1
00:00:03,800 --> 00:00:06,680
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

2
00:00:06,680 --> 00:00:13,520
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to

3
00:00:13,520 --> 00:00:15,440
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind? My name is Robert lamp and I'm

4
00:00:15,520 --> 00:00:18,079
Speaker 1: Julie Douglas. Julie, have you seen any recent movies that

5
00:00:18,200 --> 00:00:25,040
Speaker 1: have centaurs? And no, I haven't, but you recently sent

6
00:00:25,120 --> 00:00:28,480
Speaker 1: out a rate photo of fifty center. Oh yes, well

7
00:00:28,520 --> 00:00:31,319
Speaker 1: that was online. Various individualsome to have a lot of

8
00:00:31,320 --> 00:00:35,400
Speaker 1: fun creating centaurs out of humans famous humans generally and horses.

9
00:00:36,000 --> 00:00:37,479
Speaker 1: But they have shown up in some movies, and the

10
00:00:37,560 --> 00:00:41,160
Speaker 1: Narnia movies had centers in that Harry Potter movies. Pierce

11
00:00:41,159 --> 00:00:43,680
Speaker 1: Bronson even hoofs it up in Percy Jackson and the

12
00:00:43,800 --> 00:00:46,720
Speaker 1: Lightning Thief, which is amusing to look at because it's

13
00:00:46,760 --> 00:00:49,000
Speaker 1: one of these cases where the centaur is wearing clothes

14
00:00:49,000 --> 00:00:51,959
Speaker 1: on its human part. It's just weird. Yeah, and then

15
00:00:52,000 --> 00:00:53,720
Speaker 1: the horses naked, of course, and you're like, why aren't

16
00:00:53,720 --> 00:00:55,760
Speaker 1: you even wearing a shirt? You know? In our films,

17
00:00:55,800 --> 00:00:59,040
Speaker 1: it's interesting because they use various elements of costume and

18
00:00:59,080 --> 00:01:01,720
Speaker 1: makeup and CG. I generally need to create these. A

19
00:01:01,840 --> 00:01:04,920
Speaker 1: centaur is an idea that is kind of monstrosity. In

20
00:01:04,920 --> 00:01:07,240
Speaker 1: the best of cases. But if you throw in kind

21
00:01:07,240 --> 00:01:09,440
Speaker 1: of shaky c g I or makeup, it looks even

22
00:01:09,560 --> 00:01:12,920
Speaker 1: weirder and a little more troubling to behold. Yeah, I

23
00:01:12,959 --> 00:01:16,360
Speaker 1: have to say that in the Narnia series that for

24
00:01:16,400 --> 00:01:19,679
Speaker 1: whatever reason, that Center drives me nuts, Like, not in

25
00:01:19,680 --> 00:01:23,280
Speaker 1: a good way anyway, it is. It's a fine line. Yeah.

26
00:01:23,280 --> 00:01:26,440
Speaker 1: I mean, they're ridiculous yet oddly perplexing, and in large

27
00:01:26,440 --> 00:01:29,200
Speaker 1: part because they do embody the dual nature of man,

28
00:01:29,360 --> 00:01:32,080
Speaker 1: this idea of the man and beast hybrid, you know,

29
00:01:32,280 --> 00:01:34,680
Speaker 1: much like the Saturday that we had mentioned before. It

30
00:01:34,800 --> 00:01:37,920
Speaker 1: represented the duplicity of man's be steel and pious nature.

31
00:01:38,280 --> 00:01:40,760
Speaker 1: So it's why you also find centaur's running around in

32
00:01:41,080 --> 00:01:45,000
Speaker 1: Dante's Inferno, thrusting centers back to their assigned depths in

33
00:01:45,080 --> 00:01:49,240
Speaker 1: boiling rivers of blood with spears um. Elsewhere in the

34
00:01:49,240 --> 00:01:52,920
Speaker 1: world of sculptures, you find them choking heroes and punching heroes.

35
00:01:52,920 --> 00:01:56,360
Speaker 1: They're always engaging in physical violence. With a few exceptions.

36
00:01:56,400 --> 00:01:58,960
Speaker 1: You do have some notable centaur teachers who are very

37
00:01:58,960 --> 00:02:00,880
Speaker 1: wise and want to help people, but a lot of

38
00:02:00,880 --> 00:02:03,280
Speaker 1: Center seemed to be perfectly happy, was just punching dudes

39
00:02:03,280 --> 00:02:05,200
Speaker 1: in the face. Yeah, it's funny because when you first

40
00:02:05,240 --> 00:02:06,680
Speaker 1: think of them, it's sort of like in the realm

41
00:02:06,720 --> 00:02:09,640
Speaker 1: of unicorns and they seem cute and you know, like

42
00:02:09,800 --> 00:02:13,520
Speaker 1: randier unicorns, half man, but they really are sort of

43
00:02:13,560 --> 00:02:16,040
Speaker 1: bloodthirsty folk. When you look at the tales of them.

44
00:02:16,080 --> 00:02:18,960
Speaker 1: You see them in various mythologies. Their most famous for

45
00:02:19,040 --> 00:02:21,520
Speaker 1: their role in Greek mythology, but you also find them

46
00:02:21,560 --> 00:02:25,280
Speaker 1: in India. The Gandharva's are are basically centaurs, and then

47
00:02:25,320 --> 00:02:28,320
Speaker 1: you find other cultural traditions that take new takes on

48
00:02:28,440 --> 00:02:31,760
Speaker 1: what a centauri is. For instance, according to Carol Rose,

49
00:02:31,919 --> 00:02:34,800
Speaker 1: historian has written a lot about monsters and symbolic meaning

50
00:02:34,800 --> 00:02:37,600
Speaker 1: of monsters, points out that centers often pop up in

51
00:02:37,680 --> 00:02:42,840
Speaker 1: European traditions to represent quote, the suffering of Christ as

52
00:02:42,880 --> 00:02:46,200
Speaker 1: the man and the revenge taken upon his betrayal, which

53
00:02:46,200 --> 00:02:49,000
Speaker 1: I find rather interesting and kind of hard to imagine.

