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The Prophecies of Nostradamus
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In this episode, Megan and Frank explore the prophecies of Nostradamus. Nostradamus was a prophet--but what is a prophet? What should we make of his seemingly accurate predictions of major world events? Do prophetic powers imply that the future is determined? Or are we simply bound to an immovable fate? And what, if anything, does Nostradamus have to tell us about our futures? Thinkers discussed include: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Friedrich Nietzsche, Brian Leiter, and David Foster Wallace.
Hosts' Websites:
Email: philosophyonthefringes@gmail.com
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Bibliography:
Nostradamus : how an obscure Renaissance astrologer became the modern prophet of doom : Gerson, Stéphane (source for biographical details, anxiety vs. fear, and WWII propaganda)
The prophecies : a dual-language edition with parallel text : Nostradamus, 1503-1566
Nostradamus' grim predictions for 2026 revealed
David Foster Wallace and the Challenge of Fatalism | Blog of the APA
Future Contingents | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Birth of Tragedy, or Hellenism and Pessimism, by Friedrich Nietzsche.
The Twilight of the Idols, by Friedrich Nietzsche.
Brian Leiter- Moral Psychology with Nietzsche
Moral Psychology with Nietzsche | Reviews | Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Nietzsche’s Moral and Political Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Intersubjective Accountability: Politics and Philosophy in the Left Vienna Circle
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Cover Artwork by Logan Fritts
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Transcript
Introduction & Nostradamus' Prophecies
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to Philosophy on the Fringes, a podcast that explores the philosophical dimensions of the strange. We're your hosts, Megan Fritz and Frank Cabrera. On today's episode, we're talking about the prophecies of Nostradamus.
00:00:16
Speaker
Do prophecies imply a determined future, an immovable fate? What even is a prophet? And what does Nostradamus have to teach us about our time?
00:00:38
Speaker
Welcome
Podcast Journey & New Year's Resolutions
00:00:39
Speaker
back, everyone. I guess this is the beginning of our fourth season of Philosophy on the Fringes. Can you believe that, Frank? We've come so far. I can't believe we're here. I know. Me neither. Yeah, I actually spent about a year trying to talk Frank in making a podcast. He didn't want to, which I mean, fair enough. Podcasters kind of suck.
00:00:58
Speaker
But, ah you know, eventually he caved because we got really bored. And here we are about to enter our fourth season, episode 29. We're still in January. So the year's still fresh, kind of. ah Fresh excitements, fresh horrors to start the year off with. Frank, do you have any resolutions for the year of our Lord 2026?
00:01:18
Speaker
ah One resolution was to do more pull-ups at the gym. I'm not doing that good on that. I always forget. How many pull-ups did you do at the gym last time you were at the gym None. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah, I keep forgetting. There was another resolution that I had that thought I was doing. I mean, I guess it'd be easy to do more than none. Yeah. I'm going to do next time and then I'll be doing well. Yeah, you've succeeded.
00:01:40
Speaker
I had another one that was going well. I forget what it is. No, you know what it is? It's just to stop being so lazy. So, you know, for instance, if you see something that that's not in a place where it should be in the house, like there's a juice cup in the bathroom and that should be in the sink, just pick it up. You know, there's lots of times last year where I would just sort of leave these things there. We're just trying to like put things where they need to go. It doesn't take that much effort to be a little bit more neat. And so I'm really working on that. Like your socks?
00:02:09
Speaker
Yeah, that too. Yeah. That's great. I love that one. How about you? wasn't one of your wait Wasn't one of your resolutions for us to write? Oh, yeah. we Yeah. Our resolution is to write a paper together. We haven't done one in in a few years. We used to do it all the time. Yeah.
00:02:22
Speaker
During the pandemic, before we had kids, yeah in a while. So we're going to try to write write one this year. Yeah. that's That's partly one of your resolutions, too. So that's a joint resolution. That's a joint resolution. What's one of your solo resolutions? Yeah. So the past few years, my resolutions have had to do with reading literature.
00:02:39
Speaker
and I've actually been pretty good about keeping them. And so this year, my resolution is to kind of diversify what I read. So read more non-American literature and read more um plays. I want to read plays. I haven't done, I've done a lot of short stories, a lot of novels, but I haven't read a bunch of plays.
00:02:55
Speaker
So that was one of mine. i read a couple this year so far. So, so far, so good. And I'm reading a Russian novel now. So basically, I'm beasting my resolution so far. You're doing a great job. You did a great job last year, too. Thank you. Thank you. You
Fascination with Prophecies & Prediction Methods
00:03:09
Speaker
know, every resolution i want to or every year I make a resolution to try to write more.
00:03:14
Speaker
um And I kept failing, so I just decided not to do that this year. ah it was It was really freeing. But the idea of New Year's resolutions is interesting. It's kind of a way of like really intentionally trying to shape the next year of your life and and like ah determine sort of what you know the future, at least for the next 365 days, will be like and we' We as humans, I think, are really interested in the future. We don't like to leave a lot of stuff to chance, which ties in really well to today's episode, which is on the prophet, the so-called prophet. The man, the legend.
00:03:49
Speaker
The myth. He is a man and a legend. And yeah, I guess not a myth because he was real. Nostradamus. Nostradamus. And the topic of prophecy. So people are very drawn to prophecy, i think, to the prediction of the future. Not not just necessarily prophets as individuals, but just the idea of wanting to know what is in the future. So palm reading, for instance. About 20% of people have had a palm reading. Did you know that? That's higher than I would have thought. Right. I know. But but we haven't left our house in days. I don't know what's going on in the outside world. So far from me to know how many people get poem readings. I've never had one done. Have you?
00:04:28
Speaker
Come on. No. ah But it's really apparently one in five people have had a poem reading done. We talked in past episodes a little bit about tarot, which people use tarot in different ways. But one of the ways they use it is as a way of kind of predicting the future. Yeah. I guess if do we do an episode on that, we should get them.
00:04:47
Speaker
Yeah, I guess so. Don't tell your mom. Or yours. So people, ah you know, we have a vested interest in wanting to know the future. And at certain points in history, individuals have come forward and said, hey, I can help you with that um because I know a thing or two about the future. And these people we refer to as prophets. don't know. Do you have any thoughts on on ah why people are so drawn to prophets?
00:05:13
Speaker
Yeah, nothing super interesting. I imagine just has to do with control, if you can predict the future. if you can predict the future in ways that other people cannot, and you can get an edge up on your competitors. That seems very significant. So profits are trying to kind of extend our predictive capacities. One kind of philosophical question that I don't think we'll talk too much about because we have a lot of material to talk about anyway It's like, what's the difference between prophecy and prediction, like a scientific prediction? They're trying to tell us the future, too. Of course, you wouldn't really describe them as a prophet unless you were trying to be metaphorical or literary. Yeah, because, I mean, we do sometimes, right? Like, we might say, oh he was he was a real prophet of the technological unemployment term. Yeah, yeah someone who some social scientist who makes a very compelling prediction, you might refer to him as a prophet. Right, but that's metaphorical. Yeah, but real prophets, they're trying to predict things via
00:06:07
Speaker
capacities that go beyond ordinary human abilities like perception and extrapolation, generalization from past experience. They are channeling alternative sources of knowledge, let's say. Right. And not all prophets are only interested in telling you what the future is going to be like. In some situations, the relevance of the prophecy to The future or whatever the future holds has to do with a kind of warning that they're giving you. Like maybe you can change the future if you just change your wayward ways. Right. so We might think of like in ah like the the ghost of Christmas future i is is in Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. Thank you.
