WEBVTT - From the Vault: Brain and Head Theft, Part 1 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:07.560 Hey, you welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My 0:00:07.640 --> 0:00:10.920 name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:11.000 --> 0:00:13.440 Time for an older episode of the show from the Vault. 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:18.200 This one originally aired February second. This was Brain and 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:21.640 Head Theft, Part one. We did a couple about people 0:00:21.680 --> 0:00:25.400 stealing other people's heads and brains. That's right. Some episodes 0:00:25.440 --> 0:00:28.080 of our show will blow your mind. Others will cut 0:00:28.120 --> 0:00:29.920 your brain in half and store half of it in 0:00:29.960 --> 0:00:34.159 one building and the other half in another building. Okay, 0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:39.559 dock detective, what do you make of it? Here? We 0:00:39.600 --> 0:00:44.040 have got another body, another skull opened up with clinical precision. 0:00:44.640 --> 0:00:47.600 What manner of monster are we dealing with here? I 0:00:47.600 --> 0:00:50.920 don't believe we're dealing with the monster at all. Certainly 0:00:50.920 --> 0:00:55.600 none of the brain gobbling ghoule sorts sensationalized in the press. 0:00:56.360 --> 0:00:59.880 I've studied the ways of ghouls, inspector, and they consume 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:04.640 all hard and soft tissues. But they prefer the brain. Yes, yes, 0:01:04.720 --> 0:01:08.959 as does the common zombie or Mexican vitellius. But look 0:01:09.000 --> 0:01:11.760 at what we see here. Not only was the brain 0:01:12.040 --> 0:01:16.000 and only the brain targeted, but different regions of the 0:01:16.040 --> 0:01:19.400 brain have been removed from victim to victim. Not a 0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:24.760 monster or even a cannibal, then, but a brain thief indeed. 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:27.880 And look at the profiles of the victims and the 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:31.080 portions of the brain pilfered from each one of them. 0:01:31.200 --> 0:01:35.320 The vernicas area and the angular gyrus of the noted linguist, 0:01:35.800 --> 0:01:41.200 the Broca's area of the soliloquist, the best parts of 0:01:41.319 --> 0:01:46.120 the best brains. Our murderer is building himself the perfect 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:54.560 brain out of stolen parts. But to what end? Welcome 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:56.560 to Stuff to Blow your Mind, the production of My 0:01:56.640 --> 0:02:05.760 Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:02:05.880 --> 0:02:08.680 My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. And 0:02:08.720 --> 0:02:11.079 this is my second take at pronouncing my own name. 0:02:11.120 --> 0:02:13.520 I'm glad I got it right this time. Today we're 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:17.600 gonna be talking about our stolen brains, our stolen heads. Uh. 0:02:17.639 --> 0:02:20.160 This is a topic that yet again, like another one 0:02:20.200 --> 0:02:24.720 we did recently. This started as uh an artifact episode 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:26.760 that I was trying to develop, but then it quickly 0:02:26.800 --> 0:02:29.920 became clear to me that this was not a short topic. 0:02:30.000 --> 0:02:33.160 This was a huge topic with all kinds of bizarre 0:02:33.320 --> 0:02:37.440 tangents and and and dark alleys down which to tread. Uh. 0:02:37.480 --> 0:02:40.360 So I'm so excited to embark on this two parter 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:45.600 about removing and stealing people's heads and people's brains. That's right. 0:02:45.600 --> 0:02:49.360 This one just keeps growing and expanding, dragging in more heads, 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:54.320 more brains. It has an insatiable appetite this topic. Yeah. 0:02:54.360 --> 0:02:56.680 One of the so one of the original stories that 0:02:56.720 --> 0:02:58.839 I was looking at that got me interested in this 0:02:59.520 --> 0:03:04.920 was the uh theft of the Austrian composer Franz Joseph 0:03:05.040 --> 0:03:08.720 Haydn's head in the early nineteenth century. And that's a 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:10.520 story that we're going to come back to at the 0:03:10.639 --> 0:03:13.800 end of this first episode part one here, but before that, 0:03:13.840 --> 0:03:15.680 I think it makes sense to to back up and 0:03:15.720 --> 0:03:18.399 look at the removal of heads in the context where 0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:21.240 it's probably more familiar to everyone, which is not in 0:03:21.360 --> 0:03:25.320 reality but in you know, fiction. Yeah, and we promise 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:27.160 not to spend too long here because I know some 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:29.960 of you might be saying, look, you guys have Friday's 0:03:29.960 --> 0:03:32.560 Weird House Cinema episodes. Now you can pour all of 0:03:32.600 --> 0:03:35.840 your enthusiasm for horror movies into their uh and maybe 0:03:35.920 --> 0:03:38.440 a little less gets used in the core episodes, but 0:03:38.440 --> 0:03:40.360 but there's still some important stuff to touch on here, 0:03:40.360 --> 0:03:43.920 and I think that the fiction sums up a lot 0:03:43.920 --> 0:03:47.000 of what's going on when we think about these topics. Okay, 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:50.960 so yeah, brain and head theft are frequent trokes and 0:03:51.040 --> 0:03:54.440 horror and science fiction, particularly of the twentieth century, and 0:03:54.480 --> 0:03:56.600 a lot of this seems to be centered in notions 0:03:56.640 --> 0:04:00.400 and fears concerning identity and the scientific understand ending of 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:03.480 the brain is the seat of consciousness, explored in such 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:06.280 thoughtful science fiction films as Tammy and the t Rex, 0:04:06.840 --> 0:04:12.760 one of one of the all time great brain theft movies. Yeah, yeah, uh, 0:04:13.240 --> 0:04:15.520 there there are various versions of this, right, you know, 0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:18.719 because sometimes the brain is just stolen. Uh. Sometimes it's 0:04:19.000 --> 0:04:21.880 kept alive. Sometimes the head is kept alive free of 0:04:21.920 --> 0:04:25.680 the body of a you know jan in the pan situation. Um. 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:29.600 Sometimes it's a human transplant, putting the head of one 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:32.840 person under the body of another, sometimes next to the 0:04:32.880 --> 0:04:36.160 original head of the other. Um, you know, the other 0:04:37.000 --> 0:04:38.800 in in a way, in their own way, sometimes a 0:04:38.880 --> 0:04:43.000 kind of a thoughtful attempt to get at something, you know, culturally, 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:45.640 but other times just kind of this another rumination on 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:48.599 the bizarre idea of what if my head but different 0:04:48.640 --> 0:04:51.840 body what if two heads same body? You know. Uh, 0:04:51.920 --> 0:04:54.440 there's just so much about this idea that continues to amaze. 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:58.880 What if my brain in a dinosaur exactly? Not? What 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:03.599 if my brain a robot um, you know, etcetera. Uh So, yeah, 0:05:03.600 --> 0:05:06.480 you'll you'll find so many different versions of this, living 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:11.479 heads and jars, living brains and jars, head transplants between humans, 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:15.239 brain transplants into other human beings, and of course brain 0:05:15.320 --> 0:05:19.080 transplants into machines. And there's plenty to talk about here 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:22.520 even if we're just dealing with consensual brain and or 0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:25.400 head transplant. But then what if your head or brain 0:05:25.440 --> 0:05:29.760 were stolen? Right? That becomes the extra level of potential horror. 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:32.359 What do you have some mad science maniac were to 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:34.760 plug your brain into the body of a hideous monster 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:37.520 body or a killer robot. Or what if you were 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:40.320 just reduced to nothing but a head bobbing around in 0:05:40.360 --> 0:05:44.479 a jar, or even even more limiting, a brain just 0:05:44.600 --> 0:05:47.480 shut off in alive inside of some sort of contraption. 