54
00:02:49,240 --> 00:02:52,040
Speaker 1: And then you also find some interesting takes on centaurs

55
00:02:52,080 --> 00:02:54,359
Speaker 1: in sculpture. Versus, if you traveled to the Louver and

56
00:02:54,400 --> 00:02:56,960
Speaker 1: you see the old centaur there, which is this statue

57
00:02:56,960 --> 00:02:59,160
Speaker 1: of the centaur and his arms are bound behind his

58
00:02:59,200 --> 00:03:03,119
Speaker 1: back and upids riding on his back. There originally two

59
00:03:03,120 --> 00:03:05,080
Speaker 1: of these, you have the old centaur and the young centaur,

60
00:03:05,160 --> 00:03:07,520
Speaker 1: and the young center is free and in love, and

61
00:03:07,560 --> 00:03:09,840
Speaker 1: the old one has his arms bound by Cupid behind

62
00:03:09,880 --> 00:03:12,760
Speaker 1: his back. So there's this idea of his dual nature

63
00:03:12,800 --> 00:03:15,760
Speaker 1: of man and sort of the bestial urges that are

64
00:03:15,800 --> 00:03:19,239
Speaker 1: commanding the human portion of ourselves, and what the ramifications

65
00:03:19,240 --> 00:03:21,480
Speaker 1: of that might be in later years. Well, and we

66
00:03:21,560 --> 00:03:24,880
Speaker 1: wanted to focus on Center today because we thought, you know, what,

67
00:03:24,880 --> 00:03:27,880
Speaker 1: what if a centaur were to actually exist, what might

68
00:03:27,919 --> 00:03:31,480
Speaker 1: it look like physically? What sort of vital organs would

69
00:03:31,520 --> 00:03:34,040
Speaker 1: it have, much like when we talked about King Kong

70
00:03:34,360 --> 00:03:37,360
Speaker 1: or god Zilla. So we're gonna kind of take you

71
00:03:37,400 --> 00:03:39,840
Speaker 1: guys through this a little bit today, talk about not

72
00:03:39,960 --> 00:03:45,040
Speaker 1: just centaurs, but mythology, mistaking mythology for science, and you know,

73
00:03:45,080 --> 00:03:48,240
Speaker 1: in a historical context. And then we're gonna take a

74
00:03:48,280 --> 00:03:50,120
Speaker 1: look at our own bodies and try to figure out

75
00:03:50,240 --> 00:03:52,600
Speaker 1: why we are designed the way we are designed. Yeah,

76
00:03:52,760 --> 00:03:54,880
Speaker 1: first of all, we should stay just for the record, again,

77
00:03:55,240 --> 00:03:58,000
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as a center. They do not

78
00:03:58,160 --> 00:04:02,480
Speaker 1: exist as real creatures. As powerful as the idea maybe

79
00:04:02,560 --> 00:04:05,200
Speaker 1: and as interesting as the topic. Maybe there has never

80
00:04:05,280 --> 00:04:09,080
Speaker 1: existed a human horse hybrid creature. That doesn't mean that

81
00:04:09,120 --> 00:04:13,000
Speaker 1: people didn't try to convince us otherwise. Right, We've always

82
00:04:13,000 --> 00:04:15,320
Speaker 1: tried to make sense out of fossils that we find

83
00:04:15,320 --> 00:04:18,080
Speaker 1: a way bones are aligned in the earth, the ruminants

84
00:04:18,120 --> 00:04:20,600
Speaker 1: of bones, So it's not impossible that one might come

85
00:04:20,600 --> 00:04:24,160
Speaker 1: across the mixed bones of a human and a horse

86
00:04:24,279 --> 00:04:28,000
Speaker 1: or horse like creature and wonder, hey, I wonder one

87
00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:30,160
Speaker 1: of these are the same creature? How how might these

88
00:04:30,200 --> 00:04:32,800
Speaker 1: pieces fit together if I symble them wrong? And then

89
00:04:32,839 --> 00:04:36,000
Speaker 1: of course you have stories about the Spanish conquistadors arriving

90
00:04:36,000 --> 00:04:39,839
Speaker 1: on horseback in Central America and the native people thinking

91
00:04:39,880 --> 00:04:43,119
Speaker 1: at first that they were one creature composed of horse

92
00:04:43,200 --> 00:04:46,320
Speaker 1: and man. How to explain the first time someone rode

93
00:04:46,320 --> 00:04:48,679
Speaker 1: a horse? Right, and you see that cruising by, Yeah,

94
00:04:48,760 --> 00:04:52,000
Speaker 1: you might think, what so a lot of these fantastic

95
00:04:52,040 --> 00:04:55,480
Speaker 1: idea I mean, monsters, on one hand, are always symbols.