00:06:49
Speaker
is giving a warning, kind of, to Ebenezer Scrooge. He gives him a prophecy, really. shows him a vision of what the future will be like if he does not change his Scrooge-like, tight-fisted kind of ways. yeah And a lot of other, I mean, a lot of historical prophets and prophet figures have done prophecy in this way. If you think of, like, um religious prophets of, like, the Hebrew Bible and such, the prophecy therein is largely moral warnings. Yeah. and I've heard that the best way to describe prophets in the genuine sense and in the Bible is that they're trying to give yeah moral advice or moral warnings. are're not fortune tellers. Is that accurate? I don't know. anything Yeah. stuff Well, yeah. I mean, I think it's not so much advice, but it's more like. drawing people's attention to something about themselves they might not realize. They don't know they're doing something wrong or they don't realize how bad it is. yeah And so they're trying to like draw attention yeah to it. So like a really famous case is a prophet who visits like King David after he's had this ah ah affair with Bathsheba.
00:07:55
Speaker
Yeah. And and he he tells him the story of an old man who has lots and lots and lots of sheep. But he has his eye on the sole sheep, the sole little lamb of this one shepherd who only has this one sheep.
00:08:10
Speaker
And he's like, no, I want that one. So he he goes and he goes and takes it from him. And and David is outraged. you know, he's like, we have to find that guy. We have to kill him. And the prophet goes up. yeah Nathan, I think was his name. He goes, oh, you're that man.
00:08:23
Speaker
That's you. hmm. So, yeah. So it's kind of like yeah rather than advice, it's more like, i don't know, like condemnation. Yeah. You're doing something really bad. It often it comes with an explanation of what the consequences or what the result of this moral failing will be. It's kind of like a prediction ah of the future in the sense that if you continue to do this, thus and so will happen. Exactly right. But then there's, of course, um when we sometimes when we talk about prophets, we just mean people who see visions of the future and they want to warn people.
00:08:54
Speaker
And that's what most people think Nostradamus was up to. right So let's turn to him to him now now, that we have those preliminaries out of the way. Yes. So we'll say a bit about who this guy was, give us some biographical details. Not too much. I hope, Megan, you stop me if I go overboard, as always. Rank has gone absolutely off the deep end with Nostradamus lately. He's really... He's my boy.
00:09:17
Speaker
Yeah, so he's got a lot. I'm going to let Frank take this on this section because he knows a lot, a lot more than I do. So Frank, tell us everything you know. Not everything you know. Just just give us what we need to know about
Nostradamus: Life & Works
00:09:27
Speaker
Nostradamus. Well, Nostradamus, his real name is Michel de Nostradamus. He was born in 1503, died in 1566. Most people probably know only a little bit about him, hazy details. You might have seen a picture, big long beard, funny hat. That describes almost everyone from that century. yeah wrote ah ah Wrote a bunch of obscure kinds of predictions that are supposed to apply to our current events, not just events during his own lifetime.
00:09:54
Speaker
Very mystical. When we decided to do this episode, really all I knew about him was that he was from the 16th century and he was very mystical. We've watched like History Channel-esque things, things hosted by William Shatner where they talk about Nostradamus. And I still didn't really know that much about the man himself. Yeah. and It was interesting to learn about the guy. So he's born in the south of France in Provence. He was from the educated professional class. There were doctors and merchants in his family. So he wasn't a nobleman. He wasn't an aristocrat, but he was some kind of like in the middle, the middle and middle class. Interestingly, his family history was Jewish. So his great grandfather converted from Judaism to Christianity and chose the name Nostradam because it sounded super duper Christian. so He's like, we're Christian, I swear. I swear, i swear we're Christian now. But this is actually significant because some people attribute Nostradamus' alleged power to maybe studying the the Kabbalah, right the Jewish mysticism. Mm hmm.
00:10:51
Speaker
was trained as a doctor. he enrolled in university to be ah a doctor. He studied there. He's bit of a maverick. He got kind of kicked out for criticizing the theories that were going that were reigning at the time. He was a little bit too into being an apothecary, making love potions and teeth whitening balms. Right. He's like, look, man, you got to set this guy's leg. You can't just be making love potions all day. Yeah. So he was into the too muchch of the practical stuff.
00:11:20
Speaker
he was He traveled around a lot. He was a traveling traveling physician. um He traveled around to help people during ah an outbreak of plague. And that's kind of where he gained something of a reputation. was a He's a plague docker. He's a plague docker. He gained the reputation for his fearlessness and his his competence in treating the plague. I mean, he gained kind of regional reputation for that. That's pretty cool because you have to be, i mean, you have to be very brave to be a plague doctor. Yeah, he didn't run away. People, you can read the the sources, people abandoned their children during the plague. Doctors refused to treat patients. They didn't want to get the plague. and and Allegedly, Nostradamus stood firm in the face of danger. um So he gained a reputation there. But his his day job was that of an astrologer. So he was an astrologer, which kind of goes hand in hand with being a doctor. As we talked about in our astrology episode, recall there's a thing called medical astrology where you use astrological techniques to diagnose and potentially even treat medical conditions. So it makes kind of sense that he he got into astrology. So he had something like an astrological practice. Mm-hmm.
00:12:26
Speaker
People would write him letters. He would respond, cast their horoscopes, developed many friendships and close relationships with his correspondents. So that was kind of interesting to to learn. How he got into the prophecy business is that he wrote these things called almanacs. So an almanac at this period of time in the 16th century was the kind of thing that would include a calendar, important dates, weather forecasts, and prophecies. So he included prophecies in his almanacs. Which I guess kind of, I never read the Farmer's Almanac, but I think the Farmer's Almanac concludes similar things. Have you read a farm a Farmer's Almanac ever? Oh, yeah, of course. ah Well, so I grew up in the heartland, ah Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska area, and everybody read the Farmer's Almanac or like all the old people did. Yeah.
00:13:11
Speaker
And I didn't really know what was. I just kind of thought it was like, here's some farming advice. thought it just like an encyclopedia, right? Yeah. Well, not encyclopedia, but more like just like see a reader's digest, but for farming. Yeah. Basically. But no, it's not. It's like imagine if you tried to do like the weather, but for like the entire year. And also based on very weird things. it shouldn't count everything. Yeah, my sister told me the other day that my dad said that the snowstorm was due to the phases of the moon. The crescent moon. And he got that from the almanac, a farmer's almanac. Fascinating. So they read the farmer's almanac in the mid-Atlantic region too, huh? I guess so. No one's farming there. Yeah.
