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Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time for an older episode of the show from the Vault.

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Speaker 1: This one originally aired February second. This was Brain and

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Speaker 1: Head Theft, Part one. We did a couple about people

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Speaker 1: stealing other people's heads and brains. That's right. Some episodes

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Speaker 1: of our show will blow your mind. Others will cut

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Speaker 1: your brain in half and store half of it in

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Speaker 1: one building and the other half in another building. Okay,

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Speaker 1: dock detective, what do you make of it? Here? We

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Speaker 1: have got another body, another skull opened up with clinical precision.

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Speaker 1: What manner of monster are we dealing with here? I

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Speaker 1: don't believe we're dealing with the monster at all. Certainly

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Speaker 1: none of the brain gobbling ghoule sorts sensationalized in the press.

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Speaker 1: I've studied the ways of ghouls, inspector, and they consume

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Speaker 1: all hard and soft tissues. But they prefer the brain. Yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: as does the common zombie or Mexican vitellius. But look

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Speaker 1: at what we see here. Not only was the brain

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Speaker 1: and only the brain targeted, but different regions of the

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Speaker 1: brain have been removed from victim to victim. Not a

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Speaker 1: monster or even a cannibal, then, but a brain thief indeed.

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Speaker 1: And look at the profiles of the victims and the

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Speaker 1: portions of the brain pilfered from each one of them.

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Speaker 1: The vernicas area and the angular gyrus of the noted linguist,

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Speaker 1: the Broca's area of the soliloquist, the best parts of

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Speaker 1: the best brains. Our murderer is building himself the perfect

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Speaker 1: brain out of stolen parts. But to what end? Welcome

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Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind, the production of My

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. And

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Speaker 1: this is my second take at pronouncing my own name.

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Speaker 1: I'm glad I got it right this time. Today we're

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Speaker 1: gonna be talking about our stolen brains, our stolen heads. Uh.

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Speaker 1: This is a topic that yet again, like another one

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Speaker 1: we did recently. This started as uh an artifact episode

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Speaker 1: that I was trying to develop, but then it quickly

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Speaker 1: became clear to me that this was not a short topic.

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Speaker 1: This was a huge topic with all kinds of bizarre

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Speaker 1: tangents and and and dark alleys down which to tread. Uh.

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Speaker 1: So I'm so excited to embark on this two parter

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Speaker 1: about removing and stealing people's heads and people's brains. That's right.

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Speaker 1: This one just keeps growing and expanding, dragging in more heads,

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Speaker 1: more brains. It has an insatiable appetite this topic. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: One of the so one of the original stories that

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Speaker 1: I was looking at that got me interested in this

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Speaker 1: was the uh theft of the Austrian composer Franz Joseph

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Speaker 1: Haydn's head in the early nineteenth century. And that's a

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Speaker 1: story that we're going to come back to at the

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Speaker 1: end of this first episode part one here, but before that,

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Speaker 1: I think it makes sense to to back up and

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Speaker 1: look at the removal of heads in the context where

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Speaker 1: it's probably more familiar to everyone, which is not in

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Speaker 1: reality but in you know, fiction. Yeah, and we promise

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Speaker 1: not to spend too long here because I know some

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Speaker 1: of you might be saying, look, you guys have Friday's

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Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema episodes. Now you can pour all of

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Speaker 1: your enthusiasm for horror movies into their uh and maybe

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Speaker 1: a little less gets used in the core episodes, but

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Speaker 1: but there's still some important stuff to touch on here,

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Speaker 1: and I think that the fiction sums up a lot

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Speaker 1: of what's going on when we think about these topics. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so yeah, brain and head theft are frequent trokes and

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Speaker 1: horror and science fiction, particularly of the twentieth century, and

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Speaker 1: a lot of this seems to be centered in notions

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Speaker 1: and fears concerning identity and the scientific understand ending of

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Speaker 1: the brain is the seat of consciousness, explored in such

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Speaker 1: thoughtful science fiction films as Tammy and the t Rex,

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Speaker 1: one of one of the all time great brain theft movies. Yeah, yeah, uh,

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Speaker 1: there there are various versions of this, right, you know,

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Speaker 1: because sometimes the brain is just stolen. Uh. Sometimes it's

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Speaker 1: kept alive. Sometimes the head is kept alive free of

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Speaker 1: the body of a you know jan in the pan situation. Um.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes it's a human transplant, putting the head of one

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Speaker 1: person under the body of another, sometimes next to the

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Speaker 1: original head of the other. Um, you know, the other

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Speaker 1: in in a way, in their own way, sometimes a

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Speaker 1: kind of a thoughtful attempt to get at something, you know, culturally,

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Speaker 1: but other times just kind of this another rumination on

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Speaker 1: the bizarre idea of what if my head but different

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Speaker 1: body what if two heads same body? You know. Uh,

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Speaker 1: there's just so much about this idea that continues to amaze.

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Speaker 1: What if my brain in a dinosaur exactly? Not? What

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Speaker 1: if my brain a robot um, you know, etcetera. Uh So, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you'll you'll find so many different versions of this, living

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Speaker 1: heads and jars, living brains and jars, head transplants between humans,

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Speaker 1: brain transplants into other human beings, and of course brain

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Speaker 1: transplants into machines. And there's plenty to talk about here

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Speaker 1: even if we're just dealing with consensual brain and or

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Speaker 1: head transplant. But then what if your head or brain

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Speaker 1: were stolen? Right? That becomes the extra level of potential horror.

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Speaker 1: What do you have some mad science maniac were to

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Speaker 1: plug your brain into the body of a hideous monster

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Speaker 1: body or a killer robot. Or what if you were

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Speaker 1: just reduced to nothing but a head bobbing around in

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Speaker 1: a jar, or even even more limiting, a brain just

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Speaker 1: shut off in alive inside of some sort of contraption.

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Speaker 1: I mean, this is explored to some degree in things

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Speaker 1: we've talked about on the show before. For example, the

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Speaker 1: The Thought Experiments Leash short story where am I by

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Speaker 1: Daniel Dennett, which is all about brains being removed, and

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Speaker 1: that's ultimately trying to get at the question of what

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Speaker 1: is the seat of consciousness and is it located in

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Speaker 1: a place? Uh you know, given various you know, constraints

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Speaker 1: and and and thought experiments about like how brains could

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Speaker 1: be replicated with machinery. But but also there are I guess,

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Speaker 1: much less technical explorations of the subject where it's just

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Speaker 1: kind of like, uh, you know, the Futurama model, where

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Speaker 1: you're just preserving ahead or preserving a brain to supposedly

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Speaker 1: keep the keep the consciousness alive after the body dies

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Speaker 1: or after the body is superseded by some superior technology.

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Speaker 1: I think both of us really enjoy Um the character

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Speaker 1: Kane from RoboCop two Noon and Brain in a jar

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Speaker 1: U powering a mechanized death machine. Yeah tom noonan uh

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Speaker 1: and he's just like pain embodied controlling a killer robot,

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Speaker 1: which is a brilliant idea. There's even like a drug

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Speaker 1: insertion because he he was he's addicted to some sort

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Speaker 1: of super drug. Right, Oh yeah, the drug called nuke.

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Speaker 1: Yeah over of a cup two is amazing. Um, there's

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Speaker 1: a there's actually a really excellent star Wars tie in

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Speaker 1: here as well. I mean, you have a lot of

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Speaker 1: cybernetic stuff going on in Star Wars, but you have

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Speaker 1: this one creature. I don't know if you remember it, Joe,

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Speaker 1: because it kind of just walks around in the background

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Speaker 1: briefly in Return of the Jedi, but it looks like

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Speaker 1: a mechanical spider. And then it has this glass looking

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Speaker 1: container or sphere hanging underneath it, and inside there's fluid

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Speaker 1: and what appears to be a brain of some sort.

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Speaker 1: I don't think I made the brain connection when I

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Speaker 1: watched Return of the Jedi as a kid, but just

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Speaker 1: looked like a big mechanical spider. I think the brain

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Speaker 1: things explored more in I don't know what you call it,

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Speaker 1: the the supplementary Star Wars universe material, the encyclopedias and

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Speaker 1: all that. Yeah, I remember reading. I think there's a

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Speaker 1: whole story about them in Tales from Joba's Palace, or

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Speaker 1: at least it's a story that concerns them to some degree.

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Speaker 1: But we are told in other forms that this these

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Speaker 1: are the remains of the Bomar monks. Um And I'm

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Speaker 1: just gonna read this quick passage from Wikipedia. Um. It

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Speaker 1: says this follows quote. The Biomar Order, which consisted of

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Speaker 1: Bomar monks, was a religious order that believed in isolating

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Speaker 1: themselves from all physical sensation to enhance the power of

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Speaker 1: their minds. To that aim, enlightened monks had their brains

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Speaker 1: transplanted into nutrient filled jars. Whenever they wanted to move.

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Speaker 1: Those bottled brains used spider like droid walkers. I can

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Speaker 1: just imagine the purity hierarchy. It's like, oh, you're you're

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Speaker 1: gonna walk around in your spider today instead of just

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Speaker 1: sitting there in a jar doing nothing. Okay, Well, I

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Speaker 1: mean sometimes you have to have your nutrient fluid switched out, right,

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Speaker 1: I'm guessing there's like with me, one machine in job

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Speaker 1: As Palace that does that, and you gotta get there early.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I guess if you're addicted to the pleasures

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Speaker 1: of the flesh. So that's just that's just a brief

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Speaker 1: glance at some of the many, many, very creations on

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Speaker 1: this you'll find in sci fi and horror because we

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Speaker 1: can't get enough of it, because at the heart of it,

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Speaker 1: there are so there are several different um you know,

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Speaker 1: enigmas and conundrums. Uh and paradoxes that that emerge, you know,

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Speaker 1: because it's dealing with what we are and who we are,

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Speaker 1: and just sort of that some of the mysteries that

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Speaker 1: that seem to revolve around are are fleshly self and

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Speaker 1: some of the more supernatural ideas about what we are,

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Speaker 1: and of course some of the you know, the mysteries

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Speaker 1: of consciousness itself. Yeah, and that's interesting when when you

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Speaker 1: get into mysteries. One of the great things to wonder

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Speaker 1: is um as far as consciousness and its relationship to

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Speaker 1: different types of tissue in the body, nervous system, tissue

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Speaker 1: in the brain versus other parts of the body. You

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Speaker 1: always kind of wonder, um, what did ancient people know,

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Speaker 1: you know, or what did they suspect before we had

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Speaker 1: modern neuroscience and anatomy and uh, and there is something

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Speaker 1: interesting you can observe. Is not necessarily going to be theft,

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Speaker 1: like we're talking about it in a lot of our examples,

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Speaker 1: though in some cases it probably is. But there are

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Speaker 1: interesting cases you can observe from the ancient world and

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Speaker 1: from ancient religion where sometimes the head or the brain

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Speaker 1: were treated differently than some other parts of the body were,

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Speaker 1: which indicated at least something some interesting belief. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is this gets really fascinating. Now, First of all,

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Speaker 1: we should stress that we modern humans are probably just

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Speaker 1: mostly focused on the idea of the brain being the

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Speaker 1: seat of the mind and the self, because we also

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Speaker 1: paradoxically carry along other ideas with us. You know, there's

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Speaker 1: so many just parts of our language and just the