96
00:04:55,560 --> 00:04:58,160
Speaker 1: Monsters symbolize something. And so we've discussed a little, and

97
00:04:58,160 --> 00:05:00,160
Speaker 1: we'll continue to discuss a little about what a into

98
00:05:00,200 --> 00:05:02,680
Speaker 1: our means and what it represents about us. But then

99
00:05:02,720 --> 00:05:06,400
Speaker 1: also we create monsters in attempt to understand something or

100
00:05:06,440 --> 00:05:08,960
Speaker 1: to illustrate something that exists in the world, such as

101
00:05:08,960 --> 00:05:12,119
Speaker 1: people riding horses or strange ways that bones are turning

102
00:05:12,200 --> 00:05:15,120
Speaker 1: up in the earth. Yeah. The Fermbank Museum here in Atlanta,

103
00:05:15,720 --> 00:05:17,320
Speaker 1: I guess I was, but it was a year and

104
00:05:17,360 --> 00:05:20,960
Speaker 1: a half two years ago had an exhibit that actually

105
00:05:21,000 --> 00:05:25,000
Speaker 1: talked about these mythical creatures. And I did not see it, unfortunately,

106
00:05:25,080 --> 00:05:28,400
Speaker 1: but you did see it, right, nephew. Yeah, And so

107
00:05:28,640 --> 00:05:31,960
Speaker 1: they wanted to talk about with the public specimens and

108
00:05:32,000 --> 00:05:35,800
Speaker 1: fossils of prehistoric animals and try to investigate how they

109
00:05:35,839 --> 00:05:41,120
Speaker 1: could have, through misidentification, speculation, fear, or imagination, inspired the

110
00:05:41,120 --> 00:05:44,400
Speaker 1: development of some legendary creatures. They were talking about narwhal

111
00:05:44,480 --> 00:05:47,279
Speaker 1: tusks from the North Sea, which they think could have

112
00:05:47,400 --> 00:05:50,320
Speaker 1: given credence to this idea of the unicorn. Right, I mean,

113
00:05:50,360 --> 00:05:52,000
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen the narwhal tusk two, you can

114
00:05:52,120 --> 00:05:54,680
Speaker 1: actually see the way that it's spiraling upward, just like

115
00:05:54,760 --> 00:05:58,400
Speaker 1: you think of a unicorn. And how dinosaurs might have

116
00:05:58,440 --> 00:06:03,640
Speaker 1: been mistaken for griffin for instance, or undersea monsters like

117
00:06:03,760 --> 00:06:08,240
Speaker 1: giant squid could have become these Yeah, the cracking, these

118
00:06:08,240 --> 00:06:10,559
Speaker 1: crazy creatures that rose up with you in these hundred

119
00:06:10,560 --> 00:06:14,120
Speaker 1: foot waves. Hundred foot waves, true rug waves, but not

120
00:06:14,240 --> 00:06:17,200
Speaker 1: so much giant three headed octopus. That exhibit which I

121
00:06:17,200 --> 00:06:19,840
Speaker 1: believe there's a Smithsonian traveling exhibit. They also had a

122
00:06:19,839 --> 00:06:22,560
Speaker 1: Fiji mermaid, which which is a lot of fun, which

123
00:06:22,600 --> 00:06:25,240
Speaker 1: of course one of these side show carnival hybrid deals

124
00:06:25,279 --> 00:06:27,160
Speaker 1: where they would take the remnants of a monkey and

125
00:06:27,200 --> 00:06:30,200
Speaker 1: the remnants of a fish, sew them together and display

126
00:06:30,240 --> 00:06:33,479
Speaker 1: the mummified remains and it's it's frightening and horrifying and

127
00:06:33,520 --> 00:06:35,880
Speaker 1: wonderful and wonderful at the same time. You tend not

128
00:06:35,920 --> 00:06:39,000
Speaker 1: to see that kind of specimen with centaurs, because you're

129
00:06:39,000 --> 00:06:41,400
Speaker 1: talking of a horse is a big animal to deal with,

130
00:06:41,760 --> 00:06:43,680
Speaker 1: and even if you had a large enough monkey so

131
00:06:43,839 --> 00:06:45,479
Speaker 1: on to that body that you're still talking about a

132
00:06:45,480 --> 00:06:47,240
Speaker 1: lot of work to click, a lot of bones for

133
00:06:47,320 --> 00:06:49,839
Speaker 1: that one. But you do see some examples of people

134
00:06:49,839 --> 00:06:51,880
Speaker 1: combining the bones of a man in the bones of

135
00:06:51,880 --> 00:06:56,039
Speaker 1: a horse, specifically with an artistic result in mind. Yeah,

136
00:06:56,120 --> 00:06:58,719
Speaker 1: I attended the University of Tennessee and Knoxville some years

137
00:06:58,720 --> 00:07:02,080
Speaker 1: ago and they actually have an exhibit there in their library.

138
00:07:02,120 --> 00:07:04,120
Speaker 1: I assume it's still there. Perhaps any U t K.

139
00:07:04,360 --> 00:07:06,640
Speaker 1: Listeners out there can correct me on this if I'm wrong.

140
00:07:06,920 --> 00:07:10,800
Speaker 1: But they have this exhibit called the Center Excavations at Volos,

141
00:07:10,880 --> 00:07:14,120
Speaker 1: and it's made to look like the fossil remnants of

142
00:07:14,200 --> 00:07:17,360
Speaker 1: a cent our skeletal system. We've always kind of thought,

143
00:07:17,520 --> 00:07:20,000
Speaker 1: well in the description and the photo I saw, I mean,

144
00:07:20,080 --> 00:07:23,520
Speaker 1: it's really pretty mapped out so that it looks like

145
00:07:23,720 --> 00:07:26,480
Speaker 1: it is indeed the real thing. And it's tuned in

146
00:07:26,480 --> 00:07:29,920
Speaker 1: a case with a faux marble base and stimulated wood

147
00:07:29,960 --> 00:07:33,560
Speaker 1: panels at these skeletal remains of what they call a

148
00:07:33,680 --> 00:07:38,720
Speaker 1: centaur burial, along with inscribed clay tablets. And you see

149
00:07:38,720 --> 00:07:41,640
Speaker 1: there's a panel and it says it's one of three

150
00:07:41,640 --> 00:07:45,640
Speaker 1: Center burials discovered in nineteen eighty by the Archaeological Society

151
00:07:45,640 --> 00:07:49,960
Speaker 1: of Argos near Volos, Greece, and they include a map.

