Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. It's Saturday.
Speaker 1: It's time for a vault episode and this is going
Speaker 1: to be Hoof's Part two, which originally published six thirteen,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: Please enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a
Speaker 2: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two
Speaker 3: of our series on the horse hoof. Now. In part one,
Speaker 3: we discussed the anatomical form of the horse hoof, with
Speaker 3: an emphasis on the alarming fact that the hoof is
Speaker 3: essentially a highly specialized form of the tetrapod middle finger.
Speaker 3: So when you see a horse galloping around, yes, it
Speaker 3: is running around on all middle fingers and toes. We
Speaker 3: talked about an ancient legend about the horse ridden by
Speaker 3: Julius Caesar, which some artists have depicted as having dock
Speaker 3: in hair and human feet instead of hoofs, at least
Speaker 3: on the first two legs. Rob's idea, I think was
Speaker 3: that this it's possible that these stories could be based
Speaker 3: on observations of what are called polydactyl horses, horses born
Speaker 3: with extra hooflets on the sides of the primary hoof,
Speaker 3: which do in fact exist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this seems to be the more sensible interpretation that
Speaker 1: you see taken by folks. And I don't think anyone's
Speaker 1: actually arguing that these horses had like human fore feet,
Speaker 1: but it looks hilarious in the illustrations.
Speaker 3: It does. And we finally talked about the evolution of
Speaker 3: the horse hoof, with the commonly accepted narrative being that
Speaker 3: millions of years ago, the ancestors of modern horses lived
Speaker 3: in more forested environments, maybe warmer, wetter environments. They were
Speaker 3: much smaller, maybe about the size of dogs, and had
Speaker 3: multiple toes per feet. Then, due to climate and habitat changes,
Speaker 3: they became grassland dwellers, which drove them to evolve larger
Speaker 3: body sizes and select for galloping speed, and these changes
Speaker 3: coincided with the loss of peripheral toes until you end
Speaker 3: up with the modern horse and its relatives in the
Speaker 3: genus equis, so that would include the zebra and the
Speaker 3: ass all having only one toe per foot, the columnar hoof.
Speaker 3: Now today, we wanted to continue the series on the
Speaker 3: horse hoof getting into a couple other things, about horsecof
Speaker 3: evolution as well as the invention of the horseshoe. But
Speaker 3: before we do that, I wanted to take a brief
Speaker 3: detour into a metaphorical connection to the hoof, which concerns
Speaker 3: medical diagnostics and more generally, the realm of statistical reasoning.
Speaker 3: So there's a famous aphorism widely used in medical education,
Speaker 3: often invoked by practicing physicians, and it goes like this,
Speaker 3: when you hear hoof beats, look for horses, not zebras. Rob.
Speaker 3: I think this thing may have come up on the
Speaker 3: show in the past that I couldn't remember when, but
Speaker 3: I'm sure you've heard this before, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And it basically is what it sounds like, right, it's,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever the evidence seems to indicate, go for
Speaker 1: the more likely and more statistically reasonable explanation for.
Speaker 3: The evidence, right. So I was looking up the history
Speaker 3: of this quote in a chapter on medical aphorisms in
Speaker 3: a book called White Coat Tails Medicine's Heroes, Heritage and
Speaker 3: Misadventures by Robert B. Taylor published by Springer. So I'll
Speaker 3: refer back to that chapter in a second. But yeah, Rob,
Speaker 3: like you say, the point of this aphorism is that
Speaker 3: when a patient presents with symptoms X, Y, and Z,
Speaker 3: you should start by thinking about the most common conditions
Speaker 3: within the population associated with that club of symptoms, rather
Speaker 3: than jumping to assumptions about rare diseases. So, for example,
Speaker 3: if a patient presents at a US clinic with flu
Speaker 3: like symptoms, it's better to start by investigating the possibility
Speaker 3: that they have the flu or common cold, or now
Speaker 3: maybe COVID, rather than to start by investigating whether they
Speaker 3: have contracted the hindra virus from a flying fox in Australia.
Speaker 3: Taylor traces this saying back to an American medical researcher
Speaker 3: named Theodore E. Woodward who lived nineteen fourteen to two
Speaker 3: thousand and five, who taught at the University of Maryland
Speaker 3: School of Medicine. And it seems actually the common form
Speaker 3: of this aphorism might be a paraphrase, and the more
Speaker 3: accurate original quote may have been don't look for zebras
Speaker 3: on Green Street. That might be a little perplexing, but
Speaker 3: it makes sense in the context because Green Street was
Speaker 3: the location of the University of Maryland hospital in Baltimore,
Speaker 3: and he was teaching at the University of Maryland to
Speaker 3: students there, so of course you can see why it
Speaker 3: would need to be rephrased to make more sense outside
Speaker 3: of its original locality. But I also think the localization
Speaker 3: to Baltimore geography highlights something important, which is that this
Speaker 3: aphorism is only useful when you're talking about a known
Speaker 3: population of patients in which the frequency of certain diseases
Speaker 3: or conditions is fairly well understood. Because if you were
Speaker 3: talking to a group of medical students, maybe in a
Speaker 3: region of southern Africa where zebras are abundant, it might
Speaker 3: make sense to use the aphorism inverted, I guess, depending
Speaker 3: on how many horses there are around as well. But
Speaker 3: in the same sense, you have to know what the
Speaker 3: frequencies are in the population you're looking at before deploying this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3: Now, I find this the reasoning behind the saying actually
Speaker 3: kind of interesting, because if you interpret it in the
Speaker 3: usual way, it's a piece of advice that can seem
Speaker 3: rather obvious, like common explanations are more common than rare
Speaker 3: way ones. But I think as a general rule, when
Speaker 3: looking for explanations, we do have to be reminded to
Speaker 3: start by considering what is most likely in terms of frequency,
Speaker 3: because there are all kinds of mental biases that constantly
Speaker 3: tempt us to start looking for highly unusual causes for
Speaker 3: unexplained phenomena before we've exhausted all of the extremely commonplace
Speaker 3: candidates for one thing. Unusual causes and explanations are usually
Speaker 3: more exciting. They kind of stick in the mind because
Speaker 3: of our level of interest in them, and they can
Speaker 3: quite easily then come to mind when we start searching
Speaker 3: around for an explanation. They're sort of at the top
Speaker 3: of the toy box right now. In this section of
Speaker 3: the book I was talking about, Taylor makes an interesting
Speaker 3: point about the zebra aphorism, which I hadn't quite considered.
Speaker 3: I was just thinking at the first order level of
Speaker 3: more common explanations and less common explanations. But Taylor also
Speaker 3: writes quote as a clinical corollary, experienced diagnosticians look first
Speaker 3: for uncommon manifestations of common conditions rather than common manifestations
Speaker 3: of uncommon diseases. Now that seemed really interesting to me.
