Did Lead Lead to the Fall of the Roman Empire?
Ridiculous History
iHeartPodcasts
4.2 • 4.7K Ratings
🗓️ 31 March 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
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Summary
Don't do lead, kids! Nowadays everyone knows the dangers this substance poses to humans -- especially children in their formative years -- but back in the day, lead was everywhere. Ancient Rome was riddled with the stuff, using lead in everything from pipes, to smelting, to cutlery, pottery and wine. It's tough to know just how much lead the average person encountered, but breathing the lead-filled air alone may have dropped children's IQs by up to three points. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max discover a fascinating, controversial theory: that Rome didn't fall due to war and economic troubles... but instead, the empire toppled because everyone slowly became dumber and dumber.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Ridiculous History is a production of IHeart Radio. Welcome back to the show. |
| 0:27.9 | Fellow ridiculous historians, pull up your number two pencils because we have one for you with great thanks to our super producer, Mr. Max unleaded Williams. |
| 0:39.9 | I hope you are unleaded. |
| 0:42.3 | Max, get the let out Williams. |
| 0:44.7 | There we go. |
| 0:45.3 | I made a straight corn. |
| 0:47.0 | Oh, no. |
| 0:47.6 | What? |
| 0:48.2 | No, I'm 10% corn. |
| 0:49.7 | I don't understand. |
| 0:50.2 | I don't understand the correlation. |
| 0:52.7 | Yeah, half and all jokes. |
| 0:54.1 | Yeah, got it, got it, got it, got Yeah, that is none other than Mr. Noel Brown. |
| 0:58.3 | Noel, how are you doing? |
| 0:59.5 | I'm pretty good, man. |
| 1:00.6 | I'm excited to get the lead out. |
| 1:02.4 | Remember when they used to, that was like, I think it was sort of a universal |
| 1:05.2 | radio thing for like a block of lead zeppelin. |
| 1:09.4 | They just called it get the the it might have been a local |
| 1:11.4 | regional thing for me but for some reason it seems sort of like morning shows with someone called |
| 1:16.1 | the gooch as you like to say ben i just seems like an old school radio thing like we're going to |
| 1:20.2 | get the lead out this hour on 96x rock uh they do call me ben bullen. The rumors are true. |
... |
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