152
00:07:50,280 --> 00:07:53,400
Speaker 1: Would cut. I mean they make it look like, you know,

153
00:07:53,480 --> 00:07:55,760
Speaker 1: this is a real thing, and the idea is that

154
00:07:55,800 --> 00:07:57,920
Speaker 1: it supposed to be an object lesson on the importance

155
00:07:57,960 --> 00:08:01,280
Speaker 1: of skepticism. Yeah, right, like it just because something is

156
00:08:01,400 --> 00:08:03,720
Speaker 1: presented in a way that looks like it's got authority

157
00:08:03,800 --> 00:08:06,600
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, these bones are the

158
00:08:06,640 --> 00:08:08,840
Speaker 1: real thing. I think it's it's fascinating and of course,

159
00:08:08,840 --> 00:08:11,320
Speaker 1: as you said, it's meant as is artwork as well. Yeah,

160
00:08:11,320 --> 00:08:12,840
Speaker 1: I kind of wish it would have become more of

161
00:08:12,880 --> 00:08:16,240
Speaker 1: a heart for the university because the football team was

162
00:08:16,280 --> 00:08:19,480
Speaker 1: the Tennessee Volunteers, and I never really paid any attention

163
00:08:19,440 --> 00:08:21,480
Speaker 1: to the football, but but I might have had they

164
00:08:21,520 --> 00:08:25,239
Speaker 1: been the Tennessee Centaurs if that had been like the mascot. Yeah,

165
00:08:25,360 --> 00:08:27,840
Speaker 1: it's very possible, right, and then they should have taken

166
00:08:27,880 --> 00:08:30,160
Speaker 1: that whole heart, because I think that's an I wish

167
00:08:30,240 --> 00:08:33,040
Speaker 1: my university had had such an exhibit. But what if,

168
00:08:33,160 --> 00:08:36,880
Speaker 1: what if a center could be real? Well, we should

169
00:08:36,880 --> 00:08:43,160
Speaker 1: explore that after a fifth break. All right, we're back

170
00:08:43,400 --> 00:08:46,520
Speaker 1: the anatomy of the center. It's a fascinating thing to

171
00:08:46,559 --> 00:08:48,520
Speaker 1: think about, and we've discussed before. I love it when

172
00:08:48,559 --> 00:08:52,520
Speaker 1: someone with the scientific mind applies that scientific mind to

173
00:08:52,600 --> 00:08:56,319
Speaker 1: something ridiculous, not in an attempt to prove that ridiculous

174
00:08:56,360 --> 00:08:59,880
Speaker 1: thing true, but sort of has a thought experiment. So

175
00:09:00,160 --> 00:09:03,400
Speaker 1: we actually have an example of that. Year. There's a

176
00:09:03,400 --> 00:09:05,720
Speaker 1: wonderful paper that actually it published in the Annals of

177
00:09:05,760 --> 00:09:08,200
Speaker 1: Improbable Research. And these are the guys to do the

178
00:09:08,240 --> 00:09:11,719
Speaker 1: Ignoble Prizes every year, and just a little background on that.

179
00:09:11,840 --> 00:09:18,800
Speaker 1: They highlight real and legitimate scientific research that seems absurd. Generally,

180
00:09:19,000 --> 00:09:22,080
Speaker 1: these experiments or papers or studies that they highlight there's

181
00:09:22,120 --> 00:09:24,600
Speaker 1: generally something to them. It's not just complete nonsense, and

182
00:09:24,640 --> 00:09:27,040
Speaker 1: there's there's always science to it. A lot of these

183
00:09:27,040 --> 00:09:30,880
Speaker 1: scientific experiments are things that elected giggles from certain members.

184
00:09:31,760 --> 00:09:37,000
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about the scientists who a forty year study

185
00:09:37,000 --> 00:09:40,160
Speaker 1: of his own cracking of his knuckles proved to his

186
00:09:40,240 --> 00:09:43,400
Speaker 1: mother that it wasn't going to cause I don't know,

187
00:09:43,440 --> 00:09:46,600
Speaker 1: our fridays or something, as his mother had claimed years

188
00:09:46,640 --> 00:09:48,920
Speaker 1: and years. And that's a great example because on one hand,

189
00:09:49,679 --> 00:09:54,199
Speaker 1: question answered, mystery solved. This dude set out and using science,

190
00:09:54,280 --> 00:09:59,120
Speaker 1: using rigid system of evaluation take that mom, investigated his

191
00:09:59,160 --> 00:10:02,760
Speaker 1: mom's statement and proved it wrong, you know. So that's awesome.

192
00:10:02,800 --> 00:10:04,880
Speaker 1: But then in the other hand, it's a guy cracking

193
00:10:04,960 --> 00:10:08,280
Speaker 1: his knuckles and keeping track of it for this large

194
00:10:07,840 --> 00:10:10,600
Speaker 1: portion of his life and then publishing the results. So

195
00:10:11,200 --> 00:10:13,480
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff since the lineup like that. For instance,

196
00:10:13,520 --> 00:10:16,199
Speaker 1: there was the I think was the Las Vegas study

197
00:10:16,240 --> 00:10:19,360
Speaker 1: into the ovulation of strippers and how that affected their

198
00:10:19,400 --> 00:10:22,400
Speaker 1: tips like that was also a study that ignoble prizes

199
00:10:22,640 --> 00:10:26,199
Speaker 1: anson probably research fla that research, by the way, has

200
00:10:26,280 --> 00:10:30,840
Speaker 1: been questioned, yes, by the way recently, but a lot

201
00:10:30,880 --> 00:10:34,320
Speaker 1: of researches. But still it was a scientific inquiry. And

202
00:10:34,400 --> 00:10:37,240
Speaker 1: so we encounter a paper titled Anatomy of the Centaur.