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Speaker 1: way we think about ourselves that we may talk about

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Speaker 1: feeling something with our heart, and when we do that,

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Speaker 1: we may on some level position are our center of being,

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Speaker 1: in position our mind in the middle of our torso

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Speaker 1: my gut feeling. Yeah, yeah, your gut feeling, etcetera. And

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Speaker 1: you can take this even further, of course, get into

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Speaker 1: various um uh you know, supernatural and religious ideas about

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Speaker 1: say various chakras and energy points in the body, um

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Speaker 1: you know, and the And we can carry this around

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Speaker 1: with us and also carry around a science more or

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Speaker 1: less scientific understanding of the brain, um you know. And

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Speaker 1: we can we can believe in both. We can we

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Speaker 1: can you know, dip out of both steamer trays as

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Speaker 1: it suits us. Yeah, obviously people do. I mean like

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Speaker 1: that A lot of people probably believe in some type

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Speaker 1: of supernatural mind in one way or another. But then also,

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Speaker 1: like you would consult a neurologist if you needed to write,

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Speaker 1: and and you know, I'm I'm always a kind of

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Speaker 1: of two minds on all of this because on one hand,

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Speaker 1: you know, we we the brain is is the the

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Speaker 1: the author of of of all these ideas, you know,

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Speaker 1: I mean, it is the center of our being. And

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Speaker 1: we see that, um, you know, and that that bears

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Speaker 1: out anytime there's a brain injury, etcetera. But then also

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Speaker 1: we're not just the brain. We're also the body. And

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Speaker 1: while you know you might be stretching it to say

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Speaker 1: that you're you know, you're thinking something or feeling something

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Speaker 1: with your heart in the same way that you would

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Speaker 1: with your mind. You know, there is this um we

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Speaker 1: are more than just the brain. We are this entire organism. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: That's something that I think is often overlooked in these

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Speaker 1: like so the Beaumar monks or whatever. The brain in

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Speaker 1: a jar with a spider body, and you think, like, well,

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Speaker 1: that's just pure mental existence, you know, as if you

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Speaker 1: you'll just live forever in this mechanical setup and you

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Speaker 1: can have your your pure mind continuing to do whatever

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Speaker 1: it does. Meditation or whatever. But I think that might

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Speaker 1: be really underappreciating how much your mental life would be

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Speaker 1: changed if you were only your brain and did not

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Speaker 1: have the rest of your body for the brain to

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Speaker 1: interact with. Yeah, that's why General Grievous got to bring

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Speaker 1: his guts with him, you know. Yeah, he's not just

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Speaker 1: a brain, he's also eyeballs and guts in there, so well.

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Speaker 1: I mean, and there's even literal feedback. I mean, in

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Speaker 1: some way the brain is influenced, for example, by hormones

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Speaker 1: that are secreted by organs in other parts of the body.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely uh. In thinking about what ancient people's thought, though,

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Speaker 1: it's it's impossible to get into this discussion without, of

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Speaker 1: course touching on the ancient Egyptians, because, as a many

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Speaker 1: of you are probably already thinking about, they famously removed

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Speaker 1: and discarded the brain, dering and balming, while taking great

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Speaker 1: care to store various other organs in economic jars. Yet

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Speaker 1: at the same time, the ancient Egyptians are responsible for

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Speaker 1: the oldest written record using the word brain. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't brain, you know, obviously, but it was the

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Speaker 1: Higheroglyphics for brain aren't known. We see it in a

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Speaker 1: sevent BC text that was in turn apparently based on

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Speaker 1: texts that go back to about three thousand BC. Uh.

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Speaker 1: This is the so called Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, named

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Speaker 1: for the American Egyptologists who discovered it. Okay, so we're

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Speaker 1: looking at it now. The the hieroglyphic word form that

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Speaker 1: men the brain, the organ, it's like a bird, and

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Speaker 1: then something that looks maybe like a feather or a knife,

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Speaker 1: and then like a hook shaped thing, and then what

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Speaker 1: looks like maybe a bee or a fly. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I guess the hook. I have no idea, but the

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Speaker 1: hook thing is very suggestive, of course, uh, not being

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Speaker 1: entirely sure what this this these hieroglyphics um individually, these

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Speaker 1: parts of it mean because of what we think about

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Speaker 1: the hook that is used to carefully remove the brain

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Speaker 1: uh tsoot during embalming um, which was a delicate procedure

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Speaker 1: because you had to do it apparently as well without

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Speaker 1: you had to take care not to damage the facial

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Speaker 1: features during the removal. And and one thing that's important

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Speaker 1: to realize here is that the Egyptians didn't necessarily think

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Speaker 1: the brain was garbage or anything, but it was one

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Speaker 1: of the first organs to go foul. Part of their

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Speaker 1: practice was to first remove the organs that decayed rapidly,

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Speaker 1: and this certainly included the brain. This is going to

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Speaker 1: tie directly into an account from the early nineteenth century

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Speaker 1: that we're going to talk about later in the episode,

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Speaker 1: about a very prominent and fascinating case of head theft.

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Speaker 1: All right, um, just briefly some other tidbits about our

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Speaker 1: history of understanding the brain. In the fourth century BC,

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Speaker 1: Aristotle considered the brain to be a secondary organ that

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Speaker 1: cooled the heart, a place where the spirit could circulate.

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Speaker 1: The heart was the center of thought. Though now in

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Speaker 1: the second century, ce Galen concluded that the brain was

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Speaker 1: the seat of the animal soul, uh, one of three

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Speaker 1: souls in the body. But this was based in part

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Speaker 1: on his observations of the effects of brain injuries on

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Speaker 1: mental activity. So again, even if you even if you

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Speaker 1: you you were really clinging to some idea that uh,

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Speaker 1: that thought and being is tied up in the Torso

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Speaker 1: you know, after a while, it becomes clear that when

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Speaker 1: things happen to the head, um, it can it can

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Speaker 1: drastically affect how we think and how we uh we process. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that seems like that would have probably been one of

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Speaker 1: the earliest ways that people could do the important role

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Speaker 1: of the brain, not just because you could make the

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Speaker 1: argument that sometimes it's somehow kind of feels like thought

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Speaker 1: is taking place in the head. Obviously it didn't always

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Speaker 1: feel like that to everybody. Some people must have thought

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Speaker 1: it felt like it was happening somewhere else. But but yeah,

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Speaker 1: you noticed that you hit somebody in the head. It

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Speaker 1: is much more likely to have a complex and profound

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Speaker 1: effects on how they think and how they feel than

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Speaker 1: hitting them in any other part of the body. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's interesting. How again, it's an unavoidable in our language. Right,

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Speaker 1: So we talked about like putting our thinking cap on.

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Speaker 1: You know, we're just so many times like we're thinking

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Speaker 1: really hard. We might do something involving our head, We

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Speaker 1: might touch our head. But if you were living in

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Speaker 1: a culture that was more based in an idea that

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Speaker 1: would that thinking was based in the chest, would you

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Speaker 1: put your I don't know, you're you're thinking brazier on?

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Speaker 1: Would you would you sort of like hold your chest

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Speaker 1: a little bit as you as you think. I don't know, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And I also wonder what are the limits to that,

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Speaker 1: Like is is that. Is it possible that if you

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Speaker 1: just had the right cultural ideas fed into you as

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Speaker 1: you were growing up, that it would literally feel to

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Speaker 1: you like you were thinking with your feet or thinking

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Speaker 1: with your knees or something, or is there a sort

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Speaker 1: of limited range of where it can feel like thinking

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Speaker 1: is happening. I don't know. This is fascinating. I hadn't

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Speaker 1: really thought about all this before. But maybe there's some

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Speaker 1: papers out there to get into it that would it

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Speaker 1: would be interesting to read about. Yeah, but any rate,

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Speaker 1: from here, we gradually built up an improved understanding of

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Speaker 1: how the brain function, though much remained unknown for a

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Speaker 1: considerable amount of time, leading to what I've seen referred

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Speaker 1: to as a quote cultural anatomy of the brain that

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Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily match up within neurological reality. Yeah, that's interesting.

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Speaker 1: Than Now, there's one example from ancient history I guess

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Speaker 1: actually this would be prehistory of how heads were treated

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Speaker 1: in a way that was somewhat different than how the

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Speaker 1: rest of the body was treated. And this kind from

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Speaker 1: the ancient Neolithic or Chalcolithic Neolithic settlement known as chattelho

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Speaker 1: Yuk from Turkey. It's a place in southern Turkey. That

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Speaker 1: was thousands of years BC. Did did you have the

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Speaker 1: date on that? Um? I I read it had thrived

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Speaker 1: back in seven thousand. Yeah, I mean it was around

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Speaker 1: for a while, but I think that was like the

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Speaker 1: period of its the height of its population and power,

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Speaker 1: and so it's one of the earliest large human settlements

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Speaker 1: that we have evidence of sustained habitation at. There were

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Speaker 1: all of these houses that were sort of built right

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Speaker 1: next to each other. They were built up and you

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Speaker 1: would enter them through the roof. It was like a

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Speaker 1: grid of sort of cubicle houses. You'd go in through

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Speaker 1: the roof, and there are these living spaces that archaeologists

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Speaker 1: can still explore today. And it's fascinating to try to

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Speaker 1: put together the culture of the people who lived at

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Speaker 1: Chattelhoyuk because one of the things observed there is sometimes, uh,

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Speaker 1: sometimes there would be mortu ary practices that would involve

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Speaker 1: apparently incorporating the dead bodies of friends and family members

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Speaker 1: into like the furniture, just into stuff inside the house

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Speaker 1: where the people were living, so the body of a

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Speaker 1: dead relative might be buried underneath the bed where you sleep.