Speaker 3: I hadn't quite thought about it that way. And of
Speaker 3: course it would depend on exactly how uncommon you mean
Speaker 3: in each clause of that sentence, Like if you were
Speaker 3: to represent them as actual percentage chances and stuff. The
Speaker 3: math might break out in different ways. But if a
Speaker 3: certain set of symptoms appears in I don't know, only
Speaker 3: three percent of cases of an extremely common condition that
Speaker 3: affects you know, millions of people every year, it is
Speaker 3: probably still worth investigating that diagnosis the uncommon manifestation of
Speaker 3: the extremely common condition before you look at the possibility
Speaker 3: of a condition that matches the symptoms very closely. But
Speaker 3: you know, you might only see all a couple of
Speaker 3: cases in the world per year, it's extremely rare. You'd
Speaker 3: still get way more hits of confirmation on the on
Speaker 3: the uncommon version of the common condition.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of various discussions we've had about cryptozoology
Speaker 1: and the interpretations and misinterpretations of dead animals and in
Speaker 1: some cases dead human beings, where you're looking at some
Speaker 1: rate of decay and yeah, are you looking at it
Speaker 1: as the as an uncommon manifestation of a common condition,
Speaker 1: and in other words, are you're looking at as kind
Speaker 1: of like a novel pattern or appearance in decay of
Speaker 1: just a normal, mundane animal, or are you going to
Speaker 1: jump to the to that extreme level and think, well, no,
Speaker 1: this is just how it looks and we've just never
Speaker 1: seen this creature before.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. However, I want to come back on the
Speaker 3: other end, because if you search for medical case reports
Speaker 3: citing this aphorism, which I was doing a lot of times,
Speaker 3: it will be specific to discuss cases where it was
Speaker 3: a zebra on Green Street, the rare and unexpected diagnosis
Speaker 3: that turned out to be correct. So just one example
Speaker 3: I was looking at this was a case report published
Speaker 3: in Clinical Practice in Cases in Emergency Medicine in twenty
Speaker 3: nineteen by Loupez at All called Beware of the Zebra,
Speaker 3: nine year Old with Fever. I believe this incident took
Speaker 3: place in the US state of North Carolina. So it
Speaker 3: was a nine year old girl whose family spoke only French,
Speaker 3: and they presented at the hospital with the patient having
Speaker 3: an abdominal pain, vomiting, intermittent fevers, fatigue, and headache, and
Speaker 3: because there was a language barrier, everything had to be
Speaker 3: done with the help of an interpreter, and it seems
Speaker 3: that this led to some maybe some original misunderstandings about
Speaker 3: the case history. So the doctors tried to diagnose based
Speaker 3: on all the normal explanations that they would be likely
Speaker 3: to see in their patient population, but none of the
Speaker 3: common diagnoses really fit her case. Her condition continued to
Speaker 3: get worse. It even became life threatening, and the breakthrough
Speaker 3: seemed to come when the doctors began looking outside the
Speaker 3: normal slate of conditions encountered in their practice in the
Speaker 3: United States. Finally, they learned that the girl's family had
Speaker 3: just in the weeks before, arrived from the Congo, where
Speaker 3: malaria is common. The care providers eventually ordered a test
Speaker 3: that would put them on the right track. They write
Speaker 3: in their report, quote, this test was a peripheral blood smear,
Speaker 3: specifically a thick and thin smear, which revealed Plasmodium falciparum,
Speaker 3: and this is one of the protozoa responsible for causing malaria,
Speaker 3: leading to a final diagnosis of cerebral malaria. And then
Speaker 3: they write from here they contacted the twenty four hour
Speaker 3: CDC hotline to immediately get the appropriate anti malarial medication.
Speaker 3: They put the girl on a quinine drip and admitted
Speaker 3: her to the pediatric intensive care unit. And then they say,
Speaker 3: quote remarkably, within four weeks, she made a full recovery
Speaker 3: and returned home with her family. So thankfully, the patient
Speaker 3: was all right in the end, but she potentially could
Speaker 3: have died if doctors hadn't made the locally unusual but
Speaker 3: correct diagnosis and given her the right treatment. And so
Speaker 3: the authors say in their conclusion quote, many of us
Speaker 3: are taught the common aphorism in medical school. When you
Speaker 3: hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras. When approaching a
Speaker 3: nine year old with fever, we hear the hoof beat
Speaker 3: symptoms and tend to think of the typical diagnoses that
Speaker 3: are commonly seen in our pediatric population. Yet if we
Speaker 3: are not thinking about the zebras, we will miss this
Speaker 3: common presentation of a disease that is uncommon north of
Speaker 3: the equator, which could lead to high morbidity and possibly
Speaker 3: even mortality for patients. So it's very good that they
Speaker 3: were able to discover this intervene and probably save the
Speaker 3: girl's life. But it highlights how there's a difficult balance,
Speaker 3: Like if you go looking for zebras before you look
Speaker 3: for horses on Green Street, you will waste a lot
Speaker 3: of time and resources and potentially cause frequent misdiagnoses that
Speaker 3: could harm people. But if you never consider the possibility
Speaker 3: of zebra's on Green Street. There will be rare but
Speaker 3: very real cases where you could save somebody's life but
Speaker 3: you don't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, certainly looking at the
Speaker 1: like the professional end of the scenario, because on the
Speaker 1: other end, like say the user end and the media end,
Speaker 1: I mean, zebra on Green Street. That's a great headline.
Speaker 1: You're gonna that's the headline that's gonna stick in your mind,
Speaker 1: and then when you're going to see the doctor, you're
Speaker 1: gonna be like, hey, doc, is it possible that a
Speaker 1: rare amiba is eating my flesh? Or something to that effect,
Speaker 1: because that's what you saw in the headline, that's what
Speaker 1: you saw on the the documentary series that that that
Speaker 1: sensationalized a rare case, right.
Speaker 3: I Mean. The the difficult thing is like, because of
Speaker 3: the way we emotionally react to stories like this, I
Speaker 3: feel like it kind of tends to have the effect
Speaker 3: of making us think, well, maybe then I should start
Speaker 3: looking for diagnoses of unusual diseases in patient populations. So
Speaker 3: it just highlights like diagnosis in the specific case of medicine,
Speaker 3: and searching for explanations for unknown phenomena generally is really difficult.
Speaker 3: It involves a balance between prioritizing likely explanations, which are
Speaker 3: by very definition almost always going to be correct, but
Speaker 3: also being open minded enough to catch the unusual ones
Speaker 3: when they arise. And obviously, I think a big part
Speaker 3: of the art of medicine is gaining good intuition and
Speaker 3: establishing sound processes to prioritize explanations in a reasonable way
Speaker 3: based on what we know about frequency, but then also
Speaker 3: to be able to catch the cases that are unusual
Speaker 3: and intervene appropriately to help people. All right, you want
Speaker 3: to talk a little bit about the evolution of the
Speaker 3: horse hoof?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we should probably talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about how they came to run about in their middle fingers.