203
00:10:37,720 --> 00:10:39,920
Speaker 1: And this is from a German anatomous by the name

204
00:10:39,960 --> 00:10:42,520
Speaker 1: of Reinhard. Do you have his full name? Yeah? HC.

205
00:10:42,559 --> 00:10:47,200
Speaker 1: Reinhard v Puts of Germany's Ludwig Maximilian University, Unique Institute

206
00:10:47,240 --> 00:10:49,680
Speaker 1: of Anatomy. Yeah. And he writes a paper where he

207
00:10:49,679 --> 00:10:52,360
Speaker 1: just sets out with this question in mind. All right,

208
00:10:52,400 --> 00:10:55,160
Speaker 1: so the centaur is not real, but what if it was.

209
00:10:55,240 --> 00:10:58,640
Speaker 1: If the center was real, how would it's an atomy work,

210
00:10:58,720 --> 00:11:00,960
Speaker 1: How would its circulatory so isom work? How would it

211
00:11:00,960 --> 00:11:03,960
Speaker 1: digest food? There are a number of anatomical problems that

212
00:11:04,040 --> 00:11:07,280
Speaker 1: emerge and trying to imagine how a centaur works. And

213
00:11:07,320 --> 00:11:10,959
Speaker 1: this guy decided to create an answer using actual science,

214
00:11:11,040 --> 00:11:14,360
Speaker 1: using everything you knew about human and equine anatomy to

215
00:11:14,440 --> 00:11:18,280
Speaker 1: combine those and create a probable centaur. Yep, you've got

216
00:11:18,280 --> 00:11:20,440
Speaker 1: a hybrid system. So you have to keep this in mind.

217
00:11:20,600 --> 00:11:24,839
Speaker 1: So centaur's heart, or we should say hearts right right,

218
00:11:24,920 --> 00:11:27,400
Speaker 1: the centaur's going to need two of them, primary and

219
00:11:27,440 --> 00:11:31,480
Speaker 1: secondary to pump blood. Through this mash up of bodies,

220
00:11:31,600 --> 00:11:33,200
Speaker 1: you're also getting into questions of well, how does it

221
00:11:33,240 --> 00:11:35,920
Speaker 1: digest food? All right, so the stomach would be in

222
00:11:35,960 --> 00:11:38,520
Speaker 1: the horse section, but it would need to have a

223
00:11:38,640 --> 00:11:42,040
Speaker 1: human stomach because the centaurs, according to most records, they're

224
00:11:42,040 --> 00:11:44,200
Speaker 1: not going around eating hay or anything. They're going around

225
00:11:44,200 --> 00:11:46,800
Speaker 1: eating human food, so they would have to have a

226
00:11:46,920 --> 00:11:49,960
Speaker 1: human gastro intestinal system. Well, and lots of libations too.

227
00:11:50,040 --> 00:11:55,160
Speaker 1: According to right big drinkers, they live large. And then

228
00:11:55,240 --> 00:11:57,600
Speaker 1: he also gives a certain amount of consideration to the

229
00:11:57,640 --> 00:12:02,840
Speaker 1: reproductive organs of the center pis. Yes, most depictions is

230
00:12:02,880 --> 00:12:07,080
Speaker 1: he discusses show no penis in the front of the center,

231
00:12:07,200 --> 00:12:10,120
Speaker 1: and most centers in art are are males. You'd see

232
00:12:10,120 --> 00:12:12,400
Speaker 1: no penis at the front of the center because that's

233
00:12:12,520 --> 00:12:14,240
Speaker 1: like the front of the horse. That's like the horses

234
00:12:14,320 --> 00:12:16,000
Speaker 1: sternum more or less. Right, So i'd be like a

235
00:12:16,040 --> 00:12:18,280
Speaker 1: penis on a sternum, right, So you tend not to

236
00:12:18,320 --> 00:12:19,800
Speaker 1: see it there, you tend to see it back in

237
00:12:19,840 --> 00:12:23,880
Speaker 1: the back. So where the horses actual reproductive organs would

238
00:12:23,880 --> 00:12:26,320
Speaker 1: be right. There was no definitive that like where the

239
00:12:26,360 --> 00:12:28,599
Speaker 1: placement is right. It just sort of makes sense that

240
00:12:28,640 --> 00:12:30,800
Speaker 1: it would be in the hind quarters, though you do

241
00:12:30,880 --> 00:12:34,040
Speaker 1: see a certain variety points out the cretion variety of center,

242
00:12:34,200 --> 00:12:37,040
Speaker 1: which you'll see in some like mid eighth century BC

243
00:12:37,200 --> 00:12:40,640
Speaker 1: Greek artwork, where you see a center that has more

244
00:12:40,720 --> 00:12:44,040
Speaker 1: human legs in the front and human genitalia in the front,

245
00:12:44,320 --> 00:12:46,320
Speaker 1: but then but then it's unknown if it also has

246
00:12:46,320 --> 00:12:48,760
Speaker 1: genitalia in the back. This is the problem when you

247
00:12:48,760 --> 00:12:52,559
Speaker 1: start start trying to imagine mythical, unreal things as real

248
00:12:52,840 --> 00:12:55,199
Speaker 1: anatomical creation. And now I'm just laughing that we're sitting

249
00:12:55,200 --> 00:12:58,319
Speaker 1: here discussing the penis placement on the center. Yeah. I

250
00:12:58,360 --> 00:13:00,160
Speaker 1: don't know how we got here, but we did. One

251
00:13:00,200 --> 00:13:02,120
Speaker 1: of the things we found most interesting was the idea

252
00:13:02,200 --> 00:13:05,000
Speaker 1: that Reinhart argues that it would need to hearts, that

253
00:13:05,080 --> 00:13:09,080
Speaker 1: you need the human heart and the horse heart both

254
00:13:09,200 --> 00:13:12,840
Speaker 1: achieving a certain synchronicity in order for this being to exist,

255
00:13:13,040 --> 00:13:15,120
Speaker 1: which led us to think, Okay, we've got two lungs,

256
00:13:15,120 --> 00:13:17,600
Speaker 1: two kidneys, two eyes, why don't we have two hearts?