00:13:52
Speaker
Okay. We still have far. So we still have almanacs. So I think, yeah, we still have this this genre of literature, which was very popular during Nostradamus' time. He wasn't the only one writing these almanacs. He was very enterprising getting these things published. He would travel hundreds of miles to metropolitan areas to get his almanacs published. And he would include prophecies in them. After that, he published a book full of just prophecies called The Prophecies, published in 1555. Mm-hmm. So we should say a bit about the nature of this book. This is where we're going to draw ah from for the major predictions that Nostradamus made, which we're going to analyze. Yeah, what's in the book? um So it's divided up into what are called centuries, sets of 100. The first edition had four centuries, which had 353 what are called quatrains. So they're four four-line poems. One of the interesting things about Nostradamus is that he cast his predictions, his prophecies, in the form of poetry. These are poems. I've heard from people that that know the French that they're not that good. But anyway, he he thought this was the best medium for his prophecies. yeah So the first edition has 353 quatrains. He ended up with 942 in the final edition, and which is kind of weird because he wanted them to be in centuries, sets of 100, but there's 942. So maybe some got lost.
00:15:11
Speaker
So he like died before? No, it's really unclear what happened, right? It seems like there should be a thousand, but there's only 942. So interestingly, in these prophecies, there's very few precise dates. So a lot of people want to appeal to Nostradamus to explain what's going on or predict what's going on in their contemporary era. But there's not that many dates. There's like nine precise dates in the whole thing. There's lots of anagrams, you know, little hidden... Just numerology? Yeah, a little numerology. Sure. ah here Here's one ah one quote from a biography of Nostradamus that I read. The words of Nostradamus hang together in some fashion, but without the glue of punctuation, conjunctions, and conventional word order, and they are unmoored. The the translator of the text describes his strategy as heaping omen upon omen until a kind of manic hysteria is achieved. He also described them as tabloid headlines or prophetic tweets. So they're really not like full, complete sentences. They're often picturesque vignettes, just a bunch of words, like a bunch of scary words thrown together. For instance, milk, blood, frogs showering Dalmatia, battle breaking out, plague near Belenna, a great cry throughout all Slavonia, then monster born near and in Ravenna. That's 232. You don't want milk and frogs.
00:16:32
Speaker
That's what you don't want. all right. So that's like that's the book. um he He begins he begins the the prophecies with kind of setting the stage. He's describing where he is. He says he's in his seated study. There's a slim flame issuing forth from solitude. And he's casting He sets the scene. Yeah, he sets the scene. and right yeah let's read Why don't you read these out? All right. So this is the start of the prophecy. This is the first quatrain. Yeah.
00:16:56
Speaker
but being seated at night in secret study alone upon a stool of bronze at ease slim flame issuing forth from solitude fuels prophecies not futile to believe quatrain too wand in hand set in the midst of branches with water he wets both his hem and feet vapor and voice a quiver in his sleeves splendor divine the god here takes a seat
00:17:27
Speaker
So right away, my first thought is, is he like communing with a spirit? Yeah, one interesting interesting question, that kind of anticipating some other stuff we're going to talk about the god here takes a seat. It seems like he's getting this information from some kind of spirit. What's what's the origin of his power? So he he does say a bit about how he knows this stuff in the preface of the book. And he says, quote, such knowledge as the divine being has granted me thanks to the revolution of the stars. So it's God's power and inspiration. So it'ss it's astrology, maybe supervised by God. So he's a sure you know right believing Christian and yeah all of that. God gives us the signs and the stars for our own. But I think one thing that people don't know and is definitely not emphasized in some of the things we have watched. So we watched a Orson Welles documentary from We'll definitely link this. That was from the 80s? Yeah, 1980, I think. yeah Was it really? yeah Why did it look so old? That was 45 years
00:18:24
Speaker
forty five years ago We'll definitely link it. yeah I mean, it's very yeah weird. Citizen Kane. Yeah. Yeah. um So, yeah, he doesn't mention at all that Nostradamus was an astrologer and based his like prophecies on astrology. You can find references to astrological terms in the prophecies. Mm-hmm. So that's the origin of his power. he He knows it via astrology. God plays some role, too. Mm-hmm.
00:18:48
Speaker
So, OK, we haven't really said why we're focusing on Nostradamus. um
Significance & Famous Predictions
00:18:54
Speaker
if We want to talk about prophecy. and There's a lot of prophets out there. Why why is Nostradamus interesting? And I guess the the straightforward, immediate answer to that is just because people think a lot of his prophecies have come true. Yes. So he people are still talking about him 500 years later. Like 100 editions of his book has yeah been published. People don't care about prophets who make a bunch of prophecies and none of them come true. yeah So yeah he made a lot of predictions of of major world events, many people say. 952 of them, right?
00:19:24
Speaker
Almost. I'm not sure how many of the predictions the true believers think came true, but at least they will say a lot of major world events have been predicted by Noshinamas. So what are some of these? so I don't know. You want to read some of these, Megan?
00:19:38
Speaker
Yeah, sure. Okay, so Nostradamus predicted the death of King Henry II in a jousting match. So that was the the French king who was active during the time of Nostradamus. So he it was said that he predicted his death in ah in a jousting match. So he was he was in this kind of exhibition match, and he unfortunately suffered a wound to the eye, and he and he died. So here's the the quatrain. This is the one that made him famous, because during his time, people said, hey, he predicted this.
00:20:06
Speaker
The young lion shall overcome the old on the field of battle in single duel. He'll put out his eyes in his cage of gold, winner taking all, then a death most cruel. man So what's significant about this is not just the the description of the wound, right? the The wound to the eye, which is where the king was struck, but the the iconography mentioned in the quatrain. So both the king and the challenger had lion insignia for their knight costumes, right? So here night you yeah whatever you whatever you call it, right? there yeah
00:20:37
Speaker
Yeah. So people read this during the time. crassed or whatever. They're family crassed. Yeah. they They read this during the time. They said, wow, he got this right. He's probably to get some more stuff right, too. This is an argument you see over and over again. as i mean, that's a pretty good one. It's a pretty good one. That's pretty specific. Like, it it really is pretty specific. It seems like. Another one. So in 1666, I think, ah there was a great fire in London. Yeah. so I'll read this one. Yeah, read that one. ah No blood of the just shall be spilled in London.
00:21:08
Speaker
Six times 23 consumed by lightning. The ancient dame shall fall from high station. Many of the same sect shall lose their lives.
00:21:20
Speaker
Six times 23. Why couldn't you just give the number? Yeah, so he doesn't say 66 in there. but so So what people will do is they will do a little numerology on those numbers and then come up with 66. By numerology, you just mean multiplication? ah i don't think it's quite multiplication, is it? ah Six times 23 is 138. They do something else. They like they add and subtract. forget exactly yeah how it goes. They come up with 66 on those numbers. ok They do some arithmetical operations. Sure. And they say, look, you predicted it. Sure.
00:21:51
Speaker
They didn't just think that they should just multiply six times 23, that that would be the right prediction? Sure. That doesn't get the right result. Okay. Another one, the English Civil War. So ah so in English Civil War, we we mentioned this in our Apocalypse episode. end During the English Civil War, they executed the king, right King Charles the first um the parliament. And one of the lines in the in the quatrain is the Senate of London, its king shall slay.
00:22:15
Speaker
That's quatrain 949. There you go. So they also people also think he predicted the French Revolution, on Napoleon's rise, ah aerial warfare. This is an interesting one. Do you want to read this one? i think I think this came up in the documentary and you were like, oh, wow.
00:22:31
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, this is a good one. all right. So he says at night they shall believe the sun does shine when at the half human pig they get a peek.
