Andrew Schulz

Yeah, we're good.

The red wedding.

I'm trying to think of how I can start this story.

Cortez...

invades Mexico in 1519 without the permission of the Spanish crown.

And he marches his way over the course of several months to... When he lands, he lands among the Maya people.

And he writes that the Maya people are short and sickly and they're kind of ill.

Well, they're being affected by European influenza from in the decades prior.

When the Spaniards were out in the Bahamas and Jamaica and the Caribbean islands, well, some of the traders and people who are naturally curious are poking around on the shorelines of Mexico, interacting with the native people, but they don't realize they're getting them all sick.

And so that disease is starting to move into the Maya world.

Well, from, let's call it 1492-ish, maybe the year 1500 more accurately, over the next 19 years of 1519, a lot of people are getting sick in Mexico.

Wow.

So Cortes arrives, and he starts noticing these sickly people, and he's essentially saying what all aliens would say.

He's saying, like, take me to your leader.

You know, he wants to know, like, where's the head honcho of all this world?

So he finds his way to Tenochtitlan.

And while the Spaniards are there... This is modern-day Mexico City, right?

This is modern-day Mexico City, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Hey, could we look up Tenochtitlan Aztec city reconstruction and you'll see it.