257
00:13:17,800 --> 00:13:19,560
Speaker 1: Exactly yeah, why is there? Why is there just one

258
00:13:19,559 --> 00:13:21,920
Speaker 1: of these? Is? Okay, there's there's there's there's a really

259
00:13:21,960 --> 00:13:26,160
Speaker 1: good reason for this Record's University anthropologists Susan Cashell says

260
00:13:26,240 --> 00:13:28,640
Speaker 1: that the one heart to lung system began to emerge

261
00:13:28,640 --> 00:13:31,920
Speaker 1: about three hundred million years ago when animals first moved

262
00:13:31,920 --> 00:13:35,320
Speaker 1: from seed to land, and the idea is that this

263
00:13:35,400 --> 00:13:38,960
Speaker 1: one heart too lung system was an easy blueprint to

264
00:13:39,200 --> 00:13:43,480
Speaker 1: iterate as animals evolved into such divergent species as birds

265
00:13:43,559 --> 00:13:46,679
Speaker 1: and insects and humans. Um, So we all evolved to

266
00:13:46,720 --> 00:13:50,120
Speaker 1: have stomachs digest food, lungs to breathe air, kidneys to

267
00:13:50,160 --> 00:13:54,080
Speaker 1: filter waste, and this became the most efficient mold for

268
00:13:54,280 --> 00:13:57,600
Speaker 1: nearly all species to evolve here and live on earth.

269
00:13:58,640 --> 00:14:02,040
Speaker 1: That is why, my friend, And here's another thing. If

270
00:14:02,080 --> 00:14:04,439
Speaker 1: we were to have two hearts, it really wouldn't make

271
00:14:04,440 --> 00:14:07,600
Speaker 1: a difference because your body is a system that functions

272
00:14:08,080 --> 00:14:11,080
Speaker 1: at full capacity, so the addition of extra heart wouldn't

273
00:14:11,080 --> 00:14:14,839
Speaker 1: really do much. So it seems like a cool thing, like, hey, yeah,

274
00:14:14,840 --> 00:14:16,720
Speaker 1: why not have two hearts? It seems like that could

275
00:14:16,760 --> 00:14:20,080
Speaker 1: really get us to move faster, pump more blood to

276
00:14:20,080 --> 00:14:22,560
Speaker 1: our system, more oxygen to our brain. But that is

277
00:14:22,560 --> 00:14:24,800
Speaker 1: not actually what would happen. I ran across an excerpt

278
00:14:24,880 --> 00:14:26,760
Speaker 1: from a paper by a man by the name of

279
00:14:26,840 --> 00:14:31,120
Speaker 1: Nikolai Siniston. He was working at Gorky Medical Institute in Moscow,

280
00:14:31,160 --> 00:14:33,760
Speaker 1: and this is from and he says, for a number

281
00:14:33,760 --> 00:14:35,720
Speaker 1: of years my laboratory has been studying the problem of

282
00:14:35,760 --> 00:14:38,960
Speaker 1: transplating the heart of vertebrate animals in the animal kingdom.

283
00:14:39,000 --> 00:14:42,200
Speaker 1: Many necessary prerequisites exist for carrying out this important and

284
00:14:42,240 --> 00:14:45,680
Speaker 1: at first sight impossible operation. The first stage was my

285
00:14:45,760 --> 00:14:48,880
Speaker 1: work on cold blooded animals, frogs and fishes. After a

286
00:14:48,960 --> 00:14:53,320
Speaker 1: number of experimental variants and the perfection of the operation technique,

287
00:14:53,360 --> 00:14:56,360
Speaker 1: I succeeded in transplanting to a frog a second heart

288
00:14:56,560 --> 00:14:59,320
Speaker 1: taken from another animal. I planted the second heart in

289
00:14:59,360 --> 00:15:02,240
Speaker 1: the same area is the heart of the host. Animals

290
00:15:02,280 --> 00:15:05,680
Speaker 1: with two hearts show no difference from control frogs, and

291
00:15:05,800 --> 00:15:09,720
Speaker 1: experienced biologists invited to examine them were unable to distinguish

292
00:15:09,880 --> 00:15:12,320
Speaker 1: one from the other. Two hearted frogs went through the

293
00:15:12,400 --> 00:15:15,880
Speaker 1: usual nuptial period in spring and cast their spawn in

294
00:15:15,920 --> 00:15:18,920
Speaker 1: the ordinary way, which is a delightful way of saying.

295
00:15:19,360 --> 00:15:22,240
Speaker 1: Two hearted frogs also did it in the baby frogs

296
00:15:22,520 --> 00:15:24,680
Speaker 1: did it just fine. Yeah, And so they weren't able

297
00:15:24,720 --> 00:15:27,320
Speaker 1: to tell. Scientists looking at the frogs weren't able to tell.