Speaker 3: We talked in the last episode about a pretty commonly
Speaker 3: accepted story of how that evolutionary process occurred, but there
Speaker 3: was still some uncertainty about exactly why the one toe
Speaker 3: making contact with the ground is favored over keeping the
Speaker 3: larger number of toes that the ancestors of horses used
Speaker 3: to have, And to some degree I think that question
Speaker 3: is still not fully settled. There are still some questions
Speaker 3: about why exactly the one toe was favored. We do
Speaker 3: know that the ancestors of horses and zebras and asses
Speaker 3: had multiple toes per foot. But what is gained by
Speaker 3: going quad bird? You know, the middle fingers across all
Speaker 3: four feet, So the evolution of is called monodactyly, having
Speaker 3: one toe monodactyly. It has long been assumed that that
Speaker 3: was useful for allowing a large animal like a modern horse,
Speaker 3: to achieve greater running speed. But I came across an
Speaker 3: interesting alternative idea explored in a paper called the Evolution
Speaker 3: of equid monodactyly, a review including a new hypothesis published
Speaker 3: in Frontiers and Ecology and Evolution by Christine M. Janis
Speaker 3: and Raymond Bernor, and basically here the authors asked what
Speaker 3: if the evolution of the modern equine hoof was a
Speaker 3: product of selection for endurance rather than speed, meaning that
Speaker 3: the primary advantage conferred was in the evolution of an
Speaker 3: efficient and energy efficient spring foot that would support long
Speaker 3: distance trots at medium speed to locate better food resources. So,
Speaker 3: under their hypothesis, the law of extra toes may have
Speaker 3: been a coincidental byproduct of the selection for the more
Speaker 3: efficient spring foot, which helps the horse conserve energy while foraging,
Speaker 3: rather than an adaptation for top speed. Running, which again
Speaker 3: is assumed to be primarily for the purpose of escaping
Speaker 3: the jaws of predators. Now I cite this not to
Speaker 3: say that I think their hypothesis is definitely correct. I
Speaker 3: have no expertise to decide between which explanation of the
Speaker 3: horsfof evolution better fits the evidence, but this possibility made
Speaker 3: me think back again to the Zebras on Green Street
Speaker 3: saying about how sometimes certain explanations seem more likely to
Speaker 3: us not because they're actually more common, but because they're
Speaker 3: more mentally salient. It reminds me I've talked before about
Speaker 3: this idea that I have the sort of sex and
Speaker 3: violence principle in evolutionary reasoning, where what I think I've
Speaker 3: observed is that when people without or sometimes even with
Speaker 3: biological training, are trying to think of possible evolutionary explanations
Speaker 3: for a trait in an organism, we are a little
Speaker 3: too quick to resort to explanations involving either predation or mating,
Speaker 3: and we often overlook extremely common mechanisms in nature, like
Speaker 3: temperature regulation and energy efficiency, which play a huge role
Speaker 3: in the success of a life form. But I think
Speaker 3: maybe they're not as interesting to our brains as sex
Speaker 3: or violence, so we're less likely to think of them.
Speaker 3: They do not bleed, so they do not lead in
Speaker 3: the mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it kind of reminds me of past discussions we've
Speaker 1: talked about concerning the stegosaurus, for example, you know, and
Speaker 1: memory serves you know that there have been various interpretations
Speaker 1: over the years, for there are those curious plates on
Speaker 1: their back, as well as very interpretations of just how
Speaker 1: they are positioned. But yeah, you can with something like that,
Speaker 1: you can. You're inevitably you're going to find those explanations
Speaker 1: that have to do with mating, or protection from predators,
Speaker 1: or protection when they're in conflict with others of their kind.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I guess sometimes these ideas that they're used
Speaker 1: for temperature regulation or something like that may feel less exciting.
Speaker 1: May it may feel more mundane. Though I guess you
Speaker 1: could also argue that maybe the more exotic or mysterious
Speaker 1: the feature is, like say those backridges on the stegosaurus,
Speaker 1: maybe that cancels it out to some degree.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but.
Speaker 1: It's hard to imagine a like a seven year old
Speaker 1: or an eight year old playing with the toy stegosaurus
Speaker 1: and be like, look, mom and dad, this guy's warming
Speaker 1: up in the sun watching. That's not what bathtub dinosaurs do.
Speaker 1: They bite each other.
Speaker 3: But again I want to make clear I'm not saying
Speaker 3: I think that the trotting foraging spring hook explanation is
Speaker 3: necessarily better than the high speed running explanation for the horse.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I think it's important to remember
Speaker 3: to consider those types of explanations as well. Now, another
Speaker 3: question that has come up in several things I was
Speaker 3: reading is about should we really say that the horse
Speaker 3: only has one toe? I mean, it really does basically
Speaker 3: have only one toe that makes contact with the ground,
Speaker 3: But in what sense did it really quote lose the
Speaker 3: other toes. One example of this counter narrative I was
Speaker 3: reading is in an article in The New York Times
Speaker 3: by Veronique Greenwood published February eighth, twenty twenty, called a
Speaker 3: horse has five toes and then it doesn't. And this
Speaker 3: article tells the story of a researcher named Catherine Kavanaugh,
Speaker 3: a biologist at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, who was
Speaker 3: looking at preserved horse embryos in the lab when she
Speaker 3: discovered something very interesting, which is that during the earliest
Speaker 3: stages of gestation, the area of the embryo that will
Speaker 3: eventually develop to become the foot become the hoof in
Speaker 3: that area. The embryonic horses have five toes, so this
Speaker 3: period during development only lasts for a couple of days
Speaker 3: before the extra toes begin to sort of fuse and vanish.
Speaker 3: But to read from the article briefly quote, the discovery
Speaker 3: implies something profound about how anatomical development works. As an
Speaker 3: embryo puts itself together, growing from a tiny wad of
Speaker 3: cells into multiple specialized tissues, fed by blood vessels and
Speaker 3: linked by the winding threads of nerves, it is following
Speaker 3: a template. That template is subject to evolution, just like
Speaker 3: other things about the animal. But some moments in the
Speaker 3: process or some routes that development takes may not easily
Speaker 3: be altered, And so the researcher here, Catherine Kavanaugh, is
Speaker 3: quoted saying something about the early steps in toe development
Speaker 3: is stabilized. We don't know why, but that's what we
Speaker 3: think is going on. So I found it's also interesting
Speaker 3: because it's an example of how stages in development can
Speaker 3: become evolutionarily fixed even when they differ from the final form.
Speaker 3: So like for some reason, as the horse is growing
Speaker 3: as an embryo, it needs to develop five fingers before
Speaker 3: or five toes before it can lose four of the
Speaker 3: toes per hoof, so you know, eventually it will have
Speaker 3: functionally one toe making contact with the ground, but the
Speaker 3: development process has to go through this other stage first.
Speaker 1: For some reason, it reminds me of something we discussed
Speaker 1: in our whale episodes about the blowhole of the whale
Speaker 1: being seen to, of course, through the fossil record, travel
Speaker 1: up the snout up to the top of the head,
Speaker 1: but we can also observe this movement in the womb
Speaker 1: as the fetal whale is developing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Another interesting thing about the horse hoof is that
Speaker 3: there are some people who have pointed out how vestiges
Speaker 3: of the missing toes can still sort of be found
Speaker 3: as little sort of ridges on the sides of the hoof. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I ran across this a lot in some of the
Speaker 1: veterinary sources I was looking at.
Speaker 3: But don't let this take away from your mental enjoyment
Speaker 3: of thinking about the horses running around on its middle fingers,
Speaker 3: which it functionally is it is, I.
Speaker 1: Mean to me, it makes it even more weird. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like if you were to It's kind of
Speaker 1: like if you're looking at Kermit the Frog and someone
Speaker 1: were to tell you, Like there's a difference in saying, hey,
Speaker 1: there's somebody's hand in there, and and someone saying, actually,
Speaker 1: all the bones of a human hand are present in
Speaker 1: Kermit the frog, but they have been repurposed and formed
Speaker 1: into the skeletal structure of this bipedal frog creature. Like
Speaker 1: that's even crazier, And I feel like that's more in
Speaker 1: line with what we know about the horses.