00:22:41
Speaker
Noise, song, battalions battling in the sky shall be perceived and brute beasts heard to speak. So what's the half-human pig, you might wonder? That's supposed to be the fighter jet pilots wearing their face mask. Okay. It looks like a pig. Yeah. So a lot of times... I was thinking about that guy from Seinfeld.
00:23:03
Speaker
I was thinking about Man Bear Pig. Yeah. i'll park That's only a third pig. Right. But anyway, yeah, so this is what they'll do. They'll say, well, no sure name is he couldn't really understand what he was seeing. So you'll often find slightly inaccurate or kind of surreal descriptions of events from our contemporary time. Sure. But here is supposed to be and a description of aerial warfare, something that, you know, he couldn't have known about through ordinary perceptual or predictive means. this I think didn't this come up in our apocalypse episode as well? Like people who read the book of Revelation as like this really literal or not like literal, but like a prediction about like the future apocalypse. And they um are like, oh, well, yeah, you know, that talking about talking locusts with the heads of man. That's just, you know, maybe John Patmos didn't know what he was looking at, yeah but it was this other thing. Yeah, it was tanks rolling through, you know, Germany. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do one more. So ah one more major prediction. So perhaps one of the most famous ones, because people care more about their own contemporary... This definitely the one that I knew about. People care more about, you know, this their contemporary times than like 16th century kings. Yeah. um The rise of Hitler. You read the first one? Yeah, sure. Beasts wild with hunger shall swim the rivers. Most of the hosts shall move against Easter.
00:24:20
Speaker
He'll have the great one dragged in iron cage when the child the German Rhine surveys. So in Nostradamus' language, this ister was spelled hister. It's a river, but as you might imagine, some interpreters see that as a veiled description, veiled reference to Hitler. Just like a slight misspelling. It's only one letter oh yeah it's only a little one letter off. Yeah. right so So there you go. And then finally, another another reference to Hitler.
00:24:51
Speaker
At Europe's farthermost Western reaches, to poor folk a small infant shall be born. He shall seduce great crowds with his speeches, his great fame spreading to Orient shores. so Why is this supposed to be accurate? well Hitler was born to a poor family. And of course, as we know, he swayed great crowds with his speeches. So wait, back to the first one. He says he'll have the great one dragged in Iron Cage. What's that supposed to? I'm not sure. Yeah, but I imagine they have some kind of ah answer to that. They connected that to Hitler somehow. Yeah, yeah. Maybe that's a tank or something. Got it, got it, got it. Okay.
00:25:29
Speaker
Everything's a tank. Yeah, I i definitely that that was like the only one that I really I i knew people thought that he predicted the the rise of Hitler and something about the French Revolution or something. So those were the two that I knew.
00:25:41
Speaker
So, I mean, some of them are moderately compelling. The the airplanes one I thought was cool. the Obviously, I think the most interesting one was the the jousting tournament one, French king I kind of like the Senate shall slay its king. You know, that's kind of a big deal to suggest. That doesn't happen very often. He said the Senate in London, yeah Parliament, will slay its king. And that happened. yeah That's true. so when he's giving these predictions, is there any indication of when he's predicting they'll happen?
00:26:10
Speaker
Because it does seem like if he even if he says these things like with a lot of detail and description, it's sort of like, all right, but if you give anything 500, 600 years, like it's happen. Or they have a pretty big there. There are some references to dates. So, for instance, and this is not one of the quatrains, but nestled between two centuries in the book, I think it's seven and eight, is a letter to Henry II, the guy who got killed in the jousting competition. And he says in this letter, that year the Christian church shall be persecuted more fiercely than ever, than it ever was in Africa. And this shall last until the year 1792, which shall be considered the beginning of a new age. So if you know a lot about French history, 1792 will... Which i don't. will so will stand out to you. That was the during the middle of French Revolution and that was the year precisely when the French Republic was declared. and an Abolition of the monarchy. That is the beginning of a new age. and as As you might remember also, the church was persecuted by revolutionaries during the French Revolution. oh you that's like They drowned all the Catholics. That's a date. right Those are two very specific predictions. Those seem pretty accurate.
00:27:21
Speaker
so yeah yeah i mean There's at least one. There's at least one date there. That's that's pretty interesting. I do understand why if you give something that specific and you give a date and the date's right from from that. I mean, because that was more than 200 or sorry. Yeah. More than 200 years before that happened. Yeah.
00:27:38
Speaker
That's pretty good. Like, congratulations. Congratulations. You have done Yeah. That's at least weird. It's at least something that makes you be like, huh? Like, I wonder I wonder how he did it. Yeah.
00:27:49
Speaker
All right. So that's a lot. So we've we've gone into a lot of specifics, a lot of predictions that people have found compelling. And he told us a lot about Nostradamus, but I'm kind of interested in, i guess, the nature of this book.
Motives & Interpretations of Prophecies
00:28:02
Speaker
Because you said, so he's like a plague doctor. is an astrologer also and like a freelance almanac. yes he has that was it That was his side gig.
00:28:14
Speaker
ah So he's got like all these jobs. And then he just decides to write this like massive work of prophecies that seem really mystical and weird. And I guess you did you did a ton of research on this. i'm I'm interested in what his own view was of what he was doing. Like was he just sort of like overcome with, you know, I guess like that translator said that it seemed frenzied. So maybe he was like he was in like a trance or something and he couldn't help but write this down. Or was this like a planned out work? What was going on? Why did he write the prophecies?
00:28:49
Speaker
Yeah, he says a little bit about this in the preface. he does It does seem like he wants to tell people what's going to happen to help them. He does seem like ah he has a humanitarian motive at the end of the day.
00:29:00
Speaker
And maybe he thinks he has a divine mission. He mentions that the power to do this comes from God. Although he does want to be humble in the preface. He does say, quote, regarding the term prophecy, which he doesn't like to really assign to himself, which is interesting. He says, quote, If I have made mention of the term prophet, far be it from me to arrogate a title this exalted. Didn't he call his work the prophecies?
00:29:25
Speaker
Yes. In these present times, unquote. Yes, I know. It's weird, right? So he kind of goes back and forth here because he does he does say, I'm making some prophecies. I'm calling them book prophecies, but don't call me a prophet.
00:29:37
Speaker
He goes on to say, I can err, fail, be deceived. There is no greater sinner on this earth than I. okay yeah think he's he's he's He's giving himself an out for if some of his predictions don't come true. um Yeah, he's like, I never told you which ones were prophecies. Yeah. So I think he wants to help people. he wanted He wanted to help people in his astrological practice. He wanted to help people as a plague doctor. I think ultimately he wants to help people here too. Okay. And he does take the prophecies to be information that he got through his astrology, right? So he says that he finds his inspiration, quote, not in Dionysian frenzy, nor in the furor of madness, but in astrological considerations. Yeah. So he specifically wants to say that I'm i'm not like overtaken by a spirit or in a kind of like frothy pagan madness, but I'm just doing these kind of you know cold rational calculations based on the what house Mars is in tonight yeah or whatever. I think during the which during the time in which he lived, which was the beginnings of the Reformation, i don't think he would want to appear as heretical in any way, especially given his you know Jewish ancestry and all sure that. Yeah, he says many times that he is doing he is getting this information from natural instinct, ah by by which I take it he means astrology. Yeah, and astrology was like cool with the church back then. Yeah, of course. Yeah, and respectable people did astrology. I just learned today that Galileo did astrology, cast horoscopes in his capacity as the court mathematician, taught astrology at the prestigious University of Padua. Yeah, astrology was still alive and well, even It was just like a science. Yeah. Okay. yeah Got it. Got it. Okay. But this does kind of clash with the style of the book. His his own assessment of what he's doing does clash with the style of the book, as the interpreter noted, right? Because it it reads as kind of frenzy and frothy and like maybe with a hint of madness and really unclear and mystical, very, very mystical. um So he specifically references Dionysian frenzy. This refers to the kinds of ah religious fervors or frenzies that people in the cult of the Greek god Dionysus would enter into in order to have these religious festivals for Dionysus or offer offerings to him or whatever, which often included like becoming very intoxicated because Dionysus was the god of wine yeah and pleasure.