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:51.800 I mean, this is explored to some degree in things 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:54.400 we've talked about on the show before. For example, the 0:05:54.400 --> 0:05:57.360 The Thought Experiments Leash short story where am I by 0:05:57.440 --> 0:06:01.560 Daniel Dennett, which is all about brains being removed, and 0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:04.480 that's ultimately trying to get at the question of what 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:07.279 is the seat of consciousness and is it located in 0:06:07.320 --> 0:06:11.040 a place? Uh you know, given various you know, constraints 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:13.960 and and and thought experiments about like how brains could 0:06:13.960 --> 0:06:18.839 be replicated with machinery. But but also there are I guess, 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:22.159 much less technical explorations of the subject where it's just 0:06:22.279 --> 0:06:25.160 kind of like, uh, you know, the Futurama model, where 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:29.240 you're just preserving ahead or preserving a brain to supposedly 0:06:29.360 --> 0:06:32.760 keep the keep the consciousness alive after the body dies 0:06:32.880 --> 0:06:36.360 or after the body is superseded by some superior technology. 0:06:36.800 --> 0:06:39.880 I think both of us really enjoy Um the character 0:06:40.000 --> 0:06:43.240 Kane from RoboCop two Noon and Brain in a jar 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:48.760 U powering a mechanized death machine. Yeah tom noonan uh 0:06:48.800 --> 0:06:53.120 and he's just like pain embodied controlling a killer robot, 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:55.679 which is a brilliant idea. There's even like a drug 0:06:55.680 --> 0:06:58.000 insertion because he he was he's addicted to some sort 0:06:58.040 --> 0:07:00.640 of super drug. Right, Oh yeah, the drug called nuke. 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:08.159 Yeah over of a cup two is amazing. Um, there's 0:07:08.200 --> 0:07:10.800 a there's actually a really excellent star Wars tie in 0:07:10.880 --> 0:07:12.520 here as well. I mean, you have a lot of 0:07:12.960 --> 0:07:15.760 cybernetic stuff going on in Star Wars, but you have 0:07:15.840 --> 0:07:17.880 this one creature. I don't know if you remember it, Joe, 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:20.440 because it kind of just walks around in the background 0:07:20.480 --> 0:07:24.120 briefly in Return of the Jedi, but it looks like 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:29.040 a mechanical spider. And then it has this glass looking 0:07:29.080 --> 0:07:32.640 container or sphere hanging underneath it, and inside there's fluid 0:07:32.840 --> 0:07:34.840 and what appears to be a brain of some sort. 0:07:35.800 --> 0:07:38.120 I don't think I made the brain connection when I 0:07:38.160 --> 0:07:40.320 watched Return of the Jedi as a kid, but just 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:42.960 looked like a big mechanical spider. I think the brain 0:07:43.080 --> 0:07:45.840 things explored more in I don't know what you call it, 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:50.280 the the supplementary Star Wars universe material, the encyclopedias and 0:07:50.320 --> 0:07:52.760 all that. Yeah, I remember reading. I think there's a 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:55.000 whole story about them in Tales from Joba's Palace, or 0:07:55.000 --> 0:07:57.960 at least it's a story that concerns them to some degree. 0:07:58.040 --> 0:08:02.160 But we are told in other forms that this these 0:08:02.160 --> 0:08:06.680 are the remains of the Bomar monks. Um And I'm 0:08:06.680 --> 0:08:09.960 just gonna read this quick passage from Wikipedia. Um. It 0:08:10.000 --> 0:08:14.120 says this follows quote. The Biomar Order, which consisted of 0:08:14.120 --> 0:08:17.240 Bomar monks, was a religious order that believed in isolating 0:08:17.240 --> 0:08:21.160 themselves from all physical sensation to enhance the power of 0:08:21.200 --> 0:08:24.840 their minds. To that aim, enlightened monks had their brains 0:08:24.920 --> 0:08:28.920 transplanted into nutrient filled jars. Whenever they wanted to move. 0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:33.920 Those bottled brains used spider like droid walkers. I can 0:08:33.960 --> 0:08:37.120 just imagine the purity hierarchy. It's like, oh, you're you're 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:39.400 gonna walk around in your spider today instead of just 0:08:39.440 --> 0:08:42.520 sitting there in a jar doing nothing. Okay, Well, I 0:08:42.559 --> 0:08:45.920 mean sometimes you have to have your nutrient fluid switched out, right, 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:48.440 I'm guessing there's like with me, one machine in job 0:08:48.480 --> 0:08:51.000 As Palace that does that, and you gotta get there early. 