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Speaker 1: But one of the other really interesting things sometimes observed

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Speaker 1: there is the removal of heads from dead bodies I

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Speaker 1: presumably family members, where the head would be taken off

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Speaker 1: and uh and then covered in some kind of plaster

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Speaker 1: and just like kept in the house. Yeah, it's it's

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Speaker 1: really fascinating because in this we we get into, you know,

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Speaker 1: you sort of have to strip away sort of your

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Speaker 1: modern funerary customs and ideas about what is what is

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Speaker 1: proper to do with the with the body of the deceased, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: And you if you try and sort of put yourself

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Speaker 1: in this this different mindset and imagine, like how do

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Speaker 1: we relate to the bodies that no longer have life

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Speaker 1: and him you know what what is the what is

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Speaker 1: the skull of the dead? Uh? Now that they have

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Speaker 1: you know that now that the individual has passed on,

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Speaker 1: you know, you you get into this sort of like

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Speaker 1: base area. Then you you can build up from there

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Speaker 1: and imagine how some of these these customs could have

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Speaker 1: taken root. Yeah, and it it definitely signals like how

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Speaker 1: variable and culturally determined our feelings about the treatment of

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Speaker 1: dead bodies are. Because I think now and it's probably

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Speaker 1: very somewhat to culture even today, but in most of

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Speaker 1: the cultures were familiar with. Like if you were to

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Speaker 1: take Grandma's dead body and like cut her head off

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Speaker 1: and cover it with plaster and put it on a desk,

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Speaker 1: that would widely be seen as like disrespectful in some way,

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Speaker 1: But here it's the exact opposite. It seems to suggest

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Speaker 1: that this is a way of revering the dead, and

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Speaker 1: in some way it has some kind of religious significance

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Speaker 1: or ritual use. Yeah. Like nowadays, you said down and

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Speaker 1: you watch the Texas chainsaw mask you and you say,

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Speaker 1: this is not right. This family of Texan cannibals are

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Speaker 1: are are not being respectful to the dead. But you

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Speaker 1: can make a case for most of the things they're

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Speaker 1: doing and say, no, they're being very respectful. Um to

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Speaker 1: to a to a point, I'm only going to defend

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Speaker 1: the Sawyers so much. But um but but now there's

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Speaker 1: a lot to consider, like you know, what happens to

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Speaker 1: the body when it dies? Wand or what do we

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Speaker 1: do to the body when it dies? And how we

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Speaker 1: approach these different views of death, like they have a

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Speaker 1: huge impact on not only how we we treat the

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Speaker 1: bodies of the dead, but then also like how we

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Speaker 1: think about death itself. Yeah, and so we're gonna be

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Speaker 1: focusing in these episodes on some cases of brains and

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Speaker 1: heads being taken off of bodies um or or being

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Speaker 1: stolen in one way or another without the consent of

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Speaker 1: the person involved. But there we should at least know

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Speaker 1: that there are plenty of cases where heads are removed,

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Speaker 1: brains are removed, and this was according to the wishes

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Speaker 1: of the person from whose body they're being taken, right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so a few I think, mostly if not completely consensually

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Speaker 1: preserved brains worth mentioning. Uh. One of one of the

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Speaker 1: big ones that that probably a lot of people were

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Speaker 1: thinking of is is Broca's brain. Um And one of

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Speaker 1: the reasons, of course, is that Carl Sagan has a

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Speaker 1: whole book titled Broker's Brain, because one of the essays

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Speaker 1: in it deals with it specifically. And I'll get back

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Speaker 1: to that in just a second. But Paul Broco lived

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Speaker 1: through eighteen eighty. He was a French surgeon and neurologist

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Speaker 1: who played a major role in the mid nineteen in

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Speaker 1: mid nineteenth century medicine, and was the founder of modern

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Speaker 1: brain surgery. He also supported some extremely prejudiced ideas, but

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Speaker 1: his work with the brain itself was expressed. It was

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Speaker 1: it was extremely important. As such, he worked a lot

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Speaker 1: with human brains, and many of the preserved brains that

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Speaker 1: he worked with can still be found at the Pierre

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Speaker 1: and Marie Curry University in Paris, and that potentially includes

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Speaker 1: Brocco's own brain. The museum has apparently denied that it

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Speaker 1: can be found there, but there are accounts that say

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Speaker 1: that his brain ended up on a shelf alongside the others.

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Speaker 1: And Carl Sagan in the book broke his brain. In

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Speaker 1: the the the chapter or essay dealing with this, he

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Speaker 1: discusses holding the jar and that allegedly contained it, saying, quote,

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Speaker 1: it was Broca himself whose brain I was cradling, who

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Speaker 1: had established the maccab collection I had been contemplating. And

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Speaker 1: from their second goes on to question just how much

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Speaker 1: of who Broca was is still in there? You know?

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Speaker 1: Is the physical brain in the jar? Is that him?

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Speaker 1: Is this some remnant of him? It's it's a wonderful,

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Speaker 1: wonderful section of the book that you should you should read,

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Speaker 1: but it's um uh, probably one of the more famous

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Speaker 1: preserved or allegedly preserved brains. Yeah and yeah, that raises

427
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Speaker 1: really interesting questions, like in a way, is it possible

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Speaker 1: even to think about the person as an object or

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Speaker 1: as a person something more like a process. Yeah. And

430
00:24:05,560 --> 00:24:09,920
Speaker 1: then also like the whole seeming mystery about whether there's

431
00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:12,760
Speaker 1: there's an actual uh specimen that is broke his brain,

432
00:24:13,400 --> 00:24:15,760
Speaker 1: it does also bring up the question, you know, once

433
00:24:15,760 --> 00:24:17,520
Speaker 1: the brain is removed, how do you tell whose it was?

434
00:24:17,640 --> 00:24:20,240
Speaker 1: Especially when you're dealing with an old brain like this.

435
00:24:20,400 --> 00:24:22,679
Speaker 1: You know, it's not like you can just hook it up,

436
00:24:22,800 --> 00:24:24,880
Speaker 1: fire it up and see what memories are in there, etcetera.

437
00:24:26,119 --> 00:24:27,960
Speaker 1: But of course, so there's a question about this one.

438
00:24:28,000 --> 00:24:30,640
Speaker 1: But there are examples of people who were just like, yep,

439
00:24:30,760 --> 00:24:33,480
Speaker 1: you know, you use my brain, do something with it. Yeah.

440
00:24:33,600 --> 00:24:35,679
Speaker 1: Charles Babbage is a great example of this. Who have

441
00:24:35,760 --> 00:24:39,480
Speaker 1: see through eighteen seventy one, the father of the computer,

442
00:24:39,600 --> 00:24:42,560
Speaker 1: as he's sometimes known, He donated his brain to science

443
00:24:42,800 --> 00:24:45,560
Speaker 1: and today you can see it, uh in two halfs,

444
00:24:46,280 --> 00:24:48,919
Speaker 1: one side of it at London Science Museum and the

445
00:24:48,960 --> 00:24:53,760
Speaker 1: other at the Hunterian Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons.

446
00:24:54,119 --> 00:24:56,280
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, did Ada Lovelace also have her brain

447
00:24:56,320 --> 00:24:59,040
Speaker 1: preserved or just Babbage? It would be great if you

448
00:24:59,040 --> 00:25:01,600
Speaker 1: could see him about I did not run across their brain,

449
00:25:01,720 --> 00:25:03,479
Speaker 1: but I guess it would be great to see him

450
00:25:03,520 --> 00:25:06,000
Speaker 1: side by side I hooked up to the same computer.

451
00:25:08,560 --> 00:25:12,240
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting how um it is presented into how

452
00:25:12,320 --> 00:25:14,240
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so much, so many directions you could

453
00:25:14,240 --> 00:25:17,000
Speaker 1: go there with that, right, um. But yeah, you go

454
00:25:17,080 --> 00:25:18,960
Speaker 1: to one place to see one hemisphere and the other

455
00:25:19,000 --> 00:25:23,360
Speaker 1: to see the other hemisphere. UM. I wonder if I mean,

456
00:25:23,480 --> 00:25:25,679
Speaker 1: when you look at those hemispheres, do you is there

457
00:25:25,720 --> 00:25:28,360
Speaker 1: a feeling like this is wrong? They should be reunited.

458
00:25:28,400 --> 00:25:30,720
Speaker 1: The brain should be It's okay to preserve a brain

459
00:25:30,800 --> 00:25:32,639
Speaker 1: and display it, but it should be displayed as a

460
00:25:32,640 --> 00:25:36,120
Speaker 1: whole complete peace. But I don't know, maybe not now

461
00:25:36,160 --> 00:25:38,480
Speaker 1: as far as famous people go, quote, quite a few

462
00:25:38,600 --> 00:25:42,040
Speaker 1: athletes have pledged their brain to science and an effort

463
00:25:42,040 --> 00:25:44,399
Speaker 1: to better understand concussions, you know, and a lot of

464
00:25:44,440 --> 00:25:47,560
Speaker 1: people just in general donate their bodies and or their

465
00:25:47,640 --> 00:25:50,960
Speaker 1: organs to to science. Um, and so a lot of

466
00:25:51,760 --> 00:25:55,560
Speaker 1: brain study continues in this in this manner, by the way,

467
00:25:55,640 --> 00:25:58,320
Speaker 1: by most all accounts, and certainly all accounts that matter,

468
00:25:58,560 --> 00:26:00,600
Speaker 1: we should point out that Walt Disney did not have

469
00:26:00,760 --> 00:26:03,960
Speaker 1: his body, brain, or head frozen following his death. Oh,

470
00:26:04,000 --> 00:26:07,240
Speaker 1: that's a popular myth, and it is, yeah, And I

471
00:26:07,320 --> 00:26:09,520
Speaker 1: think I was reading about Apparently it's largely based on

472
00:26:09,520 --> 00:26:12,360
Speaker 1: the fact that he was interested in the topic at

473
00:26:12,400 --> 00:26:15,200
Speaker 1: some point and and in general was known to be

474
00:26:15,240 --> 00:26:19,920
Speaker 1: interested in in in scientific topics, and therefore I just

475
00:26:20,000 --> 00:26:22,440
Speaker 1: kind of carried away, like what you know about Disney.

476
00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:24,879
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, well, it seems like something he would do.

477
00:26:25,200 --> 00:26:27,760
Speaker 1: He did it. It's just like, oh, he's weird enough.

478
00:26:28,760 --> 00:26:30,760
Speaker 1: So I guess if we're in in the modern era

479
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:34,800
Speaker 1: for for now and talking about brains that were actually

480
00:26:34,920 --> 00:26:38,600
Speaker 1: just straight up stolen, Probably the most famous brain theft

481
00:26:39,160 --> 00:26:41,359
Speaker 1: uh in the modern world, happened to the body of

482
00:26:41,400 --> 00:26:44,280
Speaker 1: Albert Einstein. And I guess we'll maybe come back and

483
00:26:44,320 --> 00:26:47,040
Speaker 1: talk about that more later as we go on. But

484
00:26:47,160 --> 00:26:49,640
Speaker 1: he is by no means the only one. I want

485
00:26:49,640 --> 00:26:52,119
Speaker 1: to back up and tell a story from the early

486
00:26:52,200 --> 00:26:57,640
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds about the famous composer Joseph haydn Uh And

487
00:26:57,720 --> 00:27:00,240
Speaker 1: so a couple of sources I was looking at. Year

488
00:27:00,320 --> 00:27:04,400
Speaker 1: one is a book by Francis Larson published in fourteen

489
00:27:04,760 --> 00:27:08,199
Speaker 1: called Severed, A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found,

490
00:27:08,240 --> 00:27:09,720
Speaker 1: And the part of this that I was reading is

491
00:27:09,800 --> 00:27:11,800
Speaker 1: just wonderful. So I might have to go back and

492
00:27:11,840 --> 00:27:14,639
Speaker 1: read this entire book at some point um. But the

493
00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:17,520
Speaker 1: other is just a biography of Hayden called Hayden A

494
00:27:17,720 --> 00:27:21,240
Speaker 1: Creative Life in Music by Carl gey Ringer and Irene

495
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:24,960
Speaker 1: gey Ringer from University of California Press in nineteen eighty two.