Speaker 3: Splendid analogy, Bravo. All right, are we ready to talk
Speaker 3: about the horse shoe?
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is something that originally I didn't think we
Speaker 1: were going to cover, or if we were to cover,
Speaker 1: we might come back, but I felt like it's kind
Speaker 1: of so closely linked to our understanding of the horse
Speaker 1: and the human use of the horse. And at the
Speaker 1: same time, in discussing this, we are going to be
Speaker 1: kind of blowing through the domestication of the horse rather quickly.
Speaker 1: Like this is a topic that has received a lot
Speaker 1: of attention over the years in varying fields. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's genetic research, there's archaeology, there's you know, various cultural inquiries.
Speaker 1: It's kind of all over the place, and there are
Speaker 1: a lot of unanswered questions about, you know, especially when
Speaker 1: you get into you know, the exact who's and wins
Speaker 1: and whares, say, horse domestication and even the development or
Speaker 1: the horseshoe. But I feel like covering the horseshoe also
Speaker 1: helps us understand the hoof a little bit more so,
Speaker 1: briefly talking about the modern horse, the modern horse has
Speaker 1: a long and pivotal history as a human steed. Many
Speaker 1: animals have, of course as mounts for human riders, and
Speaker 1: many have served as a pack and draft animals. I
Speaker 1: know that, at least on the artifact and perhaps elsewhere
Speaker 1: in some core episodes, we've touched on the importance of
Speaker 1: the camel and the donkey. But the horse, the horse
Speaker 1: is just a whole different matter, both in terms of
Speaker 1: the impact that it's had, like I think, the larger
Speaker 1: impact that it's had globally, and also just how it
Speaker 1: has captured the imagination. Not to diminish the camel or
Speaker 1: the donkey, because in particular regions, the camel and the
Speaker 1: donkey have been far more important. Whole books have been
Speaker 1: written about the camel and the donkey, and I've read
Speaker 1: parts of them. If you want to hear a little
Speaker 1: bit more about that, go back to the Monster Fact
Speaker 1: episode I did on Donkeys of Dune, which touched on
Speaker 1: this a little bit. Now, as we've discussed, the modern
Speaker 1: horse evolved over the course of fifty to sixty million
Speaker 1: years from a diminutive ancestor, and then it would have
Speaker 1: reached identifiable form somewhere around four to four point five
Speaker 1: years ago, then migrating across the Bearing Strait via some
Speaker 1: sort of a primitive land bridge into Eurasia about eleven
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, then becoming stinct in North America after that,
Speaker 1: and it would not come back around the globe to
Speaker 1: North America until it was reintroduced via European conquest in
Speaker 1: the fifteenth century seehe Now. Of the wild horse's three ancestors,
Speaker 1: two went extinct and a third the Takei or Mongolian
Speaker 1: wild horse or Preswalski's horse. These are all the different
Speaker 1: names for the same creature. Essentially, this survived only in
Speaker 1: captivity and then was subsequently has been subsequently reintroduced into
Speaker 1: the wild, though with some important caveats worth discussing. Should
Speaker 1: we come back around to talk about the reintroduction of
Speaker 1: a species. There are lots of sort of ups and
Speaker 1: downs with that particular story, as there are with some
Speaker 1: other species reintroduction tales. Now much has been written about
Speaker 1: the role of the horse in the history of human conflict,
Speaker 1: and there is indeed just so much much that we
Speaker 1: could and I guess should one day discuss about that.
Speaker 1: You know, the use of say, chariot technology, even the
Speaker 1: saddle like, they're just so many different angles to take
Speaker 1: now is pointed out by equine warfare expert and Highland,
Speaker 1: and this is in Brian and Fagin's The Seventy Great
Speaker 1: Inventions of the Ancient World. DNA evidence suggests that the
Speaker 1: domestication of the horse took place independently in several different
Speaker 1: places and times. And according to them, and this was
Speaker 1: this book came out in two thousand and four, so
Speaker 1: I'm going to touch on a more recent source on
Speaker 1: all this in just a second. They were talking about
Speaker 1: the earliest domestication having possibly taken place on the Eurasian
Speaker 1: Step somewhere around four thousand BCE, though they did highlight
Speaker 1: that the proof was inconclusive. I've also seen other sources
Speaker 1: just put it that The geographic origin of horse domestication
Speaker 1: is simply an unknown, and there of course a handful
Speaker 1: of likely areas and times, based on different findings, spread
Speaker 1: across Eurasia, from as far west as Iberia to as
Speaker 1: far east as Siberia. Now more recently. The more recent
Speaker 1: source I was looking at on this though, was a
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one analysis of ancient horse DNA, and this
Speaker 1: seemed to narrow it down to the Eurasian step the
Speaker 1: Volga Dawn region, so that would seem to possibly be
Speaker 1: the strong contender for where the who. That's a little
Speaker 1: bit more complex, is pointed out by Amber Dance in
Speaker 1: a solid twenty twenty two article for Smithsonian Magazine titled
Speaker 1: When Did Humans Domesticate the Horse? The region was home
Speaker 1: to diverse peoples who may have engaged in horse domestication
Speaker 1: in the earliest time period. The win in all of
Speaker 1: this sounds like it was maybe four two hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: pushing us back to the twenty one hundred s BCE.
Speaker 1: Based on all of this, though, Dance also points out
Speaker 1: that quote clear evidence of horse domestication doesn't appear in
Speaker 1: the archaeological record until about five hundred years ago. That
Speaker 1: would push things back obviously now, as Highland and Fagan
Speaker 1: pointed out, stud records from twenty three hundred BC and
Speaker 1: what is now Iraq include data on donkeys, mules, and
Speaker 1: some horses. There are Sumerian proverbs that refer to horse
Speaker 1: riding during this time period. But yeah, like I say,
Speaker 1: this is a topic we could go on about at
Speaker 1: some length, but suffice to say that the evidence points
Speaker 1: to this general time period, but it has still long
Speaker 1: been a topic of dispute.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: One thing that I liked in Dance's article is that
Speaker 1: they point out that horses were coexisting alongside human beings
Speaker 1: long before we were able to ride them or really
Speaker 1: do anything with them. They were around during the time
Speaker 1: of Stone Age human beings. They no doubt inspired Stone
Speaker 1: Age human beings and human populations. Our ancestors depicted them
Speaker 1: in their cave art, but it would have been a
Speaker 1: long time before they could figure out how to master
Speaker 1: these beasts and truly harness the power.
Speaker 3: Of the horse. Yeah. I don't know if this is
Speaker 3: still the dominant view, but I recall reading years ago
Speaker 3: that many researchers thought that humans probably hunted horses for
Speaker 3: food before they domesticated them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's what I saw indicated. And these sources
Speaker 1: I was looking at as well, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: you see them from afar. They look cool, they looked
Speaker 1: really neat. Look at that those flowing manes. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting to think that some of the
Speaker 1: some of the impressions we have watching a horse running
Speaker 1: about with its kind, you know, across the field. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe we're feeling some of the same things our ancient
Speaker 1: ancestors would have felt, you know, these sort of deep
Speaker 1: down impressions, but with the added level of we probably
Speaker 1: don't think about maybe running them down with our spears
Speaker 1: and cooking them up later and making things out of them.
