Noam Hassenfeld

Doesn't believe it happened?

I love it.

Like in Italy, not Crimea, I assume?

Yeah, exactly.

He didn't like to travel.

He stayed home.

This whole thing is just kind of Kaffa-esque.

Too soon.

Yeah.

Oh.

It definitely gives it a different feeling of this was brought here aggressively to hurt people.

Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking about what you said before about these small historical details shaping how we tell a story.

And when I think about the difference between... Okay, the plague came from Asia through Mongols catapulting dead bodies purposefully into a city that causes the residents of that city to flee and bring the plague to Italy...

versus another story of... there was a war, the Mongols got sick, they went away, then there was peace, but the people were hungry, and they got wheat, and the wheat had rats with fleas, and then the people got the plague.

Like, that's just a totally different story.

The first story is... like, someone did this to Europe, and there's someone to blame.

And the second story is just...

you know, the way life works, that things travel and disease travels and sometimes it happens.

And it's much more of a tragic story than a story that is one that has blame as a part of it.

It's just so interesting because even when I told the story, like when you asked me to say, what's the one thing I know about the plague?