496
00:27:25,560 --> 00:27:29,480
Speaker 1: And so just a brief background on on Franz Joseph Hayden,

497
00:27:29,720 --> 00:27:32,560
Speaker 1: also just known as Joseph Hayden. He was a renowned

498
00:27:32,600 --> 00:27:37,040
Speaker 1: classical composer from Austria who lived from seventeen thirty two

499
00:27:37,160 --> 00:27:40,720
Speaker 1: until eighteen o nine. It was very influential. I think

500
00:27:40,720 --> 00:27:42,920
Speaker 1: he was sort of a mentor figure to some other

501
00:27:43,119 --> 00:27:48,240
Speaker 1: later composers like Mozart. And probably the fact that most

502
00:27:48,320 --> 00:27:50,520
Speaker 1: people know about him today, or at least the one

503
00:27:50,520 --> 00:27:53,520
Speaker 1: that I remember from school, is that he was the

504
00:27:53,600 --> 00:27:57,119
Speaker 1: composer of what's known as the Surprise Symphony. It's a

505
00:27:57,119 --> 00:28:00,840
Speaker 1: composition that is very kind of dreamy and sleepy and

506
00:28:00,880 --> 00:28:05,400
Speaker 1: then has the sudden extremely loud chords that will almost

507
00:28:05,440 --> 00:28:07,919
Speaker 1: like make you pee yourself, like they will wake you

508
00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:10,239
Speaker 1: up if you are falling asleep at the at the

509
00:28:10,400 --> 00:28:14,040
Speaker 1: on Orchestra night I wonder if we can play some

510
00:28:14,040 --> 00:28:17,360
Speaker 1: some public domain selections of of hayden music while I'm

511
00:28:17,359 --> 00:28:19,640
Speaker 1: telling the story of how his head was hacked off

512
00:28:19,680 --> 00:28:32,720
Speaker 1: and stolen. Okay, So the story of Hayden around the

513
00:28:32,720 --> 00:28:35,800
Speaker 1: time of his death, especially as told in the Geyringer book,

514
00:28:35,840 --> 00:28:37,880
Speaker 1: here is what I'm starting with. So, for a long time,

515
00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:42,600
Speaker 1: Hayden was the court musician of a Hungarian noble family

516
00:28:43,000 --> 00:28:46,920
Speaker 1: called the esther Hazy family. So I guess you can

517
00:28:46,960 --> 00:28:49,920
Speaker 1: imagine something kind of like if you've seen the movie Amadeus,

518
00:28:50,080 --> 00:28:53,000
Speaker 1: you know the roles Salieri plays in the Austrian Emperor's

519
00:28:53,080 --> 00:28:55,800
Speaker 1: chord in that movie. He's the the court composer, the

520
00:28:55,840 --> 00:28:59,920
Speaker 1: court musician, kind of there to to do musical work

521
00:29:00,040 --> 00:29:03,440
Speaker 1: for and flatter this rich family. Except, of course, this

522
00:29:03,480 --> 00:29:05,600
Speaker 1: would not have been the emperor. This was just one

523
00:29:05,640 --> 00:29:10,200
Speaker 1: particular noble house, the ester Hazy line. And Hayden died

524
00:29:10,360 --> 00:29:13,040
Speaker 1: in eighteen o nine. He died in Vienna, I think

525
00:29:13,080 --> 00:29:17,160
Speaker 1: actually while Vienna was being occupied by Napoleon's troops, so

526
00:29:17,240 --> 00:29:20,520
Speaker 1: there was a war zone situation happening, uh, And his

527
00:29:20,640 --> 00:29:25,000
Speaker 1: body was not taken back to this, uh, this remote

528
00:29:25,040 --> 00:29:28,560
Speaker 1: castle where the ester Hazy family lived because I think

529
00:29:28,920 --> 00:29:31,320
Speaker 1: I think it had something to do with the war situations.

530
00:29:31,360 --> 00:29:34,320
Speaker 1: Why he was kept in Vienna near where his house

531
00:29:34,400 --> 00:29:36,280
Speaker 1: or apartment was, and he was buried in a local

532
00:29:36,320 --> 00:29:41,240
Speaker 1: cemetery known as the hun Storm Cemetery. And that same

533
00:29:41,360 --> 00:29:44,400
Speaker 1: year the Prince of the ester Hassy line, I think

534
00:29:44,400 --> 00:29:47,720
Speaker 1: it was Nicolaus ester Hasy he put in an application

535
00:29:47,800 --> 00:29:50,960
Speaker 1: to have Hayden's body dug up from the cemetery and

536
00:29:51,040 --> 00:29:55,479
Speaker 1: transferred to Eisenstadt, which was the seat of the ester

537
00:29:55,600 --> 00:29:59,760
Speaker 1: Hausy house, and permission for the disinterment was granted, but

538
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:03,760
Speaker 1: ster Hazie never actually did it. He got permissioned, then

539
00:30:03,800 --> 00:30:06,360
Speaker 1: he just kind of forgot about it, and Hayden stayed there.

540
00:30:06,640 --> 00:30:11,160
Speaker 1: Hayden's tomb stayed as it was. But finally in eighteen

541
00:30:11,240 --> 00:30:15,200
Speaker 1: twenty Esther Hazy to quote from the Guy Wringer book quote,

542
00:30:15,440 --> 00:30:20,600
Speaker 1: was reminded of his obligations by Adolphus Frederick, Duke of Cambridge.

543
00:30:20,640 --> 00:30:25,040
Speaker 1: This distinguished visitor observed after attending a Galla performance of

544
00:30:25,160 --> 00:30:28,720
Speaker 1: the Creation, which was an oratorio of Hayden's given in

545
00:30:28,880 --> 00:30:32,640
Speaker 1: his honor at Eisenstot quote, how fortunate was the man

546
00:30:32,760 --> 00:30:36,400
Speaker 1: who employed this Hayden in his lifetime and now possesses

547
00:30:36,440 --> 00:30:40,920
Speaker 1: his mortal remains, which that moment, I'm just imagining that,

548
00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:45,880
Speaker 1: like Prince ester Hazie must have been like, oh yeah,

549
00:30:45,960 --> 00:30:50,560
Speaker 1: yeah that. But apparently he did not correct his guest though.

550
00:30:50,640 --> 00:30:54,200
Speaker 1: Immediately after this, he gave orders to have the body

551
00:30:54,240 --> 00:30:57,360
Speaker 1: exhumed from the cemetery in Vienna and brought over to

552
00:30:57,400 --> 00:31:02,000
Speaker 1: Eisenstatt and re entombed at a church there near the castle.

553
00:31:02,160 --> 00:31:05,400
Speaker 1: The church was called bag Kircha, which was where Hyden

554
00:31:05,520 --> 00:31:08,360
Speaker 1: had often performed some of the masses that he wrote

555
00:31:08,360 --> 00:31:11,800
Speaker 1: for the ester Hausy family. Uh So the order goes through,

556
00:31:12,480 --> 00:31:15,440
Speaker 1: and but then the guy ringers right quote. When the

557
00:31:15,480 --> 00:31:19,960
Speaker 1: coffin was opened for identification, the horrified officials found no

558
00:31:20,120 --> 00:31:24,400
Speaker 1: head on the body, but only the wig. And this

559
00:31:24,440 --> 00:31:28,000
Speaker 1: seems especially bad because, like it would be harder for

560
00:31:28,160 --> 00:31:30,520
Speaker 1: Esther Hassey at this point to pretend that he just

561
00:31:30,640 --> 00:31:33,560
Speaker 1: had Hyden's body where it was supposed to be all along.

562
00:31:34,200 --> 00:31:36,040
Speaker 1: It kind of reminds me of that situation where like

563
00:31:36,080 --> 00:31:39,000
Speaker 1: somebody gives you a gift, like an appliance that you

564
00:31:39,040 --> 00:31:41,480
Speaker 1: don't really want and you never opened, and they keep

565
00:31:41,480 --> 00:31:43,200
Speaker 1: asking you if you like it, You're like, yeah, we

566
00:31:43,320 --> 00:31:45,600
Speaker 1: use it all the time, it's great. And then they're

567
00:31:45,600 --> 00:31:47,400
Speaker 1: going to come over to your house and you're like, hey,

568
00:31:47,480 --> 00:31:49,800
Speaker 1: let's use that blender whatever it was, and then you

569
00:31:49,880 --> 00:31:52,400
Speaker 1: finally open it and discover that it's missing a piece

570
00:31:52,480 --> 00:31:56,479
Speaker 1: or it's broken or something. But so obviously Prince ester

571
00:31:56,600 --> 00:31:59,760
Speaker 1: Hassy was not amused that Hyden's head had been stolen.

572
00:31:59,800 --> 00:32:02,960
Speaker 1: He was really mad, and he made inquiries about the

573
00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:06,520
Speaker 1: missing head, and soon the mystery was solved. It turned

574
00:32:06,560 --> 00:32:10,120
Speaker 1: out it was sort of an inside job. The culprits

575
00:32:10,160 --> 00:32:14,040
Speaker 1: who stole the head were Hayden's friend, apparently not a

576
00:32:14,080 --> 00:32:17,080
Speaker 1: super close friend, but they knew each other, a friend

577
00:32:17,080 --> 00:32:21,800
Speaker 1: of Hayden's named Joseph Carl Rosenbaum, who had been employed

578
00:32:21,880 --> 00:32:25,160
Speaker 1: by the ester Hazy family, and then another guy named

579
00:32:25,280 --> 00:32:30,120
Speaker 1: Johann Napomuk Peter, who was the administrator of a penitentiary

580
00:32:30,280 --> 00:32:34,440
Speaker 1: somewhere in Austria. So why would these guys, including a

581
00:32:34,480 --> 00:32:39,040
Speaker 1: former friend of Hayden's, dig up his grave, steal his head,

582
00:32:39,080 --> 00:32:42,400
Speaker 1: and then cover everything back up. Well, the answer is

583
00:32:42,520 --> 00:32:45,920
Speaker 1: that they were amateur phrenologists. And I'll come back to

584
00:32:45,960 --> 00:32:48,600
Speaker 1: the subject in more detail in in a few minutes,

585
00:32:48,640 --> 00:32:51,280
Speaker 1: and I guess throughout a couple of both of these episodes.

586
00:32:51,320 --> 00:32:53,840
Speaker 1: But the short explanation of what's going on here is

587
00:32:53,880 --> 00:32:57,800
Speaker 1: that they were devotees of the then popular pseudo science

588
00:32:57,880 --> 00:33:01,360
Speaker 1: of phrenology, and they were fans of its leading proponent

589
00:33:01,480 --> 00:33:05,760
Speaker 1: at this time and place, the German anatomist Friends Joseph Gall,

590
00:33:05,920 --> 00:33:09,440
Speaker 1: who lived seventeen fifty eight to eight. And yes, I

591
00:33:09,440 --> 00:33:12,640
Speaker 1: did also notice that Friends Joseph Gall has the same

592
00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:16,680
Speaker 1: first and middle name is Hayden. I don't know if

593
00:33:16,680 --> 00:33:19,120
Speaker 1: there's any reason for that. Maybe a bunch of boys

594
00:33:19,120 --> 00:33:21,360
Speaker 1: were named after a king or something at this time.