0:08:51.400 --> 0:08:53.440 I mean, I guess if you're addicted to the pleasures 0:08:53.440 --> 0:08:57.360 of the flesh. So that's just that's just a brief 0:08:57.400 --> 0:09:00.480 glance at some of the many, many, very creations on 0:09:00.520 --> 0:09:03.199 this you'll find in sci fi and horror because we 0:09:03.240 --> 0:09:05.520 can't get enough of it, because at the heart of it, 0:09:05.880 --> 0:09:09.040 there are so there are several different um you know, 0:09:09.200 --> 0:09:13.320 enigmas and conundrums. Uh and paradoxes that that emerge, you know, 0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:16.120 because it's dealing with what we are and who we are, 0:09:16.480 --> 0:09:20.040 and just sort of that some of the mysteries that 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:24.760 that seem to revolve around are are fleshly self and 0:09:24.840 --> 0:09:28.480 some of the more supernatural ideas about what we are, 0:09:28.520 --> 0:09:30.120 and of course some of the you know, the mysteries 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:33.800 of consciousness itself. Yeah, and that's interesting when when you 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:36.680 get into mysteries. One of the great things to wonder 0:09:37.120 --> 0:09:41.319 is um as far as consciousness and its relationship to 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:44.440 different types of tissue in the body, nervous system, tissue 0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:46.760 in the brain versus other parts of the body. You 0:09:46.760 --> 0:09:50.000 always kind of wonder, um, what did ancient people know, 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:52.480 you know, or what did they suspect before we had 0:09:52.559 --> 0:09:57.080 modern neuroscience and anatomy and uh, and there is something 0:09:57.120 --> 0:10:00.880 interesting you can observe. Is not necessarily going to be theft, 0:10:01.040 --> 0:10:02.960 like we're talking about it in a lot of our examples, 0:10:02.960 --> 0:10:06.120 though in some cases it probably is. But there are 0:10:06.160 --> 0:10:09.839 interesting cases you can observe from the ancient world and 0:10:09.920 --> 0:10:13.360 from ancient religion where sometimes the head or the brain 0:10:13.520 --> 0:10:17.040 were treated differently than some other parts of the body were, 0:10:17.240 --> 0:10:22.000 which indicated at least something some interesting belief. Yeah, yeah, 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:24.760 this is this gets really fascinating. Now, First of all, 0:10:24.760 --> 0:10:28.760 we should stress that we modern humans are probably just 0:10:28.920 --> 0:10:31.360 mostly focused on the idea of the brain being the 0:10:31.400 --> 0:10:34.520 seat of the mind and the self, because we also 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:38.800 paradoxically carry along other ideas with us. You know, there's 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:41.080 so many just parts of our language and just the 0:10:41.120 --> 0:10:43.640 way we think about ourselves that we may talk about 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:46.360 feeling something with our heart, and when we do that, 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:51.520 we may on some level position are our center of being, 0:10:51.559 --> 0:10:54.000 in position our mind in the middle of our torso 0:10:55.160 --> 0:10:58.320 my gut feeling. Yeah, yeah, your gut feeling, etcetera. And 0:10:58.360 --> 0:11:00.440 you can take this even further, of course, get into 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:07.240 various um uh you know, supernatural and religious ideas about 0:11:07.360 --> 0:11:11.480 say various chakras and energy points in the body, um 0:11:12.760 --> 0:11:14.760 you know, and the And we can carry this around 0:11:14.760 --> 0:11:17.280 with us and also carry around a science more or 0:11:17.320 --> 0:11:20.320 less scientific understanding of the brain, um you know. And 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:22.280 we can we can believe in both. We can we 0:11:22.320 --> 0:11:25.680 can you know, dip out of both steamer trays as 