00:32:11
Speaker
um Becoming very intoxicated and having, if there's any little kids listening, maybe, by like having having orgies. and And other things things like that, right? Other kinds of intoxicants and stuff like that. Pleasurable activities.
00:32:25
Speaker
So he wants to distinguish himself from that. and Say, no, like this is very rational. This is very this is very orderly. let's make This is scientific. Yeah, it kind of reminds me of ah the distinction that Nietzsche makes between Dionysian and the Apollonian. read this since I was like 19, but the Dionysian is like the frenzied stuff, right?
00:32:47
Speaker
Chaos and the Apollonian is like order and rationality and these kinds of two aesthetic categories or tendencies or ways of thinking mixed very well in in Greek language.
00:32:58
Speaker
thinking and Greek art or Greek tragedy and Nietzsche found this really, really cool. like Do you remember, you know more about this than I than i do Like what's going, is there a connection between that and what Nostradamus is talking about here?
00:33:11
Speaker
Yes. um So, right. So in Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, which is an early work of Nietzsche's and one of my favorites, actually, is basically what Nietzsche tries to argue there is that the ancients, ah specifically ancient Greek outlook on life before Socrates, the pre-Socratic ancient Greek view of life, is that life is the result of and is sort of ruled by these dueling forces, the Apollonian spirit and the Dionysian spirit. Named after, of course, the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus. Apollo was the god of archery, of music and dance, of, interestingly and relevantly, truth and prophecy. oh really? Yeah. Healing and diseases and most famously probably the sun. Yeah.
00:34:00
Speaker
And also poetry. These Greek gods are like the gods of everything. and It's always so funny things. but But I think ah Apollo is not, i I don't know, like not popularly associated with this, but really like kind of the god of art. Like you have music, dance, poetry. isn't an artsy guy. Artsy guy. Yeah. and And Dionysus, obviously the god of wine, the god of rev revelry. And so so so Nietzsche's view is that the pre-Socratic ancient Greek view of life is that it is sort of almost like a yin and yang relationship. with creation and art as this individual enterprise that people engage in as a way of like forming themselves. And then on the flip side of that, the Dionysian spirit, which is a way of dissolving the individual, dissolving the self into like a frenzied state of bliss. Mm-hmm. And and that these two forces were the essence of life, the duality between these two sources and the the perfect tension, the perfect balance of them brought meaning to life, gave meaning to suffering, to hardships, to pleasure and happiness and really made sense of life.
00:35:14
Speaker
Nijus sees this in the in the birth of tragedy. He sees this is all being quashed by the Greek philosopher, starting with Socrates. um So he contrasts this view of life, the Dionysian Apollonian dual spirit view of life with what he calls Socratic rationalism, where you have a view of life where reason is is supposed to constrain the impulses, to rule them, to guide them in the correct direction, where there's now a view of, like, the correct direction that they should go, right? To tame them, mute them, temper them. and The reason should rule above all. And crucially... How Nietzsche understands it is that Socratic rationalism, in taking away the meaningfulness of suffering and hardships in life, then has to make up for this somehow. And it does that through Plato's philosophy, which he sees as an escape from the world into the realm of the forms. yeah You have to escape from the world now because now there's no way of dealing with and making sense of hardship and suffering.
00:36:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's life-denying. Right. So I think that this is actually kind of interesting because Nostradamus is distinguishing himself from the Dionysian spirit, but clearly and overtly embodying the Apollonian spirit. Which kind of... Goes against what you might expect. right I think before and what what I expected, too, before doing the research for the podcast, I had no idea that Nostradamus grounded his prophecies in astrology. And if you read the first two quatrains, he's kind of it almost seems a little Dionysian. He's hitting from his fire. He's getting ready to receive the frenzy. But that's not really what he wants. He wants to ground it in astrology. And as I mentioned earlier, you can find references to astrological configurations and and language in yeah prophecies. But it's more Apollonian than like Socratic rationalism because clearly his prophecies are a work of art. They are a kind of instantiation of an individual rather than just cold, hard rationalism. Right. He's trying to do something beautiful with what he's writing. yeah he want He wrote poetry for a reason. What exactly that reason is is, is a little puzzling. Maybe maybe he did have some kind of artistic ambitions. Yeah, I think so.
00:37:27
Speaker
Okay, so what does Notion Dramas have to say about our times? I'm sure some of you are wondering this. so we We mentioned some of his prophecies about the past. But what about 2026? We're in a new year. Yeah, if he got Hitler right, what is he going to get right about 2026? If he got all the other stuff right, shouldn't we think he's going to get stuff right about 2026? So what did he say about 2026? So I did a little research on this. And things are a little tricky here because, as we mentioned already, there are very few dates in the prophecies. There's like nine, so not many.
00:37:58
Speaker
So how do you get predictions for ah a specific year? Well, the Nostradamus interpreters have a technique. They have a methodology. It's very simple. You go into the texts and you look for the quatrains that end in the year...
00:38:12
Speaker
that you're in. So we're in 2026. So you go to the quatrains that end in 26. So you look at 126, 426, 726, those sorts of things. What about 1926? You know, that's actually fine because Nostradamus has this kind of cyclical conception of time where the same kinds of events repeat over and over again. Every 100 years exactly?
00:38:34
Speaker
Don't ask too many questions. okay Let's talk about the predictions of 2026. Don't worry about 1926. This is just one methodological school in notion of interpretation. well i i I call BS on this school. think that I'm at this. iis But let's look at the... the prediction. So 126, quatrain 126, predicts that a popular figure will be struck down by a thunderbolt.
00:38:58
Speaker
The great man will be struck down in the day by a thunderbolt. An evil deed foretold by the bearer of a petition. According to the prediction, another falls at nighttime. Conflict at Reims, London, and pestilence in Tuscany. Don't go to Tuscany this year. I know everyone listening to this has their own person that they'd like to see get struck down by lightning in mind right now.
00:39:18
Speaker
So just we'll just keep that to ourselves. The next one, a great swarm of bees. oh Megan, 426. four twenty six The great swarm of bees will arise such that one will not know whence they have come.
00:39:32
Speaker
By night, the ambush, a sentinel under the vines, city delivered by five babblers, not naked. OK, well, fun fact about bees, they don't fly at night. So if there's a swarm of something at night that seem like bees, unfortunately, he's referring to nocturnal hornets, which are terrible. And I'm not excited for this year. Unfortunately, he doesn't tell us where this great swarm will be.