595
00:33:21,720 --> 00:33:23,520
Speaker 1: I don't know if you have any insights on the

596
00:33:23,600 --> 00:33:26,880
Speaker 1: on the friends Joseph's. Maybe it's just a total coincidence. Yeah,

597
00:33:26,880 --> 00:33:28,120
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Off the top of my head, I

598
00:33:28,160 --> 00:33:31,840
Speaker 1: don't know any I don't know any friends Joseph's. But

599
00:33:32,000 --> 00:33:37,120
Speaker 1: so they these two guys, Rosenbaum and Peter wanted Hayden's

600
00:33:37,160 --> 00:33:41,400
Speaker 1: head because they wanted to conduct a pseudo scientific dissection

601
00:33:41,480 --> 00:33:46,560
Speaker 1: of the skull to determine its characteristics according to phrenological theory,

602
00:33:47,120 --> 00:33:49,719
Speaker 1: to see if you could read his musical genius in

603
00:33:49,760 --> 00:33:53,200
Speaker 1: the shape of his skull. So I'll come back to

604
00:33:53,400 --> 00:33:57,080
Speaker 1: that aspect in a bit. But together these guys bribed

605
00:33:57,120 --> 00:34:01,200
Speaker 1: a grave digger in the Vienna cemetery to dig up

606
00:34:01,280 --> 00:34:04,000
Speaker 1: Hyden a few days after his funeral, hack off his

607
00:34:04,080 --> 00:34:07,200
Speaker 1: head and deliver it to them, quote to protect it

608
00:34:07,280 --> 00:34:14,959
Speaker 1: from desecration. Um. So, according to to Larsen, the grave

609
00:34:14,960 --> 00:34:17,440
Speaker 1: digger did this. It was a few nights after the burial.

610
00:34:17,480 --> 00:34:19,680
Speaker 1: He chopped off the head, wrapped it up in some rags,

611
00:34:19,680 --> 00:34:23,000
Speaker 1: and then handed it off to Rosenbaum. And Rosenbaum had

612
00:34:23,040 --> 00:34:25,480
Speaker 1: a carriage waiting nearby. He was on the way taking

613
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:27,440
Speaker 1: the head to the carriage, but he was so curious

614
00:34:27,480 --> 00:34:30,560
Speaker 1: to see it that he peeled back the rags uh

615
00:34:30,640 --> 00:34:34,120
Speaker 1: to take a peek. But this was June, and Hayden

616
00:34:34,200 --> 00:34:36,400
Speaker 1: had been dead for a while at this point, and

617
00:34:36,480 --> 00:34:40,279
Speaker 1: the body was already beginning to rot. And apparently Rosenbaum

618
00:34:40,360 --> 00:34:43,080
Speaker 1: was so overwhelmed by the sight and the smell that

619
00:34:43,120 --> 00:34:46,520
Speaker 1: he just vomited in the cemetery, but then got right

620
00:34:46,560 --> 00:34:48,920
Speaker 1: back to business. So he got into the carriage, went

621
00:34:48,960 --> 00:34:52,960
Speaker 1: straight to Vienna Hospital, where the skull was de fleshed

622
00:34:53,080 --> 00:34:56,799
Speaker 1: and the brain was removed from its casing and Rosenbaum

623
00:34:56,840 --> 00:34:59,520
Speaker 1: described the scene later in his own writing. This is

624
00:34:59,600 --> 00:35:03,400
Speaker 1: quoted and Larsen quote. The site made a lifelong impression

625
00:35:03,440 --> 00:35:06,840
Speaker 1: on me. The dissection lasted for one hour. The brain,

626
00:35:07,000 --> 00:35:10,840
Speaker 1: which was of large proportions, stank the most terribly of all.

627
00:35:11,080 --> 00:35:13,640
Speaker 1: I endured it to the end. And that's what I

628
00:35:13,680 --> 00:35:16,320
Speaker 1: was thinking of when you mentioned earlier that the brain,

629
00:35:16,719 --> 00:35:18,920
Speaker 1: according to the Egyptians at least you know, was one

630
00:35:18,920 --> 00:35:21,480
Speaker 1: of the earliest parts of the body to spoil and

631
00:35:21,520 --> 00:35:24,040
Speaker 1: smell bad, which might have had something to do with

632
00:35:24,080 --> 00:35:27,000
Speaker 1: the process for its early removal. Yeah, well, I've I've

633
00:35:27,040 --> 00:35:30,600
Speaker 1: read this other places as well. In fact, tomorrow's episode

634
00:35:30,600 --> 00:35:34,200
Speaker 1: of The Artifact will touch on how quickly a brain

635
00:35:34,360 --> 00:35:38,760
Speaker 1: will rot. Well, apparently Rosenbaum noticed like he could, despite

636
00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:40,400
Speaker 1: the fact that they had a whole head there. He

637
00:35:40,480 --> 00:35:44,279
Speaker 1: was like, the brain was the worst. But anyway, at

638
00:35:44,320 --> 00:35:46,680
Speaker 1: the Vienna hospital here the skin muscle in the brain

639
00:35:46,719 --> 00:35:48,960
Speaker 1: were burned in the furnace, and then the skull was

640
00:35:49,040 --> 00:35:51,799
Speaker 1: soaked in lime to clean the bones so it could

641
00:35:51,840 --> 00:35:55,959
Speaker 1: be measured for the phrenology purposes. And this soaking would

642
00:35:55,960 --> 00:35:58,719
Speaker 1: take a while. So while that was going on, Rosenbaum

643
00:35:58,960 --> 00:36:01,480
Speaker 1: went back home and he and Peter at some point

644
00:36:01,520 --> 00:36:05,440
Speaker 1: designed a case with which to hold the skull. The

645
00:36:05,440 --> 00:36:08,880
Speaker 1: guy ringers right quote. Peter had a black wooden box

646
00:36:08,960 --> 00:36:12,040
Speaker 1: made with a golden lyre at the top and glass

647
00:36:12,080 --> 00:36:14,960
Speaker 1: windows in it. The skull was placed on a white

648
00:36:15,000 --> 00:36:19,160
Speaker 1: silk cushion trimmed with black, which reminds me very much

649
00:36:19,200 --> 00:36:22,800
Speaker 1: of some of the displays I've seen of supposedly incorruptible

650
00:36:22,800 --> 00:36:26,480
Speaker 1: saints bodies and the relics of saints an old Catholic

651
00:36:26,520 --> 00:36:31,439
Speaker 1: and Orthodox museums or not museums cathedrals. Yeah, they didn't

652
00:36:31,480 --> 00:36:33,320
Speaker 1: just stick it on the table and put a candle

653
00:36:33,360 --> 00:36:35,680
Speaker 1: on top of it or let a raven perch on it.

654
00:36:35,800 --> 00:36:37,920
Speaker 1: You know, they did it up right. Yeah, you get

655
00:36:37,960 --> 00:36:40,160
Speaker 1: a nice glass box. But this one here has a

656
00:36:40,160 --> 00:36:43,200
Speaker 1: golden lyre. And Larson actually has a very wonderful passage

657
00:36:43,200 --> 00:36:45,800
Speaker 1: about this that I wanted to quote. She calls attention

658
00:36:45,840 --> 00:36:48,560
Speaker 1: to the fact that this box was ornamented with a

659
00:36:48,560 --> 00:36:51,640
Speaker 1: golden liar, and she asks if this might have been

660
00:36:51,719 --> 00:36:55,120
Speaker 1: intended as a reference to the Greek god Orpheus. So

661
00:36:55,160 --> 00:36:58,640
Speaker 1: here I'm quoting from Larsen, whose music carried him safely

662
00:36:58,680 --> 00:37:02,440
Speaker 1: into the underworld to say of his wife Eurydicy. Rosenbaum's

663
00:37:02,440 --> 00:37:05,080
Speaker 1: own dark and earthy mission had been driven by his

664
00:37:05,160 --> 00:37:09,120
Speaker 1: passion for music and his admiration of Hayden as a composer.

665
00:37:09,640 --> 00:37:12,480
Speaker 1: He too had retrieved his love from the rod of

666
00:37:12,520 --> 00:37:16,120
Speaker 1: the nether world. If the liar did refer to Orpheus,

667
00:37:16,160 --> 00:37:19,280
Speaker 1: there may have been other symbolic residences at work as well.

668
00:37:19,760 --> 00:37:22,560
Speaker 1: In one version of the myth, Orpheus lost his own

669
00:37:22,640 --> 00:37:25,839
Speaker 1: head when his body was ripped apart and thrown into

670
00:37:25,880 --> 00:37:29,319
Speaker 1: the sea by the women of Thrace and Macedonia. Later,

671
00:37:29,719 --> 00:37:33,560
Speaker 1: Orpheus's head was found floating in the river Mela's, fresh

672
00:37:33,640 --> 00:37:37,319
Speaker 1: and vigorous and still singing mournfully. The place where it

673
00:37:37,400 --> 00:37:41,000
Speaker 1: was buried became a shrine and an oracle for pilgrims.

674
00:37:41,840 --> 00:37:45,240
Speaker 1: And that is interesting to me because within this special box,

675
00:37:45,320 --> 00:37:48,320
Speaker 1: Haydn's severed head would become kind of like a shrine

676
00:37:48,440 --> 00:37:52,279
Speaker 1: within Rosenbaum's house. It's so weird to think about this

677
00:37:52,320 --> 00:37:56,879
Speaker 1: in terms of patrons and artists, you know, um, like

678
00:37:56,880 --> 00:38:00,000
Speaker 1: like what if what I have today on Patreon or

679
00:38:00,120 --> 00:38:02,480
Speaker 1: uh or some sort of a kickstarter like that was

680
00:38:02,680 --> 00:38:05,920
Speaker 1: a tier level, Like if you support me, then you

681
00:38:05,960 --> 00:38:08,439
Speaker 1: can cut off my head when I'm dead and run

682
00:38:08,440 --> 00:38:10,560
Speaker 1: off with my skull, or you will be you will

683
00:38:10,600 --> 00:38:14,200
Speaker 1: be tasked with keeping my body and protecting it. That

684
00:38:14,360 --> 00:38:17,640
Speaker 1: sort of thing. The Platinum Club membership. Yeah yeah, but

685
00:38:17,680 --> 00:38:20,560
Speaker 1: to a certain extense, like at least a metaphorical level. Um.

686
00:38:20,600 --> 00:38:22,360
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of this does kind of weirdly

687
00:38:22,400 --> 00:38:25,319
Speaker 1: match up with some of our attitudes about celebrity, you know,

688
00:38:25,400 --> 00:38:29,879
Speaker 1: and celebrities and creators you know, and how we how

689
00:38:29,920 --> 00:38:34,200
Speaker 1: we treat them and uh regard them after their death,

690
00:38:34,280 --> 00:38:38,359
Speaker 1: you know, like literally turning turning their their their deaths

691
00:38:38,400 --> 00:38:42,360
Speaker 1: into in sometimes their places with burial into into holy shrines,

692
00:38:43,239 --> 00:38:47,239
Speaker 1: and like you're invoking this whole pseudo scientific field to

693
00:38:47,880 --> 00:38:54,520
Speaker 1: come up with a physical explanation for their supposedly superhuman genius. Um. Anyway,

694
00:38:54,600 --> 00:38:57,120
Speaker 1: So to come back to the story, years go by,

695
00:38:57,680 --> 00:39:01,799
Speaker 1: we already narrated the intervening events. Remember princesster Hazy. At

696
00:39:01,840 --> 00:39:06,440
Speaker 1: some point he's reminded like, oh, yeah, Hyden's body, Oh

697
00:39:06,600 --> 00:39:10,000
Speaker 1: I need yeah, that should be here. Uh So, so

698
00:39:10,080 --> 00:39:13,320
Speaker 1: back to the investigation, because they discovered no head, only

699
00:39:13,360 --> 00:39:18,560
Speaker 1: a wig in the in the coffin, and um so

700
00:39:18,680 --> 00:39:22,120
Speaker 1: they had Hyden's body moved to the castle at Eisenstat

701
00:39:22,160 --> 00:39:25,680
Speaker 1: where the Prince wanted it. But the Prince was furious

702
00:39:25,760 --> 00:39:28,560
Speaker 1: because there was no head, and he had them investigate,

703
00:39:28,640 --> 00:39:33,080
Speaker 1: and eventually, somehow it was figured out that Peter and

704
00:39:33,200 --> 00:39:36,400
Speaker 1: Rosenbaum had been, you know, the ones implicated here, that

705
00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:38,120
Speaker 1: they would have been the people who took the head.