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:28.560 it suits us. Yeah, obviously people do. I mean like 0:11:28.600 --> 0:11:32.520 that A lot of people probably believe in some type 0:11:32.520 --> 0:11:35.600 of supernatural mind in one way or another. But then also, 0:11:35.840 --> 0:11:39.319 like you would consult a neurologist if you needed to write, 0:11:39.600 --> 0:11:41.679 and and you know, I'm I'm always a kind of 0:11:41.679 --> 0:11:43.520 of two minds on all of this because on one hand, 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:47.360 you know, we we the brain is is the the 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:50.240 the author of of of all these ideas, you know, 0:11:50.320 --> 0:11:52.839 I mean, it is the center of our being. And 0:11:52.920 --> 0:11:55.600 we see that, um, you know, and that that bears 0:11:55.600 --> 0:11:59.360 out anytime there's a brain injury, etcetera. But then also 0:11:59.679 --> 0:12:03.120 we're not just the brain. We're also the body. And 0:12:03.679 --> 0:12:06.000 while you know you might be stretching it to say 0:12:06.000 --> 0:12:09.600 that you're you know, you're thinking something or feeling something 0:12:09.600 --> 0:12:11.160 with your heart in the same way that you would 0:12:11.160 --> 0:12:14.079 with your mind. You know, there is this um we 0:12:14.360 --> 0:12:17.920 are more than just the brain. We are this entire organism. Yeah, 0:12:17.960 --> 0:12:21.240 That's something that I think is often overlooked in these 0:12:21.559 --> 0:12:25.080 like so the Beaumar monks or whatever. The brain in 0:12:25.120 --> 0:12:27.560 a jar with a spider body, and you think, like, well, 0:12:27.640 --> 0:12:30.280 that's just pure mental existence, you know, as if you 0:12:30.360 --> 0:12:32.880 you'll just live forever in this mechanical setup and you 0:12:32.920 --> 0:12:36.040 can have your your pure mind continuing to do whatever 0:12:36.040 --> 0:12:39.240 it does. Meditation or whatever. But I think that might 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:44.040 be really underappreciating how much your mental life would be 0:12:44.120 --> 0:12:47.160 changed if you were only your brain and did not 0:12:47.320 --> 0:12:49.160 have the rest of your body for the brain to 0:12:49.200 --> 0:12:51.960 interact with. Yeah, that's why General Grievous got to bring 0:12:52.000 --> 0:12:54.640 his guts with him, you know. Yeah, he's not just 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:57.560 a brain, he's also eyeballs and guts in there, so well. 0:12:57.600 --> 0:12:59.680 I mean, and there's even literal feedback. I mean, in 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:02.360 some way the brain is influenced, for example, by hormones 0:13:02.400 --> 0:13:04.959 that are secreted by organs in other parts of the body. 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:11.080 Absolutely uh. In thinking about what ancient people's thought, though, 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:13.920 it's it's impossible to get into this discussion without, of 0:13:13.920 --> 0:13:18.120 course touching on the ancient Egyptians, because, as a many 0:13:18.120 --> 0:13:21.199 of you are probably already thinking about, they famously removed 0:13:21.240 --> 0:13:24.880 and discarded the brain, dering and balming, while taking great 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:29.000 care to store various other organs in economic jars. Yet 0:13:29.080 --> 0:13:31.840 at the same time, the ancient Egyptians are responsible for 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:36.400 the oldest written record using the word brain. I mean, 0:13:36.440 --> 0:13:38.920 it wasn't brain, you know, obviously, but it was the 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:41.840 Higheroglyphics for brain aren't known. We see it in a 0:13:41.960 --> 0:13:46.200 sevent BC text that was in turn apparently based on 0:13:46.280 --> 0:13:49.240 texts that go back to about three thousand BC. Uh. 0:13:49.320 --> 0:13:53.079 This is the so called Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, named 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:56.640 for the American Egyptologists who discovered it. Okay, so we're 0:13:56.640 --> 0:13:59.600 looking at it now. The the hieroglyphic word form that 0:13:59.760 --> 0:14:03.080 men the brain, the organ, it's like a bird, and 0:14:03.120 --> 0:14:06.120 then something that looks maybe like a feather or a knife, 0:14:06.280 --> 0:14:08.680 and then like a hook shaped thing, and then what 0:14:08.800 --> 0:14:11.720 looks like