00:39:53
Speaker
One final one. So these are three that I found in several articles online and outlets such as the New York Post. Which actually took a kind of ironic stance toward this. yeah Not everyone takes it very seriously. It's kind of just a fun thing for some people. I take it. But anyway, the last one. So some have interpreted this quatrain as, let me read it out and then I'll ask you what you think it's about. Mm-hmm.
00:40:20
Speaker
726. Caravelles and galleons out to thrash. Seven ships fighting them to the last man. The Madrid chief receiving several shafts. Two shall escape and five be towed to land.
00:40:34
Speaker
So what do you think that is to be about, Megan? I mean, he mentions Madrid, so home home maybe Spain. You'd think that. But actually, the interpreters say it's about a sea battle between between China and someone in the giant like the China Sea. Maybe the invasion of Taiwan or something like that. Why?
00:40:53
Speaker
I don't know. That's just thatches what they say. He says Madrid. I know, but you've got to read between the lines. But why can't I just read the lines? I don't know. i don't know. All right. Anyway, that's that's the predictions. OK, I'm sure receiving several shafts gets a lot of jokes made about it.
00:41:10
Speaker
Anyway. OK, so we've been fairly sympathetic to notion on is up until now. But I think it's time to turn to what I've referred to as the standard critiques. Yeah.
Critiques & Philosophical Implications
00:41:21
Speaker
So you want to start here, Megan?
00:41:23
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So ah probably what many of our our listeners have been thinking, maybe since we began the episode, if they're still with us, ah this is just a straightforward case of confirmation bias. Maybe you can find three or four that seem kind of compelling. But look, he wrote like almost a thousand of them.
00:41:41
Speaker
So the vast majority of them are either nonsense or failures. And even the ones that do seem like he got them right, they're still so vague as to still be like not that interesting and you're just seeing what you want to see and blah, blah.
00:41:55
Speaker
Yeah. So I mentioned earlier the strikingly accurate prediction about 1792 and the French Republic and on the New Age. Right. But right after that, he gives a spectacularly wrong prediction about the rise of Venice. So he says, thereafter, Venice, with great force and power, raised its wings very high, not short of the might of ancient Rome.
00:42:18
Speaker
ah That was super duper wrong because the Venetian Republic went out of existence like a few years after 1792. Well, if Madrid means China, maybe Venice means the United States or something. I only know so much about how to interpret it. But anyway, in the Orson Welles documentary, he made some predictions that were wrong.
00:42:38
Speaker
too, right? that He predicted there was like going to be a wickle worldwide drought or something like that. and And I don't think that happened. Oh, yeah. That was interesting in the documentary. If anyone listening goes and watches this. um Yeah. Orson Welles really plays it up. He's like, there's going to be a drought. yeah i worldwide drought. yeah Yeah. You better look out. He's like basically telling people like stock up on water. yeah So that's the first critique, right? Confirmation bias. The second one, which is super common, which I'm sure anyone who's skeptical of Moshronomus has already been thinking of, is what I refer to as the vagueness problem. Yeah. but You already kind of anticipated this earlier on. there a lot of the prophecies, if you read them word for word, they're very, very vague. they They say things like, there will be war, there will be famine, the king will be killed.
00:43:23
Speaker
If you don't slap any dates onto these things, and your prediction is just that at some point in the future, these things will happen, then that has like a probability of occurring of like 99%, right? At some point in the near future somewhere, there's going to be a famine. That's like 99% probability. So if that happens, ah that's not really surprising. And it's not really something that makes Nostradamus seem compelling. And and we can we can show this based on, you know, probability theory, right? We mentioned this in our astrology episode. According to Bayes' theorem, the posterior probability of a hypothesis is inversely proportional to the probability of the evidence. In other words, if you're predicting something that's super duper likely to occur, that doesn't really give much support or confirmation to the hypothesis when the thing occurs. Yeah, it's not novel. Yeah, when your hypothesis predicts something unlikely, something specific, something unlikely to occur, as something surprising.
00:44:19
Speaker
And then when it does occur, that ah provides a lot of support for the theory. So here you can think of Nostradamus as a kind of theory that's making a lot of predictions that are very, very highly likely to occur. they're very vague and therefore highly probable. And so when they occur, they don't give a lot of credibility to Nostradamus. We shouldn't be that impressed that he his very vague predictions there will be war there will be famine the king will be killed came true yeah if i say i can see i can see the future you know look i'll flip this coin and tell you what it's going to land on and i say it's either going to land on heads or tails well yeah you know that had almost a hundred percent probability of occurring i guess it could have landed on its side but yeah And some philosophers actually have given this critique of divination practices way early on and in the history of philosophy. So Thomas Hobbes, for instance, in the Leviathan, in chapter 12, he's criticizing oracles and other divinatory practices. And he says that the the prophecies of the oracles were, quote, made ambiguous by design to own the event both ways. So what he has in mind here, I think, a famous story from Herodotus where the oracle tells the king of Lydia, Croesus, that if you go to war to Persia, you will destroy a great empire.
00:45:37
Speaker
So he hears this he's like, all right, yeah, I'm gonna go to war to per with Persia. I'm gonna destroy the Persian empire. Well, his empire gets destroyed and the oracle says, well, I said a great empire will be destroyed. I didn't say which one it was. right Yeah. So anyway, right. that That's a stark illustration of the vagueness problem. One has to wonder, though, like, how do you not hear that prophecy and immediately you're like, but wait, but with bowau which one? Well, it's probably just ah um a story. No, of course, but it's it's a story that's weird because it's like, who would even like who would even not question that anyway? Yeah.
00:46:14
Speaker
And there's lots of prophecies in Nostradamus that are very, very vague. So we we showed you some of the cool ones, which seem very compelling in isolation. But consider this one, 167. The great famine that I sense approaching, turning this way in that, ever widespread, so great, so long, that she'll end up plucking roots from the woods and babes from the breast. Like, you know, there's a famine. Okay. Wait, like they're going to eat babies?
00:46:38
Speaker
No, I think they're going to stop the babies from breastfeeding because, they you know, they can't, you know, sorry. Oh. Another one. After major chaos, more on the way. The mighty mover renews the ages. rain of blood, milk, famine, war and plague, fire in the sky, trail of sparks in its wake.
00:46:59
Speaker
It's interesting how like a lot of the predictions are very Egyptian plague style. You know what i mean? Like famine, frogs. Yeah. Milk. mil Yeah. Blood, blood in the water, a swarm of insects, you know, um like these are all just like straight from the Egyptian plague repertoire. Yeah.
00:47:21
Speaker
Okay, so we've said a lot about, you know, maybe why Nostradamus has been given more attention than he possibly deserves. Maybe. It's up in the air. Maybe he was the real deal. Maybe not. But let's say, even if even if we don't care about Nostradamus specifically, you know, maybe in the future we might be like, is this other person a real prophet or not? You know, they're they're telling us some things that seem like they're coming true.
00:47:47
Speaker
One question that you might have for a prophet is like, are these things bound to to happen no matter what? In which case, like, why are you telling me really? Or like, you know, maybe can I change them?
00:48:01
Speaker
i i don't know. are you know, are we fated to end up here no matter what? And you might wonder if if this entails that prophecy rests on the assumption of causal determinism. if If a prophet, you know, in order for a prophet to be real, does this mean that like causal determinism is true? Everything is actually determined. Or does that just mean that certain events are definitely going to happen no matter what?