706
00:39:38,480 --> 00:39:41,479
Speaker 1: And so the police went to interrogate Peter, who said

707
00:39:41,520 --> 00:39:43,920
Speaker 1: that he had given the head to Rosenbaum. And then

708
00:39:43,960 --> 00:39:47,080
Speaker 1: the investigators went to Rosenbaum's house and they searched for

709
00:39:47,120 --> 00:39:51,120
Speaker 1: the skull, but they didn't find it. Quote since Rosenbaum's wife,

710
00:39:51,320 --> 00:39:55,160
Speaker 1: the opera singer Teresa Gossman, hid the skull in her

711
00:39:55,200 --> 00:40:00,120
Speaker 1: straw mattress and lay down on the bed. And then

712
00:40:00,160 --> 00:40:03,240
Speaker 1: to to finish up the story the guy Ringer's right quote,

713
00:40:03,239 --> 00:40:06,920
Speaker 1: the Prince now tried bribery and his emissary promised Rosenbaum

714
00:40:06,920 --> 00:40:09,719
Speaker 1: a large sum if he would deliver the skull, whereupon

715
00:40:09,800 --> 00:40:12,040
Speaker 1: the skull of an old man was handed to the

716
00:40:12,080 --> 00:40:17,360
Speaker 1: Prince and buried with Hyden's body. Uh not unnaturally, Prince Princess. Okay,

717
00:40:17,360 --> 00:40:21,120
Speaker 1: so fake skull handed off for a bribe. Not unnaturally,

718
00:40:21,200 --> 00:40:24,600
Speaker 1: Prince Esther Hazy did not keep his promise of a reward,

719
00:40:24,880 --> 00:40:29,359
Speaker 1: but neither had the wary ex secretary acted honestly since

720
00:40:29,400 --> 00:40:32,839
Speaker 1: he had not delivered the right skull. So it's a

721
00:40:32,880 --> 00:40:35,520
Speaker 1: double double cross. But I wonder if they both leave

722
00:40:35,600 --> 00:40:37,319
Speaker 1: happy with that. You know, it's like, all right, I've

723
00:40:37,320 --> 00:40:41,960
Speaker 1: got a skull. I can literally somebody's skull. It might

724
00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:46,320
Speaker 1: not have the right kind of musical genius bump, but uh, yeah,

725
00:40:46,360 --> 00:40:48,839
Speaker 1: somebody's skull is in there. And but the guy did

726
00:40:48,840 --> 00:40:51,520
Speaker 1: not get his money. Uh. And then finally they say,

727
00:40:52,200 --> 00:40:56,040
Speaker 1: on his deathbed, Rosenbaum gave Hyden skull to his collaborator,

728
00:40:56,080 --> 00:40:59,360
Speaker 1: to Peter and quote made him promise to leave it

729
00:40:59,400 --> 00:41:02,479
Speaker 1: in his will to the Museum of guessel Shoft dear

730
00:41:02,719 --> 00:41:06,560
Speaker 1: music Freund in Vienna, the owner of a great number

731
00:41:06,560 --> 00:41:09,320
Speaker 1: of valuable Hyden relics. So the hyde and skulls stayed

732
00:41:09,320 --> 00:41:13,799
Speaker 1: there from eight until nineteen fifty four. And then eventually

733
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:16,680
Speaker 1: there was a there was a mausoleum built in berg

734
00:41:16,840 --> 00:41:20,560
Speaker 1: Church that that church in uh in Nisenstock, where the

735
00:41:20,560 --> 00:41:23,520
Speaker 1: body was supposed to be. Eventually, it was in nineteen

736
00:41:23,520 --> 00:41:26,360
Speaker 1: fifty four that the skull was finally reunited with the

737
00:41:26,400 --> 00:41:28,520
Speaker 1: rest of the body. But I think at least for

738
00:41:28,520 --> 00:41:31,719
Speaker 1: a while, maybe maybe permanently after that, but at least

739
00:41:31,719 --> 00:41:33,480
Speaker 1: for a while there were two skulls in the grave

740
00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:37,600
Speaker 1: because they also had the original fake decoy skull that

741
00:41:37,680 --> 00:41:40,800
Speaker 1: had been interred with the body in the wig. So

742
00:41:40,840 --> 00:41:54,640
Speaker 1: we had a friend, really a roommate, right exactly. But

743
00:41:54,680 --> 00:41:57,719
Speaker 1: this brings me back to to the pseudo science underlying

744
00:41:58,320 --> 00:42:01,600
Speaker 1: uh this this head theft mission here. Why did Rosenbaum

745
00:42:01,600 --> 00:42:06,720
Speaker 1: and Peter steel the head Again, they were enthusiastic amateur phrenologists.

746
00:42:06,760 --> 00:42:10,280
Speaker 1: They were students of the German anatomist Franz Joseph Gall,

747
00:42:11,080 --> 00:42:15,440
Speaker 1: who again he's credited with pioneering the now discredited field

748
00:42:15,480 --> 00:42:19,960
Speaker 1: of phrenology. Now, Gall apparently made some legitimate contributions to

749
00:42:20,040 --> 00:42:23,200
Speaker 1: the development of neuroscience and nero anatomy, but I think

750
00:42:23,239 --> 00:42:26,840
Speaker 1: whatever these legitimate contributions where they are now overshadowed in

751
00:42:26,920 --> 00:42:30,480
Speaker 1: his legacy by the association with phrenology, which is just

752
00:42:30,520 --> 00:42:34,040
Speaker 1: one of the most awful and rightfully infamous pseudosciences in

753
00:42:34,120 --> 00:42:38,520
Speaker 1: human history. And we can explain more about phrenology across

754
00:42:38,880 --> 00:42:41,799
Speaker 1: this couple of episodes, but the short version is that

755
00:42:41,920 --> 00:42:47,000
Speaker 1: Phrenologists incorrectly believed that you could make accurate inferences about

756
00:42:47,080 --> 00:42:53,200
Speaker 1: human mental traits like uh like, personality traits, moral characteristics,

757
00:42:53,239 --> 00:42:58,000
Speaker 1: and intellectual aptitudes by measuring the shape and the contours

758
00:42:58,040 --> 00:43:02,399
Speaker 1: of people's skulls, particularly bumps on the skull. So if

759
00:43:02,440 --> 00:43:04,960
Speaker 1: there's a bump in a certain place right near the

760
00:43:05,000 --> 00:43:06,960
Speaker 1: top of your head, that might show that you have

761
00:43:06,960 --> 00:43:10,080
Speaker 1: a special propensity for veneration. Maybe you'd be a good

762
00:43:10,120 --> 00:43:13,960
Speaker 1: candidate for the clergy. But if there's a pronounced ridge

763
00:43:14,040 --> 00:43:16,800
Speaker 1: over the top of your ear, that is a swelling

764
00:43:16,840 --> 00:43:19,879
Speaker 1: of the organ of destructiveness, and you will surely become

765
00:43:19,920 --> 00:43:23,279
Speaker 1: a violent criminal, etcetera. And I think you can pair

766
00:43:23,480 --> 00:43:28,320
Speaker 1: phrenology along with what's known as physiognomy. More broadly, physiognomy

767
00:43:28,440 --> 00:43:31,000
Speaker 1: is the belief that you can accurately assess a person's

768
00:43:31,040 --> 00:43:35,279
Speaker 1: mental characteristics by looking at their outward appearance. Often, physiognomy

769
00:43:35,320 --> 00:43:37,799
Speaker 1: would focus on the face. You'd see these charts of like, oh,

770
00:43:37,960 --> 00:43:40,480
Speaker 1: somebody has a face like this, it means that they're

771
00:43:40,520 --> 00:43:43,440
Speaker 1: they're very sanguine and uh and and they're you know,

772
00:43:43,520 --> 00:43:46,560
Speaker 1: prone to laughter and to gluttony. And somebody has a

773
00:43:46,560 --> 00:43:48,759
Speaker 1: face like this and there, you know, without a doubt,

774
00:43:48,760 --> 00:43:52,680
Speaker 1: a murderer. Uh. And so phrenology and that kind of thing,

775
00:43:52,960 --> 00:43:56,680
Speaker 1: they lead to all kinds of horribly misguided applications and

776
00:43:56,880 --> 00:44:01,960
Speaker 1: pseudo scientific criminology, supposed science of justifications for racism and

777
00:44:02,040 --> 00:44:06,279
Speaker 1: ethnic prejudice, for gender prejudice, and so forth. And it's

778
00:44:06,280 --> 00:44:09,080
Speaker 1: weird because phrenology, like if you explain it today, it's

779
00:44:09,120 --> 00:44:12,280
Speaker 1: one of those things that sounds so stupid on its face.

780
00:44:12,440 --> 00:44:15,400
Speaker 1: It's hard to see how people ever believed it. But

781
00:44:15,480 --> 00:44:19,200
Speaker 1: phrenology was hugely influential, especially in the first half of

782
00:44:19,239 --> 00:44:22,680
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds. Uh, though it was, it should be said,

783
00:44:22,719 --> 00:44:24,879
Speaker 1: it was not like everybody believed it at the time.

784
00:44:25,360 --> 00:44:29,800
Speaker 1: It was subjected to fierce scientific criticism even during its heyday.