maybe a bee or a fly. Yeah, yeah, 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:14.560 I guess the hook. I have no idea, but the 0:14:14.559 --> 0:14:17.720 hook thing is very suggestive, of course, uh, not being 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:22.080 entirely sure what this this these hieroglyphics um individually, these 0:14:22.080 --> 0:14:23.760 parts of it mean because of what we think about 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:26.240 the hook that is used to carefully remove the brain 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:31.400 uh tsoot during embalming um, which was a delicate procedure 0:14:31.760 --> 0:14:34.080 because you had to do it apparently as well without 0:14:34.760 --> 0:14:36.440 you had to take care not to damage the facial 0:14:36.480 --> 0:14:40.040 features during the removal. And and one thing that's important 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:42.520 to realize here is that the Egyptians didn't necessarily think 0:14:42.560 --> 0:14:45.720 the brain was garbage or anything, but it was one 0:14:45.760 --> 0:14:48.880 of the first organs to go foul. Part of their 0:14:48.920 --> 0:14:52.400 practice was to first remove the organs that decayed rapidly, 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:55.360 and this certainly included the brain. This is going to 0:14:55.400 --> 0:14:58.960 tie directly into an account from the early nineteenth century 0:14:59.000 --> 0:15:00.920 that we're going to talk about later in the episode, 0:15:00.920 --> 0:15:04.240 about a very prominent and fascinating case of head theft. 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:10.120 All right, um, just briefly some other tidbits about our 0:15:10.160 --> 0:15:13.160 history of understanding the brain. In the fourth century BC, 0:15:13.880 --> 0:15:16.840 Aristotle considered the brain to be a secondary organ that 0:15:16.960 --> 0:15:20.479 cooled the heart, a place where the spirit could circulate. 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:23.160 The heart was the center of thought. Though now in 0:15:23.200 --> 0:15:27.440 the second century, ce Galen concluded that the brain was 0:15:27.520 --> 0:15:30.440 the seat of the animal soul, uh, one of three 0:15:30.480 --> 0:15:33.480 souls in the body. But this was based in part 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:36.600 on his observations of the effects of brain injuries on 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:40.200 mental activity. So again, even if you even if you 0:15:40.200 --> 0:15:43.760 you you were really clinging to some idea that uh, 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:46.200 that thought and being is tied up in the Torso 0:15:46.520 --> 0:15:48.360 you know, after a while, it becomes clear that when 0:15:48.360 --> 0:15:51.280 things happen to the head, um, it can it can 0:15:51.400 --> 0:15:56.280 drastically affect how we think and how we uh we process. Yeah, 0:15:56.320 --> 0:15:58.240 that seems like that would have probably been one of 0:15:58.240 --> 0:16:00.920 the earliest ways that people could do the important role 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:03.560 of the brain, not just because you could make the 0:16:03.680 --> 0:16:06.960 argument that sometimes it's somehow kind of feels like thought 0:16:07.040 --> 0:16:09.160 is taking place in the head. Obviously it didn't always 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:11.440 feel like that to everybody. Some people must have thought 0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:13.920 it felt like it was happening somewhere else. But but yeah, 0:16:14.000 --> 0:16:16.120 you noticed that you hit somebody in the head. It 0:16:16.240 --> 0:16:20.400 is much more likely to have a complex and profound 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:23.840 effects on how they think and how they feel than 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:26.560 hitting them in any other part of the body. Yeah, 0:16:26.560 --> 0:16:30.560 it's interesting. How again, it's an unavoidable in our language. Right, 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:32.480 So we talked about like putting our thinking cap on. 