Summary: <p>What was the worst year to be alive on planet Earth? </p> <p>We make the case for 536 AD, which set off a cascade of catastrophes that is almost too horrible to imagine. A supervolcano. The disappearance of shadows. A failure of bread. Plague rats. Using evidence painstakingly gathered around the world - from Mongolian tree rings to Greenlandic ice cores to Mayan artifacts - we paint a portrait of what scientists and historians think went wrong, and what we think it felt like to be there in real time. (Spoiler: not so hot.) We hear a hymn for the dead from the ancient kingdom of Axum, the closest we can get to the sound of grief from a millennium and a half ago.</p> <p>The horrors of 536 make us wonder about the parallels and perpendiculars with our own time: does it make you feel any better knowing that your suffering is part of a global crisis? Or does it just make things worse?"<em>Thanks to reporter Ann Gibbons whose Science article "<a href="https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.362.6416.733">Eruption made 536 ‘the worst year to be alive</a>" </em><em>got us interested in the first place. </em>In case you want to learn more about 536, here are some other sources: Timothy P. Newfield, <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_32">“The Climate Downturn of 536-50”</a> in the <em>Palgrave Handbook on Climate History</em>Dallas Abbott et al., <a href="https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D81V5DCR">“What caused terrestrial dust loading and climate downturns between A.D. 533 and 540?”</a>Joel Gunn and Alesio Ciarini (editors),<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348577900_THE_AD_536_CRISIS_A_21ST_CENTURY_PERSPECTIVE"> “The A.D. 536 Crisis: A 21st Century Perspective”</a>Antti Arjava, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4128751">“The Mystery Cloud of 536 CE in the Mediterranean Sources”</a> And for more on the composer Yared, watch Meklit Hadero’s TED talk “<a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/meklit_hadero_the_unexpected_beauty_of_everyday_sounds/transcript?language=en">The Unexpected Beauty of Everyday Sounds”</a></p> <p>Credits: <em>This episode was reported by Latif Nasser and Lulu Miller, and produced by Simon Adler. With sound and music from Simon Adler and Jeremy Bloom.</em></p> <p>Special Thanks: <em>Thanks to Joel Gunn, Dallas Abbott, Mathias Nordvig, Emma Rigby, Robert Dull, Daniel Yacob, Kay Shelemey, Jacke Phillips, Meklit Hadero, and Joan Aruz.</em></p> <p><em>Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at <a href="https://pledge3.wnyc.org/donate/radiolab/onestep/"></a></em><em>Radiolab.org/donate</em><em>. </em></p> <p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaum_fMDGgFQCmKHUBPq_xg"></a>Radiolab is on YouTube! Catch up with new episodes and hear classics from our archive. Plus, find other cool things we did in the past — like miniseries, music videos, short films and animations, behind-the-scenes features, Radiolab live shows, and more. Take a look, explore and subscribe!</p>