785
00:44:29,880 --> 00:44:32,719
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean it did not find very popular

786
00:44:32,760 --> 00:44:35,440
Speaker 1: applauding audiences. Yeah, like you said, so much of the

787
00:44:35,440 --> 00:44:39,280
Speaker 1: time it ends up being this way of saying those

788
00:44:39,320 --> 00:44:42,920
Speaker 1: horrible things you think when you look at certain people's

789
00:44:42,920 --> 00:44:48,560
Speaker 1: skulls and faces, those feelings are backed up by scientific principles,

790
00:44:48,600 --> 00:44:51,520
Speaker 1: and here they are, and and and that you know,

791
00:44:51,560 --> 00:44:54,200
Speaker 1: you can see why that would be enough to hook

792
00:44:54,239 --> 00:44:56,879
Speaker 1: people who wanted to believe these things. Oh yeah, it's

793
00:44:56,920 --> 00:44:58,799
Speaker 1: great to tell people like that. You know, you can

794
00:44:58,880 --> 00:45:03,279
Speaker 1: have a scientific justification for whatever you gut feeling you

795
00:45:03,320 --> 00:45:06,080
Speaker 1: get when you look at somebody like, oh, this guy

796
00:45:06,200 --> 00:45:08,880
Speaker 1: he has the you know, the pointy top of the

797
00:45:08,880 --> 00:45:12,240
Speaker 1: head of a genius or you know this late. Yeah,

798
00:45:12,280 --> 00:45:14,399
Speaker 1: my wife won't do what I tell her because there's

799
00:45:14,400 --> 00:45:16,640
Speaker 1: something wrong with the shape of her skull, and science

800
00:45:16,680 --> 00:45:20,480
Speaker 1: proves it. Now, the tragedy of phrenology is started with

801
00:45:20,520 --> 00:45:23,520
Speaker 1: some premises that are basically true. Like it started with

802
00:45:23,560 --> 00:45:27,080
Speaker 1: the idea that the personality and mental traits are in

803
00:45:27,200 --> 00:45:30,200
Speaker 1: large part determined by processes in the brain. Of course

804
00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:33,279
Speaker 1: that's true, we know that today and uh. And with

805
00:45:33,320 --> 00:45:36,640
Speaker 1: the premise that some brain functions are especially dependent on

806
00:45:36,880 --> 00:45:40,359
Speaker 1: localized regions in the brain, so we also know that's

807
00:45:40,400 --> 00:45:43,759
Speaker 1: basically true. Like you know, visual processing depends especially on

808
00:45:43,760 --> 00:45:46,560
Speaker 1: the visual cortex in the back of the head. Speech

809
00:45:46,600 --> 00:45:49,479
Speaker 1: is especially dependent on the area now known as Broca's area,

810
00:45:49,560 --> 00:45:51,480
Speaker 1: which is on the left side of the brain, near

811
00:45:51,480 --> 00:45:53,920
Speaker 1: the front of the head. Uh. And these were real

812
00:45:54,040 --> 00:45:56,960
Speaker 1: discoveries of early neuroscience that there were regions of the

813
00:45:57,040 --> 00:46:00,440
Speaker 1: brain that correlated with certain types of mental activity, not

814
00:46:00,600 --> 00:46:05,200
Speaker 1: always as strictly as some people think um. But from

815
00:46:05,239 --> 00:46:10,320
Speaker 1: these real discoveries was extrapolated this flawed chain of reasoning

816
00:46:10,360 --> 00:46:13,320
Speaker 1: that lead to chronology, and according to people like Franz

817
00:46:13,400 --> 00:46:15,759
Speaker 1: Joseph Gall, it would go something like this. So you'd

818
00:46:15,760 --> 00:46:18,120
Speaker 1: say the mind is a product of the brain. You know,

819
00:46:18,160 --> 00:46:21,239
Speaker 1: apparently true or at least mostly true. The brain is

820
00:46:21,280 --> 00:46:24,319
Speaker 1: not a homogeneous mass, but they're you know, there are

821
00:46:24,320 --> 00:46:27,480
Speaker 1: different parts of it that do different things. That's generally true.

822
00:46:27,880 --> 00:46:30,319
Speaker 1: But then the next leap is to the size of

823
00:46:30,360 --> 00:46:33,719
Speaker 1: a localized part of the brain will be correlated to

824
00:46:33,880 --> 00:46:38,000
Speaker 1: how powerful it's associated mental faculty is, which is not

825
00:46:38,120 --> 00:46:41,799
Speaker 1: necessarily true. And then from there you get to well,

826
00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:44,360
Speaker 1: you get bumps on the outside of the skull that

827
00:46:44,440 --> 00:46:47,239
Speaker 1: will indicate the size and therefore the strength of the

828
00:46:47,320 --> 00:46:51,680
Speaker 1: underlying regions of the brain, which that's pretty much not true.

829
00:46:52,160 --> 00:46:55,040
Speaker 1: And then therefore you can make a generalized map of

830
00:46:55,080 --> 00:46:59,120
Speaker 1: the skull to find which shapes and bumps and protuberances

831
00:46:59,120 --> 00:47:02,759
Speaker 1: create which sonality characteristics and aptitudes, which at this point

832
00:47:02,920 --> 00:47:05,640
Speaker 1: is just completely wrong. You can just imagine the branch

833
00:47:05,800 --> 00:47:09,600
Speaker 1: on the tree here just going growing gradually more crooked,

834
00:47:10,040 --> 00:47:13,920
Speaker 1: for the further you go, right, yeah, um, But for

835
00:47:13,960 --> 00:47:17,640
Speaker 1: a few decades at least, phrenology again proved extremely popular,

836
00:47:17,680 --> 00:47:20,280
Speaker 1: and as it was especially during like the first half

837
00:47:20,320 --> 00:47:23,760
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century. Uh. And there's an interesting section

838
00:47:23,760 --> 00:47:27,040
Speaker 1: in Lawson's book where she attributes at least some of

839
00:47:27,080 --> 00:47:31,080
Speaker 1: the appeal of phrenology to Franz Joseph Skull's skills at

840
00:47:31,120 --> 00:47:35,600
Speaker 1: public speaking and the allure of his lectures. She writes

841
00:47:35,680 --> 00:47:38,960
Speaker 1: that he always gave his public addresses with props surrounded

842
00:47:38,960 --> 00:47:42,000
Speaker 1: by his personal collections of heads, which he would pick

843
00:47:42,120 --> 00:47:45,600
Speaker 1: up and use for demonstration to enraptured audiences. You know,

844
00:47:45,680 --> 00:47:48,239
Speaker 1: here's the skull of a man who was consumed in

845
00:47:48,320 --> 00:47:51,279
Speaker 1: life by vanity. You can see the bulge corresponding to

846
00:47:51,360 --> 00:47:54,279
Speaker 1: his organ of conceit. Or here's the skull of a

847
00:47:54,320 --> 00:47:58,680
Speaker 1: genius composer observed the swelling above his organ of music, etcetera.

848
00:47:59,400 --> 00:48:03,600
Speaker 1: And Larsen rights quote. When fresh specimens were available, his

849
00:48:03,680 --> 00:48:07,600
Speaker 1: assistant would dissect an animal brain or occasionally a human

850
00:48:07,640 --> 00:48:11,640
Speaker 1: brain in front of the audience. Galls talks became famous

851
00:48:11,640 --> 00:48:14,440
Speaker 1: in Vienna and later throughout northern Europe, and they were

852
00:48:14,440 --> 00:48:17,040
Speaker 1: attended by a wide cross section of the public, from

853
00:48:17,080 --> 00:48:21,600
Speaker 1: tourists and tradesmen to ambassadors and academics. The combination of

854
00:48:21,680 --> 00:48:25,520
Speaker 1: medical terminology visual aids few members of the public can

855
00:48:25,560 --> 00:48:30,360
Speaker 1: have seen a dissection before, and talented oratory was intoxicating.

856
00:48:30,760 --> 00:48:33,520
Speaker 1: After a lecture, people queued up to have their own

857
00:48:33,560 --> 00:48:37,800
Speaker 1: heads read by gall This was science endowed with psychic powers,

858
00:48:38,120 --> 00:48:40,680
Speaker 1: the scientists who knew you better than you knew yourself,

859
00:48:41,000 --> 00:48:43,960
Speaker 1: and all thanks to the secrets inscribed in the shape

860
00:48:43,960 --> 00:48:47,319
Speaker 1: of your head. But but I mean the horrible part being,

861
00:48:47,320 --> 00:48:50,160
Speaker 1: of course, that it was all just completely wrong. Phrenology

862
00:48:50,200 --> 00:48:55,080
Speaker 1: had no empirically verifiable basis, its founding premises were incorrect,

863
00:48:55,480 --> 00:48:58,840
Speaker 1: and it could not make accurate predictions about future findings.

864
00:48:59,080 --> 00:49:02,040
Speaker 1: But it was popular nonetheless, And it seems like, at

865
00:49:02,120 --> 00:49:05,440
Speaker 1: least to some extent, it's popularity had more to do

866
00:49:05,520 --> 00:49:09,840
Speaker 1: with the personal flare and charisma of its founding popularizer

867
00:49:09,920 --> 00:49:13,160
Speaker 1: than with its empirical merits. And this is something I

868
00:49:13,200 --> 00:49:15,520
Speaker 1: think about a lot. I think this is always something

869
00:49:15,560 --> 00:49:19,160
Speaker 1: to be really conscious of. It is so so easy

870
00:49:19,239 --> 00:49:23,440
Speaker 1: to mistake good public speaking for truth. Uh, you know,

871
00:49:23,520 --> 00:49:26,920
Speaker 1: the the allure of a weekly supported claim delivered by

872
00:49:26,960 --> 00:49:30,799
Speaker 1: a charismatic voice is always present and something to you know,

873
00:49:30,880 --> 00:49:34,000
Speaker 1: be conscious of, to like ask yourself if that's happening

874
00:49:34,000 --> 00:49:37,360
Speaker 1: in your brain, if you are thinking something is true

875
00:49:37,440 --> 00:49:40,520
Speaker 1: because somebody is good at talking and they're saying it.

876
00:49:41,120 --> 00:49:43,640
Speaker 1: And I think about digital versions of this today, the

877
00:49:43,680 --> 00:49:47,920
Speaker 1: digital versions of the Viennese lecture halls like YouTube, where

878
00:49:48,840 --> 00:49:50,600
Speaker 1: you know, I get a feeling that there is a

879
00:49:50,680 --> 00:49:54,920
Speaker 1: huge undercurrent of ideological shaping that often takes place on

880
00:49:54,920 --> 00:49:58,000
Speaker 1: a similar basis here viewers of things like YouTube and

881
00:49:58,040 --> 00:50:01,840
Speaker 1: even podcasts. So we could say, listen to somebody mainly

882
00:50:02,000 --> 00:50:05,719
Speaker 1: because they are compelling speaker. They're captivating to listen to.

883
00:50:05,840 --> 00:50:08,080
Speaker 1: They you know, they they're good with words, there's something

884
00:50:08,160 --> 00:50:10,560
Speaker 1: nice about their voice, whatever that is, and over time

885
00:50:11,000 --> 00:50:14,279
Speaker 1: can end up adopting their beliefs or claims, regardless of

886
00:50:14,280 --> 00:50:17,839
Speaker 1: whether there's a good reason for the claims themselves. Yeah,

887
00:50:17,960 --> 00:50:19,239
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It makes me think back

888
00:50:19,280 --> 00:50:21,560
Speaker 1: to uh, you know Carl Sagan I mentioned earlier. I mean,

889
00:50:21,640 --> 00:50:25,479
Speaker 1: Sagan was an individual who every everything tended to line

890
00:50:25,560 --> 00:50:29,080
Speaker 1: up for him, you know, a great scientific mind, an

891
00:50:29,120 --> 00:50:34,600
Speaker 1: excellent speaker and science communicator. But you don't have to

892
00:50:34,640 --> 00:50:37,080
Speaker 1: have everything line up with a person, and many times

893
00:50:37,120 --> 00:50:39,600
Speaker 1: it does not. You have plenty of great scientists who

894
00:50:39,640 --> 00:50:42,680
Speaker 1: are not natural public speakers, and you have plenty of

895
00:50:42,760 --> 00:50:45,839
Speaker 1: natural public speakers who do not have a mind for

896
00:50:45,880 --> 00:50:49,480
Speaker 1: science or an appreciation for science, and maybe not interested

897
00:50:49,880 --> 00:50:53,359
Speaker 1: in in in pressing the science like that. They may

898
00:50:53,480 --> 00:50:56,160
Speaker 1: use the science in some cases when it suits them,

899
00:50:56,160 --> 00:50:58,239
Speaker 1: but that is not their their primary go Well, I

900
00:50:58,239 --> 00:51:00,839
Speaker 1: would say one thing that really works against us here

901
00:51:01,480 --> 00:51:05,279
Speaker 1: is the tragic disjunction of the fact that one of

902
00:51:05,320 --> 00:51:09,040
Speaker 1: the most compelling qualities in a speaker, one of the

903
00:51:09,040 --> 00:51:11,920
Speaker 1: things that makes people most fun to listen to as

904
00:51:11,920 --> 00:51:17,520
Speaker 1: a speaker is confidence, and yet being a good communicator

905
00:51:17,560 --> 00:51:21,200
Speaker 1: of science often requires you to be extremely circumspect and

906
00:51:21,239 --> 00:51:24,719
Speaker 1: to repeatedly in tone, you know, communicate doubt, and to

907
00:51:24,840 --> 00:51:28,200
Speaker 1: repeatedly communicate you know, we're not sure about this, that

908
00:51:28,320 --> 00:51:30,640
Speaker 1: you know that, these are reasons for thinking so, but

909
00:51:30,680 --> 00:51:32,960
Speaker 1: there are reasons against it, and all that which goes

910
00:51:33,000 --> 00:51:35,400
Speaker 1: exactly against some of the things that make somebody the

911
00:51:35,480 --> 00:51:39,120
Speaker 1: most fun to just like watch lectures from right right,

912
00:51:39,160 --> 00:51:41,879
Speaker 1: And this is true it at various levels in different ways.