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:34.640 You know, we're just so many times like we're thinking 0:16:34.640 --> 0:16:37.480 really hard. We might do something involving our head, We 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:39.800 might touch our head. But if you were living in 0:16:39.800 --> 0:16:42.480 a culture that was more based in an idea that 0:16:42.560 --> 0:16:45.440 would that thinking was based in the chest, would you 0:16:45.480 --> 0:16:48.560 put your I don't know, you're you're thinking brazier on? 0:16:48.800 --> 0:16:51.920 Would you would you sort of like hold your chest 0:16:51.960 --> 0:16:54.640 a little bit as you as you think. I don't know, Yeah, 0:16:54.800 --> 0:16:56.840 And I also wonder what are the limits to that, 0:16:56.920 --> 0:16:59.560 Like is is that. Is it possible that if you 0:16:59.680 --> 0:17:02.360 just had the right cultural ideas fed into you as 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:04.679 you were growing up, that it would literally feel to 0:17:04.800 --> 0:17:07.679 you like you were thinking with your feet or thinking 0:17:07.680 --> 0:17:10.360 with your knees or something, or is there a sort 0:17:10.359 --> 0:17:13.199 of limited range of where it can feel like thinking 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:15.960 is happening. I don't know. This is fascinating. I hadn't 0:17:15.960 --> 0:17:17.840 really thought about all this before. But maybe there's some 0:17:17.880 --> 0:17:19.440 papers out there to get into it that would it 0:17:19.480 --> 0:17:23.080 would be interesting to read about. Yeah, but any rate, 0:17:23.080 --> 0:17:25.720 from here, we gradually built up an improved understanding of 0:17:25.760 --> 0:17:28.560 how the brain function, though much remained unknown for a 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:32.280 considerable amount of time, leading to what I've seen referred 0:17:32.280 --> 0:17:35.560 to as a quote cultural anatomy of the brain that 0:17:35.640 --> 0:17:40.480 doesn't necessarily match up within neurological reality. Yeah, that's interesting. 0:17:44.840 --> 0:17:50.640 Than Now, there's one example from ancient history I guess 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:55.680 actually this would be prehistory of how heads were treated 0:17:55.800 --> 0:17:57.520 in a way that was somewhat different than how the 0:17:57.560 --> 0:18:00.639 rest of the body was treated. And this kind from 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:05.880 the ancient Neolithic or Chalcolithic Neolithic settlement known as chattelho 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:09.639 Yuk from Turkey. It's a place in southern Turkey. That 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:12.920 was thousands of years BC. Did did you have the 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:16.000 date on that? Um? I I read it had thrived 0:18:16.080 --> 0:18:20.240 back in seven thousand. Yeah, I mean it was around 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:21.679 for a while, but I think that was like the 0:18:21.720 --> 0:18:25.240 period of its the height of its population and power, 0:18:25.920 --> 0:18:29.440 and so it's one of the earliest large human settlements 0:18:29.480 --> 0:18:33.200 that we have evidence of sustained habitation at. There were 0:18:33.240 --> 0:18:36.400 all of these houses that were sort of built right 0:18:36.440 --> 0:18:38.320 next to each other. They were built up and you 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:40.280 would enter them through the roof. It was like a 0:18:40.320 --> 0:18:42.880 grid of sort of cubicle houses. You'd go in through 0:18:42.920 --> 0:18:46.280 the roof, and there are these living spaces that archaeologists 0:18:46.320 --> 0:18:49.879 can still explore today. And it's fascinating to try to 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:52.560 put together the culture of the people who lived at 0:18:52.640 --> 0:18:58.520 Chattelhoyuk because one of the things observed there is sometimes, uh, 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:02.000 sometimes there would be mortu ary practices that would involve 0:19:02.119 --> 0:19:07.919 apparently incorporating the dead bodies of friends and family members 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:11.600 into like the furniture, just into stuff inside the house 0:19:11.680 --> 0:19:14.280 where the people were living, so the body of a 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:18.760 dead relative might be buried underneath the bed where you sleep. 