298
00:15:27,360 --> 00:15:29,880
Speaker 1: So to your point, an animal with an extra heart

299
00:15:29,880 --> 00:15:31,360
Speaker 1: thrown into the mix is not going to be a

300
00:15:31,400 --> 00:15:34,840
Speaker 1: super frog or a super animal. It's gonna work out. Yeah.

301
00:15:34,880 --> 00:15:37,840
Speaker 1: You could actually do the same to a human if

302
00:15:37,840 --> 00:15:41,000
Speaker 1: you were to intervene in the embryonic stage. Because here's

303
00:15:41,000 --> 00:15:43,920
Speaker 1: the deal. During the embryonic stage of development, we actually

304
00:15:43,960 --> 00:15:46,920
Speaker 1: do have two hearts, and this is called the heart primordia,

305
00:15:47,040 --> 00:15:50,680
Speaker 1: which eventually fuses together into one heart with four chambers.

306
00:15:51,200 --> 00:15:54,680
Speaker 1: And we're also outfitted with two eyes during the embryonic stage,

307
00:15:55,120 --> 00:15:58,160
Speaker 1: although we begin with one primordia of the eye, which

308
00:15:58,240 --> 00:16:02,400
Speaker 1: eventually separates to formed do so if the primorny were

309
00:16:02,600 --> 00:16:06,320
Speaker 1: to be kept from splitting, we would have a cyclop side.

310
00:16:07,560 --> 00:16:10,240
Speaker 1: How crazy, awful and great is that. I think we

311
00:16:10,280 --> 00:16:13,840
Speaker 1: could also consiuerably engineer two hearts at that early stage exactly.

312
00:16:13,880 --> 00:16:16,520
Speaker 1: But I believe they have achieved that with frogs, Yes

313
00:16:16,560 --> 00:16:18,160
Speaker 1: they did. You could do it frogs, You could do

314
00:16:18,200 --> 00:16:20,240
Speaker 1: it with humans, but obviously this is not something you'd

315
00:16:20,240 --> 00:16:23,560
Speaker 1: want to do. But there is something called heterotopic heart

316
00:16:23,560 --> 00:16:27,280
Speaker 1: transplant that we should mention, Yes, we should, because it

317
00:16:27,400 --> 00:16:30,120
Speaker 1: has to do with a guy human who actually does

318
00:16:30,200 --> 00:16:32,920
Speaker 1: have two hearts. Earlier this year, an older man was

319
00:16:32,960 --> 00:16:36,800
Speaker 1: admitted to a hospital in Verona, Italy, and doctors were

320
00:16:36,840 --> 00:16:40,320
Speaker 1: amazed because they could detect two heartbeats, both of which

321
00:16:40,320 --> 00:16:44,400
Speaker 1: were displaying signs of dys rhythmia. And what they found

322
00:16:44,400 --> 00:16:46,960
Speaker 1: out is that this guy had undergone a procedure known

323
00:16:47,040 --> 00:16:50,720
Speaker 1: as heterotopic heart transplant, which we don't really do anymore

324
00:16:50,760 --> 00:16:53,520
Speaker 1: because technology has gotten to the point where it's not necessary.

325
00:16:53,600 --> 00:16:55,360
Speaker 1: But for a while, if you were going to transplant

326
00:16:55,360 --> 00:16:58,760
Speaker 1: an additional organ kidney, you wouldn't necessarily take the old

327
00:16:58,920 --> 00:17:02,400
Speaker 1: organ out right because it might be too difficult to extract,

328
00:17:03,240 --> 00:17:05,399
Speaker 1: or there was the hope that the organ might recover

329
00:17:05,440 --> 00:17:08,240
Speaker 1: while the new organ took over day to day functions. Right,

330
00:17:08,280 --> 00:17:09,800
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, oh, well, we don't want to

331
00:17:09,840 --> 00:17:12,680
Speaker 1: fire this person. Let's have them train their replacement for

332
00:17:12,720 --> 00:17:15,080
Speaker 1: a few for a week or so, and it works out,

333
00:17:15,080 --> 00:17:17,720
Speaker 1: we'll just keep them both. And that's what happened in

334
00:17:17,760 --> 00:17:20,320
Speaker 1: the chest of this Italian man. Yeah, yeah, that the

335
00:17:20,359 --> 00:17:23,520
Speaker 1: transplant team made it his new heart with his malfunctioning

336
00:17:23,560 --> 00:17:25,520
Speaker 1: old one, and the chambers and blood vessels of the

337
00:17:25,560 --> 00:17:28,080
Speaker 1: two hearts were married so that the new heart could

338
00:17:28,080 --> 00:17:31,239
Speaker 1: support the old one. The problem though, is that you

339
00:17:31,280 --> 00:17:34,840
Speaker 1: can develop two independent heart rhythms, especially in a scenario

340
00:17:34,880 --> 00:17:38,040
Speaker 1: where one heart gets a little bit better, and in

341
00:17:38,080 --> 00:17:42,560
Speaker 1: this guy's case, to just rhythmic problems led to him

342
00:17:42,600 --> 00:17:46,240
Speaker 1: actually flatlining. Fortunately, though, he was jolted back to life

343
00:17:46,240 --> 00:17:50,040
Speaker 1: with a defibrillator and his pacemaker was replaced. But it

344
00:17:50,080 --> 00:17:53,040
Speaker 1: did kind of put you know, doctors on alert to like, oh, yeah, hey,

345
00:17:53,040 --> 00:17:56,359
Speaker 1: there are some people walking around with two hearts from

346
00:17:56,440 --> 00:17:58,760
Speaker 1: this procedure. He would have a great excuse, I guess

347
00:17:58,800 --> 00:18:01,199
Speaker 1: if he was caught by his adi looking around, you know,

348
00:18:01,240 --> 00:18:02,480
Speaker 1: and he would say, hey, what can I do? I