Speaker 1: Of course, this would have been This was how we
Speaker 1: interacted with pretty much everything in the natural world during
Speaker 1: that time period. And of course if we were going
Speaker 1: to hunt a horse, we would have to depend on
Speaker 1: human ingenuity, human strategy, human tool use, and eventually when
Speaker 1: humans figure out figured out how to truly harness the horse,
Speaker 1: they also had to employ various tools. So if anyone
Speaker 1: out there, if you're like me, most of your experience
Speaker 1: with horses is probably in video games where you break
Speaker 1: a wild horse or train a wild horse by doing
Speaker 1: something like I don't know, whistling at it, or you know,
Speaker 1: you jump up on its back. I was asking my son,
Speaker 1: how do you get a horse? And Zelden He's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you just jump on its back and I don't know,
Speaker 1: you do something else and then you're good to go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Breath of the Wild is kind of a bucking
Speaker 3: Bronco thing. You jump on the horse and if you
Speaker 3: can hold on long enough while it's trying to kick
Speaker 3: you off, then it becomes your friend. There you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, then that's fine for video game, but a lot
Speaker 1: more complex. If you read any like serious westerns about
Speaker 1: breaking horses and so forth, you get into a little
Speaker 1: Cornett McCarthy, you're gonna you know, it's it's it's a
Speaker 1: longer process, a lot more more kicking, maybe a few
Speaker 1: more busted ribs in the process.
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 1: One thing that Hyland and Fagan point out is that
Speaker 1: as humans were mastering horses, they inevitably turned to bovine
Speaker 1: control mechanisms, so cows were domesticated much earlier. Humans had
Speaker 1: had much earlier figured out some of the ways that
Speaker 1: they could use tools and things they they built to
Speaker 1: control these large and powerful creatures, and they were able
Speaker 1: to adapt some of those for the domestication of the horse,
Speaker 1: and they evolved from there to include things like metal
Speaker 1: bits and harnesses, ultimately things like armor horse armor for battle,
Speaker 1: chariot technology, and of course things like the saddle and
Speaker 1: stirrup loops. But all of this discussion thus far has
Speaker 1: been in service of the horse hoof and of course
Speaker 1: the horseshoe. As we mentioned already in the previous episode
Speaker 1: on the horse hoof, the hoof, while certainly an amazing adaptation,
Speaker 1: is not indestructible, and the domestication of the horse took
Speaker 1: this creature out of its sort of normal environment in
Speaker 1: activities and placed it in those that suited us best,
Speaker 1: especially in the use of things like agriculture, travel, ultimately warfare,
Speaker 1: and at some point, and much like horse domestication itself,
Speaker 1: likely various points in various times in ancient history, humans
Speaker 1: who made use of the horse realize that hoofs require
Speaker 1: special care, and that this care could in fact be
Speaker 1: preventative care, so the hoof, like the human foot, could
Speaker 1: be protected and reinforced.
Speaker 3: This is one of those things like drinking animal milk,
Speaker 3: that's the questions like who's the first person who tried
Speaker 3: to do this, You really got to wonder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again this kind of gets into sort of
Speaker 1: the everyday nature of the horse and horse related technology.
Speaker 1: It just seems so common. You know, it's the stuff
Speaker 1: of westerns and fantasy shows, fantasy shows in which the
Speaker 1: horse is not the most fantastic element. You know, we're
Speaker 1: focusing on the dragon, but meanwhile, here's this animal running
Speaker 1: around on its on its single toes, and we have
Speaker 1: augmented this creature with various contraptions and straps and bits.
Speaker 1: And also we have we have nailed these these shoes.
Speaker 1: We call them a shoe, but you know, it's like
Speaker 1: it's like an iron loop onto the bottom of their
Speaker 1: their hoof walls in order to make them more capable
Speaker 1: of keeping up with what we need them to do.
Speaker 1: Technologically enhanced. Is the horse cyborgs? Yeah, yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: in some respects now, there have been many different approaches
Speaker 1: to this over the ages, because again, like the Bay Sick,
Speaker 1: none of it is the realization that, oh man, we're
Speaker 1: rough on these horses. We should we're having to clean
Speaker 1: up and take care of them after we use them
Speaker 1: too hard. Let's try and protect that hoof a little bit,
Speaker 1: and there have been various ways to sort of address
Speaker 1: this again in different times.
Speaker 3: In different places.
Speaker 1: Some early examples from parts of Asia have been based
Speaker 1: in apparently in medicinal organic wrappings to treat injuries. So
Speaker 1: you're working your horse too hard, the horse is suffering
Speaker 1: various injuries or ailments of the hoof, so you start
Speaker 1: wrapping it up in things to protect it and to
Speaker 1: heal it. And then it seems to be a case
Speaker 1: of treatment becoming preventative, where it's realized, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: let's just keep something wrapped around the hoof or at
Speaker 1: least when we're using the horse, or at least in
Speaker 1: certain environmental circumstances, and that can help make the hoof
Speaker 1: last longer.
Speaker 3: That's interesting.
Speaker 1: Then there's this whole area of early hoof boots. Now
Speaker 1: these are not to be confused with the hoof boots.
Speaker 1: Humans make and wear themselves so that their own feet
Speaker 1: can look like hooves. If you're not familiar with these,
Speaker 1: treat yourself, go do an image search. A lot of
Speaker 1: them are cloven hoofs for like sador costumes, but other
Speaker 1: times they are horse hooves for horse related dress.
Speaker 3: When you i didn't realize at first. You meant like
Speaker 3: that these were for costumes or recreational I was like,
Speaker 3: what is the functional reason to make your foot into
Speaker 3: a hoof?
Speaker 1: To be a satyr or to be a horsey? And
Speaker 1: you find that, you know, some of them are very
Speaker 1: goth looking, some of them more and more on the
Speaker 1: furry end of the spectrum. But yeah, I saw some
Speaker 1: of these recently at a at a Renaissance festival that
Speaker 1: I went to with my family. There's a sadar guy
Speaker 1: over there walking around on hoof boots.
Speaker 3: Man, you think being in high heels for a long
Speaker 3: time is rough? It turn your foot into a hoof.
Speaker 1: I know it. It looks, it looks unpleasant, I mean,
Speaker 1: but I guess it's like really awesome high heels, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, nobody's wearing those for comfort. You're wearing them
Speaker 1: to look cool. And the same goes for those those
Speaker 1: weird goat boots you might be wearing to the renfest.
Speaker 1: All right, So what we're talking about here not those
Speaker 1: sorts of hoof boots. These are basically different approaches where
Speaker 1: you would take like essentially like a leather sheath for
Speaker 1: the hoof, sometimes augmented with metal studs on the bottom,
Speaker 1: essentially making you know, you think about basically the same
Speaker 1: sort of adaptations you would make to a human boot.
