You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.

Tim Harford here. I'm the host of cautionary tales.

We've teamed up with a couple of other great shows from the Pushkin Network to bring you a special episode all about mistakes and what we can learn from them.

They said, swish the ketamine around in your mouth and then spit it out.

And I swished it around in my mouth around in your mouth and then spit it out. And I

swish it around in my mouth for about 30 seconds and then I swallowed it. Listen to the episode on

Cautionary Tales, available wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to the Explorers podcast. I hope you are well. Today we have another

one-and-done series, this on Roman Emperor Nero's Nile Expedition

in the middle of the first century AD.

This is an odd and obscure story, not dissimilar to our last episode, which was on the Vivaldi

Brothers' attempt to sail around Africa.

I'll be honest, I had not intended to cover this tale just yet, but I'm working on a larger

series, and I've been

struggling to get that story put together in a manner that makes me happy. And thus I pivoted

to this new topic. I have had this story of Nero and the Nile in my back pocket for such a

situation, and decided it was time to pass it along to you because it is a fun tale, and it

gets you guys your fix of exploration fun.

Now, the first thing you're probably thinking is Nero? You mean crazy Nero? The guy who fiddled

while Rome burned? The answer is, yes, that Nero. The second question you probably have is,

did Nero really go exploring in Egypt? And the answer to that one is, no, not personally, but he did

commission a small expedition to travel up the Nile River to search for the famed river's source.

This expedition would mark the first time Europeans ventured into Equatorial Africa, and it will

...