phlegraean Fields", it's part of a natural park, and that one is the one that endangers them. I once asked "what would happen if it erupted and why do you still live here?" and one of the geologist from Naples that I work with told me this "We will probably die but the food is too good to leave" 🤣🤣 Napolitans are the best people! And the second thing is only that I highly recommend visiting the runes, there is a lot of cool information there about how they lived and everything, also visit the Vesuvius itself! It is a cool walk and you can see the whole region including Pompei and Naples! Really cool! Have a great day!

“Some history is...hehe... just a mystery.” -The Professor, 2020

19:17 RIP Pliny (died trying) 😂😂😂

I- am pretty sure that “fortune favors the bold” was meant to say “Fortuna favors the bold” as in- the Goddess Fortuna? As in- she’ll protect them??

The professor: you’re a little baby aren’t you? Ryan: a bear would make light work of you. While Matt: look at my little dandy trophy oh look! It comes with jelly beans hehe

actually, romans did know about volcanoes and they even had a festival annually called vulcanalia, in honor of the god vulcan, god of blacksmith, fire, and volcanoes! they just didnt encounter them very often, and it had been a long while since vesuvius had erupted, so they had no idea that vesuvius was a volcano, hence why it was called a "mons" rather than them trying to adapt the greek word "etna" (meaning volcano) into latin as they did with other greek borrowed words. also, fun fact, vulcanalia was held every year on august 23rd (because the romans were like "oh no this is the hottest time of the year, so everything is at risk of catching on fire" which is the day before vesuvius erupted. pretty sure the pompeiians thought vulcan was super mad about their vulcanalia festival