Speaker 1: You know, well, it's like wrap that, let's wrap that
Speaker 1: foot up in leather. Or it's a little slippery, let's
Speaker 1: put some studs on the bottom of that so it
Speaker 1: doesn't slip around. And it's also worth noting that modern
Speaker 1: hoof boots exist as horseshoe alternatives. You see a lot
Speaker 1: of this, particularly in the realm of natural horsemanship, sort
Speaker 1: of like modern backing away from some of the the
Speaker 1: aspects of horsemanship that might be considered a little bit
Speaker 1: too rough or unnecessarily rough, especially for what we might
Speaker 1: be asking of our horses in the modern age, and
Speaker 1: so you might see a hoof boot, which in many
Speaker 1: of these cases they look like like little like sports
Speaker 1: shoes for a horse. They can slip those on, and
Speaker 1: I'm to understand that also sometimes they're used in addition
Speaker 1: to a normal horseshoe. Equestrians out there listening to the episode,
Speaker 1: if you have some thoughts on hoofboots right in, we
Speaker 1: would love to see them. Same goes for people who
Speaker 1: just like dressing like satyrs. We also want to see
Speaker 1: your hoof boots. Nobody needs to feel left out. But
Speaker 1: then there's also the hippo sandal, and this is exactly
Speaker 1: what it sounds like. It is a sandal of sorts
Speaker 1: for horse hooves. These were especially common in the northwestern
Speaker 1: Roman Empire and it was I think largely a temporary solution.
Speaker 1: So the idea is, this is not something that was
Speaker 1: nailed on. It was something that was strapped on, and
Speaker 1: if you look at examples, it looks like basically like
Speaker 1: a strap on horse hoof. You can see that like
Speaker 1: these were generally made out of iron. They would cover
Speaker 1: the bottom of the hoof wall and then you would
Speaker 1: strap it on, but it wasn't going to be on
Speaker 1: their long term. Once you got wherever you were riding to,
Speaker 1: or I don't know, after battle or whatever the scenario is,
Speaker 1: then it's time to take these hippo sandals off. And
Speaker 1: then eventually we get to the proper iron horseshoe, which
Speaker 1: everyone knows what this looks like because it exists in
Speaker 1: the public mind outside of mere equestrian interests, and even
Speaker 1: outside of its use on the horse, it has become
Speaker 1: an artifact of some significance across multiple cultures. It is
Speaker 1: this U shaped twist of iron that is actually nailed
Speaker 1: into place in the horse's hoof walls. The origin of
Speaker 1: this particular invention or artifact is also difficult to well
Speaker 1: nail down, if I guess you could say, with different
Speaker 1: possibilities emerging, I've read that the Gulls are thought to
Speaker 1: have possibly innovated this. Others have said the Celts may
Speaker 1: have done it, or being among the first to do it,
Speaker 1: and there's some evidence stemming from ancient grave sites. But
Speaker 1: one thing to keep in mind here is that initially
Speaker 1: you might think, oh, well, they're made out of iron,
Speaker 1: at least they're going to keep longer. But then we
Speaker 1: have to realize iron would have been precious, and therefore
Speaker 1: iron would often be reused or even re forged, thus
Speaker 1: robbing us of evidence in many cases of these particular artifacts.
Speaker 1: But it's possible that the use of iron horseshoes go
Speaker 1: back to perhaps four hundred BCE. But like a lot
Speaker 1: of this, the use of iron horseshoes is rather broadly
Speaker 1: difficult to define and nail down because their use often
Speaker 1: bumps up against and coexists with other forms of protecting
Speaker 1: the hoof. So you might have a period of time
Speaker 1: and a part of the world where some people are
Speaker 1: using a horseshoe, using the hippo sandal or some other innovation,
Speaker 1: or or indeed where there'll be a whole culture that's
Speaker 1: not using anything and they're depending on stage just switching
Speaker 1: out horses and find you know, realizing that they can't
Speaker 1: and shouldn't just run the horse to death. But they
Speaker 1: may realize, well, we just need to switch them out more,
Speaker 1: and this is going to be our approach to making
Speaker 1: the most out of a given hoof and making the
Speaker 1: hoofs and therefore the horse itself lasts longer for us.
Speaker 1: Now the horse shoe itself has a life all its
Speaker 1: own at this point outside of merely nailing it in
Speaker 1: place in the bottom of a horse's foot. As we've
Speaker 1: touched on a bit already, the horseshoe has long been
Speaker 1: seen as a good luck icon in many different cultures,
Speaker 1: in many different times, and it's only kind of interesting
Speaker 1: chase down like why this is? Like why did people
Speaker 1: start admiring the horseshoe and nailing it up and attracting
Speaker 1: some level of significance to it?
Speaker 3: Very good question. I often find myself wondering about things
Speaker 3: like this, like how did a certain item or image
Speaker 3: come to have good magic or bad magic associated with it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So one of the first places I turned
Speaker 1: to for an answer on this is the book Magical
Speaker 1: House Protection by Brian Hoggard, a former guest on the show.
Speaker 1: I think it was on last October while you were
Speaker 1: on a parnal leave. But the book deals with various
Speaker 1: things that people have hidden away in their walls and
Speaker 1: under their floorboards throughout Europe, in the US predominantly, but
Speaker 1: also just throughout the world as a way of protecting
Speaker 1: the house from bad luck, evil spirits, and what have you.
Speaker 1: And Hoggard wrote that, yeah, you find horseshoes being associated
Speaker 1: with good luck throughout the British Isles, Europe, the United
Speaker 1: States quote, and it would seem the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: He writes that the horseshoe is sometimes displayed pointing upward quote,
Speaker 1: so that the luck doesn't run out, which I thought
Speaker 1: was fun. You know this idea that it's like, well,
Speaker 1: don't have it facing down, because then all the luck's
Speaker 1: going to run out of the ends of the horseshoe.
Speaker 1: But meanwhile, in other areas, other traditions. It is common
Speaker 1: to display the horseshoe with the points down.
Speaker 3: I think of it with the points down, I think
Speaker 3: because I think of it hanging up just by a
Speaker 3: nail through the middle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the easiest to do, right. If you hang
Speaker 1: it the other way, you's a little more complicated or well,
Speaker 1: I guess it depends. I mean, you g The thing
Speaker 1: about the horseshoe, I guess too, is it is made
Speaker 1: to be nailed in place, and therefore it can be
Speaker 1: nailed in its intended place, the bottom of a horse's hoof,
Speaker 1: or it can be nailed in place on a barn
Speaker 1: wall or above your door or what have you. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Hoggard highlights two main reasons for the horseshoes perceived power. One,
Speaker 1: and it's certainly a big one, is the closer relation
Speaker 1: between humans and their horses. You know, these are animals
Speaker 1: that were highly important to the people who owned them
Speaker 1: and or used them. They were animals that we ultimately
Speaker 1: cared about, and we also had various, you know, supernatural
Speaker 1: traditions concerning them. And if not your actual mundane horses,
Speaker 1: you have these ideas of mythic horses and so forth.
Speaker 1: And this is something that also influenced the use of
Speaker 1: horse skulls and things like that in other traditions. The
Speaker 1: other key fact that he highlights is that these are
Speaker 1: made of iron, and iron was thought to provide protection
Speaker 1: against quote witchcraft and the fairy folk. Yes, and as
Speaker 1: Hoggard chronicles in that book, iron horseshoes and iron nails
Speaker 1: were often used in these household productive magics, hidden in
Speaker 1: walls and so forth. I also looked at this was
Speaker 1: an older paper, but I thought it highlighted some interesting concepts.
Speaker 1: This is an eighteen ninety six paper by Robert M.