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:22.640 But one of the other really interesting things sometimes observed 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:27.520 there is the removal of heads from dead bodies I 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:31.000 presumably family members, where the head would be taken off 0:19:31.560 --> 0:19:34.920 and uh and then covered in some kind of plaster 0:19:35.280 --> 0:19:38.120 and just like kept in the house. Yeah, it's it's 0:19:38.119 --> 0:19:40.879 really fascinating because in this we we get into, you know, 0:19:40.880 --> 0:19:42.680 you sort of have to strip away sort of your 0:19:42.720 --> 0:19:47.960 modern funerary customs and ideas about what is what is 0:19:48.000 --> 0:19:51.000 proper to do with the with the body of the deceased, etcetera. 0:19:51.320 --> 0:19:53.240 And you if you try and sort of put yourself 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:56.600 in this this different mindset and imagine, like how do 0:19:56.680 --> 0:19:59.760 we relate to the bodies that no longer have life 0:19:59.760 --> 0:20:02.439 and him you know what what is the what is 0:20:02.480 --> 0:20:05.600 the skull of the dead? Uh? Now that they have 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:07.920 you know that now that the individual has passed on, 0:20:08.040 --> 0:20:10.320 you know, you you get into this sort of like 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:13.720 base area. Then you you can build up from there 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:16.399 and imagine how some of these these customs could have 0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:20.560 taken root. Yeah, and it it definitely signals like how 0:20:20.640 --> 0:20:24.679 variable and culturally determined our feelings about the treatment of 0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:28.040 dead bodies are. Because I think now and it's probably 0:20:28.160 --> 0:20:30.199 very somewhat to culture even today, but in most of 0:20:30.200 --> 0:20:32.240 the cultures were familiar with. Like if you were to 0:20:32.280 --> 0:20:35.359 take Grandma's dead body and like cut her head off 0:20:35.440 --> 0:20:38.040 and cover it with plaster and put it on a desk, 0:20:38.400 --> 0:20:41.639 that would widely be seen as like disrespectful in some way, 0:20:41.680 --> 0:20:44.720 But here it's the exact opposite. It seems to suggest 0:20:44.800 --> 0:20:48.040 that this is a way of revering the dead, and 0:20:48.200 --> 0:20:50.480 in some way it has some kind of religious significance 0:20:50.520 --> 0:20:54.280 or ritual use. Yeah. Like nowadays, you said down and 0:20:54.280 --> 0:20:56.160 you watch the Texas chainsaw mask you and you say, 0:20:56.240 --> 0:21:00.479 this is not right. This family of Texan cannibals are 0:21:00.560 --> 0:21:03.720 are are not being respectful to the dead. But you 0:21:03.720 --> 0:21:05.560 can make a case for most of the things they're 0:21:05.600 --> 0:21:09.359 doing and say, no, they're being very respectful. Um to 0:21:09.560 --> 0:21:11.720 to a to a point, I'm only going to defend 0:21:11.960 --> 0:21:18.280 the Sawyers so much. But um but but now there's 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:20.479 a lot to consider, like you know, what happens to 0:21:20.560 --> 0:21:23.040 the body when it dies? Wand or what do we 0:21:23.119 --> 0:21:25.200 do to the body when it dies? And how we 0:21:25.960 --> 0:21:28.800 approach these different views of death, like they have a 0:21:28.880 --> 0:21:31.480 huge impact on not only how we we treat the 0:21:31.480 --> 0:21:33.760 bodies of the dead, but then also like how we 0:21:33.800 --> 0:21:37.159 think about death itself. Yeah, and so we're gonna be 0:21:37.240 --> 0:21:42.119 focusing in these episodes on some cases of brains and 0:21:42.240 --> 0:21:46.120 heads being taken off of bodies um or or being 0:21:46.200 --> 0:21:49.240 stolen in one way or another without the consent of 0:21:49.280 --> 0:21:52.199 the person involved. But there we should at least know 0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:55.960 that there are plenty of cases where heads are removed, 0:21:56.040 --> 0:21:59.760 brains are removed, and this was according to the wishes 0:21:59.800 --> 0:22:03.400 of the person from whose body they're being taken, right. Yeah, 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:08.040 so a few I think, mostly if not completely consensually 0:22:08.080 --> 0:22:11.240 preserved brains worth mentioning. Uh. One of one of the 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:13.439 big ones that that probably a lot of people were 0:22:13.440 --> 0:22:17.879 thinking of is is Broca's brain. Um And one of 0:22:17.920 --> 0:22:19.919 the reasons, of course, is that Carl Sagan has a 0:22:19.920 --> 0:22:24.159 whole book titled Broker's Brain, because one of the essays 0:22:24.200 --> 0:22:26.920