00:48:28
Speaker
I don't know. Thoughts on this. Yeah. So for Noshadamus, I think he does accept a kind of fatalism. So that's that's a term that we should you know examine. Sure. Because that's not determinism exactly. Yeah. I think that is one thing that one philosophical theme that thinking about Noshadamus makes me think of is, yeah, fatalism. What is that? I think sometimes people do use fatalism interchangeably with causal determinism, where causal determinism the idea that Every event in the universe is determined by the initial conditions of the universe and the laws of nature. Yeah. thing
00:49:02
Speaker
So I don't think necessarily Nostromus is endorsing that, but I think he is endorsing the idea that what he is predicting in the prophecies is fated to happen. It's bound to happen. Mm-hmm. Now, does that mean that there is no free will or no kind of openness to the future? and Not necessarily. But he does he does think at least think that these events are fated. That's that's it's not something we can get out of by just giving more money to the poor and becoming better. No, it's not. It's not. It's not like the yeah it's not like it's not like Ebenezer Scrooge. OK, got it. Yeah, i couldn't help but think of that when you described it in the beginning. Yeah. But you did also just suggest an interesting question, another interesting question, which we should touch on before turning to like fatalism, is that what what good is knowing these prophecies if they're bound to happen? And I guess maybe you might say that The fear of the unknown is worse than a fear you can name and you know is going to happen. So maybe like anxiety about the unknown is worse than fear of something that you know is bound to happen. So there could be some benefit to knowing that the doom and gloom is going to happen and what exactly is to be. And even if you can't change it, because then at least you know what it is. Yeah. The anxiety of the unknown is is diminished. That's why one benefit. that's why That's why my least favorite doctor kind is the dentist. yeah Because I can't see what they're doing to me in there. With a regular doctor, if they're stitching or cutting or poking, I can see that. But I can't see inside my own mouth. Anyway, that so agree. ah so So fatalism, we want to say, is something like not necessarily causal determinism, but just the idea that certain outcomes are fixed. Something like that. Yeah, there are fixed points in the future, even if how we get to those points isn't isn't fixed.
00:50:56
Speaker
So going returning to Nietzsche, actually, i feel like Nietzsche comes up a lot in this podcast, which is great. i always think Nietzsche is underrated by by philosophers, actually. Probably like overrated by people on Reddit, but underrated by philosophers. But anyway... um Going back to Nietzsche, because he, so at least some philosophers argue that Nietzsche himself was a fatalist, not necessarily a determinist, although also maybe a determinist, but but at least separately a fatalist. And in particular, Nietzsche. Brian Leiter, who wrote a book called Moral Psychology with Nietzsche, argues that Nietzsche's views about the futures of individual people are fated, but they're not fated by the gods or the faded necessarily by causal determinism in the in the sense we typically understand it but their fate it's faded by the kinds of people that we are like we have these personalities are these sets of characteristics that I guess the term he uses a significantly circumscribe rather than uniquely determine the trajectories of our lives is that basically right I didn't read this book So I didn't either, but I read the i read the SEP that Leiter wrote on this kind of thing. um but So he calls this the doctrine of types. And he attributes Nietzsche. He says, each person has a more or less fixed psychophysical constitution, which defines him as a particular person. So he's going to say, ah and on Leiter's leer's interpretation of Nietzsche... Nietzsche says that Socrates was a particular kind of person. And in fact, one key characteristic of Socrates for Nietzsche is that Socrates was ugly. yeah And his ugliness kind of determined a lot of things he thought and did. and And there are certain outcomes or trajectories that just not in the cards for Socrates because of who he was. So it doesn't uniquely determine everything Socrates did, his type, the type of person he is. Yeah. But it does at least fate some outcomes or it does determine some possibilities.
00:53:02
Speaker
Yeah. So, OK, so let me see if I can reconstruct this reasoning. So Socrates was ugly, which obviously is one of the worst things a person can be. For the Greeks, yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, yeah, especially for the Greeks. And because of this, it would be an extremely difficult burden to bear if you were not able to convince yourself that that didn't matter. hmm.
00:53:22
Speaker
And that reason was above all and that it it didn't matter because the next life mattered more anyway. Something like that. Right. And this makes it highly likely that Socrates life will take the trajectory of thinking about things as in this like Socratically rational way. Yeah. I reread the beginning of the Twilight the Idols by Nietzsche, and he thinks all the great sages in history who had life denying views all had some kind of sickness in common. And he doesn't just do this with the ancients. um He does this with contemporaries as well. So Wagner, ah the composer, he sees as like... the The one possible way of coming back from the scourge of Socratic rationalism in the birth of tragedy, he he's like, well, maybe we can get out. of we We can go back to the Dionysian Apollonian picture of life that will give us meaning because of this the great man of our time, Wagner, whose music he saw is it Well, he didn't keep this view of Wagner forever. But he he thought surely someone who produces music like this must understand the Apollonian Dionysian picture of life and why he's right or whatever. He was he was um disabused of this notion and and let down by Wagner eventually. And we still kind of talk this way ordinarily. We talk about a type of person. he or she has a type, you know, that kind of thing. Sure. i mean, that's why we're so interested in you know going back to our episode on personality tests. That's why we're so interested in those. I liked Leiter's discussion of fatalism here because philosophers don't really talk too much about fatalism as distinct from determinism. And so he he shut sketch out of sketches out a view for Nietzsche, which is is interesting. He calls it causal essentialism, that there's certain outcomes that are faded or there's certain trajectories or sets of possibilities that are that are circumscribed based on the kind of thing it is. Yeah. which differs, according Leiter, from what he calls classical fatalism, quote, in which all the details of one's life are determined in advance. That's kind of fatalism you can find in discussions of Aristotle, where where he talks about this this famous sea battle argument. He kind of appeals to the the very nature of logic to argue for fatalism about everything. Do you remember this? It's kind of like
00:55:37
Speaker
Either there will be a sea battle or there will not. If it's true, there will be a sea battle. You can't do anything about it in the future. If it's true, there won't be a sea battle. You can't do anything about it. So you can't do anything about it anyway. The idea is like from the very nature of logic itself and how truth works, all things are faded. So so David Foster Wallace in his senior thesis had a nice description of this kind of fatalism as this thing from determinism. David, like the... like Yeah, the David Foster Wallace. Oh, wow. Okay. The infinite jest guy. Yeah, that guy. so he see So in his senior thesis, he clarified how this kind of fatalism, where everything's faded because of the very nature of logic itself and how truth works. So he says, unlike determinism, fatalism does not proceed by contemplating the causal mechanics of the universe, the implications for human freedom of Newtonian physics or thermodynamics or quantum mechanics, Instead, the fatalist argues that his doctrine can be established by mere reflection on the logic of propositions about the future.
00:56:37
Speaker
Either it's true now that there's a sea battle tomorrow or there's not. You can't do doing anything about it. So that's a whole can of worms. We won't explore that. But that's a kind of fatalism, too. Not Nietzsche's fatalism, at the very at least. Fascinating. Yeah. OK. So for the prophet to be right, we don't necessarily have to accept causal determinants. No, I don't think so. but but we We could just be fatalists. But you've got to at least believe that some propositions about the future are true now. Yeah. And you can't do anything about it. So it at least a kind of mitigated form of this logical determinism sea battle thing that Aristotle was writing about.