Speaker 1: Lawrence published in the Journal of American Folklore titled The
Speaker 1: Folklore the Horseshoe, and Lawrence points out that the horseshoe,
Speaker 1: though shaped the way it's shaped for practical reasons, obviously
Speaker 1: it would have essentially stood in or resembled pre existing
Speaker 1: and potent symbols in different traditions and in different cultures,
Speaker 1: and he highlights some of the key ones here. So
Speaker 1: picture the horseshoe, just a standard horseshoe, and then think
Speaker 1: about these. The first one he mentions is the idea
Speaker 1: of an arch, just a protective arch, something that would
Speaker 1: be even in an age before horseshoes positioned above a
Speaker 1: doorway or on a threshold. I believe he highlights the
Speaker 1: I want to say a Scottish tradition of having an
Speaker 1: arch shaped from from just the branch of a tree
Speaker 1: would sometimes be used like this.
Speaker 3: Well, this may be saying the same thing as saying
Speaker 3: that it sort of resembles an arch, but it also
Speaker 3: sort of resembles a doorway, which is like an arch
Speaker 3: and good luck symbols of various kinds are often put
Speaker 3: on or around a doorway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a pretty solid one. The
Speaker 1: next one he brings up is that a horseshoe is
Speaker 1: also reminiscent of a serpent, and therefore it could tie
Speaker 1: into various traditions and involve the use of some sort
Speaker 1: of a serpent symbol. Be that a serpent, that's you know,
Speaker 1: I guess it depends what your snack is doing. It
Speaker 1: may be it may be straight, it may be coiled up,
Speaker 1: it may be eating its own tail. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: so many different ways the snake has been utilized in
Speaker 1: different iconography over the ages, but this one seems sensible.
Speaker 1: The idea of like the horseshoe as a serpent. Another
Speaker 1: big one the horseshoe is the crescent moon. Now the
Speaker 1: next one is one that he writes that he thinks
Speaker 1: the evidence is mediocre for this, and he's kind of
Speaker 1: begrudgingly mentioned that. He's like, I'm gonna mention it, but
Speaker 1: I don't like it. And that's that the horseshoe could
Speaker 1: also stand in for various ophallic imagery. So the horseshoe
Speaker 1: as thallus.
Speaker 3: Huh, I need to have the case made for that.
Speaker 3: It's not evident to me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I looked around for more horses on this to see
Speaker 1: if there was anybody advocating for this, and I didn't
Speaker 1: find anything. Maybe it's out there and I just couldn't
Speaker 1: find it. I did see some images of some Roman
Speaker 1: phallic icons and charms that maybe kind of remind like
Speaker 1: I could maybe see it, like there's more than one
Speaker 1: way to create a phallic symbol, and some of them
Speaker 1: are I guess, more horseshoe like than others. But still
Speaker 1: I think maybe Lawrence is right and saying that maybe
Speaker 1: there's not as much sense behind this. This one I
Speaker 1: thought was interesting. The prong shape of the horseshoe as
Speaker 1: a deterrent to evil spirits or as a kind of trap.
Speaker 1: So the idea that the horseshoe is either the thing
Speaker 1: that's gonna kind of like catch the limb of an
Speaker 1: evil spirit, you know, you know, like, oh, you put
Speaker 1: your limb, your arm in there, and now you can't
Speaker 1: get it out, or kind of like the prongs of
Speaker 1: some sort of a poking fork.
Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, that the horseshoe does have a shape that
Speaker 3: seems to contain yeah.
Speaker 1: In this this lined up with a lot of what
Speaker 1: Hoggard wrote about concerning witch bottles, which bottles would often
Speaker 1: have a bunch of nails in them, and the idea
Speaker 1: that like, here's this evil spirit coming into your house
Speaker 1: and then it smells some of your hair that's in
Speaker 1: this bottle that's buried.
Speaker 3: Under the floorboards.
Speaker 1: Oh, it went into that bottle after that hair smell,
Speaker 1: and now it's found a whole bunch of nails. Good
Speaker 1: luck getting out of their spirit.
Speaker 3: Iron nails maybe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I believe they would have been in
Speaker 1: most of these cases. Now, Lawrence also points to the
Speaker 1: sacred nature of the horse and the virtues of iron,
Speaker 1: as Hoggart did. He points to examples from various cultures
Speaker 1: and traditions, including the ancient Romans, Arabic traditions, Chinese and
Speaker 1: Scottish traditions. So again, it's one of these things when
Speaker 1: you start, it's just it's spread all over. Some other
Speaker 1: ideas that he mentions include the horseshoe is a thing
Speaker 1: that captures traps or transmits bad luck. The position is
Speaker 1: sometimes important here, and like it could be a situation
Speaker 1: where it's like, Okay, here's the horseshoe. You got all
Speaker 1: your bad luck in that. Now leave it on the
Speaker 1: ground and see if someone picks it up and catches
Speaker 1: all that bad luck you just put into it. Then
Speaker 1: there's an idea of numerology coming into it, particularly concerning
Speaker 1: the number of nails in a horseshoe versus the number
Speaker 1: of nail holes. He writes, quote in Northumberland, the holes
Speaker 1: free of nails are counted as these indicate, presumably in years,
Speaker 1: how soon the finder of the shoe may expect to
Speaker 1: be married. And I guess in this case they're like,
Speaker 1: you know, you're out in the field, you find a horseshoe.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, I found a horseshoe. Let's find out
Speaker 1: how long I'm going to be single? Which and again,
Speaker 1: you know, we're not familiar with this tradition and we
Speaker 1: can kind of snicker at it. But I guess there
Speaker 1: are a lot of things like this. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: kind of on a very very like slender level. It's
Speaker 1: almost like you know, not stepping on a crack, right,
Speaker 1: you know, like we know that's not there's not accurate,
Speaker 1: but we can't help but think about it when we
Speaker 1: do it. And so I can imagine there could be
Speaker 1: this tradition whereas, oh I found a horseshoe exciting for me,
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm going to take this home and put it
Speaker 1: up over my doorway for good luck. But also what
Speaker 1: if it's right? What if I am three years from
Speaker 1: finding my wife that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Well, also, I mean things like this are done for fun,
Speaker 3: even if people don't necessarily believe it's literally predictive. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, she loves me, She loves me, not on
Speaker 3: flower pedals and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, catching the flowers at a wedding and so forth.
Speaker 1: The other thing you mentioned is that you could consider
Speaker 1: the horseshoe in its resemblance to a halo. M Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I don't remember that coming up at all in
Speaker 1: our episodes about the Halo. We did a series on
Speaker 1: the Halo, and there was a lot of fun. But
Speaker 1: I guess again, we might just think of it like,
Speaker 1: what are some major icons and symbols within any given
Speaker 1: culture that could then here comes this artifact, this, here
Speaker 1: comes this horseshoe. What does that horseshoe remind us of? Now,
Speaker 1: outside of all these superstitions and so forth and older traditions,
Speaker 1: the emblem of a horseshoe, I think really potent. One
Speaker 1: example of this that came to mind is the various
Speaker 1: cartoon interpretations of this, as well as how it's presented.