913
00:51:41,880 --> 00:51:43,840
Speaker 1: It's certainly true at our level because we are we

914
00:51:43,920 --> 00:51:47,160
Speaker 1: are not experts in the topics that we discuss, and

915
00:51:47,200 --> 00:51:50,160
Speaker 1: therefore we always have to admit this could this could

916
00:51:50,160 --> 00:51:53,080
Speaker 1: be wrong, and or this is changing, this could change,

917
00:51:53,520 --> 00:51:55,560
Speaker 1: because then we get into the level of just that's

918
00:51:55,600 --> 00:51:59,319
Speaker 1: what science is. So you'll encounter, you know, experts in

919
00:51:59,360 --> 00:52:03,200
Speaker 1: their field who are also voicing the same level of uncertainty.

920
00:52:03,719 --> 00:52:07,799
Speaker 1: And there are times where that is not as convincing

921
00:52:08,320 --> 00:52:11,960
Speaker 1: as someone who, uh, you know, who's very sure of themselves,

922
00:52:12,239 --> 00:52:14,640
Speaker 1: like the the the yeah. And you know, you can

923
00:52:14,719 --> 00:52:17,640
Speaker 1: easily think of various examples of this, um, yeah, you

924
00:52:17,640 --> 00:52:19,960
Speaker 1: can see why they You can be drawn into the

925
00:52:19,960 --> 00:52:23,840
Speaker 1: siren song of someone who's absolutely seems absolutely certain about

926
00:52:23,880 --> 00:52:27,160
Speaker 1: what they're talking about, versus someone who says, well, we're

927
00:52:27,200 --> 00:52:29,640
Speaker 1: still figuring it out, all right, Well, you know, we're

928
00:52:29,640 --> 00:52:32,160
Speaker 1: almost out of time here, But I want to share

929
00:52:32,200 --> 00:52:35,400
Speaker 1: another story of brain theft, and this one comes to

930
00:52:35,480 --> 00:52:39,200
Speaker 1: us from two thousand sixteen. I don't know if you

931
00:52:39,280 --> 00:52:42,759
Speaker 1: ran across this one, Joe, but the basic premise here

932
00:52:42,840 --> 00:52:45,680
Speaker 1: is summed up well in the headline this headline from

933
00:52:45,719 --> 00:52:49,440
Speaker 1: the Daily Mail My nemesis, are you're gonna make me

934
00:52:49,480 --> 00:52:52,840
Speaker 1: click on a Daily Mail article? Well? I also I

935
00:52:52,880 --> 00:52:54,920
Speaker 1: also provided you with or maybe I didn't. Yeah, I

936
00:52:54,920 --> 00:52:57,960
Speaker 1: did provide you with another U record as well from

937
00:52:57,960 --> 00:53:03,000
Speaker 1: CBS Pittsburgh. So you're choice. Okay, thirty thousand caveats to

938
00:53:03,040 --> 00:53:05,920
Speaker 1: whatever this story is, but I do want to hear it. Okay.

939
00:53:05,960 --> 00:53:09,360
Speaker 1: So the Daily Mail headline was burglar stole human brain,

940
00:53:09,800 --> 00:53:14,120
Speaker 1: nicknamed it Freddie, and used the embombing fluid to get high. Um.

941
00:53:14,160 --> 00:53:16,680
Speaker 1: And there were various versions of this this headline that

942
00:53:16,760 --> 00:53:22,120
Speaker 1: were were traded about in So what happened here is? Okay,

943
00:53:22,120 --> 00:53:26,080
Speaker 1: this is Pennsylvania where allegedly a twenty six year old

944
00:53:26,600 --> 00:53:30,080
Speaker 1: UH individual was in jail on burglary charges when his

945
00:53:30,160 --> 00:53:34,359
Speaker 1: grandma discovered a human brain underneath the porch in a

946
00:53:34,400 --> 00:53:41,319
Speaker 1: Walmart pack. Okay. Allegedly the stolen brain, named Freddie by

947
00:53:41,400 --> 00:53:44,640
Speaker 1: the year old individual, Okay, he named it, He named

948
00:53:44,640 --> 00:53:48,520
Speaker 1: it Freddie, was being used for its embalming fluid, which

949
00:53:48,560 --> 00:53:52,120
Speaker 1: the accused and and a friend used to soak their

950
00:53:52,160 --> 00:53:56,680
Speaker 1: marijuana in prior to smoking said marijuana. Oh no, if

951
00:53:56,719 --> 00:54:02,960
Speaker 1: that's true, that no, no, no, so um. According to

952
00:54:03,040 --> 00:54:06,240
Speaker 1: first of all, according to CBS Pittsburgh reporting on the incident,

953
00:54:06,280 --> 00:54:10,160
Speaker 1: the brain was most likely a stolen teaching specimen. So basically,

954
00:54:10,200 --> 00:54:13,719
Speaker 1: go back to the original Frankenstein. That's scene where was

955
00:54:13,760 --> 00:54:16,080
Speaker 1: his name. Fritz goes in to steal a brain, and

956
00:54:16,080 --> 00:54:18,160
Speaker 1: there are the two brains, there's the normal brain and

957
00:54:18,200 --> 00:54:21,279
Speaker 1: the criminal brains, and he accidentally smashes one of the

958
00:54:21,360 --> 00:54:26,120
Speaker 1: jars and steals the other one. Basically that scenario um,

959
00:54:26,160 --> 00:54:29,399
Speaker 1: except in this case. Uh. I guess Fritz had other

960
00:54:29,480 --> 00:54:33,080
Speaker 1: ideas in mind. So to two tips I want to

961
00:54:33,360 --> 00:54:36,759
Speaker 1: share for everybody here. First of all, and obviously, do

962
00:54:36,840 --> 00:54:40,800
Speaker 1: not steal a human brain. I mean it's it's illegal

963
00:54:41,040 --> 00:54:43,440
Speaker 1: in the United States to possess a human brain like this.

964
00:54:43,719 --> 00:54:45,920
Speaker 1: It's illegal to own or possess the remains of a

965
00:54:46,000 --> 00:54:49,439
Speaker 1: human being other than ashes. Uh. You know, with certain

966
00:54:49,520 --> 00:54:51,919
Speaker 1: caveats obviously if you're like a teaching institution, et cetera.

967
00:54:52,560 --> 00:54:55,520
Speaker 1: But for the ran just a random individual. No, you

968
00:54:55,600 --> 00:54:57,960
Speaker 1: can't have a brain. You can't have a skull. Um.

969
00:54:58,160 --> 00:55:01,120
Speaker 1: So that means no head, no brain, no skull. Uh,

970
00:55:01,239 --> 00:55:05,760
Speaker 1: none of that. Second, smoking from alde hide laced anything

971
00:55:06,200 --> 00:55:09,160
Speaker 1: is just a terrible idea. Do not do it, um.

972
00:55:09,200 --> 00:55:11,920
Speaker 1: It can result in a host of issues, including brain

973
00:55:12,000 --> 00:55:16,160
Speaker 1: damage to your brain not Freddie, your brain, lung damage,

974
00:55:16,200 --> 00:55:20,160
Speaker 1: and body tissue destruction. So just a some bad choices

975
00:55:20,200 --> 00:55:26,560
Speaker 1: were made here regarding Freddie never smoked Freddy. Yeah, so

976
00:55:26,880 --> 00:55:29,359
Speaker 1: uh with that, I think we're gonna close out part

977
00:55:29,440 --> 00:55:31,359
Speaker 1: one here, but I'm excited to come back in part

978
00:55:31,360 --> 00:55:33,800
Speaker 1: two because we're gonna we're gonna get into other cases

979
00:55:33,880 --> 00:55:36,680
Speaker 1: of head and brain theft. We're gonna get into some

980
00:55:37,200 --> 00:55:40,440
Speaker 1: ancient traditions. We're gonna talk a little bit about mythology

981
00:55:40,480 --> 00:55:43,200
Speaker 1: and folklore. Uh, it should be a really fun time.

982
00:55:43,360 --> 00:55:45,359
Speaker 1: I can't wait. And then at the end of the week,

983
00:55:45,600 --> 00:55:48,480
Speaker 1: are are weird how cinema selection is also going to

984
00:55:48,520 --> 00:55:52,399
Speaker 1: concern brains? We have a really brainloaded week here. I'm

985
00:55:52,440 --> 00:55:58,560
Speaker 1: so excited. As chop Top would say, my brain is burning. Alright. Well,

986
00:55:58,600 --> 00:56:01,000
Speaker 1: if your brain is burning and you would like to

987
00:56:01,080 --> 00:56:03,160
Speaker 1: listen to more stuff to blow your mind, check out

988
00:56:03,160 --> 00:56:06,000
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. Wherever you

989
00:56:06,040 --> 00:56:10,440
Speaker 1: get your podcasts, you'll get your core episodes of science

990
00:56:10,840 --> 00:56:14,440
Speaker 1: and Culture on Tuesdays and Thursdays, that short form artifact

991
00:56:14,600 --> 00:56:17,640
Speaker 1: on Wednesdays, you get listener mail on Monday's and Yep,

992
00:56:17,719 --> 00:56:20,520
Speaker 1: Friday is Weird House Cinema and we run a vault

993
00:56:20,560 --> 00:56:25,440
Speaker 1: episode a rerun on Saturday's UM If you can, rate, review,

994
00:56:25,440 --> 00:56:28,440
Speaker 1: and subscribe, because that helps out the show huge. Thanks

995
00:56:28,440 --> 00:56:31,560
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producer, Seth Nicholas Johnson.

996
00:56:31,960 --> 00:56:33,360
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us

997
00:56:33,440 --> 00:56:36,000
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

998
00:56:36,000 --> 00:56:38,320
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

999
00:56:38,360 --> 00:56:40,960
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact. That's Stuff to Blow

1000
00:56:41,000 --> 00:56:51,200
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com Stuff to Blow Your Mind's production

1001
00:56:51,280 --> 00:56:54,000
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,

1002
00:56:54,200 --> 00:56:57,040
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're

1003
00:56:57,040 --> 00:57:13,560
Speaker 1: listening to your favorite shows. The four Foot f