00:57:12
Speaker
Okay, so we're getting close on time. and I always like to wrap things up with a nice little question. So Frank, you obviously really poured yourself into Nostradamus research.
00:57:23
Speaker
I think you weren't all that into the topic. But then once you once you started reading about him, you really, ah you really latched on. So do you have like a favorite tidbit or fact or facet of Nostradamus that you that you want to share with us? Well,
Prophecies in WWII Propaganda
00:57:38
Speaker
well the biography of him that I read was less a biography and more about the history of the reception, the use and abuse of Nostradamus, the legacy of Nostradamus. And I very much liked learning about the use of Nostradamus in propaganda campaigns during World War ii So this was very surprising to me to learn. But during World War II, Nostradamus was super duper popular in France. When the Nazis invaded or and took over France, people were reading Nostradamus a lot, trying to figure out what was going to happen next.
00:58:10
Speaker
Copies of the prophecies were selling out at bookstores. 20 Nostradamus books were published in the years nineteen thirty seven nineteen thirty nine a lot of insane like books about Nostradamus. The French were reading Nostradamus.
00:58:25
Speaker
um But not just that. The Germans, the Nazis, were reading Nostradamus too. So Hitler had a copy in his bunker. He's like, who's this hister guy?
00:58:37
Speaker
Well, you say that, but so I read that Saddam Hussein wanted a translation of Nostradamus too because he thought he was in there. Anyway, but Goebbels, the the minister of propaganda for the Nazis, he thought that he could use Nostradamus in his propaganda campaign. So what they would do is they would drop leaflets from planes over France. predicting the demise of the Allies. They'd say, look, Nostradamus said you guys are going to lose. And in his private ah correspondences, Goebbels said, this stuff is this stuff is great. are The Americans and English fall easily for this this type of thing. yeah So he thought he thought the Americans were stupid. ah no But the Americans clapped back, as the kids say. They...
00:59:19
Speaker
i hate yeah I hate that term, but I'm going to use it. So MGM, the prominent film studio, they created some Nostradamus shorts of their own. so so So short videos that were shown in theaters, their own propaganda campaigns against Hitler and the Nazis and that kind of thing.
00:59:35
Speaker
ah The height of the use of Nostranomis in World War ii is reflected in a quote from the Washington Post in 1941. So they said that the prophecies has, quote, replaced Mein Kampf as the infallible authority on what is going to happen next.
00:59:51
Speaker
Washington Post, 1941. Yeah, wild stuff, right? The wild that they're using it in propaganda campaigns, both the Allies and the Nazis. Everyone France is reading it.
01:00:02
Speaker
The newspapers are reporting that this is how we learn what's going happen next. People don't tell you this in school. Huh. yeah Yeah. I mean, prophecy is propaganda totally makes sense, though.
01:00:13
Speaker
Telling people what they want to hear is good for morale. yeah You know, like that's why I'm sure like the fortune teller or palm reader who's constantly telling people like, you know, oh you're going to you're going to have keep having a, you know, a series of of short romances and one night flings and you're never really going to settle down. Like that person's not getting repeat customers. And so I guess there's yeah, there's an aspect of propagandizing where I mean, yeah, yeah I guess it is like prophecy is propaganda. That really gave me a newfound appreciation for, i shouldn't say newfound, right? We do philosophy. But it really reminded me why philosophy matters.
01:00:50
Speaker
I get it now. i get i I'm reminding myself why we we do what we do because philosophy is a pretty good antidote to propaganda, I think. Philosophy done well, like emphasizing clarity and precision, critical reason. ah That sounds like ah the spirit of Socratic rationalism to me. Okay, we'll get out of here, Chuck. But yeah, I mean, and this is the kind of thing that that was motivating certain schools of philosophy that were around during times preceding World War II, right the the logical positive this. People remember them as those nerds that insisted on science and math and everything that you can't experience or derive from logic as meaningless. And yeah, they sound really you know goofy and restrictive, but people like Rolf Carnap were motivated by The threat of propaganda. He lived in Germany. He saw what was going on. He's like, we need to really insist on reason and evidence because that is the way to keep ourselves accountable.
01:01:47
Speaker
You know, I guess one thing that does do is like soften my dislike of logical pops. Oh, yeah. I mean, I still hate it, but it does make me kind of get it. I get it. You know, I get it. So given the content. The verification principle as social critique.
01:02:02
Speaker
Yeah, sure. As a bulwark against fascism. Yeah, that's fine. What was your favorite thing to learn about Nostradamus or favorite thing that we discussed or anything like that? Yeah, I mean, I guess it's sort of related to yours. Not propaganda necessarily, but I just think thinking about our hunger for prophecy as just like another facet of our hunger for um like narrative meaning in life. Prophecy doesn't really make sense in like a chaotic, meaningless universe, right? Even if you could like see into the future, like, you know, prophecy seems like narrative, like it's telling a narrative. Yeah. Yeah. More so than just like being like, this will happen in the future. Like it's it's true trying to paint a story. So in that way, it kind of makes historical sense why World War II was like the last big burst of interest in Nostradamus. I mean, I know there was that documentary in the 80s or whatever. There some interest in during 9-11, too, but yeah but really nothing that has rivaled in our times the interest in World War II. no Yeah. Right. So that makes sense, though, because after World War II, you see this kind of, I don't know, you yeah would they talk about it as like a kind of worldwide descent into increasing nihilism. The existentialists. Sure. Of course. Yeah. There's no objective meaning. Right. Yeah, yeah, you really, um it's really a kind of worldwide phenomenon in response to these great world wars as being very shattering to the idea of meaning and objective value and narrative coherence in life, which which one can understand. and And I guess it makes sense that people sort of lose interest in the idea of prophecy after that, not just because of decreasing belief in the supernatural, but decreasing confidence in anything making sense ever. Yeah. There's definitely people out there still trying to decode Nostradamus. But my sense is we don't hear as much about him anymore. And in fact, the articles I read about the 2026 predictions, as I mentioned already, they were very ironic. right Yeah. Yeah. It was it was just like a game. It was it was dripping with irony. Yeah. And I just feel like we just don't like have profits anymore in general.
01:04:14
Speaker
You know, like who's who's maybe that's what we need, Megan. We need a profit. She looked for the late night telethons, you know, we'll read your palm or whatever. But you need a profit for our time. We need. Yeah. God. Yeah.
01:04:28
Speaker
yeah So I guess that was that was something that I thought was really interesting in thinking about all of the stuff. I just that that made sense to me. Yeah, connections to our apocalypse episode, connections to our prehistory episode where we talked about the terror of history. The idea that everything that happens is just one damn thing after another. that It's yeah unconnected. That's horrifying. So even if if it's bad, we still want some meaning to it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, even bad things, if they're if it's a story that we have a part there's something comforting about that. Yeah.
01:04:59
Speaker
Grow back and listen to that episode if you haven't. um Anyway, we're over time. I mean, there's not anyone here cutting us off, but you guys are probably tired. So we'll wrap this up. Our next episode will be episode 30, right? Throw party. we're going to have Yeah, we'll do something special for the next episode. So if you have any idea of what that should be, send us a message. Otherwise, we'll just wing it.
01:05:24
Speaker
So thanks for listening. Tune in next time.