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A listener note, this episode contains adult content and is not suitable for everyone.

Please be advised. In 64 a.D. the Roman Emperor Nero was in the city of Naples Italy performing for the first time in a public theatre.

Niro was a huge fan of the arts and he was reportedly a very good musician.

Just two years earlier, the area had suffered a major earthquake.

So when the ground in the theater began to tremble, anxiety ran high.

But Nero continued his song, taking his time to get to the last note.

After he finished, the crowd raced out

and made it just in time to watch the theater crumble and fall.

But this was just a precursor, or should I say warning of the

cataclysmic event that was to occur 15 years later.

The city of Pompeii, just 17 miles southeast of Naples,

stood in the shadow of a great mountain. At least, they thought it was a mountain at that time, but it was actually what we now

know as the volcano Mount Vesuvius.

That volcano erupted in 79 AD,

destroying almost everything in its path,

including the beautiful city of Pompeii.

When a volcano explodes, the magma or molten rock which has been

building under the surface begins to rise. It is more buoyant than the surrounding earth and rock. The

pressure slowly builds until the Earth's surface is forced to crack open to vent the magma, which then turns to lava.

This rather simplified explanation is analogous to the circumstances that created the

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