Speaker 1: Sometimes in science textbooks. The horseshoe magnet has become a
Speaker 1: kind of fixed symbol for magnetism, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: horseshoe magnets are technically obsolete, since like the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: you don't need a horseshoe shaped magnet. All the magnets
Speaker 1: on your fridge are likely not horseshoe shaped.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about the horseshoe magnet, and especially when
Speaker 3: you were talking about the various magical powers associated with them,
Speaker 3: because of the way horseshoe magnets are represented in cartoons,
Speaker 3: as like emitting beams of magic power or with like
Speaker 3: zigzagging lightning of magnetic I don't know what, you know,
Speaker 3: the like zappiness coming out of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, it might be a scenario where
Speaker 1: you've stopped to think and maybe you're like, hey, do
Speaker 1: I know how magnets work? And then instantly you're struck
Speaker 1: with that cartoon image or that or that little icon
Speaker 1: your science textbook growing up, where oh, yeah, there is
Speaker 1: horseshoe lightning bolts. Now I got it, Now I can
Speaker 1: move on.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Another concept that some people may be thinking of, there's
Speaker 1: also this horseshoe theory of politics, which I'm to understand.
Speaker 1: I didn't know a lot about it previously, but it's
Speaker 1: my understanding. It's also it's not something that's really that
Speaker 1: much of a thing within actual political science, but you
Speaker 1: sometimes see it in a lot of popular discourse about
Speaker 1: people's political leanings and their ideologies. This idea that instead
Speaker 1: of it being like a sliding linear scale between on
Speaker 1: one on one end, like leftist extremism and on the
Speaker 1: other end right wing extremism, and then in the middle,
Speaker 1: you know, just just you know middle of the road,
Speaker 1: you know, neutrality and so forth. Then instead of it
Speaker 1: being shaped like that, we should really curve it, and
Speaker 1: then it's more of a horseshoe, and that by virtue
Speaker 1: of this horseshoe shape, it's illustrated that the extremes of
Speaker 1: either side are actually closer than you might think. And
Speaker 1: this is generally it's employed to talk about like either
Speaker 1: like an overarching theme, like perhaps that in the extremes
Speaker 1: there's more of a draw towards like a strong leader
Speaker 1: type or totalitarianism or something, or that you might find
Speaker 1: particular sentiments, say like an anti vaccine sentiment in both
Speaker 1: the far left and the far right, despite these groups
Speaker 1: having little else in common in terms of their ideology.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've heard people using this analogy in different ways.
Speaker 3: I mean, in I think in one sense it is
Speaker 3: often used to mean that people think that at the
Speaker 3: far extremes of the political spectrum people actually come to
Speaker 3: share some political ideas. And then I think the other
Speaker 3: idea is that is that at the furthest extremes of
Speaker 3: the political spectrum, people have more i don't know, sort
Speaker 3: of personality based or epistemic things in common apart from
Speaker 3: political positions. And I'm not sure which version of the
Speaker 3: of the model people are really talking about when they
Speaker 3: invoke it often.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I do. It kind of comes comes back
Speaker 1: to our discussion earlier though about like how do we,
Speaker 1: you know, interpreting data and thinking about like the underlying
Speaker 1: truth of a given situation or a mystery. Like obviously,
Speaker 1: the way people think about the world. They're different ideologies
Speaker 1: and their political viewpoints. I mean, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: complexity going on here, and that complexity can be overwhelming.
Speaker 1: I mean, as we try to make sense of the
Speaker 1: world's around us, the larger world and perhaps even the
Speaker 1: closer world of our friend circles and our families and
Speaker 1: so forth, and it might be tempting to say, but hey,
Speaker 1: look at this horseshoe, Look at this. I think this
Speaker 1: explains it all. You know, it provides maybe a simple
Speaker 1: model that may I mean, maybe it provides some insight,
Speaker 1: but also a level of insight that at least you
Speaker 1: can sort of nod your head at and think like, Okay,
Speaker 1: well this kind of lines up with some of the
Speaker 1: things I'm observing.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I think another twist, for example, is whether
Speaker 3: or not it is useful to think about political beliefs
Speaker 3: as a spectrum at all, meaning that they extend along
Speaker 3: a single dimension, or whether it's more useful to decompose
Speaker 3: political beliefs into a number of different types of I
Speaker 3: don't know, preferences and personality traits. And then in a say,
Speaker 3: a representative democracy with two major parties we represent, we
Speaker 3: discover that political behavior manifests in varying degrees of like
Speaker 3: or dislike for those main two parties. But you know,
Speaker 3: that doesn't fully explain people's the depths of people's beliefs
Speaker 3: and preferences.
Speaker 1: Yeah, though in isolation it can at least seem to
Speaker 1: make some sense. I had a case of this over
Speaker 1: the weekend. I was in a city that has a
Speaker 1: lot of crystal stores, so I wasn't necessarily out to
Speaker 1: venture into a crystal store, but by virtue of where
Speaker 1: I was, I just was going to wind up in
Speaker 1: one eventually, and I was looking looking around at them.
Speaker 1: Crystals are beautiful, you know, I think they can. They're
Speaker 1: nice to look at, and maybe they're a nice focus
Speaker 1: sometimes to take you out of the past in the
Speaker 1: future and put you into the present. But they have
Speaker 1: all these little notes on them about what they're good
Speaker 1: for and what focus in the crystal will allegedly do
Speaker 1: for you. And on one table I found one that
Speaker 1: it was promised would help me connect with quote Christ consciousness,
Speaker 1: and on the other it would help me communicate with extraterrestrials.
Speaker 1: And so generally speaking, I don't know. I would expect
Speaker 1: that people looking to connect with either would have rather
Speaker 1: different world views, you know, the person with the Christ
Speaker 1: crystal and the person with the extraterrestrial crystal, Like maybe
Speaker 1: they want different things out of life. But also they
Speaker 1: may have both wandered into this crystal store, which makes
Speaker 1: me think that think of the you know, the ends
Speaker 1: of the of the horseshoe, you know, arching towards each other.
Speaker 3: Every crystal store I go in, I ask for their
Speaker 3: Nixon consciousness crystal, What will help me communicate with Nixon?
Speaker 3: He's out there somewhere.
Speaker 1: Oh man, there's got to be a crystal. There's got
Speaker 1: to be one that will do it. Unrelated to Nixon, though,
Speaker 1: in discussing this, I am also thinking I don't think
Speaker 1: Lawrence mentioned horns or antlers, but this would seem at
Speaker 1: least just you know, off the top of my head,
Speaker 1: this would seem to be like a potent symbol to
Speaker 1: jump to and we're interpreting, like how people connected with
Speaker 1: this horseshoe with this, you know, for all intensive purposes,
Speaker 1: this new artifact that lines up with various symbols of
Speaker 1: potents like the horns and antlers have long been and
Speaker 1: still are things of symbolic power.
Speaker 3: In a quite literal sense in their biological context, but
Speaker 3: then in a metaphorical sense to humans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right, Well, on that note, we're going
Speaker 1: to go ahead and close this episode out, but we'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from everyone out there if you have
Speaker 1: thoughts about the horse, whof the horseshoe, interpretations of the horseshoe,
Speaker 1: the use of hoof boots, be they equine hoof boots
Speaker 1: or human hoof boots. Everything is fair game.
Speaker 3: Right in.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. In the meantime, you
Speaker 1: can find all of our core episodes, so Stuff to
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Speaker 1: and on Fridays we do Weird House Cinema. That's our
Speaker 1: time to set aside most serious concerns and just talk
Speaker 1: about a weird film.
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