349
00:18:02,480 --> 00:18:04,280
Speaker 1: got two hearts? You know, Hey, I got a lot

350
00:18:04,280 --> 00:18:07,120
Speaker 1: of hearts, got a lot of heart Yeah, something like that. Yeah,

351
00:18:07,240 --> 00:18:09,840
Speaker 1: I'm sure he would love that joke. Seriously. It's it's amazing, though,

352
00:18:09,880 --> 00:18:12,040
Speaker 1: I think there are individuals out there with two hearts

353
00:18:12,040 --> 00:18:15,280
Speaker 1: in their chest. It's possible conceivable at an early stage

354
00:18:15,320 --> 00:18:19,640
Speaker 1: to interfere in human development and create two hearts. So

355
00:18:19,720 --> 00:18:22,159
Speaker 1: even these things that would factor into the existence of

356
00:18:22,200 --> 00:18:25,680
Speaker 1: a mythical creature we can pinpoint in the anatomical world

357
00:18:25,760 --> 00:18:29,320
Speaker 1: at large, and also like the discovery, at least for me,

358
00:18:29,480 --> 00:18:32,800
Speaker 1: that we did have this primordia I that separated that.

359
00:18:32,960 --> 00:18:35,360
Speaker 1: If it didn't, you would have a cyclopsize. So centaurs.

360
00:18:35,400 --> 00:18:37,640
Speaker 1: There you go. That's just kind of a a quick

361
00:18:37,720 --> 00:18:39,800
Speaker 1: run through what they are and some of the science

362
00:18:39,840 --> 00:18:42,160
Speaker 1: tied up around them. One of the more thought provoking

363
00:18:42,280 --> 00:18:44,520
Speaker 1: ideas I ran across. I discovered it through some of

364
00:18:44,560 --> 00:18:47,000
Speaker 1: the writings of author and theorist Ken Wilbur who was

365
00:18:47,119 --> 00:18:50,359
Speaker 1: drawing from the works of Hubert Benoir, Jane Alexander, and

366
00:18:50,480 --> 00:18:53,679
Speaker 1: Eric Erickson, and they used the centaur to describe the

367
00:18:53,760 --> 00:18:57,359
Speaker 1: integrated state of mind and body. So the idea here is,

368
00:18:58,200 --> 00:19:00,760
Speaker 1: especially modern humans, we tend to think of ourselves in

369
00:19:00,760 --> 00:19:03,600
Speaker 1: our body, our brain in our body as a rider

370
00:19:03,640 --> 00:19:06,480
Speaker 1: on a horse. We are the rider, our body is

371
00:19:06,520 --> 00:19:09,960
Speaker 1: the horse, and inevitably our horse ends up failing us.

372
00:19:10,280 --> 00:19:12,159
Speaker 1: It's not going as fast as we wanted to go.

373
00:19:12,320 --> 00:19:15,439
Speaker 1: It's got a bum legs trying to buck us. You know,

374
00:19:15,600 --> 00:19:18,840
Speaker 1: it's up, so we're whipping it. We have this relationship

375
00:19:18,920 --> 00:19:20,840
Speaker 1: where we're the mind, the body is a horse, and

376
00:19:20,840 --> 00:19:23,480
Speaker 1: we kind of treat the horse like this thing that

377
00:19:23,560 --> 00:19:26,879
Speaker 1: is subservient to us, where in reality, the state is

378
00:19:26,880 --> 00:19:29,439
Speaker 1: more like a centaur. It is an integrated state. So

379
00:19:29,480 --> 00:19:31,280
Speaker 1: we've discussed before we're not just a brain, and we

380
00:19:31,320 --> 00:19:33,560
Speaker 1: talked about the way our diet and the way whatever

381
00:19:33,640 --> 00:19:36,200
Speaker 1: is going on in our digestic system, how that influences

382
00:19:36,359 --> 00:19:39,040
Speaker 1: our state of being. Where this integrated being, where this

383
00:19:39,119 --> 00:19:42,000
Speaker 1: centaur when it comes to the mind body relationship, and

384
00:19:42,040 --> 00:19:44,720
Speaker 1: that's definitely the more healthy and the more accurate way

385
00:19:44,720 --> 00:19:47,120
Speaker 1: of looking at the relationships. So if your horsey parts

386
00:19:47,160 --> 00:19:51,240
Speaker 1: aren't happy, you're not happy, Yes, exactly, speak because you

387
00:19:51,280 --> 00:19:55,240
Speaker 1: are your horsey parts. That's that's that's the one takeaway

388
00:19:55,240 --> 00:19:58,560
Speaker 1: from this this episode. So there you have it. Centaurs.

389
00:19:58,600 --> 00:20:00,800
Speaker 1: If you would like to share your lots on centaur's,

390
00:20:00,840 --> 00:20:04,040
Speaker 1: your favorite centaurs from fact or fantasy, let us know

391
00:20:04,119 --> 00:20:07,040
Speaker 1: about them. You can find us on Facebook where we

392
00:20:07,119 --> 00:20:09,480
Speaker 1: are stuff to blow your mind, or you can find

393
00:20:09,520 --> 00:20:11,359
Speaker 1: us on Twitter where our handle is blow the Mind

394
00:20:11,440 --> 00:20:13,520
Speaker 1: and you can share any of that stuff with us there,

395
00:20:13,600 --> 00:20:15,560
Speaker 1: and you can always drop us a line at blow

396
00:20:15,640 --> 00:20:22,439
Speaker 1: the Mind at Discovery dot com for more on this

397
00:20:22,600 --> 00:20:25,080
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works?

398
00:20:25,119 --> 00:20:29,359
Speaker 1: Dot com